Let’s start with the reflection. It didn’t take long for me to fuck this up in some way.
The first three days were great. I got up, got coffee, and made my first priority writing the hymn of the day. I did well, as those prompts were easy for me to get into. Day 4, however, I ran into a snag. I have associated queer lady love with Brighid for a while now, but didn’t really have any idea how to put that into a hymn. So I sat staring at a blank piece of paper for a while, then tried to write something, which was awful, and stared at that even longer before saying “Fuck it” and putting my concerns into Google. Google gave me this post, which I quickly read, and which gave me the inspiration I needed for the hymn.
However, I wasn’t very happy with the hymn as written. I didn’t feel it was as good as the others, so I delayed in typing it up. (I’ve been hand writing and then typing later; often edits are performed while typing it up. The handwritten version is my first draft. This is how I accomplish most creative — ie, fiction or poetry — writing.)
So I decided to sit on it until the next day. The next day, February 5th, I had a dentist appointment in the morning so I didn’t have time to sit and write a hymn before rushing out the door; we usually go to bed very late on Thursday nights and I got about 3 hours of sleep total before heading off to get jabbed in the mouth.
The dentists was supposed to be a couple of fillings, but we both felt it was more urgent to extract the remains of the broken tooth that’s been sitting in my mouth for about 4 years now. (My tooth broke while I was eating chips and there has been a hole in my mouth with jagged tooth-remains in the bottom for a while. I have not had the money to take care of it until now, as I’m now on my husband’s insurance. Marriage can be a great problem solver in some respects.) (No, Canadians do not get dental covered by our “universal” healthcare.)
Extracting the roots of this tooth actually counts as dental surgery, though it was not so involved as when I got my wisdom teeth out, so I sort of felt it wouldn’t be a big deal. I was wrong. It wiped me out. Probably a combination of the extraction and the epinephrine from the freezing, but when I got home I quickly fell asleep on the recliner and stayed like that for several hours. (Mr. Morag went and napped in the bedroom.)
I planned on writing the blood hymn for the Morrigan that day, I really did, and it would have been so appropriate because my mouth was bleeding from surgery and continued to do so until the next day. But it didn’t happen.
So on Saturday I was only a day behind, and planned to catch up. Didn’t get to it in the morning, but I figured I could do it that evening while Mr. Morag was out being a scary clown in gold lamé shorts. (He does stuff with a local burlesque troupe from time to time.) I did not. I vegged instead, because I was still out of it with my tooth.
Sunday was a wash for anything I wanted to do. I slept in too late to get up early and do things before Mr. Morag woke up and turned on the Superb Owl, so most of my day was full of football. My dream is that someday we have a house where my office is secluded enough that I can get whatever I need to get done on days when the TV is on while I need to work. Our basement suite is just too small to allow for that, unfortunately.
Of course, by this point the guilt spiral set in. I felt guilty for not doing the hymns for the past few days, which made it even harder to attempt to do them. It was easier to pretend they weren’t there than to actually tackle them and face my guilt. Not to mention, because the last one I’d written I wasn’t entirely happy with, my confidence in even writing more hymns was shot.
So Monday passed without me writing any hymns, too, and now I was 4 days behind.
Today I would have been 5 days behind but I finally put my butt in chair and wrote the next 2 hymns: blood for the Morrigan and the land of the dead for Manannan. I also made myself type up queer lady love (as well as the next 2 hymns) and I’ve found that now it’s typed, it’s much better than it was. Still not as good as I wish it were, but I’m trying not to let perfect become the enemy of good, here. I strive for perfection, which is both great and awful. It makes me work hard to do good things, but it also means I am never satisfied with anything. So I have to learn to let go.
I might try to tackle the next three hymns (Sunday’s, Monday’s, and today’s) tonight, as I’ll be up for a while (my sleep is totally messed up), or I might leave them until tomorrow. To be honest, the land of the dead wiped me out. It’s the longest one I’ve written yet, about double the length of the other ones. Most have been clocking in ~150 words; the land of the dead is ~330. Also the subject matter I found a bit taxing.
At any rate, the guilt spiral has been put away for now, so I’m feeling much better. My confidence is up as well. I fucked up in this project, but I’m recovering. There needs to be room for forgiveness for me messing up because dental surgery threw me out of whack.
(Speaking of, holy hell my mouth still hurts. I thought there would be relief when this tooth came out and there is, to a certain extent, but jesus my jaw is fucking killing me. Also I will not be surprised if I get dry socket, as I did when I got my wisdom teeth out.)
And writing this reflection has made me think I might eventually need to come up with better titles for these hymns rather than the prompt names. Something to ponder.
On to the round up!
Week 1 Hymns Round-Up
Only three hymns have been posted so far; I’ve typed up the other three but have not yet put them on the blogs. That will be happening today.
Hymn #21: Manannan Mac Lir, apples.
(The hymns are each numbered 1 on their respective sites, but within the whole scope of the project these are their appropriate numbers.)
Now, I’m off to finish cooking dinner for myself and Mr. Morag, and probably watch some TV with him or something.
~Morag