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Laura

Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month

Just in time for Autism Awareness (or Acceptance) Month (April), I got to celebrate my autistic awareness (or acceptance) with my very own official diagnosis. This has been a long time coming. I started looking into the possibility that I might be autistic at the beginning of 2023. It’s the main reason that my blog posts since then have been much sparser than they were in 2022. It was hard to find the motivation to write about my mental health when I couldn’t be as… Read More »Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month

40

I always thought people made too much of a big deal of 40. Now it’s here, and I’m not sure how I feel anymore. Part of me is looking back at all I haven’t accomplished in the last 40 years and blaming myself pretty heavily. I can see some pretty big mistakes on my part, and I can see some problems that were completely out of my control—not least of which is what the world has learned about brains so far—but if I’m being completely… Read More »40

Change in Delivery Methods

For a number of reasons, we’ve decided to pull our music from Spotify, Apple Music, etc. It will still be available on Bandcamp, and the two lyric videos (“Wholehearted” and “Come Around”) will stay up on YouTube, hopefully to be joined by more in the future. When the album (eventually) comes out, it will also go up on Bandcamp and it is currently my intention to make a lyric video for each song. So, people who want to listen for free can watch the videos,… Read More »Change in Delivery Methods

The Ups and Downs of Knowing Your Limits

It’s been months since my last post. I haven’t really felt like I have anything to say, or if I do, it’s in the form of a song or a story. And I promise, there’s movement on the album and the novel. But recently I realized I did have something I wanted to say, and it wasn’t going to fit neatly into either format. So here I am, back in the blog. My younger self didn’t know what my limits were. She would go running… Read More »The Ups and Downs of Knowing Your Limits

What I Love

I’ve written a lot of things. Stories, essays, poems, songs. Typically, these have ended up in one of two categories: “this is garbage, I hate it,” or “someone else says this is good so I guess it’s good.” I’ve also made a lot of music. Mostly amateurly, though on rare occasions professionally. But these performances have tended to fall into the same two categories: “this is garbage, I hate it,” or “someone else says this is good so I guess it’s good.” But increasingly, over… Read More »What I Love

Mood Music

Twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I had a collection of mix CDs which each bore a label according to the mood of the music contained on the CD1. I can’t remember all of them, but I’m pretty sure they included things like “Giddy,” “Silly,” and “Angsty.” Nowadays I keep my music on Apple Music playlists. And although I do often listen to entire albums, I have two main playlists that I will turn to when I’m not in the mood to do that. The first… Read More »Mood Music

Out of My Depth

Imagine this. For the sake of argument, you are not a very strong swimmer. But you do like to be in the water, so you get yourself an ENORMOUS flutter board and you take it out to the lake or the pool and you flutter your way out of the shallows. Then you stand on your enormous flutter board. And it’s a bit of a struggle, as anyone who has tried to stand on a flutter board will tell you, but eventually you get yourself… Read More »Out of My Depth

Quiet

I wouldn’t want to lose a number of the things I own. My wedding and engagement rings, obviously. My signed edition of Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men. Certain pieces of clothing or jewelry. But one of those things that a lot of people might not guess holds such importance is a pair of headphones. A pair of comfortable, Bluetooth-capable, noise-cancelling headphones. Typing. Chewing. Floorboards creaking above my head. Excessive bass from the car down in the apartment parking lot1 or some kind of noisy exhaust situation from the… Read More »Quiet

Fire

You ever feel on such creative fire because you’re more than 30,000 words into a manuscript and almost through the demo process for your second EP and then you started a writing workshop facilitated by your favourite teacher from high school and you forget about your blog and don’t write anything for six weeks? Maybe? No? Well, that’s where I’m at. Let’s break it down by project. First off, the novel. I’ve done NaNoWriMo (https://nanowrimo.org) twice before and, although fun, the output from that has… Read More »Fire

Bear Hunt

You may (or may not) be familiar with some version of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen. The story begins, We’re going on a bear hunt.We’re going to catch a big one.What a beautiful day!We’re not scared. The terrain is varied and difficult, and at each point the children have to decide how to tackle it. I learned a variation as a chant at Brownie camp and didn’t even realize it was a book until, years later, I did a search for the… Read More »Bear Hunt