Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Writing

I’m too old for this shit

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My brother may want to do travel vlogging, so I’ve been helping him (I do work for him). I’ve been looking at popular travel vloggers and seeing what theye had in common. I’m doing it for my brother, yes, but I’m also doing it for myself. I know that blogging is dead, and, hell, even vlogging/YouTube are on their way out. It’s all about the TikToks and the Insta-worthy moments. I don’t use either of those, even though I do have an Instagram. I don’t use my Facebook any longer except to message K. Twitter is a trash fire, and I deleted my account a while ago. I check in on Bluesky once every blue moon (heh), and I find I don’t miss social media in general.

I find that Discord has replaced it, and we’ll see what happens when it goes *sigh* public. Which means it’s going to go to shit pretty soon. I mean, it’s to be expected because we can’t have nice things, and Discord was pretty nice to use.

Anyway. I have toyed with the idea of doing YouTube, knowing it probably won’t go anywhere. My YouTube channel, I mean. I am realistic that I am too old, too scatter-shot, too much of a dilettante, and just too, too much. There are many reasons  I haven’t done it, but one of the main ones is that I just cannot stick to one subject. And that’s very important because the internet is broken up into many, many different niches. You succeed by finding a niche within a niche and flogging the hell out of it.

Here are some of the things I noticed that the hot travel vloggers had in common. In no particular order and just from watching on a cursory level half-a-dozen or so very popular vloggers, here are the things that they all have.

1. Cult of personality

The strongest through-thread of all these videos was the personality of each content creator. They were all distinctive and immediately recognizable, and their personality was their brand. Sure, they went to very interesting places and had really amazing experiences, but the focus is on them. When I think back to the snippets of videos I watched, I don’t remember much about the places–but I can easily recall each of their personalities.

For better and for worse.

I did not like most of them from a personal standpoint, but I could see the appeal. Most of them were very outgoing, gregarious, friendly, and bubbly (for lack of a better word). They were, for the most part, white, and good-looking. Or at least average-looking. Mostly guys, and some of them were plain-looking. The women I saw, though, were all attractive. Take that for what you will*.


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Looking for ways to make my life better

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I was talking in yesterday’s post about my writing. I would dearly love to be able to write fiction again, but it’s a struggle. The words still come fairly easily, but they are not catching fire like they used to. I have mentioned before how if my writing is going well, then there’s a sparkle to the words. A lightness that I can tangibly feel–and see. when it’s not going well, the words are flat and lifeless. Sometimes, I can find ways to spice it up, but oftentimes, I just have to trash it and start over.

I don’t know what to do with my writing, honestly. I know what I want to write. I know what I feel compelled to write. These are not the same thing, though I might be able to meld the two together.

I have to say that it’s time to sort my family shit out. It’s a bit crude to point out that my parents are in the last stage of their life/lives, but it’s true. And it’s wrought/fraught because of my father’s dementia. But, that’s not the only reason. There’s also the fact that my parents are broken people. They have been my whole life, and they’ve only gotten worse as the years have gone by.

I clearly remember having an argument with my mother about social justice issues. This was since my medical crisis. We’ve had plenty of arguments about all the ‘isms’ beforehand, but this was after, I think. My mother said she was a traditional/old-fashioned person and tried to justify it by saying she had been born in 1942.

This argument drives me batshit insane. It’s always given as an excuse for attitudes/beliefs that are frankly horrible. In addition, though, it’s the laziest, most contemptible excuse one can give. Yes, she was born over eighty years ago. But you know what? She was not cryogenically sealed for the ensuing eighty years, only to be defrosted in the last three years. She lived in America during the Civil Rights years. She saw the ERA movement in America, and got to witness marriage equality in both Taiwan and America. Well, she wasn’t here (America)when it happened, but she got to see it happen. She got to experience Taiwan elect its first female president (something America hasn’t managhed to do), and many more progressive things in her eighty years on this earth.


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How to self-soothe during the dark days

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I’m still reeling. I ‘m not the only person who is. The deep anger is bubbling, and I’m not sure what to do with it.

