Kameron Hurley

Fit Test Results

Had our quarterly fitness test at work today.

I am full of awesome!

My blood pressure and heart rate improved, and my measurements overall stayed about the same. I did 50 timed pushups, up from 46, and 51 timed situps, up from 48. So, whoo!

My dougheyness seems to be caused by a mere 4 extra pounds, which also makes me happy. Not cause I’m all excited about weight numbers, but because I was pleased that I was able to note that I was feeling doughy and lethargic at such a low additional weight number… and kick my butt back to the gym.

I like the idea that I’m a lot more aware of my body, how I feel, how it works, than I used to be. It used to be 15 lbs or more before I started going, “Gee, I haven’t been feeling so great lately and I don’t have any clothes to wear.”

Posted in fitness | No Comments »

Shit Lucky, and Back at the Gym

Probably one of the most frustrating things about being me (besides the whole insulin thing) is the fact that I have to go to the gym 4-5 times a week just to, like, maintain my current weight.

I get lazy, I slack off and just do two days a week, I play a few video games, and 8 weeks later my clothes don’t fit as well and I’m starting to feel doughy.

This annoys me.

It annoys me because I do 15 min of free weights every morning, I’m not allowed to food binge anymore, I miss doughnuts and pasta and bread, and still. 4-5 days a week, or it’s back to doughy. And you know, I’m not a small person to begin with. So just to stay intimidating as opposed to doughy, I have to invest… time. Also, there’s that whole, I don’t feel like buying new clothes thing. So.

I could wish for all sorts of things. Like a body that was better regulated, more interested in exercise and less in food, or more interested in running than more sendentary stuff like, well, writing.

But that’s like wishing that I could make insulin. It’s like wishing that I wouldn’t be me.

And this is what I am. So this is what I have to work with. This is how it rolls, so you have to roll with it.

Part of growing up has just been accepting that this is me. This is how I work. In some areas of my life, I have to work harder than other people just to look “average.” And sometimes I have to work really hard just to appear “passable.”

Other times, of course, I am just shit brilliant.

But the trickier stuff, the bullshit that annoys me (boo hoo I have to work so hard), it’s really not worth fighting, or bitching about. You just pick who you want to be, and you act like that person. You do the things you need to do to get there. 30-50 on the elliptical 4-5 days a week, plus my two days of weight training at work, and the free weights in the morning, is what it takes to be where I want to be.

So that’s what ya do.

In any case, it’s been back to the gym this week, which is good in a lot of ways. My mood was starting to take a nose dive again, and I was having trouble staying motivated at night (hence the lack of proper writing, too). Gym time gets me out of the house, away from the computer, and away from my sugar free, fat free chocolate pudding and flourless peanut butter cookies (mmmmmm cookies!).

Those exercise minutes are also good book brainstorming sessions. I’m trying to think through how the end of book 2 gets me through book 3 (yes, I have synopses, but I need to fill those in in my head), and I have a lot of character sketches to work out. The trouble with trilogies is that the best kinds are the ones that look like you knew what the hell you were doing when you wrote the first sentence of the first book.

I did not, in fact, have any idea what I was doing when I wrote the first sentence of the first book.

But if I can knock out book 2 and have a lot of book 3 in my head when I start editor revisions on book 1, I can give the illusion that I was really brilliant when I was writing the first sentence of the first book.

As opposed to just shit lucky.

So that’s what I’m up to.

Wild times, I know.

Posted in health, life, the writing life | No Comments »

Bugpunk

Used in conversation with the web designer working on the GW site, while brainstorming some themes:

“Retro-cyberpunky”

It’s funny, when you don’t have a word that describes exactly what you want, you sort of just cobble them together from existing words. Because I think what I meant was, you know, steampunk without the steam, but with a little cyber, only organic-cyber.. er, organic punk? er….

Ok, let’s be honest. What I meant was:

Bugpunk.

Which is a subgenre of the New Weird.

Trust me.

Posted in the writing life | No Comments »

One For the Road

Posted in fun, life | No Comments »

Joy Nash

Still my hero.

