Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Family

November is novels all the way down (part seven)

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In the last post, I wrote about diversity and how it’s not a dirty word. I also wrote about how it’s a part of me and not an affectation. I will say that it’s deliberate in that I choose to make the majority of my characters minorities. So, yes, in that case I’m doing it on purpose. I am not doing it at anyone in particular, but if I upset certain people in the meantime, well, that will please me greatly.

Some people are worth pissing off is what I’m saying. Yes, we need to be civil in general to work as a society, but when people break that social contract by being bigoted assholes, I am no longer beholden by that social contractor to those people.

There are going to be three main characters, and nary a cishetwhiteman among them. I will admit it amuses me to see how far I can go without having one as a main character. I have three or four other characters in mind (not fleshed out yet), and none of them are CHWM, either (figure it out).

I have a snapy beginning to my novel. The first few pages have been written–in my mind. This is how I write, by the way. I write in my brain before I write for real. That’s my way of planning/scheduling/outlining. I do a big brain dump as I’m musing things over in my mind. Then, I write in my mind for a few weeks. Then, I start the actual writing, and it’s like a brain dump agai, but in a more orderly fashion.

Before my medical crisis, my writing regime was pretty uniform. I wrote 2,000 words a day like clockwork in the fashion I outlined above. I edited as I wrote, though I tried not to do that. I rarely had a writer’s block, and I could finish a novel in a few months.

When I used to do NaNoWriMo, I had no problem meeting the word count. Why did I start doing it? Just to get back in the habit of writing again. I set my own goal of 2,000 words a day, and I was able to do that with ease. One year, I did 5,000 words a day–that was exponentially more difficult. In the later years of doing it, I started breaking the rules. I edited a novel one year. I wrote a novel and the the beginning of a sequel another year. I started on a day other than the first of November in yet another year. Before November, I mean.


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Noveling all November long (part six)

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I’m back to write about writing one more time. In the last post, I veered into ranting about the state of the world right now and how anti-inclusive it currently is (especially in America). I have been fighting this fight for thirty goddamn years, and I’m so tired. I did not realize that electing a black man would create a backlash this severe, but here we are.

I haven’t felt this hopeless in years. Politically, I mean. I don’t know if we as a country can recover from the shit that is happening right now. More to the point,  I don’t know if we should. We are not really a country–we are a conglomeration of fifty small nations. A resentful conglomeration.

There is no compromise, by the way. You’re either for inclusivity or you’re not. If you’re the latter, then you’re part of the problem. If you can’t even tolerate people who are different than you, then we have no ground that is common.

Back in the day, many minorities didn’t ilke the word tolerate. They wanted to be accepted as they were. Which, yes, ideally, that would happen. You can’t legislate that, though. You can’t mandate how people feel (though, lord knows,the curret admiistration is trying to do so), but you can dictate how they act. I don’t care if people accept me or not, but goddamn it, they can at least be civil–even if it’s just by a thread.

I include all this in my writing because it’s a part of me. It’s the fabric of my life, and it’s not an affectation. This is what the alt-right doesn’t get–we are not being who we are to spite them: that’s just an added benefit! I’m not agender, queer, and Asian AT them–it’s just who I am. My life experience, and, indeed, my very being, include all those aspects of myself.

The fact that I died (twice!) and came back to life (twice!) has deeply affected me as well. I learned things from that experience that I could not have learned any other way. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can share with many people because it’s so out there. I want to include it in my novel, though, beacuse it’s just that unusual. Will people believe me? Probably not, but that bothers me not.

In my first few attempts at a novel after my medical crisis, I really tried to set it in the hospital. It was such a wild experience; I still haven’t completely digested it yet. At some point, I realized that everything I thought happened while I was in the hospital didn’t. Well, to be more precise, most of what I thought happened did not.

I was as high as a motherfucking kite, and I was delusional/hallucinating the whole time. Some of the things that I thought happened did actually happen, but not in the way I thought. For example, I was so impressed that there were so many people of color on my team. I live in Minnesota, which means the vast majority of people are white. My experience in the hospital was that everyone but a few people were non-white–specifically, they were Asian.


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November means novel to me (part five)

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Back for yet another round of talking about writing a novel in November. Here is my post from yesterday in which I touched on the same topic. In rereading the last post, I realized that I didn’t write about writing at all. That’s hilarious, but so true to my heart.