Tangentially, I’ve had the longest writing drought (except for blog posts) that I’ve had in my life since I started writing–which was when I was seven. Back then, it was poetry. A bit later, I wrote a short story for school that was a murder mystery (I found my love for it at a young age). It was about a young girl, Birdie, who was ostracized by her peers (yes, I was drawing on real life. Which is still what I do). There was a teacher found murdered, I think? There were red herrings galore, but it turned out that Birdie killed her. I drew the illustrations to accompany the story as well (they were shitty). For some reason, playing cards played a part in it as well? I can’t remember why Birdie committed the murder, but that was very Agatha Christie of me–writing from the point of view of the killer. And, no, I hadn’t read Agatha Christie at that time.

By the way, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the book to which I’m referencing, is one of my favorite Poirot novels. If I remember correctly (and I’m not going to Google it, so I’m right in my own head), it was controversial at the time because while some people thought it was brilliant, others thought it was cheating. The reason why? Because the narrator was the murderer. Yes, I’m spoiling a book that came out nearly a century ago. Deal with it.

It was different to begin with because Captain Hastings isn’t in it. I have to admit that I prefer to have him there because he anchors the stories. Plus, he’s a good stand-in for the reader while simultaneously making me feel smart (because he’s not the brightest bulb in the garden). He has a good heart and an impetuous nature. He is credulous and susceptible to women who have hair that was a certain shade of auburn.

In this book, Dr. Sheppard is the narrator. Poirot has retired and moved to the countryside. He has dedicated himself to growing the perfect marrow, which I never knew what that was. It’s a courgette, which is zucchini in American English. The book opened with Poirot gardening and being angry because the marrows weren’t doing what he wanted. He was throwing them around, and one landed in Dr. Sheppard’s yard.

They struck up a friendship and when a murder happened, Poirot leaned on Dr. Sheppard to do the legwork. The book is written from Dr. Sheppard’s point of view as a journal of sorts. At the end, after Poirot denounced him as the murderer, Dr. Sheppard revealed that he had intended the journal to be his magnum opus after he got away with it. I have some quibbles about how Christie wrote the book because she did have the tendency to dance on the line of being not fair.


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More thoughts on NaNoWriMo

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I probably have brain damage. I want to state that outright because I think it has had an impact on how I write. Or not. I’ll get more into that, obviously. In yesterday’s post, I talked a bit about how I write. I don’t do what is commonly thought of as the right way to write. I don’t do it the first thing in the morning. I don’t do an outline (except in my head). I write a lot of garbage. That’s normal, but I write more of it because I’m so prolific. I edit as I go, which is a no-no as well.

This is the story of my life. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do just because I’m supposed to do it. It’s why I don’t identify as a woman any longer. It’s why I give a side eye to ‘but tradition’ or ‘but faaaaamily’. I have never understood why I should accept something is good just because society declares it as good. This is doubly so because as a minority, I have had to endure so many different kinds of isms across my life.

I am a weirdo, yes. This has put me on the fringe of society all my life. This has caused me no end of heartache, but it’s also been a strength. I have a bad tendency of being a people-pleaser–except when it comes to my writing. I mean, I do self-edit, but when it comes to how I write and the things I write about, I just don’t give a shit. I know that there is no way I can write about something that will have mass appeal. I just don’t have that in me. I am not a mass appeal person.  When I allow even a sliver of the real me to slip through, I get in trouble. I don’t like most of all pop culture, and I’ve learned to keep that opinion to myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to say I like Star Wars, for example. I don’t. I saw the first movie when I was eight or nine and absolutely hated it. I cannot tell you why, but I loathed it with every fiber of my being. I have seen the second movie (I’m talking the original trilogy), which I did not like either. That was the last Star Wars movie I’ve seen–oh, except for the horrid Christmas movie that Lucas tries to pretend never existed. I have no interest in the series, and I’m gobsmacked how fans just gobble down any shit Disney throws their way.


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NaNoWriMo in full effect

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It’s the first day of November, and I started my NaNoWriMo project at midnight last night. Well, technically, I started before that, but since I did not record my first 2,000+ words until after midnight. It’s totally legit, shut up. I began with a little brainstorming, and I will do more of that throughout the month.

