I haven’t had to change anything on this site in so long

I have forgotten how to do half of it.

I have this new thing I’ve been trying, but I can’t figure out how to publish it on here, because all this website is is a glorified wordpress instance, and I can’t remember how the directories work, otherwise, god help me. If the subscription part of this isn’t working anyway, maybe I burn it all down and start over anyway. People are still reading the old stuff, which is delightful, (if fucking weird, in a way) and it would be sad to lose those fingerprints, but maybe its the last of a skin that needs shedding.

I’ve taken to carrying around a notebook with me. A dear friend suggested it, to use as an outboard memory of sorts, to store thoughts and experiences, to put down literal cut and pastes of things, if need be.

I haven’t written a fucking thing in it, of course, except to state that that’s what it’s for. I know my dear friend will read this and shake his head and probably roll his eyes at me. I know my wife will do the same.

It’s more than a habit — it’s a hallmark of all sorts of neurodivergent nonsense. (My editor has a red line under that word; apparently it hasn’t caught up with today’s vocabulary.) I feel like inscribing my journals/diaries/notebooks with their purpose simply curses them into becoming unused husks of unfulfilled purpose.

I’m not sure this will flow through Tumblr, Facebook, or email subscriptions anymore — I’m shouting into the void right now and that’s okay, because I just need to get moving. I’ve been slowly calcifying in body and mind since at least the pandemic if not before, and if I don’t do some kind of writing, art, something, I’m just going to end up a heap of unmoving sludge.

Even if it’s just posts like this to remind myself I’m alive.

I’m alive.

If this showed up in your email, drop me a line — catastrophe.jones@gmail.com, or a comment below? I promise I won’t use your information to sell you trips to Las Vegas.

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Is This Thing On?

I’m not receiving my own content, as a subscriber, to this blog. Something broke, somewhere, and I can’t figure out what.

Are you still receiving this? Send me a line catastrophe.jones@gmail.com or post a comment below so I can see if anyone’s still out here with me in the vast wilds of whatever the fuck the internet’s turned into.

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Posted in Announcements, Just Blog Stuff, Real Life | 3 Comments

A Different Set of Scales

I pull it from my lungs,
from the seat of me,
the floor, the places
where there shouldn’t be
places of something
to accumulate. I want to be
grounded, want to have
roots but then again
I don’t want to be
tied down.

Peel myself out of the layers
and set them all on fire.
Then set all Them on fire
who tell me that I
cannot have both,
that I cannot
have it all

so what if I am Light and Air
so what if I am Spring and Blossom
and Bloom
so what if I am Death Eternal
and the Blackness of Rot that takes it all
so what if I am,

bitch

I contain more
than you can comprehend
and I can be both
beauty and destruction,
both joy and rage,
both accomplishment and lackluster despair.
I can be both
worm and bird,
larva and butterfly,
egg and fucking dragon
don’t believe for one moment that you could
contain my multitudes.

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Spring Cleaning

Too many cobwebs cluttering up BrainTown for the last year. A year ago, I was in isolation, riddled with COVID, miserable and sick for Mother’s Day and my birthday. Everything was bullshit.

A year later, I can still feel the after effects of having contracted the plague; my lungs are close to, but not 100%. I feel like I aged 10 years in the last one.

Spring’s often a time where I sort of shake off the dust and feel a little less hollow; there’s definitely something to that whole “Winter makes some folks fucked up in the head” — it me, reader; some folks is me.

I have a lot on my plate, these days — the day job got infinitely busier, the house we bought shortly before the plague is much larger and requires lots more maintenance. My better half tricked me into suggesting we get chickens (I maintain it’s entirely not my fault — I would never have done such a thing like leaping into a massive endeavor without ever fully grasping the consequences, no, not me) and my descendant tricked me into getting them a dog after our first one passed away. Said dog is sleeping behind me in the office, in the only place she ever really wants to be during daylight hours: with me.

I am beset on all sides by conspirators, truly.

But I have also chosen to try new things like auditioning for voice acting work, or dusting off manuscripts and actually shoving them in front of other people for judgment. I’m renewing some old things too, like my rock choir, and Friday Night Meatballs, and firmly settling in to my kitchen witch self.

I make a lot of soup, let me tell you.

The point is, I noticed I’m still alive, and in true ‘I really miss LiveJournal’ fashion, I’m going to scream into the void that is the internet, and fill it up with whatever kind of noise I can think of that feels good. Stick around, watch this space, and come along with me for the ride.

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A Jetpack Plugin Barfed…

…and I hadn’t been able to access the dashboards for this website for quite a bit. It pissed me off, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it (you have to get to the dashboard to disable the plugins, but you can’t access the dashboard BECAUSE the plugins are fucked), so I’d get frustrated and just leave it. Then I’d go to write something and realize it was still broken, get pissed again, and just leave i.

Finally, I’ve now fixed it while procrastinating about something else, because that’s how we adults with ADD roll.

Or at least that’s how MY feral goblin brain rolls.

Happy Friday, you gorgeous goblins, you.

I’ma try to finish the 823483293 other things I’m supposed to get done today, and then maybe I can see about putting my brain on display again.

I kind of liked that, while it was working, didn’t you?

Friend of mine recently mentioned he’d gotten addicted to the instant feedback one can get, while putting writing up online, and honestly, I have to admit to a hard same, there, but while he’s quit doing it, saying that part of him is done, I think I need to re-start mine.

Not for the stuff I want to submit, but for the everything else, to iron out what’s in my headmeat, which has grown increasingly weird over the past few years. Maybe it’s just age? Probably.

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