Posted in assumptions | No Comments »

Where Do Your Ideas Come From?

I got my first book-specific “Where did your ideas come from?” question at lunch with the rest of the marketing department yesterday.

Sure, I’ve gotten this question before, but it was always really general. That one’s easy. You just say, “From living.”

Which doesn’t make great interview copy, but it’s true.

But this question was in specific reference to God’s War. “Where did you get the idea for the book?”

I mean, how do you answer a question like that? It really did stop me cold, though it’s the hugest cliche question in the field and I should have been over prepared for it (well, the biggest cliche question other than, “My aunt/cousin/niece/nephew/friend’s brother’s dog wants to be a writer could you read their stuff/meet with them/send them an e-mail and tell them if they’re any good/how to “break in”/read some of their stuff?” I’ve gotten that one loads and loads of times and whenever people ask it, I’m still dumbfounded that they don’t know what a tired cliche that request is).

Where did I come up with the idea for God’s War?

Schenectady.

The real answer would take me half an hour, and you’d hear all about South Africa, and bugs, and dying for a year, and getting an IUD, and chronic illness, and being weak, and kickboxing, and failed relationships, and heartbreak, and fear, and personal disaster. The real answer would mean reading four years worth of blog entries and only getting a sliver of the story. The real answer isn’t the answer anybody’s looking for.

The real answer is life, a life that’s not ours, and we don’t have enough head space or time or patience to get a grip on something like that.

Which is why we read books.

And why I write them.

Posted in the writing life | No Comments »

In Which the Protagonist is Pissed Off

I hate it when I wake up pissed off for no reason. I think it’s just a weird feeling because I’ve been in such a state of zen for the last two months. Being pissed off first thing in the morning at old hurts and bygones is such a waste of time.

Good thing there’s pancakes and MST3K.

More line edits today.

Posted in life | No Comments »

Buried in Bills

Living on your own is fucking expensive, yo.

The bare facts of this were nicely camouflaged when I lived in Chicago, as Jenn would just give me the total bill for the month, so I’d write one check, not 8. Totalling these all up separately makes you realize just how much… stuff there is to middle-class living.

Granted, a lot of it is still catching up on various and sundry medical payments (I got a $50 refund from one of the ones I’d overpaid. I’ve spent so long not paying these that now when they come in for the 85th time, I try to pay them if I can, and there’s some bum accounting on my part).

Only $800 to go, once I can get my old insurance company to admit that they’re responsible for paying the $700 one.

I look at what I’ll be making this year, including book money, and I’m thinking, “How is it possible I’m still in so much debt?” and then I look at the pile of unpaid medical bills leftover from last year’s three emergency room visits.

Ah.. that’s right!

I also try not to think about the fact that I’d be a lot closer to being COMPLETELY DONE with medical debt if I would STOP GOING TO CHIPOTLE.

I’m on the 5 year plan here, folks. One day at a time. Things get better, including me. I just take a frickin’ long time.

So long as I’m an adult by 30, I figure I’m doing pretty well.

Posted in life | No Comments »

Transformers

That was pretty fucking awesome.

Posted in media | No Comments »

Brain Death

I’m starting to think that work has eaten my brain. That, or cozy apartment living.

I don’t know what it is. Things just feel… nice. The problem with me feeling nice and content is that everything just sort of stops. I do a lot of cooking and reading and play some video games and watch some shows and work out and sleep and take showers and use perfume that won’t kill anyone and tidy up and it’s all very cozy and.. nice.

And I don’t know what to do with myself when things are nice, when I don’t hate myself. I tried to stir up some self-hate yesterday when I decided to order some pizza and have a beer, but I didn’t eat enough to make myself sick (three pieces is my limit in order to subdue an impending sugar crises), and I played video games all night instead of working because I wanted to feel sorry for myself.

Instead, I woke up the next morning and I didn’t feel sorry for myself at all. I tried to start a bit of the old, “Oh, I am such a loser stuff,” but it was half hearted, because, what am I a loser about? Because I ate some pizza and played Mass Effect? Seriously.