Jerks like to complain about ‘woke’ characters in pop culture. It happens a lot in video games, and I see it in other mediums, too. If the main character of a video game isn’t a cishetwhiteman, then, it’s pandering to the ‘woke’ crowd. Including pronouns in the game? WOKE. Nonbinary as a gender? WOKE. I’ve told this before, but there’s a document floating around the internet that is a list of all ‘woke’ video games. What makes a ‘woke’ video game? (And, yes, I’m going to keep putting ‘woke’ in quotes because as long as it amuses me).) According to this doc, a Pride flag made a game ‘woke’. Any major character being anything other than a cishetwhitedood was ‘woke’. Of course, anything LGBTQ+ was ‘woke’.

I’ve heard this whining for so long. It was called affirmative action in the nineties/aughts, and my god, cishetwhitemen like this are so goddamn fragile. They like to call us special snowflakes, but they are the ones who are sniveling and whining when a game’s protag is anything but (say it with me), a cishetwhiteman.

Bro. Brah. My dude.

Do you know how many video games star a cishetwhitedude? Even with all the diversity that has floated into games (and I, for one, am very pleased about it), I would guess that 75% of games (and I’m being conservative here (the only time I will be conservative)) star a cishetwhitedude. If you want to play as a cishetwhitedude, you have SO many options!

Also. I just need to point out that women (and, I’m assuming women-adjacent people) make up nearly fifty percent of gamers. In some countries, they (we) are in the majority of gamers. In other words, by putting more so-called diversity into games, developers are acttually making the games more realistic than they were before.

I’m Asian, AFAB, agender, areligious, queer, not married, and no children. That’s my life. That’s who I am. I’m not a made up character; I’m living a so-called ‘woke’ life. I’m environmentally conscious, pro-choice, an anarchist, and I would be a small-l libertarian if it weren’t such a dirty word. I believe in the collective and lifting up each other.

None of that is fake or an affect; it’s simply who I am. And there are a lot of people like me. We’re not trying to be weirdos or out there or ‘woke’. We just are. I know it’s hard for some people to believe, but we are not who we are AT them; we. just. are. Are some of a bit extra because of them? Hell, yes, but that’s a pretty normal reaction.


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Novel in November (part four)

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Here’s the thing about writing a novel (at least for me). When I get an idea in my head that won’t leave, I know I need to write about it. Before my medical crisis, this was not an issue because what got stuck in my head was what I wanted to write about, anyway. Now, however, I’m not sure I want to write about what I’m obsessing over–even though it will be the background for what I do want to write.

Oh, here’s yesterday’s post. I went off the rails for quite a long time, but that’s part of my writing style. It’s not going to change, and let’s face it, I don’t want to change it. I ilke it. I think it gives my writing character. I already know that I am not for everyyone if not most people, and I am fine with that, too. In fact, there are people I hope I’m not for, and I want to antagonize the shit out of them.

To put it plainly, I write about several topics that fit into the term DEI. Which, as we know, is a dirty word with the current administration and his acolytes. I talk about race, gender, sexual identity, religion (a lack there of), and other things considered problematic by this administration. I’m not married, and I don’t have kids; I have no desire to marry, and I never wanted children. I had cats, which I much prefer to human babies (for me).

I don’t believe in rigid gender norms/roles–indeed, I don’t see any reason for them. One of the reasons I have an easy time with pronouns is because, well, there are several reasons for that. The reason related to this is that since I don’t see why we have rigid gender roles, it’s easy for me to accept people as their stated gender.

I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, so I’ll try again.

I’m a weirdo. I have always been a weirdo. I have always had to mask and calibrate myself to not freak out the normies too much. I didn’t even realize I had to do this until I was in my twenties (which made my childhood and teens very difficult). Once I realized how much of a weirdo I was, I studied normies so I could try to see what made them tick. Plus, the whole emotional support person thing I’ve talked about countless times before (my mother forced me to be that for her). I put my high EQ to work, and I came up with an acceptable way to be around normies–for the most part.

There is very little that I find shocking as a result. I mean, there are things that bother me, disturb me, and disgust me, but shock me? Very rare. That’s not a flex or a humblebrag, by the way. It is just the way I am.


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But faaaaaamily

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I want to talk about my family today because I’m so tired. I’ve been talking about what I want to do with my life, and I derailed myself by talking about my family in my last post. More specifically, about my father slipping further and further into dementia, and how my mother is dealing with it.

Or not. I mentioned that she is pinning her hopes on him returning to normal, whatever that means. She knows that dementia is irreversible, and yet. She has confided to me that she does things expecting him to return to himself.

I’m doing my best not to snap at her, but it’s hard. She is very rigid in her expectations about what is and isn’t acceptable. when I was in my twenties, I told her several important things about myself that she vigorously rejected. She didn’t just not like what I had to say; she hated it. She hated that I got a tattoo (I have four now); she hated that I was bisexual; she hated that I chose not to get married and have children; she hated that I decided to study Taiji. Those were all heresy in her eyes, but there was one that was even worse–I think.

