So what if I can't win?

So I slept on all the things that upset me and woke up in the morning feeling a lot better.  After all, nothing's changed.  Now I just know about it.  Damn, wasn't ignorance blissful?

So what if people bitch about my dances?  They've always bitched about my dances.  The day people stop bitching about me is the day after my funeral-- although it might be safe to say they'll still bitch about me after I'm dead.  That's just a condition of being alive.  Can't help it, can't really waste the energy to be upset about it.

I have been asking myself, though: What am I working so hard for?

Why am I working so damn hard?  It's 5 am and I haven't gotten any sleep and I'm sitting next to the computer listening for music I might dance to in the next competition and doing exercises to strengthen my wrists so I can do new pole tricks.  Why?

I know now that there's no way under the sun I could've won Miss Nude Tennessee.  I was the only girl giving a 100% legal dance.  Of course mine was going to be the least sexy out of all of them.  In fact, it was really rather silly of me to try in the first place.  Even if my stage work had been excellent and my swimsuit piece flawless, I still probably wouldn't have had a shot in hell of winning.  (I still think the girls who won deserved it, but I want to know how far down the rung I ended up because of my silly lap dances.)

And none of that even matters.  What matters is why?  Why?  Who am I trying to impress?

I'm working on my novels.  I'm trying so hard to get Justine out and published.  I'm writing out the layout for Promethean Riddle #3 while penning down #2.  Who reads this stuff anyway?

I work my butt off every time I sell a dance to a guy.  I do anything I can think of to amuse and entertain him (within the letter of the law).  I make it my own personal goal during that song to make that guy smile.  And he still goes and bitches to the next girl how I cheated him out of his money. Why should I dance for him at all?  Why I don't I stand in front of him and just sort of vaguely rock from side to side then grumble at him, "Sorry, no refunds."  Will it even make that much of a difference to these guys?

And then I tell myself to stop acting like a drama queen.  I do my best on the lap dances because I at least owe it to these guys to try and be entertaining.  And besides, it gives me exercise which makes me healthy.

And as for the books, I'm doing all that craziness because I'm hoping-- praying-- pleading with the powers above-- that if I can maybe maybe get enough people to read even one of those novels and give me good reviews (or, hell, any reviews) I can pitch my work to an agent.  I can say, "See, I've done the work, I just need a publisher to add a bit of polish and help me make it bigger."

The thing is, right now, I'm doing the work, and there's no reward.  There's no end in sight.  There's just me and the work.  And every now and then I find myself wondering if I'm just kidding myself.

I love what I do.  I really and truly love it.  I will be doing these things until the day I die.  Maybe I'll just be doing them for myself, though.  Maybe I'll write my books just because I get depressed when I'm not creating something.  Maybe I'll keep dancing just to keep my health up.  I'll probably be doing these things when I'm ninety.

And yet, I can't help but think I'm leaving something undone.  There's some avenue I haven't taken yet.  There's someone I haven't talked to yet.  There's something--something-- that I haven't tried.  And that something's the key.  Whatever it is, wherever I find it, once I've done this thing, I'll start making progress.

Then again, that probably isn't how it works.

Someone who wanted to be a millionaire told me that he was at least pursuing the goal of a million dollars.  He was that much farther ahead of all other people who wanted it but did nothing to get it.  Every step I take puts me that much farther ahead of all the other people out there striving to reach the top.

Will I ever reach it?  Dunno.  I do know that if I stop trying now, then I definitely won't reach it.

Proof that the world is fundamentally UNFAIR

Just got home from work.  Left work because I was too royally pissed off to try and smile at people and sell them dances anymore.

Why?  Because I give shitty dances.  Why do I give shitty dances?  Because when I got my license to work, the very first thing I did was ask the lady who worked at the licensing board:

ME: "Durr, what's legal and what isn't according to Nashville law?"
LICENSING OFFICIAL: "Blah blah blah... blah blah blah and no physical contact during dances."
ME: "None?"
LICENSING OFFICIAL: "None."

So I give shitty dances that no one likes, because all I can legally do is stand in front of these guys and dance in front of them.  I've been doing this for two years now, and every guy I dance for complains to me, but life's a bitch like that so I deal with it.

They love me onstage.  They think I'm awesome onstage.  But then they buy a dance from me and immediately ask for their money back.  I've gotten so very good at asking for my money before I give a dance, because every time I give these poor motherfuckers a "legal" dance, they immediately want their money back.

So, we had a staff meeting on Sunday discussing the slight (yeah right) discrepancy between what is "legal" and what is outrageously illegal in a dance.  The head manager said we needed to clean up our act.  He said only two girls were following the law on their dances: me and a girl we'll call "B".

