Author Archives: Murphy

apocalypse adjacent

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Comedian Dana Gould said that phrase and it made me laugh. And it made me think.

I’ve had a number of personal apocalypse experiences. The most recent and lingering was about 2 years ago. A perfect storm hollowed me out.

I imagined myself an eight-year old girl, small skinny and dark, lying on the cold ground with no coat in the mud. I’d been kicked, beaten and starved, but I imagined I laughed. Maniacal laughter, but victorious.

You think you got me? I am not done yet. I am going to triumph. It’s what I do.

That was my imagination. It takes a lot of work and time to triumph.

I staggered on. I got up and staggered. and I kept staggering.

And the pages fell from the calendar. Eventually I noticed that that days were not triumphant. I thought, “I need to not focus on the negative. I should cherish the happy moments.” So I looked for the happy moments, for cherishing purposes.

They took a long time to come. After a few weeks, I wrote

HAPPY

on the calendar in red letters. Because that day I had felt happy once on that day. And I wanted to remember it, and see how long it was until the next time.

During this apocalypse, I gave up this blog. I ask you, how am I supposed to survive an apocalypse if I can’t blog it? Not a good disaster recovery plan. I think I could have recovered faster if I’d stuck it out.

I kept reading. Because i always keep reading. But instead of fiction books that tell true things about the human experience, I had to run for cover. I had to KNOW that human would win over adversity.

I needed a hero.

Dragons, magic, forces of good and evil and

TRIUMPH

No losing. Winning. Always. Never any doubt.

Because in my life there was doubt. And doubt is for the losers when the apocalypse comes.

I needed to be sure. So I found the books that were. And I didn’t stop reading them. Fortunately, there seem to be enough of us needing that reassuring to keep them in circulation.

I don’t usually try to be escapist. But this was an emergency. Dive into fantasy worlds and don’t come out. And naps were important. Whenever possible. Because I needed to reconnect the broken bits, and rest was required.

It took so long, but I have strung together a chain of happy days. I can feel them regularly, pretty much back to touching happy at least every day.

I owe that to my friends who kept in touch and talked and talked and talked and talked with me.

But I haven’t hit triumph yet.

I look at that two-years past imaginary me, muddy and bruised and crying and laughing in the face of the persecuters. I think, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t think it would take this long. And I’m still walking.

At least I’m not staggering. But I want the story to tie up into a triumph bow.

Let’s get to the triumphant part.

Script as start up

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from9/3/2002

HOWEVER, I myself was getting a little tired of the ONE THING happening in Silicon Valley. Life is rich and full. It is important to have more than one interest. Computers are fascinating, and I enjoy them. But there is more to life than start-ups.

I just didn’t know yet. That the movie is a start up. That the script is the new get-rich scheme, and the angel investor is the studio

It’s so much the same. Garage start up or couch-surfing actor?

you make the call

have to exercise that muscle

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I like reading what I wrote lo these many years ago. I would like to get back in the habit of writing longer pieces again. I used to do it with regularity.

Well. That WAS before I knew how to write a book. So I pressure myself to write entire books now, too.

But still. I wrote some good stuff. yay me

because I had to take a break

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or maybe it would have happened anyway.

But because I was getting a threatening stalker (more to it, but that covers the bases) I had to back away and hide my blog…

I used to write several times a week, but last year I had to step away from the blog. And somehow, I lost connection with it. I used to really know, really remember, my posts. But now I find I have forgotten many of them.

I am going to make a point of re-reading my entire blog, and pulling out some good stuff. I want to put a bunch of my stories and essays (aka blog posts) into a book.

a

NOTHER

book.

…feels good to day that..

BUt I have some good stuff I’ve written over the last ten years. I think i’d like to call it “Memories and Meanderings”

I will have to set some goals for finishing reading this whole thing again.

Let’s see…120 months. I will have to read 5 months a day to read it all in a month

I”VE WRITTEN A LOT OF WORDS!

jeez.

I’ll have to work hard to read all my work.

I’m daunted and impressed with myself. Dang. Its going to take me a couple months to get through just the blog.

Ten Year Retrospective

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So.

It’s been ten years of blogging. A lot has happened in my life in ten years. THANK GOD!

Imagine how wretched an individual I would be if I hadn’t had something happen to me in ten years.

When I started this blog I lived in a cheap two-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale, was about to finish my bachelors degree. I had already been a consultant in Silicon Valley and gotten off just as everyone was getting thrown off.

I figured I would get my college degree, because I knew I needed to move. But you can’t graduate from a college unless you ATTEND it for a while. And I wanted to wrap up the degree.

So, I finished my consultant gig and then finished my degree. Just as I was about to graduate with an English degree I found out about BLOGs.

I had to get a piece of that. I started out on Blogger. Then my brother Bryan bought me a domain name. Then i bought my own domain name. Three platforms later, and now I am still blogging

So much has changed. I had dreams and what I thought the future would hold then.

I had my first laptop then. I am on my fifth laptop now. and I RAN THEM INTO THE GROUND.

I am on my third car.

I am on my second husband.

And I am stuck on my first child. She’s pretty great

I am living in my second home and on my 6th mortgage.

I’ve had one cat, he’s dead. oh wait, I had joint custody of a cat with my brother. He got full custody. That cat is gone too.

I am still living with my first dog.

How does one measure the length of ten years of life?

Ten years. One Blog.

Because it’s about story, sometimes

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Wrote this a long time ago about myth and science.

Now I am thinking about metrics. Thinking about how to develop myths or to get a handle on the myths that already exist.

I can’t be the first one to think of this. Wait, no..I think when they do political polls, they are very very aware of what questions are asked to get particular responses.

That must be a part of the myth-building or the myth-tapping.

Narrative and story are very very important

round and round again: an atom is the universe

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Veronica amazing me everyday.

Little smarty has figured out the alphabet, capital and lowercase letters.

At the same time, she figured out all the sounds of the letters.

She repeats these to herself and with me all the time.

So.

What’a parent to do? We need to take it to the next level. Kid needs to learn about

WORDS

After trying some other things, I bought a dry-erase board. Sat down with her and wrote some letters, asked her to sound them out

Then I asked her to sound them ALL out

D-O-G

Dog!

This wigged her out. TOTALLY WIGGED HER OUT

She wiggled, she tried to get away. She did not want to deal with this.

Chris told me to leave her alone.

It reminded me of two things.

First, I remembered learning algebra. I did the same thing. I wiggled and tried to get out of it any way I could. Very similar to what she was doing.

Then I remembered when she was a newborn, and the dreaded Tummy Time.

As a contemporary parent, we are all told do NOT let your kid sleep on their tummy. Ever. It will

KILL

them. Because of SIDS. but if they never spend time on their tummy they don’t learn to crawl. So parents have to endure tummy time, resting the baby on her tummy so that she’ll develop arm and neck muscles.

Veronica HATED it. Other babies, I hear, hate it too.

I would put little 10 pound Veronica on her tummy on a blanket and count to 30–THIRTY SECONDS–of screaming. The doctors say give it 5 minutes a day. I was lucky to get one minute. In TWO THIRTY-SECONDS-OF-SCREAMING INCREMENTS.

Learning is hard.

So, I figured, I’ll have Veronica do a few words a day. Three, maybe. Sound out ‘hat’  ‘dog’ and ‘cat’, ‘fox’ ‘red’ and ‘cup’

Things like that. She can do it. But it’s hard for her.

At least she doesn’t scream.