Cinnamon, Spice, and…

Presently listening to my “I’ve developed a taste for you” playlist.

Type O Negative’s cover of “Cinnamon Girl” just ended.

I’m embarrassed to admit I first thought the title/lyrics referred to a girl with dark hair, and believed I *was* a cinnamon girl. I even had an old Yahoo email address with that as part of the handle. Silly, sheltered, youthful me.

Now, it’s Suzanne Vega’s “Caramel.”

Drinking some black tea with rose petals in the mix, sweetened with clover honey. Big ol’ bottle of ice water on the side. I wasn’t 100% faithful to writing without any skips and doing it very-first-thing, but I did crank out 3 pages of Morning Pages, starting out with what I remembered of last night’s dreams.

AND… while I also picked up my pen here or there or just stopped to criticize my own writing on the page and try to overthink what I was trying to say, I did also get in 4 pages of writing in the first of the two writing exercises from Wild Mind, where I had left off.

Writing every day for 10 days and not rereading anything you’d written for 2 weeks, then teasing apart bits and pieces that might work for other timed writing exercises, as opening lines.

I’m not sure if there’s the possibility that any of that material might “become” something. Natalie Goldberg suggested they’re all for warm-up. For getting the mind limber, like The Dude in The Big Lebowski.

Is writing its own sort of mind-altering activity? Maybe. That’s kind of a pretty thought.

Gearing up to make myself breakfast, even if I suspect a big meal might make me even sleepier. Slept in late. Only beat the noon alarm by 20 minutes. Guess I needed all that rest. Still tired.

I will have to eat more than dry toast and a protein bar, if I hope to get anything apart from writing done today. Also have to call my nurse practitioner’s office. The pharmacy said they needed some kind of paperwork from her, regarding one of my meds. I hope this is the last one I need refilled this month, after how expensive the last trip to the pharmacy was. And this refill is pricey, too, since it’s the name-brand rather than the generic. But I didn’t have as much success with the generic.

Don’t know why it seemed at one point like the volume control on my phone didn’t affect the sound on the Bluetooth speaker. It noticeably does today. Maybe it’s like the volume on my TV, where once you get up past a certain level, it all kind of sounds the same? But right now, it’s barely above muted, and you can tell when you go up or down.

I also finished reading that book last night, that I mentioned yesterday. It’s book two in a series. Not sure if I will read more of the series. It must have been on a Stuff Your Kindle freebie day. Can’t conceive of any other reason I would have Book Two of anything, by itself.

Nina Simone just trailed off, followed by, of all artists, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Which I guess really their whole band name includes something edible. But I chose to use the song “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” from the album of the same name.

The caffeine in the tea has seemingly done nothing whatsoever. Did once have a supervisor tell me you sometimes need to take tolerance breaks. HA! Yeaaaaah, can’t imagine doing that at this point. I *was* doing pretty well for awhile there, drinking nothing but water at work, but at this point, I can’t make it through even a relatively short shift without some soda.

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Something happened right about at this point of the afternoon, and the day went in a totally different direction. I never did make actual breakfast, and many, many hours passed in between the opening of this post, and my writing this section, now.

I’m not sure if it could ever turn into more than just a supplemental position, an add-on to my current job, since they don’t really indicate how many hours you might get weekly…. BUT, I did decide, today, to apply for instructional positions with the art gallery, after much encouragement from friends and family.

I put my name in BOTH for writing, and visual art, even IF I think my difficulty with photorealism is a real weakness (and my lack of formal art training, post-high school, unless you count art history and art philosophy classes as an undergraduate).

I can do photorealism to a point, if I have a really solid reference image, but it’s tricky. Especially with paint. Sketching is a little easier. But I did make a really great watercolor flower, in a one-off art class. So the ability is there, awaiting further practice.

Kiddo gave me the idea to suggest art without a plan, just diving in and expressing something personal. I added to that the possibility of using a writing sample, or a piece of music, as a springboard to go into the project.