I was really excited.  Gee, I thought to myself.  You know what this means?  This means that I'm gonna be on an even footing with the other girls.  At long last, I'll be able to sell dances in this club without practically having to break someone's arm to do it.  Because I'll finally be giving the same dances that all the other girls are giving.

Nope.  Nope.  Doesn't work that way.

Today, I asked B to tell me how she gives dances, because she doesn't have trouble selling them and the manager said they were "legal".  She said she just does what she always does.  Okay.  So toward the end of the night, she told me that she was going to give me a dance to demonstrate how she dances.

ME: Thank you.  I know nobody likes my dances.
B: Yeah.  All the guys you've been giving dances to tonight have been complaining about you to me.
ME: I'm not surprised.

So B takes me to one of the rooms and proceeds to give me her typical "legal" lap dance.  And just about the point where her boobs are rubbing across my face, I start thinking, "Gee, I never thought any of this stuff was legal."

So afterward, I asked her if it was.  She told me that, technically it wasn't.  She also told me that if the inspector ever drops in I need to dance the way I've been dancing or just not sell any dances while she's there.  She then proceeded to tell me when the inspector usually comes in so I'll be duly forewarned.

I was like, "So, really, it's not legal."  B was like, "Well, if you want to get technical, it's not 100% legal."

So... yeah.  I thanked B and went to the manager.  I told him that everybody's been complaining about my dances, and I'm pissed off because (apparently) I'm the only girl in there following the letter of the law.  I told him that I feel like I'm punished because I'm doing the right thing.  Because I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, I'm making far less money, and the customers bitch about me to all the other girls in the club.

The manager (not the head manager) was caught between a rock and a hard place with me.  He couldn't really tell me to go ahead and break the law "just a little" but at the same time, that was probably the only good advice left available to him.  I thanked him for at least listening to me bitch about my problem, then got dressed and checked out.

Outside, I told another dancer named M about my problem and immediately she was like, "Oh, so you're the girl everyone's been complaining about."  Yeah.  That's me.  I'm the girl that everybody regrets buying a dance from.

So there you have it.  Proof that the world is fundamentally unfair.  I can either start breaking the law so that I won't have people bitching about me "cheating" them all the time.  Or I can keep obeying the law and just deal with the fact that I'm working twice as hard for half the money.

Right now I'm thinking I'll just keep obeying the law, but I have no idea what I'm gonna do.  I'm angry that I have to make this decision.  I SHOULDN'T FUCKING HAVE TO MAKE THESE KINDS OF DECISIONS.

So fuck the fucking world right now.  I'm mad.  I hope you all have a good night, and I will post again when I no longer feel like screaming at somebody.

Busy But Happy

Work has been physically exhausting lately.  I'm very happy with it.  I have several ideas I want to put into my stage work.  I've been trying to figure out ways to improve my couch dances (because no one seems to like those).  I've been working at improving how I do my job.  And I'm happy with that.

I'm also just worn out.  I want to write, but I'm tired.  I'm halfway through Justine, and I want so badly to finish.  I'm also trying to remedy any plot inconsistencies before I write them down.  Is the ending sufficiently climactic?  Are important matters explained so that they would make sense to a reader who's new to the Promethean Riddle universe?

Am I inserting enough philosophy and introspection to match the original flow of the series?  Can I insert it without making it feel tacked-on and unnatural?

Yesterday my husband threatened me with Tylenol to get me out of bed.  LOL.  I'm pretty anti-medication, and while I was considerably sore, I'd much rather be sore than take a pill to make it go away.  So anyway, when every other tried and true method of getting me up failed, he resorted to bringing me Tylenol and a glass of water to help me get past the soreness enough to crawl out of bed.

By now my muscles feel pretty normal.  Tomorrow I'll be back at work trying to wear them all back down again.

That's all good and well, but nowhere in my immediate schedule is there time to write.  That was what yesterday was supposed to be for.  I kinda dozed through it.

I suppose I've got right now, but I'm still trying to get the right rhythms running through my head.  Instead I wrote a chunk of the outline for Promethean Riddle #3.  So far, it's still going down on paper easily enough.  I just need to figure out the ending.  Worried about that.  Need to know how it will end so I can write in all the little threads to foreshadow it long before the event itself occurs.

Until then, I've got what I've got.  While I'm inclined to call it a hot mess (because that's how it feels sometimes) I know it's not.  It's just unruly, that's all.  Like my hair.

A very gut-instinct driven part of me wants to take some time to just float... meditate, relax, ponder, listen to music that doesn't come from work (i.e. not loud dance music).  Do things that are calming, centering and peaceful.

I imagine this is exactly what I need to be doing.  It's not what I want to be doing.  I want to be rushing through the second half of Justine and finishing off Book 2.  I'm pretty sure if I did this, Justine would come out with plot holes and a certain lack of depth or thought in the belief systems of its characters.