When I told her that I did not believe in her god any longer. I told her I no longer believed, and true to her wont, she simply let it fly over her head. That’s her way of dealing with unpleasantry–not accepting it it all. A few years after I told her I was bi, I said something casually about liking women, and she said dismissively, “Oh, are you still like that? I thought you were over it.”

So, yes, she did not accept that I had left Christianity. She had people from her mother church (LA branch) praying at me as they circled me, their hands near my face. They asked if they could touch me, and it was a hell no to that. I was so freaked out, especially when some of them started speaking in tongues. NOT a way to try to convince someone to return to the fold, I’ll tell you that much.

But when you’re that deep in, you just can’t see it. Just like people say, “I’ll pray for you,” thinking it’s a positive thing. They don’t realize if you’re not part of their group/cult/denomination, it’s at best, neutral, and at worst, repulsive/scary/offensive.

That’s not completely fair. I’m sure for some people, the positive intent is there even if the receiver of the prayer is not part of the group. Some people can think of it as the equivalent of warm wishes and be at peace with that.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part four

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In yesterday’s post, I mostly focused on martial arts. I want to set that aside for this post and contradict what I had said in yesterday’s post about not having any more goals for this upcoming year. This is going to be family-focused, and it probably isn’t going to be pretty. Because family isn’t pretty. At least not mine, especially not now.

My father has dementia, and it’s getting worse. He’s almost eighty-six years old, and his decline in the last six months has been rapid and alarming. I talk to him maybe once every other week or so, and we Zoom (with my mother) once in a long while. We did that a few days ago, and my father was clearly not having a good day. Usually, he can hold it together enough to talk to me–and he almost always remembers who I am–but this time, it was clear that his mind was wandering.

Dementia is a cruel and ugly disease. It strips the person of everything–especially if the person is…look. My father was self-centered and self-absorbed before he got dementia. It’s only gotten worse because that’s what dementia does to you. It makes you a toddler who can only think of themselves, and it seems to be worse in my father because of his proclivities prior to getting it.

In addition, it emphasizes the dysfunction that already exists in my family. My mother has devoted her life to my father, and now, she has a valid reason for doing it. But she also resents it at the same time, and she has some pretty rigid ideas as to what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

The problem is that she’s hoping against hope that he’ll return to ‘normal’, and she cannot accept that dementia only goes one way. She told me about a promising new medical study for early-onset dementia, and I could hear it in her vocie. She knew that my father was beyond that, and yet.

I don’t blame her for hoping, honestly. Most people hope for miracles when something really bad happens. It’s the fact that she pushes my father to do things because she wants him to get better, and the things she pushes him to do border on cruel. Like when we were talking on Zoom, he suddenly decided he had enough. He abruptly stood up and started to leave. My mother protested and tried to stop him from leaving. He was pretty insistent on going, and she was equally insistent on him staying.

I broke in and told her to let him go because it was distressing to watch. And, there was no need for him to stay if he didn’t want to. That’s my mother, though. Once she gets an idea in her head, nothing is stopping her from executing it.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part three

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I’m still thinking about the goals for this year. In yesterday’s post, I talked a lot about Taiji and Bagua and the weapons I want to learn/how hard it is to find a Double Sword Form. I did add one more actual goal, and I’ll add a few more in today’s post (probably).

I’m still dealing with the lingering aftermath of getting double-vaxxed and my bloodwork done on the same day. That second shingles shot was no joke. Even though I knew that going in, I was not ready for how much it was going to lay me out. K and I were talking about it, and she said she had never felt as shitty as she did with her first shingles shot. My first one was pretty bad as well (I always react badly to shotslvaxxes), but nothing like the sceond one. My right arm (pneumonia shot) is fine. My left arm (shingles shot. I got the bloodwork done in the back of my hand.

Side note: Whoever invented the butterfly needle is a genius. Seriously. Changed my life)

is still slightly puffy and sore. The real issue is that I’m still exhausted, like I had the flu. I was doing the Swimming Dragon Form today, and by the end, I was fatigued–and sweating. My teacher has always said that if you start sweating lightly, you’re fine. If you start sweating profusely, you should immediately stop.

No, wait. It was when I was doing the Double Fan Form that I started sweating and felt really fatigued. Fortunately, I was able to retain all the movements with minimal problem, but by the end, I just wanted a nap. I had hoped I’d be able to do a full routine by now, but that isn’t the case.

It’s been almost two full weeks since I got the shots (will be two full weeks in eight hours), and I’m really glad I work from home. I can’t imagine dragging my body anywhere feeling like this.