We’ll see what they say.

It was a very involved affair. I restructured my entire resume so I would have room for both my teaching experience and related elements of my retail work (believe it or not, there is some: social media content creation including photography and writing, merchandising, etc.)

Otherwise, my newer retail experience would drown out the previous teaching stuff, and it would have been WAY too long.

I then had to pick and choose what to send for samples of my work, and decided I wanted a blend of writing and visual art. Maybe I should have included a short story as well as the two poems, but I couldn’t land on one I liked enough. And the two poems were pretty good. One was the piece I put together for the dance/poetry collaboration project, which involved the poem and a painting, and pairing with my friend, Christine, who choreographed the dance and edited the video.

I think as far as a multimedia approach to creativity goes, participating in that project looks pretty impressive. Christine worked so hard on that video. I did my part, too, and sent voice recordings of me reading the poem, as well as photos of the painting, in progress, and the finished product. And the poem was an extended labor of love. It kept getting longer and longer LOL…

Anyway, I changed my mind a few different times about what to include for the samples, and started out with 5 things, then went back and reread the application and saw they wanted a max of 3-4. Had to cut at least one. THEN, I discovered that Google Docs didn’t want to let me share the content the way the site was set up to receive it. So I had to copy and paste the whole shebang into a Word document.

FINALLY got everything submitted.

In the interim, I’d also noticed that while I had recently updated my profile resume in Indeed, I hadn’t updated the uploaded one. I had also looked over the profile resume and concurred with Indeed that it was a bit wordier than my experience justifies.

Removed all the pronouns but for one “his” that referred to an assignment I had created for a Letter of Inquiry; students pretended to be Jonathan Harker, writing to Dracula about what to expect out of his upcoming trip to Transylvania.

I still have to call my nurse practitioner, but I have enough meds that it won’t necessarily be an issue. And I’m off tomorrow. I ended up engaging in a flurry of huffy activity at home, bagging up and hauling out trash, and going through the clothes to be donated to make sure my one good pair of leggings that actually fit wasn’t mixed in there by mistake, as well as separating them into two bags rather than one so the bag would hold up… and collecting all the aluminum soda cans I had been tossing into takeout bags, into a single trash bag to give to a coworker so their dad can trade them in for some money.

I drink a lot of zero sugar soda. I’m sure my contributions add up.

With both bags of donation clothes piled into a laundry basket, I grabbed that, and my purse, a can of soda, and my trusty water bottle, and headed to my parents’ house. My mom rode along with me as I donated the clothes, after we got gas.

Then, we went to Panera. I had half a chicken salad sandwich and a salad with chicken and “Mediterranean Greens with Grains.” My mom got an assortment of macaroons, which she shared. I had the chocolate, and she had the plain coconut. We saved the third one for my dad.

From there, we stopped at the local library. I got us each a postcard to fill out about how much we love our library and why it ABSOLUTELY deserves funding. Picked up yet another novel. The self-checkout didn’t want to accept my card, but the computer took my numbers, when I placed a hold on Goblin Mode.

But the librarian was more than happy to check me out, instead. I wonder if the barcode on my card is shot, and it’s reading it as someone else’s numbers?! Who knows?

So, I now have 3 library books. Alors. First world problems. All the books, and so few hours in a day.

Speaking of which, I should away, to do some more Wild Mind writing. Started after midnight yesterday, so I *technically* started today… but I still feel like I want to get some writing in before bed.

AND I have therapy in the AM.

I guess one of the big insurance companies is trying to eliminate virtual visits. A money thing, maybe? Not sure if that would affect my nurse practitioner appointments AND my therapy appointments. They work for different companies now (but didn’t always), and only my nurse practitioner has mentioned it. Will have to ask my therapist.

Something else to remember.

The day got away from me, without me adding to Mystery Train. My poor characters! Will have to poke at that tomorrow, too. Maybe right after therapy, and calling my NP.

To the notebook, Batman!