There are too many good things going on to hate myself over. Thing is, I have no idea what to use to motivate myself at all. You spend so long running on self hate (I need to be a writer, need to publish a book, need to experience things, need to date more, need to socialize, need to have a better job, need need need need need) that when you stop, well… needing things, what are you supposed to do to get motivated again?

I used to have this deep fear of falling in love, because I had this deep fear of loving somebody crazily and them not loving me back, and how that would make me weak and useless (which is probably why, until recently, I always dated people who were far more crazy about me than I was about them. I was too terrified to pursue people I was sick over).

And then that heartbreak actually happened, and yes, it sucked, and I was completely heartsick and heartbroken for months and it still aches a little when I think about it, but like any other hurt, it bleeds and bleeds and then scabs over, bleeds a little more, and heals over. So all you’ve got to show for it is that occasional dull ache.

And you know, in the face of chronic illness, near death, job loss, and staggering credit card debt, heartbreak really wasn’t so bad.

So that’s not so scary anymore. Now I have something else to face, which is finding myself without that motivator. I ran a lot on fear. Choking, pulse-pounding fear. Fear of being weak, fear of failure, fear of never being good enough, fear of lost potential, fear of, well, fear of fear. Fear of just not doing enough.

I was in the shower the other day thinking about how I was going to get to Macchu Pichu for my 30th birthday, and I was thinking… this is all extra time. I’m dead already, really. All this is just extra time… so much extra time. What a gift.

One of my coworkers shuddered the other day when I gave myself my daily lunch shot of insulin. “I just don’t know I could do it,” he said. “Stick myself with a needle every day.”

“Well,” I said, “the alternative is to die in 72 hours.”

Some bad things have happened. Not horrifically bad things. I haven’t been beaten, raped, shot, mutilated and left for dead in a ditch or anything, but some things I feared have happened, and I got through them.

A funny thing happens when you face fear. It’s not an unknown anymore. There’s no anticipation, no buildup. Death sucks. It happens. Heartbreak sucks. It happens. Being poor and homeless, relying on other people, shitcanned and deeply in debt, sucks. And it happens. And you go on. Or, in the case of death, you cheat it just a little bit longer. Never inevitably. Just a little bit longer.

Now, though, I find myself a little directionless. I have a great job, a great apartment, a book deal, an actual mattress for my bed. I’m comfortable with my body and my looks. I honestly have no complaints. I like my coworkers. I have few but good friends.

I just don’t know what to do with all this. I went out on the porch this morning and transferred some of my basil seedlings into bigger pots. It made me so happy, that simple thing. Simple things make me so happy. Readying comic books out on the porch. Line editing Black Desert on my big new mattress. Reading The Sugar Festival on the bus.

But it all feels sort of… formless. Without real drive or purpose. There’s no gearshift grinding there in the back. Nothing telling me to shape up or ship out. No self-hate, no fear. Just this vast stretch of happy nothingness. Some days, I just drown in it, I just let myself go.

And maybe that’s what gets to me, that I just let myself revel in it. It’s so strange to not be crazy or unhappy or… driven.

I like to think that I just pushed so hard and long to get here that this is just a lull in… drive, productivity. Life. Because though I am happy, I miss that driving force, that passionate desire to do, to live, to push. I need to find that again somewhere, but it’s so nice… so nice to just be happy.

I worry that happiness is a dangerous thing. I worry that it’s not something we should strive for, but just something you get periodically, a lull between the long stretches of darkness, like the short, sharp Alaskan Summer. Those three months of intense, gorgeous, beautiful life and sunshine that make the 8 months of winter worth it.

Thing is, without the winter, would I have loved those summers so much?

And without the promise of summer, could I have made it through the winter?

I don’t know.

I just know that I feel like I’m sinking into a happy life of cozy softness, and part of me wants to just let myself enjoy it because nothing lasts forever, and part of me wants to find some kind of weakness, some kind of fear, some kind of motivation, to make it feel that I’m living on the edge of everything again. To keep me going forward when all I want to do is pretend the world is OK for just a little bit longer

Posted in life | No Comments »