I decided to start with the mystery, Here’s the thing, though. Because it’s set in the hospital, it could be the start of the memoir as well with a few tweaks. Which then makes me think, why not combine both?

Here’s the thing with the memoir. I am not and never going to write a classic memoir because it’s not the way I roll. Plus, as I mentioned before, my life isn’t nearly interesting enough for that. In addition, my brain will not settle down enough to write anything in a straightforward, sequential way. Believe me, I have tried. Several times. I start out a piece telling myself sternly that I am going to write something that starts at Point A, goes directly to Point B, and does not stop at Point C or Point -Z in-between.

I can Start at Point A and be absolutely determined to go right to Point B without turning my head–hey, what’s that over there? Why, it’s Point C!

Believe me, it’s much better for me to be honest with myself. I can sit here and say that I’ll be sequential and tell everything in a nice, neat fashion–and it would be a bald-faced lie. I know it’s not true. I know that I’m messy and bendy and I will always prcefer footnotes over the main story. I have footnoted a footnote before, and I will do it again. Don’t think I won’t.

Here’s the thing about my project. I decided I wanted to do two separate things (a memoir and a murder mystery (sort of)), but now I’m thinking of smashing it together. But would that be possible or even wise?

Side note: I just Googled fictionalized memoir. There are some very strong feelings about this, but there is also a term for it–autofiction. Which, I’m not thrilled about, I don’t mind saying. Why? Because it sounds like I’m writing about a car. Which I’m not. Most emphatically not. Anyway, some people have Very Strong Feelings about fictionalized memoirs, meaning they are very against it. It’s not true to the feelings and the blah-di-blah blah blah. Or rather, it’s not being truthful, which is sacred in memoirs.

Which, come on. No one’s memory is 100% perfect, plus we all have our biases. It’s folly to think that a memoir would be 100% accurate or even 75%. If I were to go the route of writing a fictionalized memoir, I would be honest that it’s not completely real. It’s more about the vibes and the feelings. And me jsut musing about whatever I want to muse about.

This is how I am about, well, everything, really. I use something until it’s no longer useful to me (like a label). Then I let it go and move onto something else. Is this a part of my neurodivergent brain? Maybe? I’m not sure because I’ve never been any different. I don’t like labels (but not in the ‘no labels’ way), but I acknowledge that they’re useful as heuristics.


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NaNoWriMo down to the wire

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It’s Halloween, and we have snow. That is not what i’m here to talk about, but I’m excited about it, nonetheless. We were supposed to get a mix of rain/snow overnight, which morphed into 2-4 inches of snow (up to six inches for outer MN). I woke up to nothing, but then the heavy fat flakes started falling. I’d say there’s nearly an inch on the ground. Who knows how long it’ll last? I don’t really care; I’m just happy to have snow at all. It’s been weird, though, the weather, I mean. In the last week or so, it’s been 80 by day and 40 by night. I am not a fan of the wild weather swings and neither is my body.

But snow? I am a fan of that! I love snow. We had a huge blizzard on Halloween back in 1991. I was at college, on campus, and everything was shutdown. Our profs in Minneapolis could not make it down. We got over 2 feet of snow, and it was glorious. We’re not going to get anything close to that today/tonight, but any hint of snow pleases me.

I do feel for the kids trick or treating tonight. It does add to the vibes, but it’s probably not much fun to walk around in the snow. However, I don’t feel sorry enough to turn on the lights and hand out candy. Granted, it’s partly because I don’t have candy, but it’s mostly because I don’t like doing that.

I’m sitting in my house with the lights off and waiting for the night to end. It’s already dark at six-thirty, so the festivities are probably pretty much over. I did hear a bunch of kids about ten minutes ago so there’s that.

In yesterday’s post, I meandered all over, per usual. I talked about what I wanted to write for NaNoWriMo, kind of. It’s coming down to crunch time and I’m setting my goals as basic this year. 50,000 words. No creativity in that area because I have not written fiction for quite some time. I can do 2,000 words a day–or at least, I could before. Let’s see if I can do it again. My perfect writing time is around midnight, so that lines up as well. Meaning I can start at midnight and hopefully be done about three weeks in.