Back to my weapons.

I think I’ll polish up my Double Saber Form next. It’s gotten a bit sloppy, which makes me sad. I love this form, and I love the double sabers. So, yes, I think that I need a refresher on the form. I’ve done it once, I think, since getting my shots. Hopefully, I will be able to do it all the way through when I’m up to practicing it again.

I am not worried about the Sword Form or the Saber Form because they are the first two weapon forms I learned. Same with the Solo Form–I’m pretty comfartable with that (well, not with the changes my teacher’s teacher has recently made, but I’m getting there).


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part two

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I’m back with more actual goals. Here is my last post, and, yes, I’m still talking about my re-birthday. Hm. It’s really late (early in the morning), and I am exhausted. I t hink I’ll skip it and come back to it tomorrow.

I’m back. A quick side note (yes, this early): My sleep has been so fucked in the past two weeks. It’s the vaxxes and my bloodwork, and I really should not have done all of them on the same day. Yes, it made sense to do them all at one time just to get them done, but given my outsized reaction to shots, I should have known better.

It’s been a week-and-a-half, and my arms are almost 100% better. I’m still tired, though. Very much so. I was able to do the whole Swimming Dragon Form (hands-only, Bagua) after completely forgetting the beginning of it yesterday. I was also able to do the whole Double Sword Form, though I did have to peek at the videos now and again.

Here is the post from day before yesterday in which I listed four goals for this year. I struggle to make them realistic because I swing from making very small goals that I easily do and goals that are so big, there’s no way I can reach them.

In addition, I don’t know what is realistic, really. Like before my medical crisis, I could confidently say I could write a rough first draft of a novel (100,000 words or more) in a year. hell, I did that during NaNoWriMo several years in a row without breaking a sweat. Now, however, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I can still write 2,000 words a day? But I haven’t been able to do that in ages, either.

I want to set goals that I can conceivably achieve, but I just don’t know what that means any longer. I think it’s better to set ongoing goals when I’m unsure about the results. I think I can say that I will finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I have 11 movements left, so I could even possibly get it done by the end of this calendar year.

If that’s the case, then I need to start thinking about what I want to learn next. I do want to teach myself a Double Sword Form at some point, but there are several problems with that. One, there is not an official Double Sword Form–at least not one I could find. My teacher’s teacher hasn’t done one, either. She did ask him about it, and he said that you can do the Sword Form with two swords, doing the guiding hand mmotions with the off hand with a sword in that hand, too.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday

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Ok. No more fucking around. I’m going to lay out my goals for this year. Starting with the more important ones and then meandering down to the ones that are just rattling around in my brain. Here is my post from yesterday, which is vaguely related.

1. Write the first draft of my novel/book. This has been in the forefront of my mind for the last few years. I have tried and tried to write it, but I’ve always stopped short because it just would not gel. Now, I don’t care about how terrible the first draft is as long as it gets written. I’m not sure which of the two ideas I want to focus on or if I can somehow combine the two.

I have been putting it off for a few years because I just can’t get the words to come out right. I don’t know if it’s permanent or temporary–but I fear it’s the former. I still have the ideas in my head, but they aren’t alive as they were before. In the past, they were moving as if in a film. Now, they are static.

I don’t know if it’s because of the medical crisis or not, but I have a hunch it is. I also realized that I had a much harder time visualizing things in my head. Before my medical crisis, if someone said, “Picture an apple in your mind.” I could do that easily, put it on any background, and make it move around. Now, I can still picture it, but it’s very pale and shadowy.

Again, I’m not mad about it because I’m alive. That’s all that really matters. But writing was a big part of my identity, and I’m lost without it. I could easily write 2,000 words a day as I did before my medical crisis–and I have. But it’s shit, and what’s more, I don’t know how to make it not-shit.

On the one hand, there’s no reason not to write the whole novel/memoir/book because why not? I have  all the time in the world, so if it ends up not working, it’s nothing more than a few wasted months. It’s not like I don’t have those, anyway.

My goal is to write a very rough draft, 2,000 words at a time. If that’s too intimidating, I’ll start with a thousand words a day. The goal will be just to write. If even that is too much, then I’ll start with a character study of each main character. I never do that, but it’s a good way just to get me writing.


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Life goals for my re-birthday, part three

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I am back to write more about, well, my lack of writing. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had said to myself a few weeks after I got home that if I never wrote again, that was a fair trade-off for being alive.

