don't stop believing, just dance

I know it seems trivial, but I set a couple of goals for the summer and I've already reached them, so huzzah, and now I need to GET BACK TO WORK. Except that I seem to be working nearly nonstop lately, and I'm not sure what's up with that. It's like I've broken through another barrier or something. I mean, this year has been a biggie in so many ways, but I'm still seeing improvements that make me think maybe it's possible to dream even bigger, maybe fly even higher.

For the first time ever on a personal blog I pulled in 3000 views in one month. (I've got pingbacks and my own cookie turned off, and my other trackers, who take turns catching bots and ghosts, wink at me that 3000 actual views with real eyeballs is about right.) Back when my total views were around 15,000 I was hoping I could shoot for and possibly hit 18,000 by my one year anniversary here. I've still got 3 1/2 weeks to go and flew right past that one, and all I can think is how weirdly numb I feel about it.

The last time I played a numbers game like this was the original eCritters, wiping out shops, churning eem into mega collections, colorizing whole tribes of pets like they lived in Hollywood mansions. That was me surviving a loss that felt like a crater. It was all I could do to dink around on a children's game because it was after the brain crash, eleven years ago this fall. And bad stuff just kept happening until it finally all very slowly turned around five years ago, and ever since has felt like crawling like a bug up a mountain. Until this year.

I still have glitchy days, hours, moments. I still facepalm over ridiculous ineptness that has me slapping myself silly behind the screen. I still can't believe I blurted something or left a typo that bad hanging for several hours before I even saw it and I proofread it 5 times on two different devices. I still die quietly once in awhile after I push the 'publish' button and then go crawl off like a worm. I once saw a license plate on a pickup jacked way up on monster tires that said "U WORM", that still cracks me up.

But I'm writing amazing stuff, way better in the last few short months than how I started out (I know #facepalm more rewrite). I don't know how. It reminds me of when I had to drive over to Kansas to take my GRE exams because I missed the local date, got lost and shot onto a turnpike in Oklahoma, eventually bumbled my way into a seat in the nick of time and didn't have a clue for several hours what I was even doing. I assumed I failed. I barely even remember it because the stress and fatigue were so bad, and it was really cold, and I barely had enough money to eat because I wasted my gas on that stupid turnpike. I was starving when I finally rolled back into my own yard.

I got called into a plush office on campus later, and sat alone in a big leather chair on one side of a big room with a really nice desk while two 'old guys' (professors) fussed quietly over a piece of paper on the other side of the room. They walked back and looked dumbfounded at me over their glasses and asked "How did you even do this? NO one does this." I had virtually failed one part of the three part test, at least badly enough to never get into graduate college, but I had wildly surpassed the expected above average averages on the other two parts. They'd never seen that happen before. How could I be so dumb on a whole section and so brilliant on the other two? I told them I don't know, I had no idea what I was even doing.

That was the truth. I fly blind. All my life I've been ricocheting around, bumbling my way through relationships and jobs and life in general, never quite oriented, and yet succeeding. My psychologist wasn't the first to ask me how I'd managed to hold jobs and get a degree, much less keep a marriage intact for two decades and raise children who didn't wreck cars or become alcoholics or get pregnant in high school.

They let me into graduate school on the proviso that I not let a single grade slip, and I managed to pull those As in right and left, even though I'd failed, dropped, and nulled a few classes as an undergraduate to the point of having to request a hearing over whether I would be put on probation. I won the hearing. Because I wanted to.

I've always won. Even when I lose, I win. I always find a way to win. Every single thing in my life is about winning. I use losing as a strategy. I even lose on purpose to postpone winning. No one wants to play Uno with me because I can keep a game going for three hours. People stopped playing chess with me years ago because I'm not content to checkmate, I have to dance around the board squeezing every drop of blood out of the game until there's nothing left to do but win. I once kept a Monopoly game going for a week by extending credit and upbuilding hotels into mansions. (Imagine spreading out several boards or making 3D Monopoly. I dream...) And now I play a different game.

I have barely begun this monstrous set of goals I put together three years ago. I originally meant to have more done by now, but by more, I mean far less, because I am doing ten times more now than I originally envisioned. If I'd already accomplished what I had set out to do in the first place, I would have finished already and it would be a lot smaller than all my unfinished stuff I'm working on now.

Some days I feel dizzy. This is a lot of stuff. Most days I just feel high. I've got my brain back, I'm in high gear, and I'm mentally so buzzed that I hope this never ends. I want to be this busy the rest of my life.

If I could sit for hours without pain like other people do, if I had a team of friends working on the same goal, if I had the money to get the proper tech to support the work I'm doing- just imagine. But imagine me accomplishing all the stuff I want to do without that. Imagine winning the game the long way around, excruciatingly slowly, every move, every strategy, every keystroke going out into building a mansion, brick by brick.

Squeezing out every last drop of blood. I am so high feeling good about where I'm going.

routine

It took several years for me to embrace the somewhat daily discipline of touching base with myself on blogs. Once I got into the habit, it took another couple of years to embrace the interruptions that keep me from focusing on enjoying the brain workout of daily blogging. That's really what it is, isn't it? Writing something down every day is an exercise, and sometimes it's hard and sucks the same way that committing to a 30 minute workout every day does. So when alone time with one's brain creeping out into the soft static of the world Borg mind becomes enjoyable, something getting in the way of that can make a person feel kinda pissy. And then learning to let it go can turn it into work all over again when it's time to get back into routine. Routine iz hard, yo.

That's why I blog the way I do. I make it really enjoyable to come back because I would otherwise be so bored and frustrated with the written word that I'd maliciously envision visiting horrible consequences all over my laptop, either in forums or actually on my laptop. ZZztTTT There, you stupid keyboard, want some COFFEE? Can you keep up NOW??? See, if I had minions, they'd look more like spiders because I'm evil and would go on gleeful stomping frenzies.

I'd rather be cool, you know? Not just someone losing it and throwing things.

A wise man once said, "Don't dream it. Be it." I heard the playwright actually got that off a cigarette ad, but who cares.

You thought I was done, didn't you? I'm not done. I actually did do some writing over the holiday weekend. I've been noticing over the last 8 weeks that writing seems to suddenly have become remarkably easy. I'm no longer struggling when I sit down and continue painting my canvas. I was kind of joking about the whole thing through April, but I guess it was real.

I couldn't read until I got into the second grade. Thankfully I got a teacher who was all into phonetics. Suddenly words became a game.

My third grade teacher made sentence structuring a game. I began to write.

My fifth grade teacher made reading a game. I had the second longest bookworm in the class.

My sixth grade teacher showed me with a special projector that I'm actually a speed reader.

I figured out by high school that I can glance through books and accurately summarize them without being conscious of what I've read.

College was like a circus smorgasbord at which I excelled without understanding, and learned that my communication skills were dismal. I discovered a secret key and unlocked a door to a gigantic maze.

The internet was a joyous brawl without direction until I learned I can make and lose friends.

Blogs helped me practice in the long, dark nights after my world shattered and all hope was gone.

A psychologist helped me understand that my problem really is me. I saw myself for the first time.

I am Aspienado. I've worked long and hard to reach this place. There is no magic involved. I'm not that savant. (I believe we are all beautiful and magical.) Because I kept pushing myself into a routine, I am writing.

I'm writing pain.

And I'm writing joy.

And one day, Lord willing, you will see it. Time to GET BACK TO WORK! >=l