Now. Have I decided if I’m going to write the mystery (one book of the trilogy) or the memoir? Yes, I have, and the answer is yes. Yes to which? Both.


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NaNoWhatMo? WTF am I writing?

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I want to talk more about NaNoWriMo which starts in two days. Here is my post from yesterday about it. I want to get back into writing. I miss it a great deal. I mean, yes, I write a post a day, but before my medical crisis, I wrote a post a day plus 2,000 words of fiction. Every day. I would love to do that again. As I’ve mentioned, I did continue to write after my medical crisis, but it was shit. Now, I am hard on my writing no matter what. That’s not unusual for writers. We are (usually) our own worst enemies. In this case, however, the negativity I have towards my writing is valid. Of course I would say that, though. Nobody has a great assessment of their own anything, really. But to me, my writing as of late has been shit. Maybe I needed to push through it to get to the good stuff (which is often the case), but last year or the year before, I tried to write the second book (though I didn’t realize it would be the second book at the time) of my mystery trilogy. I wrote over 50,000 words, and the words never started to shimmer.

I mentioned this before as well that I don’t consider myself anything but a conduit for the words to flow through. I don’t feel like I was the creator of any of my novels, which may actually be the problem now. The words are not flowing through me. Before my medical crisis, I could sit down and write effortlessly for hours. After my medical crisis, I had a much harder time doing that. Yes, I could still write the 2,000 words a day, but it wasn’t nearly as effortless as before.

My goal this NaNoWriMo is…well, I’m not sure. Writing the 2,000 words a day, obviously. That’s my own personal goal because it’s what I used to do. It’s also to see if I can actually finish a novel as I did before. Or my memoir. Speaking of the latter, if I write it, it’s not going to be a straightforward memoir. As I’ve said a few times, my life is not interesting enough for a memoir. Except for the one situation that is unique and has never happened to anyone else.

The problem is, will anyone believe it? I almost can’t believe it myself. Yes, I’ll reference my brother’s CaringBridge journal in which he details what happened to me–but, wait. I’m not sure he mentions that I had two cardiac arrests and a stroke as that happened before he came into the picture. (And the non-Covid-related walking pneumonia which kicked it all off.) He told me about it when I woke up, but no one needs to believe that.


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Big brainstorming dump

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NaNoWriMo is fast approaching–where the hell has 2024 gone? Seriously. I know that this is a trope, but it’s also true. Every year does, indeed, go faster than the year before. Yes, I know this is not possible, but I am also not possible. So there! Oh, and here is the post from yesterday.

I know why it is, of course. It’s beacuse when you’re a kid, a year is a huge chunk of your life. When you’re five, it’s one-fifth of your years on this earth! I remembering waiting or Christmas (when I actually believed in Santa–which was up to eight or nine) and it took F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Now, a year is but a sharp inhale or maybe the following exhale.

I’m fifty…ah…three? Yes. Fifty-three. I’m never quite sure because I always add a year to my age at some point before I turn the next age. No idea why, really. In Taiwanese culture, you’re one at birth, so maybe that has something to do with it? It doesn’t help that I consider September 3rd to be my re-birthday. (In that case, I’m three.)

Anyway. This year has just flown by. I think in part because I have been grieving since February. Grieving is strange. It makes time both expand and contract. Sometimes at the same time. It seems like just yesterday that the tragedy happened. At the same time, it seems like forever ago. I have not been able to write (except here) since then–which I’m sure is part of the issue.

It’s nearly November. It’s because I’m thinking about NaNoWriMo that I’ve been musing about time in general. And because it’s been three years of bonus days of which I’m feeling I’m not taking proper advantage. Ugh. That was a terrible sentence. Let me phrase it better. I died (twice) on September 3rd, 2021. I was not supposed to come back, but come back, I did. Twice! Only to fall back into unconsciousness again. I was in a coma for a week, and my medical team told my brother to start thinknig about pulling the plug. Strongly advised.

And then I woke up. And while I was drugged out of my mind, I was able to do everything reasonably well. And was back home in a little over a week. No rehab. No physical therapy. Still drugged the fuck up, but functional. I could not read for the first few days I got home (blurred vision), but that went away fairly quickly.

