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Welp. After getting absolutely shit sleep yesterday and somehow managing to drag my tired ass to capoeira, I got not one but two compliments in class. One from some/one of the other people in the roda saying they liked my game (do they know I've only been doing this for three months very roughly??) and one from the teacher saying I have a beautiful voice. ULP. I don't even know what to do with that, although I did manage to kick manners into reflex at the time. I just. Um. Very um. Ackpth.

Anyway. So, as the braintwin says, I guess this is where I panic, and by panic I mean practice harder. Which would be, at all, these days, but at least I've been doing exercise in the morning so it's not that arduous to push. I've got a short list of things I can do so far, I guess I can start with those and not do too many reps. Still need to work on the phrases of movements, as the individual ones are kind of okay. And the closer to the floor stuff, which means building up hip and thigh and ass muscles. Oh that's going to be so much fun. Blegh. It'll look good at least. I swear. This is a good motivation for doing this, along with learning to kick ass. I will look good and kick ass. Which is still a powerful motivation even if your willingness to shove and fight and defend your personal space and yourself from encroaching people and men is greater than the average female bear.

Even with a decent seven hours of sleep last night I feel sleepy. Or at least I feel tired. Might be the sore from last night, which is how we know I was pushing myself to do as much as I could do, self, you were not being lazy, you were exhausted and not up to your usual standards. (Yes, this is a major problem even though I'm only slowly getting back into shape, and it takes longer for me because lungs, I still feel like I should be able to do all the things and be all the strong and argh.)

And, heh, I figured something else out while getting off my ass and doing some practice, I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of falling over. It's easier with the class, partly because I'm not the only one falling over, even the teachers do it sometimes, and partly because they're there to show me when I'm doing it wrong and if they don't, I know that it's just a matter of practice and strength building. If I'm falling over at home I don't have that reinforcement/correction, it's just failure. I have to remind myself not to be afraid of failure. Not to be afraid of falling over instead of moving with alleged grace. (I say alleged because I have no idea, I can't see myself in a mirror, but if I'm landing on my feet and not flailing limbs, I can pretend it's grace.)

Which I guess should apply to writing, too. Don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid to write, to keep going, to put it out there. The writing I have less of a problem with, almost the opposite problem, it's putting it out there that's nerve-wracking. Right now I am so far behind or at least, a couple days behind, so that's not actually helping. And I have all the Astronomy stuff to do today rarrrgh. Though at least that's fun. I mean, okay, here's my order of operations for today: capoeira, work, where there may or may not be much to do. Editings in Sandborn and White Lightning, although Sandborn can get cut off after a bit since WL takes precedence, trying to finish County Witches today, edits in a different White Lightning story, maybe the BACA story that still needs a title. Do Astronomy videos, do homework. Come home, do Astronomy lab which is always the hardest part because all the damn math, do Astronomy design project which is also a writing project yay! Do Arabic. Do physics at some point today. Possibly do Haven at some point tonight because I really, really need to get as far as I can on that. And then work on the new Haven Friday and Saturday along with capoeira and aaargh. I mean, I know I can do all this, I've gotten the kind of efficient that would have scared me five years ago, but aaargh. Have to keep moving forward. Can't be afraid.

Heh. There's a quote from DaVinci's Demons that I need to frame or get illuminated or something and hang it up where I'll see it every day. Something about studying every possibility, including failure. I can't remember the exact quote and I need to dig it up, it's not in the episode I thought it was. Season Two, though. I'll find it when I get home, or over the next few days.

OC October Day 8 - Saudade

Day 8: Saudade
Saudade is an interesting bird in that when I wrote the story she appears in, I did it from the point of view of someone else, so we only see her from another's point of view. In this story she's a programmer who's become a program tester of a virtual environment and the AI that the environment was built around. She also has something like a crush on the AI, though it's less a schoolgirl style crush and more a professional idealization that she can help the AI become a real live human, or as much as the physical limitations involved allow. This part is well known, as she's not all that skilled at concealing her emotional responses and her intentions.

The part that is less well known is the part where she's also very acute about people, even if she has a hard time communicating what she sees or knows. Her communication skills are the main problem, she has a hard time controlling her emotions down to something more acceptable for social interaction and a more difficult time finding the right words for what she's thinking is going on, what she feels or what she senses. She did, to be fair, try to warn people about what she suspected was happening with the AI, but she had no way of knowing what type of action it would take and then how that would affect all of them.

It's hard for her to be around people and to communicate with them on a more than surface level, although she didn't have much of a problem learning the social niceties and she was always thought of in school and growing up as very intense, but generally normal. That intensity and feeling, though, is what kept her from any kind of serious relationship. She dabbled with the idea, but not much happened after she was able to pry herself away from a couple of over amorous boyfriends. She always had help with this from her female friends though, of which she does have several, most of them understanding about her disappearing into her work periodically. She has never had any kind of psychiatric or medical help, though; she's never sought it or felt she needed it.

There are times when she sees herself as a tragic figure in her own life, and there are times when she sees herself as overcoming adversity, and there are times when she looks around and thinks about what she's doing, trying to give the world a better understanding of humanity and what defines it, and is very pleased and grateful to be where she is. Most of the book takes place around one of those times. Well, most of the beginning, afterwards everyone's too stressed to feel much pleased or grateful.