I wonder sometimes if Promethean Riddle #1 did that.  I don't think there was really much time in the environment and situations the characters were thrown into to contemplate the universe.  I know Raina did a little bit, and maybe I should have given her more time to voice her thoughts.  But where would I have fit that in without disrupting the flow of the story?  I know I could have.  If I wanted to badly enough, I could have.  I think...?

I think I'm doing that thing again where I throw too many irons into the fire and wear myself down to nothing, then have to stop for a while just to recover from all the many things I'm trying to make myself do.  If I stop now, and meditate, I should be okay in a few days, to go back to rushing around like a chicken with no head.

I think I'll go now and do just that.

I'm gonna be so sore tomorrow...

So the club was pretty quiet.  On a Friday.  Something about freezing fog and rent being due soon.  Too many dancers, hardly any customers.  And it was cold.

So I did lots of stretches on the back tables to keep warm. :D

I've already got one bruise showing purple on my knee.  The others will make an appearance tomorrow morning.  Always signs that I've been getting plenty of good exercise at work.

I got some really good stretching in.

I managed my very first ever straddle splits.  (That's the one where one legs goes left and the other goes right.)  It was uncomfortable and it wasn't as poker straight as I would have liked, but it was pretty undeniably a splits.  I managed to get to it by doing lots of back-bends (lots of work done on the back tonight) and then stretching in the opposite direction by spreading my legs and laying my torso forward between them, keeping my upper and middle back as straight as possible.

I'm quite sure there's a yogic term for that position, but I'm too tired to look it up right now.  I guess it's a pretty commonly used position to open up the hips and widen the splits.

Anyway, I did tons of that stuff.  And I only shivered uncontrollably from time to time.  (My internal thermometer's funky.  I suspect I'm some sort of reptile.)

Anyway, it was good.  I tried really improving the depth of my back-bends in the area of my spine around my rib cage.  I know I tend to neglect that area when doing a bend, and it's kind of hard to feel it right now because I'm still building up the muscles to arch it backward and really open up my rib cage.

And I'm rambling.

Some drunk guy tried grabbing my butt.  I walked up to him and asked for a dance and he wrapped an arm around me and grabbed a nice handful.  So I pushed him away and he acted like I'd done something wrong.

HIM: "Hey!"
ME: (grinning like this is all just flirting, because there's the slimmest chance I'll make some money from this group of people) "You can't just go grabbing on me without paying me.  What kind of a girl do you think I am?"
[NOTE: No one can go grabbing my ass-cheeks like that.  Especially when I'm in a super-mini mini skirt and a pair of undies.  Wait.  I take that back.  My husband can.]
HIM: (drunken stare, clearly at a loss for words.)

So I walked passed the drunk grabby fellow and asked his friend for a dance.  His friend said yes.  I think because #1 it was his way of apologizing for his friend being a drunk idiot and #2 I didn't freak out at grabby guy, but maintained a flirtatious manner while scolding him.  What wisdom to take from this, I really can't say.  Don't flip the fuck out at guys who are trying to knead your butt like they're making a loaf of bread?  Or, maybe just don't flip the fuck out at people when you're trying to get money out of their friends.  (That's the second time I've made money by acting cheerful immediately after someone makes an ass of himself.)

I really hope that in a real-world situation (and the strip club is kinda surreal, so it doesn't count) I'd punch whoever grabbed my butt like that.

Anyway, that was my one asshole for the night.  I also met a really cool Dune fan-- yay, Dune!-- and another gentleman who was very pleasant to talk to.  I made hardly any money, but I'd still call it a good night.

Sleepy now.  To that degree that I feel mildly goofy.  I knew it was time to go home when I exclaimed to myself,  "Holy Carp!" in the changing room and then burst into a fit of giggles.

In the last three days I've managed to write 24,000 words on Justine.  This is probably contributing to my tiredness.  Probably more than a little bit.  I can't wait to get Justine done and published.

Future Goals: Finish writing Justine.  Find a willing editor.  Finish book two of The Promethean Riddle (it's already halfway done so it should go by pretty fast.)  Start posting youtube videos about dancing and writing.  Learn how to do a handstand.  (I've really been working on this one, but I'm not quite there yet.)

Guys, I really hope this is legible, because I'm falling asleep at the computer.  Good night.

A Familiar Face

So, I posted about this on facebook at some point, because I was fed up then.  But I'll write out a whole long blog on it, because I have the feeling my unwelcome passenger will be accompanying me for a little longer than I'd hoped.

I have a chalazion on my eye.  It's not really gross, and most people don't even notice it.  But when I look in the mirror, the first thing I see is, "Hey, that's not my face."

I've had this sucker for five months now.  It was there at my freaking wedding.  I had it for one month before the wedding, and at that time, I looked up "How to get rid of a chalazion" and every source I read up on said, "It will go away in a month on its own."

