1. I learned that Morgana O'Reilly from Neighbours is going to be on the third season of White Lotus. I'm excited about that.
2. It's freezing cold in Texas which stresses me out a lot. But my stress was higher before the freeze than it is now during the freeze.
Earlier I was most scared about our pipes freezing and then exploding. Now I'm kind of numb to that possibility and am stressing about the water I put out for the cat who visits daily/nightly. The cat came early this morning and was met with a bowl of frozen water.
I've twice brought the bowl in, defrosted the water in the sink, and then put new water out.
It freezes so fast. It's hard to keep up with it.
3. How do animals drink in the winter? I should Google that.
4. I Googled and didn't easily find anything reassuring.
5. I've been watching Season 5 of All Saints lately. It's a huge comfort show for me. I think, for the most part, that's what Australia has become for me now. A source of comfort television...and also probably comfort music.
6. Some nights ago, I had a epiphany that could have been painful but was instead quite comforting.
It's along the lines of I'm quite up there in age and very likely won't find any success as a writer.
It's very much not the first time I considered this. but it was the first time it made me feel more good than bad.
Why did it make me feel good?
I'm not sure, but I think it's because I have felt all this inner pressure to keep working via various avenues to try to find success.
Like I need to keep trying and trying even though I will probably fail.
There's peace in knowing it's okay to give up.
7. I wonder if writing this post negates what I wrote in #6.
8. What is the point of writing and posting?
9. I'm thinking though I'm not too bothered by the lack of writing success, I am bothered...haunted...by the idea of the world being oversaturated with content. So many books being written, so many TV shows.
Fan fiction
Blogs
Podcasts
Message Boards
Social Media Posts
10. There is nothing inherently horrible about the world having too much content to read. It just means, though, that a lot of writers will never be paid. Or they won't be paid well. And if that's not bad enough....there's really not enough people with enough time to give all writers the readers that they want.
I will be lucky if one reader has the time to read this post.
11. I have probably said this way too many times, but I'm going to say it again. I really believe that content consuming is just as valuable to our society as content creating. Probably even more so now that AI can create.
12. I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from planning a novel series. I'm creating various unpublished blog posts to jot down various ideas, plans, etc.
I love doing this but don't at all love the idea of actually writing the novel.
But when I think of not-writing-the-novel, all the note taking seems pointless, and I feel compelled to quit the project all together.
So I have to keep pretending that I plan to write the novel.
13. What's the point of writing a novel if no one is going to read it...that even if the novel is brilliant, people still won't read it, simply because they don't have time, because there are a ton of other brilliant things out there to read.
14. I can barely even find hope in the idea of my future relatives reading my stuff. They too will have too many things to read.
15. If I do write my novel, it will be impossible to promote, because it's going to lack structure, character arcs, high concept ideas, etc.
I think it's going to be like an ongoing soap opera about mundane life.
I mean it might have those things to some degree. But it won't have enough of those things to easily describe in a compelling sentence or two.
16. Although playing around with world building for a novel I might never write does bring me some joy, what brings me much more joy is enjoying fiction created by other people. I plan to spend the rest of my life doing more of the things that bring me feelings of joy and comfort.
I read a Judy Blume book on the plane (Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself). Reading the book gave me so many good feelings. I want more of that.
17. I'm addicted to The Simpsons: Tapped Out
Tim had been playing it...somewhat obsessively.
I decided to try playing it, mostly as a kind of gesture of interest and support.
I secretly thought it was boring and couldn't see the appeal.
At first.
And then as I unlocked more characters and buildings, it became better and better.
I love it.
Now I'm often playing it, and Tim rarely does.
I don't really care about the dialogue and storylines. I kind of zoom through it all. I just like the accumulating, collecting, rearranging, etc.
18. Jack has suggested we try Universal Studios again, since we're so much into thrill rides. I did some research and ended up learning that, like Disney, Universal has a bunch of different hotels. It too is a whole big resort-thing.
What if it's just as good as Disney World. Or even better?
There are times I love being a DVC member, sometimes so much so that I want us to buy even more points.
Other times, I wish we weren't DVC members. Right now I'm leaning towards that, because it would be easy than to try doing a Universal Studios vacation. We could stay at a Universal Studios resort, go to the Universal Parks, have early entry to the Universal parks, etc.
