fiction – Rhys Ford

It is funny how I am constantly doing nothing but at the same time it seems like there isn’t any space to add to my day for the things that I need to do. I am in an odd cycle of trying to get my body back into some kind of semblance of working order, scratching at a day job which takes up a lot of my brain, and then trying to grab the tidbits of writing that are floating up into the stratosphere of my thoughts.

I have a great desire to write. And I’m angry that I don’t have access to that subspace that I’m very comfortable in but I think it’s a matter of exercising that muscle again. Because in a lot of ways it is a muscle.

Oddly enough, I’ve also been fighting with my dictation software because for some reason it keeps uninstalling itself. There is obviously a glitch and the tech desk has opened up the ticket because we haven’t been able to replicate it once it’s installed again. So now it’s pretty much on a watchlist stand if it misbehaves again there will be a coding spank.

The hardest thing that I’m having to do is to remember how to dictate. They really can’t be any modulation in your voice which you would think would be easy for me because you know… Autistic… But after so many decades of masking and forcing social interaction through my voice, I find myself modulating even when I don’t need to. The weird thing is that my modulation isn’t really that good. I used to think I had an expressive voice but I have discovered after speaking to people that know, there is still a monotone aspects to it and I guess that’s just something I can’t break away from. But apparently for Dragon Speak it is enough of a modulation for it to tell me to fuck off and it will do what it likes with my words.

I do like dictating because it allows me to pretty much stare off into the distance and shuffled through the words that come up to describe the images that I have sculpted out of the brain vomit. Writing is an odd thing. I also find it amusing that I dictate my writing rather my stories which goes into a Word document, gets chewed through editing cycles, gets formatted into e-book and print making it a tangible object of sorts; a digital imprint as well as a paperback book. And when that is all done, someone else takes those words and turns them into an audiobook. A full circle if you will. Because we start with sound and then we end with sound.

If I’m lucky enough to get stuff in audiobooks.

The creative structure and the process of what we ll go through is always fascinating. And of course it varies from person to person and from media to media. There are some creators that I absolutely adore and they don’t update as often as I would like them to. I know that refrain. But when they do it’s all such a delight me and that’s real is so short. You just want to savor it but you can’t. It’s that little tidbit of chocolate that melts away as soon as it touches your tongue.

One of these creators is Pocketss. (https://pocketss.tumblr.com/)

It is going to say I don’t know why this web comic hits every single one of my buttons but it does. I can explain it. But I absolutely adore their ongoing series and the characters and even the art style which this isn’t normally an art style that I prefer but for me with this content the quirkiness of it and the storylines, it just becomes this wonderful thing that brings me joy happiness.

So, if you like a little bit of strangeness but at the same time, something filled with great heart and little delights here and there, I recommend it

Oh credit for the part that I’m including goes to Pocketss and I’m just including it so you could get a sample of a little bit of the craziness but yet the art style for some reason just rocks.

Hello and I wanted to stop by and just sort of ramble.

It has been a long time since I wanted to write. Or rather it is been a long time since I’ve tapped into that fuzzy space where my writing happens. A lot of it has to do with the continuous pain of being sliced open and stitched back up as well as the immersion blender I think they used up my guts. It’s odd how it comes in waves of brain-dead numbness to exhaustion just from cleaning out the cat boxes. I’ve had others tell me it took them a year which I can totally see but I had hoped that wouldn’t. But here I am at the six-month mark going, hurry up already.

I am not known for my patience with myself.

I do find the body interesting. And I also guess there is a lot to do with the aging process and bodily trauma that has been done before because certain things are very easy to do while simple things get harder.

So it’s been an interesting journey.

I don’t have a lot of exciting news to share mostly because I have been trying to rearrange my life. I am going to have to retire my old laptop here because it has reached a point of not being happy with this existence. It does make me kind of sad because I have had it for many a year and have dragged it across of several continents. But the technology has evolved and it is kind of heavy clocking in at almost 10 pounds. One of the things I hate about getting a new laptop is transferring everything over so I have not to look forward to.

Apparently one of the best things about moving is the preponderance of squirrels the cats can watch through the windows. Goji has already picked up a nemesis and she continuously battles it through the glass every morning. Or so she believes. I do not think the squirrel actually is aware it is in a battle but there is a lot of name-calling and chittering done in its direction.

Oh! I was successful in my battle to get the Firebird registered which was an exercise and a half in bureaucracy. I got everything with me like current registration, title, and insurance. Only to be told that I needed the prior year’s registration card as well. Or I would have to pay the purchase fee for the car which would be interesting considering I bought it in 1987ish . Honestly I was at the point of saying I don’t give a fuck about the purchase fee and just tell me how much it is me make the decision about paying for it and then I was told they could not figure that out until I had a sale slip. Not only do I not save my registration cards from prior years but I also do not save a sales receipt for a car I purchased decades ago, especially since I have the title in my hand.

When I contacted California to see how to get out of this dilemma there was a full on discussion of what the fucking hell and we don’t keep house registrations because they are current that is the only ones that matter but here is something you can print out that shows history. Of course it’s not official by any means because it doesn’t have the California state logo or anything other than this view of numbers that show the car’s registration history and any parking tickets assigned to the car as well as the succession of personalized license plates it’s. So I went in again with just that extra piece of paper because that’s all I had and everyone decided that no I didn’t need it and it ends up with what I had already was enough.

I don’t blame the people at DMV because they are just usually trying to make sense of the directions given to them by the Transportation Department of that state. They are caught up in those tangles just as much as everyone else. I do finally get registration and I have officially left California.

To be honest I don’t know how I feel about that and there are actually a lot of things that I need to process through so there is going to be some journey taken at this point in my life that I did not expect to encounter. It will be interesting to see where I go because I have not felt anchored in a long time and I need to get that done.

I’m not really too sure what that looks like but it’ll definitely be a journey.

And God I need to write because I have Luke’s book started and a plot all worked out. It’s sitting RIGHT there!