I stand by that, but…

It’s hard. Before my medical crisis, I had stories in my head all the time, and I had no problem writing furiously for hours on end. I had a goal of two thousands words a day, and I had no problem fulfilling that goal. This is not a humblebrag or a brag, but 2,000 words was no problem for me. It took maybe two hours if I was really on a roll, and it was usual decent writing. Not end game writing, of course, but it was at least usable.

Now, I have tried to write the first two or three chapters of one, ah, yes, we can call it a novel I guess over and over again. The first ten pages or so? Great! Then, it just goes flat, and I cannot inject life into the words no matter how hard I try.

I gave up after writing the first few chapters four or five times. I have another idea in my head that is pretty far from the first one, but I would love to find a way to bring them together.

This is my strength and my weakness. I like to bring together disaparet ideas and make it work as best as I can. I don’t like to hear that something can’t be done because why the hell not? When I took a murder mystery writing class from a local mystery writer I really enjoyed (her work), I was pretty disappointed when she said I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I usually write from the first-person perspective, and for that class, I decided to have scenes in which the “I” character did not appear.

My teacher was adamant that this could not be done. She said if the book was in the first person, that character had to be in every scene. When I asked her why, she had no real answer for it. She just reiterated that it wasn’t possible/acceptable.

Here’s something you need to know about me. If someone can’t give me a solid reason for whatever they’re saying, I won’t accept it at face value. Let me rephrase that. I can’t accept it at face value; my brain just won’t allow it.

So when teacher was saying it wasn’t possible/correct to have the “I” chaaracter missing from scenes in a novel, I pushed back. I could not see why it wasn’t possible/proper/correct, and she kept saying it wasn’t done. Yeah, I know. But that’s not telling me why it can’t be done in the future.

You want to know the ironic bit? A few years after that, it became the rage to have murder/mystery novels with different perspectives. An “I” character could be missing from several scenes, and no one would bat an eyelash.

In other words, I was fucking ahead of my time. I often am. My brain doesn’t work the way other people’s brains work, and at some point, I resigned myself to just being a freak. Until that point (late twenties/early thirties), I just thought my brain was broken. I knew about neurodiversity, but I didn’t fit the stereotypical symptoms, so I thought it couldn’t be me.

In addition, many of the things that are empathized with auutism (lack of empathy, the inability to read social cues/situations, not being able to do extended eye contact) were not things I had an issue with. In fact, I excel at the first two and can (kinda) do the third. It wasn’t until an autistic friend told me to take the online test as unmasked as possible that I realized how much I was performing for the gen pop.

I’m excellent at social cues unless I’m really tired or sick because I have had to do it since I was a small child. Same with empathy. I am exceptionally good at it, but it’s something I developed and honed over the years. I do think I have some natural ability for it, but I can’t say for sure because I have been my mother’s emotional support person since I was eleven.

I think I will have to add to my goals something about finding a therapist/psychologist to help me sort out my shit. I have a lot of shit to figure out, and I tried to find a local therapist. The problem is that I need someone who understands straddling American and East Asian culture, the difficulties of living in a dysfunctional Asian family, queer and gender identity issues, AND autism issues.

If I had to choose, I would put the first two as the most important right now, but I would like at least a glancing knowledge of the other two.

I live in Minnesota which is predominately white. You can see my difficulty in finding someone who would have an in-depth knowledge of diaspora issues, especially for an Asian person. Especially during the current troubled times.

Another thing I really want to do in the next two months is finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I have taught myself 39 out of 48 postures, which means I’m more than three-fourths done.  I can’t tell you how agonizing it’s been and how I’ve doubted that I’d be able to do it. It’s the hardest weapon form I’ve learned/taught myself by far, and I was stuck halfway through for a very long time. I have never taken this long to learn a form, and I was oddly grateful when my teacher validated my feelings out of the blue. I sent her videos of the form, and she emailed me back saying, “Wow, this is really difficult.” That was unprompted, so it made me feel so much better.

I’ll be interested to see how many movements I’ve lost when I start practicing it again (have not done it in over a week before of my mulitple shots/vaxes I had on one day). I think with a little watching of the videos (three!), I can get back to where I was pretty quickly. That still leaves me with 9 or 10 movements left to go.

I do not doubt that I will learn it this year. But I’m curious to see how long it will take me. I have no idea. It could take me anywhere from another month to half a year. I hope it’s not the latter, but I would not be surprised if it did. After that, I’m not sure which weapon I want to learn next. Before I started teaching myself the Double Fan Form, I was thinking that I would want to teach myself a Double Sword Form. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be an official one, and I’m not sure I want another really hard form after learning this one.

I may focus on refining my Double Saber Form. I think I’m getting a bit sloppy in my execution, and it’s not a bad idea to tweak a form every now and again. That’s all for today. One more post tomorrow.