It's a pain to get from Disney to Universal Studios. We're either going to have to pay for parking or take a Lyft.
19. I think, in the end, I will probably always prefer Disney. With that in mind, I'm glad to be DVC members.
20. In the past few years, we farewelled Jack's childhood/teenage home, the family lake house, and my parent's house. So many changes. Disney World is a constant in our life. The Beach Club really is like a second home to us.
21. Last year, Tim and I had considered going to Disney World together without park days. Then we changed it to going to Vero Beach, and I realized I felt really blah about the whole thing. We ended up canceling the plan.
I'm still feeling blah about Vero Beach. But I think I could actually enjoy a Disney vacation without going to the parks.
It would probably be easier staying at a resort that's not a few steps away from Epcot.
On our non-park days and also on our non-park-hopping days, I felt a sort of longing and regret seeing Epcot right there, knowing we couldn't just walk in.
22. The feelings of longing and regret is probably preferable to the feelings of exhaustion and obligation I have when we have annual passes or park days for every day of the trip.
23. Just as I have longing and regret for the parks when we're not in them, I also have a sort of longing and/or FOMO about the resorts. I tend to have this feeling that everyone else at the resort is fully there and fully taking advantage of all the amenities.
Thinking about this....I don't have that sort of feeling about the parks and all the other people there. So I think maybe we do spend enough time in the parks, and maybe I actually need more resort time.
I think I need to spend more time at the pool, not necessarily swimming or even bothering to put on a swim suit. But maybe I need more time sitting near the pool, ordering from the pool bar, etc.
24. I might write more posts like this. I get interrupted a lot from the cats and from Tim. I've lost most of my ability to handle interruptions while writing. And with posts like this, it's much more tolerable to lose my train of thought.
It's easier to hop back on.
25. It will be extremely hard for me to write a novel with all the interruptions.
26. Maybe instead of writing a novel, I'll just jot down information about the novel in posts like this.
27. The main character in my maybe-novel is Kelly Feldman. She's Jewish and autistic (but not diagnosed). She has an older sister named Ruby. Her father is a successful writer. Their family owns and manages a movie theater that was gifted to them from Kelly's maternal grandparents.
The grandparents own a whole movie theater business.
28. The maybe-novel takes place between 2004-2010 and is mostly about Kelly's obsession with the TV show Lost. I don't know if that would be the main storyline or just a kind of background thing.
29. My idea is to have different novels in different time periods focusing on different women in Kelly's family.
So while the first book would be about Kelly; the second book would be about one of Kelly's paternal aunts and would take place between 1978-1985.
30. I have various time periods marked off as possibilities for books
A) 1974-1981
B) 1982-1988
C) 1986-1991
D) 1990-1995
E) 1995-2001
F) 2004-2010
G) 2007-2013
H) 2014-2021
Each time period represents some kind of era in my own life. Though I'm not sure what each era is anymore.
Let's see.....
B is my Poltergeist obsession era
G is the years where we took our three trips to Australia
E is the time from starting to date Tim and becoming a parent with Tim. I think?
C might be the years that my special interest was Cystic Fibrosis.
D is my college years. Probably?
I have no idea what A is.
31. The three things I love about the maybe-novel planning is
A) making things up
B) having an extra purpose for research. I love doing research and having an imagined reason for the research makes the research extra enjoyable.
C) I love having a reason to think about and dwell in pop culture nostalgia. Though when I think about actually turning it into a project, it stresses me out.
For example, I plan to send the Feldmans on Disney World trips. I have them going on big family trips in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006...and then Kelly's mom Elizabeth went with her family to Disneyland in 1968 and Disney World in 1972, 1977, and 1982.
While we were at Disney World, I thought about all this and started stressing about the research and remembering I will need to do in order to write about life at Disney World without the My Disney Experience app.
D) Figuring out which rides, restaurants, and resorts were around and not around will be easy. I think all that can easily be found on Wikipedia or other sites.
32. One of my research things is reading a Livejournal Community for Lost fans.
I had made a sort of rule for myself that I would start with the writing of the novel after I finished reading the community postings from 2004-2005. Since I am reading in very small bites, this will take me several months.