Well I went far afield there, didn’t I? Let’s get back to brainstorming what I want to do for NaNoWriMo this year.


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I’ll tell you what I want (what I really really want)

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We’re coming down to crunch time. Friday is the first day of November (!), which means the start of NaNoWriMo. As I’ve mentioned before, I have done it every year for over a decade. I never had a problem meeting the 50,000 words limit because I am verbose by nature. At that point, I was writing 2,000 words a day as a personal goal.

That dropped off about the same time as a personal tragedy befell me. I still don’t want to talk about that, but I’ll just say it shook up my life. I lost a lot of the passion I had for life, including my writing passion. To be fair, I hadn’t really recovered the latter since my medical crisis. Or rather, my ability to write fiction. I still don’t know if it’s brain damage from the stroke or what, but I’m struggling with it in a way that I have never struggled before.

I don’t want to get into that becuase this post is about brainstorming for what I want to do for NaNoWriMo. I do want to do something. I have three options. Well, three options with sub-options.

1. A mystery trilogy. I write mysteries. Or at least I did back before my medical crisis. I have an outline of a trilogy lurking in the back of my brain. The problem is that I want to start with book two. I can start with book two, yes, but would that make it book one? Or would it still be book two when I go back to book one? I can ask those questions here because I’m trying to decide what to do in NaNoWriMo so there are no stupid questions. Or something.

I like to do things my way even if it’s not the best way to do things. Being weird/different sparks joy in me. And, again, it’s not that I do it on purpose, but that my brain works that way. I am better then I don’t try to restrain the oddity and just let the creativity flow. The problem is that the masking I do is hard to shed. I can feel this very thin veil surrounding me when I write, admonishing me not to step outside the box too far.

The issue with the mystery trilogy is that I know the general shape of what I want to do with it, but I lose steam after twenty-five to thirty pages. I can’t make it sing the way it used to do. When something I’ve written is good, the words shimmer and lift off the page. I know that sounds like nonsense, but it’s true.


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Nanowhatmo? Part four

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I’m back at it again to explore more about what I want from my writing. Specifically, if I want to do NaNoWriMo and if so, what I’ll do for it. In the past, writing 50,000 words in a month was not a problem. I made a personal goal to write 2,000 words a day, which I did mostly with ease.

Yesterday I wrote about reality versus what I thought was reality when I was on very heavy drugs. I was 100% convinced that what I experienced was real. My brother asked me months later about one thing I had rambled about whilst heavily drugged. He asked if it had actually happened, and I immediately said no. I had Googled it after I got out of the hospital and found no mention of it. I would have if what I thought happened had really happened.

Once the drugs had cleared my system, I realized that most of what I thought had happened could not have/did not happen. I read up on it and realized that hopsital psychosis (and delusions) was a thing. I didn’t have any truly traumatic delusions, thankfully, but it was such a wild ride. I thought everyone taking care of me weer PoC, which was really nice. In reality, there wasn’t anyone of color on my team (according to my brother and the pictures I saw of the staff a year later).

I want to talk about it because it’s had a deep and lasting impact on me. To put it plainly, I have a week missing from my memory and a week of memories that are a complete lie. Delusions, almost all of them. Well, roughly 90% of them. Let me say not remembering a week is a trip in and of itself. Actually, it’s more like a week-and-a-half. The memory wipe was retroactive and took away a half week leading up to my hospitalization. My heart doc said this was normal and he told me about one of his patients who was on vacation when he had a suddent cardiac arrest. He could not remember any of the vacation leading up to the cardiac arrest.

I remmeber on Tuesday emailing my Taiji teacher to let her know I was not attending the Zoom class that evening. I remember  messaging Ian Thursday morning to talk about Nioh 2 (which we were both playing). That’s it for that week. I had my medical crisis at 3 in the morning Friday night/Saturday morning and have no memory of it. At all. When my brother told me what happened, I was astonished because I had not a whisper of a memory of it happening.

I stayed in a coma until Thursday. My brother set up a CaringBridge journal while I was in the hospital and he noted at a quarter to seven in the evening that just as he was walking to the car to drive to the hospital to see me, the doctor called him to tell him that I had woken up.


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