misconceptions

if you decided to confine half your life to a tiny cube where you were walled in and given security in the form of money, health insurance, a predictable daily routine, comfort, artificial light, food, a title to define yourself by; would these conditions result in sanity? And how would you know you were sane, when you were insane determining?

world full of plastic

The greens are alive and you know, only turn red when you're not looking. red is a just a mask for how they really feel. blue. in a world full of plastic, you would be too.

promise

once there was a boy named bee 

upon my knee

softly telling me how rivers

did not reach the sea in the year 

twenty twenty three

some were black others blue

in twenty twenty two

and none could you wash your

self in

his eyelashes fluttered 

feeling me shudder

i could tell 

he honestly knew 

he unbuttoned my collar 

i cried and hollered and then he promised 

just breathe

then rolled up our sleeves so carefully

we could see those cuts on

our arms

with one finger 

he crossed my lips

tenderly looking into my eyes

and

we existed quietly there

until about quarter past one

bee upon my knee

and me

i wondered if all of the darkness

 he shared

could 

     ever

         be

          undone

yet i knew our

                 pain

             was

         the

same

- KatYa, 2017

WIP. plan of attack. (with loving kindness)

Strategy... (reimmersion campaign)


1 - get head out of fog  (yes. established) deeper sleep renews!
2 - attend to physical  (ongoing)
3 - re-reading David Copperfield. learning from Dickens style (ongoing)
4 - sit my ass at desk at home  (fail fail fail!)
5 - consider rearranging furniture. laptop on couch. switch rooms (last resort)
6 - attend to spirit (ongoing)
7 - prayer. journaling. sunshine. caring (move toward causes)
8 - channel switching (yes. more guitar. running. cycling. walks)
9 - minimize netflix (body at rest)
10 - maximize housekeeping (body in motion)
11 - memory (what you do that makes you feel good)
12 - attending to needs vs desires (self-discipline)
13 - work = freedom (purpose)
14 - coffee (is my drug) in moderation
15 - mindfulness. slow but certain

Goal to complete and publication
reality: June / July 2016

Nothing is possible without
attitude of loving kindness

GUEST BLOG

Here is the Guest Blog I did for Jen Winters 

Guest blogger: Katya Mills On Mood Manufacturing
by Jen Winters


I am a mood perfectionist, which has put me into business in mood manufacturing. Yes, it is a confession. I cannot often just sit down and write, and not worry about setting my mood just so. I grew up in the eighties, and my parents bought me an original Mac Plus for school. This computer was the coolest. I taught myself how to type. I realized I could open a Word document and stare at a white screen. The ‘tabula rasa’: Latin for ‘blank slate’. Which is what every artist faces, almost every day. I remember staring at the screen and feeling something in my heart which yearned to be expressed, but how to put that in words? The little cursor was blinking, just counting the seconds, endlessly waiting for me.

Self-publishing today is a luxury, just as computers were luxurious back then. My appreciation of both comes from having been born in a world without either. A world without the internet. Thank God for all the hackers in their garages who dreamed of this day, and worked toward their dreams! What a gift. In the eighties you could never reach a wide audience so quickly. Readers in China, Russia, Germany, Romania? Forget about it! I would be lucky to get my next door neighbor interested.

Today everything is in place for the indie authors of the world to succeed. Once you have your story the way you want it, complete and intact, you can follow in the footsteps of successful writers. Cookie-cutter. Only the creative process remains enigmatic. To me, the creative process must trump everything else. Which means I need to find the ideal conditions (for me) to write. A very personal process. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in a boarding house full of noise, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. I have written in a room with an (ex) boyfriend whose paranoia and jealousy could turn on me in a second. I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other sides of walls. I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears, and no money in my pocket. I have written in a bar, in a car, in the cloud of someone’s cigar.

I came to realize how external conditions never defeated me. My problem was really internal! My moods are like weather patterns in the Jetstream. Unpredictable. So I developed my mood manufacturing industry. I thought I could figure out ways and means to boil my moods down into a mind-state conducive to writing the next bestseller.

I will spare you the details, except to say that this business failed! I struggled and struggled, trying to control my mind. A real turkey shoot! Many suns set without my having pulled the screen up, at all. Today, I am back to the basics. Focusing on the practice of writing. Get to writing, one word at a time.

What I realized in the end, was I gotta let go. Have some faith in the process. Stop trying to control things and manufacture the perfect mood. I gotta surrender. Trust. I have to sit myself down, every day, and do it. I have to be kind and encouraging to myself. I have to remember why I write, and the rewards of the creative life. The self-insight. Getting in touch with my feelings. Expressing myself deeply. Healing.

In the end, I write for my life.