But I don't think I want to start writing the novel months from now.
If I write the novel, I think I want to write it years from now.
33. I had felt this need to start the novel soon, because I'm getting old, and what if I'm to die in my fifties and never finish this project?
But I think it will be perfectly fine if I never finish the project or if I don't even start writing at all.
34. It would be awesome if I spend all my fifties having a great time planning the novel and then spend my 60's writing the novels.
35. I am pretty sure I'm okay with not being a successful writer.
36. I am trying to figure out if I still like the idea of being a successful writer.
Would it be wonderful, okay, or kind of awful to have people read and like my writing?
Of course, it would be wonderful in some ways. But it would also be incredibly stressful.
Would the good outweigh the bad?
37. We're watching Party Down, Martin Starr's character, the failed novelist and blogger, is highly relatable to me.
38. I used to love the idea of young people loving my writing. Having children and tweens be big fans of my work. Being adored by the young.
That has faded, though. And now I like the idea of old people reading my stuff...especially old women.
I'd like to be popular in retirement homes.
39. Again, I'm questioning what I wrote in #6. What is the point of writing and posting if I expect my writing to be ignored?
What if the point of writing and posting if I'm okay with my writing being ignored?
Am I okay with my writing being ignored?
40. Maybe I am okay with my writing being ignored, and I can still enjoy writing and posting while expecting my writing to be ignored.
If it comes to the point that I'm too much NOT okay with my writing being read....
If I become too anxious about the idea of people reading my writing, then that will be the time to stop writing and posting.
I do have waves of feeling that way. But it's probably at a tolerable level right now.
41. It would be a waste of time, energy, and emotional health to write, post, and then worry about people reading my writing when people are not likely to read what I've written.
42. It would also be bad to be a popular writer who has horrible anxiety about people reading their stuff. But it would be less ridiculous.
Less ridiculous but probably a zillion more times stressful.
43. I was about to end this but now feel compelled to say something about Israel. A few weeks ago, I was obsessed with the whole thing. Now I'm less so.
It's too complicated for me to go into it on a thorough level (in this post)
On a personal level, I'm on that small isolated island of left-wing Zionists. We're rejected by most people on the left. I think probably 99% of non-Jewish left-wing people hate Zionists and believe Israel should not exist.
I think most right-wing Gentiles and right-wing Jews agree with Donald Trump and Elon Musk's view of us—that Israel is a fantastic place and progressive-Jews are a betrayal of both Israel and the United States.
44. I am so incredibly thankful for the few people out there that are progressive and Zionist. I'm thankful for the Jewish ones and thankful for the extremely rare non-Jewish ones.
45. I knew that antisemitism on the left existed. But I would have expected it to be at the level that if something like October 7 happened, people would put aside their negative feelings....
Kind of like if someone has a turbulent relationship with a family member but at the level that if the family member was rushed to the hospital, they'd soon be there at the family member's bedside.
I would have expected most people to put their anti-Israel feelings on pause and show a bunch of compassion towards Israelis and Jews.
I would not have expected the opposite to happen.
46. I just realized that the rushing-to-the-bedside scenario is kind of what happened with most progressive Jews. A lot of us had very ambivalent feelings towards Israel...especially during the Trump years.
October 7 had us rushing to Israel's bedside (in a symbolic sense. Though I think some have done so more literally).
47. Reading about history and seeing all the past wars, battles, geographic boundaries etc. gives me hope that there will come a day when Jews and Palestinians manage to share the land and have peace and prosperity. Well, at least with each other. Then they'll probably be allies against some other groups out there.
48. It's not just a they.
It's a we.
It's not to the same degree to all those who live there...or those who have sadly died there.
But I think everyone in the Jewish or Palestinian diaspora is also a part of the whole thing.
49. Maybe in the 2050's, there will be a reboot of The White Lotus. And the first season will take place on the beautiful, thriving beaches of Gaza. The resort will be managed by a lesbian couple—a Palestinian and an Israeli. There will be fights, betrayals, and murder. But none of it will have any connection to the question of who does and does not belong on the piece of land.
50. I enjoyed writing this post but it took a lot of time and energy...which I would rather spend on other things. So....it might be the last post I write for awhile.
Read my novel: The Dead are Online