Alone and Unobserved

I don’t know if I’m supposed to be feeling the therapeutic effects of my antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication only two weeks after starting it, but I think I am. I’m 100% certain I’m experiencing the side-effects, at least, and if the accompanying sustained good mood is just a placebo effect I’ll take it, by god.

Maybe in about ten years I’ll be stable enough to consider a relationship. I want one right now, or I kind of do (see this post if you’re wondering what “kind of” means). But I think I need to learn to be happy by myself before I’ll [...] Continue Reading…

A month ago, on this very blog, I was bemoaning the creative doldrums I found myself in. Nothing sounded interesting, I had no attention span for any of my favorite pursuits, and I couldn’t even blog or write or read, which left me nothing to do except play Nintendo for hours and hours.

Since then there have been a few changes. First, and perhaps most important, my doctor has put me on some antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds. They aren’t free of side effects, but the difference in my mood—and my creative output—is obvious. I’m happier, more upbeat, and I’m writing [...] Continue Reading…

This is the last day of my third week on this fitness program I’ve started. I’m not magically slim and fit and muscley, but I’m moving in the right direction. To be honest, I’m moving a bit too fast—I’m down eight pounds, which means some of what I’ve lost is likely muscle tissue. My main problem is remembering to eat, to not let myself get ravenous, to have healthy, filling food around when I need it. I’m going to the grocery store more often. I’ve discovered Greek yogurt—so delicious, creamy and hunger-quenching. I need to stock up on snacks [...] Continue Reading…

In case you haven’t been following along, I just finished participating in a week-long daily creativity experiment with several other readers, writers and frequenters of the Mind on Fire blog. (The original invitation to participate is here. I know, I know, I should’ve posted about it immediately.) Every day, John Remy at MoF drew a different tarot card, and we participants used that card (directly or tangentially, concretely or abstractly) to spark our imaginations and inspire some sort of creation. The experiment ended yesterday, and I would call it a success. There were enough submissions, and enough different genres, [...] Continue Reading…

Through the magic of the Internet, I’m still in contact to some extent with many of the Mormon acquaintances I had at BYU. Even if I haven’t spoken or even directly corresponded with them in five years, their thoughts and episodes from their lives still show up in my Facebook feed or my Goodreads list, or are reflected in the comments, photos and FarmVille announcements of other, mutual acquaintances. One by one, of course, as their overt religiosity and conservatism has become more and more alien to me, I’ve hidden their updates or defriended them, but I don’t think [...] Continue Reading…

If you aren’t subscribed to the RSS feed and/or don’t follow me on Twitter and/or aren’t my friend on Facebook, you may have missed the new flash fiction piece I posted today, inspired loosely by the Two of Pentacles card in the tarot deck, and more directly by the Mind on Fire Group Creativity Experiment.

On a Roll
Flash fiction
1184 words

Growing up, I thought coffee was the devil. Booze was the devil squared. People who drank coffee or beer were evil, filthy, satanic. They were destroying their souls. And besides, caffeine and alcohol were poisons, right? Those people were poisoning themselves.

Even worse, Mormon propaganda films so conflate alcohol and drugs that there was almost no distinction in my mind between a) drinking vodka, b) smoking pot and c) shooting up heroin, and there was certainly no way to do any of these things responsibly. Any and all of them would inevitably lead to you overdosing and dying… presumably while [...] Continue Reading…

Just about two years ago, I enrolled in a ten-week fitness/weight-loss program with the goal of losing sixteen pounds of fat and gaining six pounds of muscle. I never made it, although I did make significant progress, and for about six months to a year after the program I was thinner and in better shape than I’d been in years.

Unfortunately, over the past year or so, I’ve gained it all back, and a little more. Worse, because I’ve been so lackadaisical with my eating and exercising, I’m probably in the worst shape I’ve been, ever. I knew I wasn’t [...] Continue Reading…

Despite having been me for the past 29+ years, and having lived with my short attention span and cyclical interests for that whole time, I’m still surprised when my interest wheel clicks over and I suddenly go from reading four novels at a time to reading none at all. The art supplies I couldn’t get enough of in January and February are scattered around the house, forgotten for the moment. My Flickr photostream—where I was posting drawings, comics, photos—is stagnant. My Twittering has suffered. Even this website is sitting idle.

For the past several days, I’ve done almost nothing but [...] Continue Reading…

In our lovely Deseret,
Where the Saints of God have met,
There’s a multitude of children all around.
They are generous and brave;
They have precious souls to save;
They must listen and obey the gospel’s sound.

Hark! Hark! Hark! ’tis children’s music—
Children’s voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.
(“In Our Lovely Deseret,” Eliza R. Snow)

I’m sure all ex-Mormons (and lots of other people too) have a most-hated hymn. I have several! But at the top of the list is “In Our Lovely Deseret,” a cheery abomination written for Mormon children by Eliza [...] Continue Reading…