Truly. Deeply. Madly

Well, I've cracked 4000 as of last night's quittin' time.

True to my own form, I'm not running by wordcount, but by whether the scene I'm working on is finished, or at least come to a resting point, because my brain is wrapped around the story, not the maths and mechanics of it. I think this month is going to be an exercize in sorta-kinda-aligning with the site's rules, insofar as they dovetail with my own techniques and habits -- that is, my habits as they *should* be, not as they usually are.

I am, however, fixing to slow the fuck down on it today. My neck is WAY out of alignment, meaning that I've been battling a steadily escalating headache for something over a week now, and long days spent over a keyboard tend to lead to long nights on a heating pad, in a half-sleep fugue. I don't mean to diminish what Fibro sufferers go through in any way, but my ongoing relationship with pain opens a bit of a window for me into that world. You keep on, and you do what you must, and you do what you can to find such relief as works for you, but it wears. And it's really easy to let the pain get right into the way of everything else, too, even when you acclimate to it, because, by keeping on instead of slowing down, one often makes the inflammation worse. Adapt to the pain, the pain escalates, and you adapt to it again -- lather, rinse, repeat. I'm luckier than fibro patients though. My headaches arise from a spinal condition -- something that shows up clearly on an x ray, not from some nebulous, stealthy autoimmune hiccup that half the medical establishment still thinks is psychosomatic.

Psychosomatic. What a word, eh? Here's the thing, though; the Western medical community is fully willing to assume that one's mind can make one ill, but they refuse to support stress/pain relief therapies like meditation, yoga, chiropractic, accupressure/puncture, and massage, because they believe those therapies are only successful via placebo effect. So the mind is only allowed to make one ill, never well? From my personal experience with all of the above (and contrasted with my experiences with pharmaceudical 'cures') I have to say that the 'alternative' is far more trustworthy, far more efficacious, and has far fewer disgusting side effects. I have experienced astounding responses to alternative medicines, and I'm not too proud to accept the pain relief even if it is 'placebo effect' -- it's better than being in pain, or addicted to some pharmaceudical mess that drains my pocket while it sets me up for liver failure or cancer twenty years down the road!

*Cues Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine on the iPod.*

Don't get me wrong; I do feel that Western Medicine has its place. Broken bones, wounds that need staples or stitches, bacterial infections, and infectious disease control amoung them. I just have trouble with a set of agencies that turn a profit on sickness by backing each other's scams up, the way the AMA, and Big Drug companies do. They have more of a vested interest in sustaining their profit margins than they do in helping people to be well. So when they pooh pooh an emergent therapy as quackery? I tend to consider the source, and assume there might be something to it -- it only makes me look into it closer, and with more interest. I'm contrary that way, I guess.

And this is me, paddling back from the bywater of Medical Corruption into which this blog post accidentally seems to have drifted.

So I seem to be in Colours today, entirely through accident. I picked up a new, silky-soft green sweater last weekend, and am wearing it with black leggings, and the over-knee Slytherin socks that jenna_thorn sent to me. Now all I need is a pleated skirt, and I'll be fitting Azkaban-bait, give or take thirty years. Amusingly, these particular colours were sort of 'mine' long before they emerged as emblematic of Slytherin House -- my high school alma mater, Amphitheater, used green, silver, and black as their colours, and there were several years there where I literally did not own a piece of clothing that was not one of those three colours. Luckily, my colouring is such that I can pull that off -- although I have to be careful with grey, as too much in concentration tends to wash me RIGHT out. Greens, though, love me. I've never actually met a hue of green that I can't rock. I'm even down with chartreuse, and olive drab, but this particular green of my new sweater, this emerald shade, is so very much in love with me that whenever I put it on, I have to wonder why I don't wear it all the damn time. *Vain!Catt is vain.*


And now, I seem to be reaching the bottom of my chai, and the days' minutes are ticking away while I dither, so it's time for me to Get Something Done, avaunt!

For those following along on cluewrites, I'm posting my daily words over there every night. As expected, I landed on Tempus Fugitive, though for NaNoWriMo purposes, I have not logged the 10,000 words I had done before November 1. All the text is on that site though, so there, at least, it's complete. And yeah, feedback is appreciated -- especially since it gives me motivation to keep plugging away at this day after day, yaknow?

Anyhow; cheers!