So I applied hot compresses to it, and prayed that it would be gone before the wedding.  It wasn't.

So I applied soaked teabags.  I soaked my eye in saline.  Nope.

Finally, out of frustration, I sterilized a needle and stabbed the damn thing.  I got a little pus out, but in the long run, no difference.

So, we went to the doctor.  Apparently, you have to go to a GP before you can go to a specialist.  We went to the GP.  I asked, "Can you cut this sucker out of me?"  They were like, no, we need to schedule you a visit with a specialist.

Figures.  So I got a call from the specialist this morning.

ME: I'm so happy you'll finally be getting this thing out.
SPECIALIST'S NURSE: Oh, I'm sorry hun.  Our plastic surgeon does that.  You need to meet with our specialist first, though.

Are you kidding me?!?!?!  Where's that fucking needle I left in the bathroom!  I'm gonna cut this motherfucker out of my fucking face tonight!   Give me the damn needle!!!

Needless to say, my husband has decreed that I may not cut my own chalazion out.  (Yes, I could go and do it anyway, but his logic is too sound.)  Apparently, you're not supposed to attempt DIY eye surgery at home, because the eye is "very vascular."  To laymen like me, this means that if the pus inside my eye had been infectious, the infection could easily have spread throughout my entire eyeball, necessitating excision of the entire eye.

I suppose, if I hate having a little bump on my face, I'd really hate having only one eye.

(Damn, I really think I could get it if I just stabbed it hard enough...)

I solemnly swear I will not go cutting open my own eye.  I will wait for the (second!) doctor to look at it, then take my money, then tell me they can't do anything, so that the (fucking third!) doctor can look at it, then take my money, then tell me they can do something about it in another month or so-- something that will cost an arm and a leg.

Fucking medical system.  I've got a perfectly good sewing needle in my bathroom.

Guilty... and Hoping to Change.

Have been putting tons of effort into advertising my book.  Forcing myself to tweet, trying to add every human under the sun as a friend on facebook.  All because I've gone around online and every article I've read has insisted this is the only way you can do things.

Being on twitter for a while, the only people who ever follow me are people who post (every seven seconds) "Buy my book!  My book is awesome!"  And I really didn't want to become one of these people.  It seems cheap and dehumanizing.  And yet, there I was on twitter and facebook (I still want that account on youtube) trying to friend-add and follow and tell everyone about my book.

And I was hating every moment of it, because it's so totally not me.  I am not that kind of person.  Granted, I'm generally just a very antisocial person.  I'm also kind of an uninteresting person (if you exclude the stripper/novelist/off-gridder-ness).

So last night, I decided I needed to can the "buy my book everybody!" mentality, because it was making me sick and depressed and kinda headachey.  I started looking up new marketing strategies today, and came up with more garbage, so I decided to see what other successful people had done.  (Them, specifically, and not other people who may or may not have succeeded, but were very happy to shell out advice.)

That led me to this gem: an interview with Smashwords success story, Amanda Hocking.  My favorite quote from that interview being this one.

"I think the biggest things that I see people do is becoming very spammy. Or they'll comment on blogs and all they really say is, "Yeah, I agree with you because my book is like this." They're not adding anything to that conversation. They just immediately start talking about their book. I get tweets all the time from people that say, "Buy my book." I know nothing about this person. I know nothing about their book. All they're saying is to buy their book and I'm not going to do that. They're just being obnoxious."

Took the words right out of my mouth.  (And used better grammar than I might have.)

I think the reason I've been hating twitter with such a passion is the fact that a good 80% of the people I know on twitter are constantly pestering me to buy their junk.

I've hated the idea of advertising my books, because I was under the very erroneous impression that I needed to be just as irritating to sell my work.  And this just can't be the truth.  If I'm driven nuts by these people, who's to say prospective readers aren't too.

That said, I'm gonna unfollow a lot of my spammier followers on twitter, and I'm gonna make a point to tweet things I want to tweet, and not just shit I'm "supposed" to retweet.

Will this help me sell more books?  Honestly, I have no clue.  But, on the plus side, I won't feel cheap and sleazy anymore.  Gotta say, that's a definite bonus.

WISDOM: (I keep relearning this lesson for some reason.)  Don't keep banging your head against a brick wall just because everyone around you insists it will turn into a door.  It may be a doorway for them, but it's not for you.

Writing Against the Odds

I dreamed last night that I was competing in a beauty contest I couldn't possibly win.  Before you try to psychoanalyze such a symbol-potent dream as that one, I'll spare you some trouble.  I really did enter in a beauty pageant I couldn't win.

Miss Nude Tennessee.  A couple weeks ago.  And let me tell you something, I totally lost.  And, be it a good thing or a bad one, after the contest, when many of the other girls were wailing about how unfair the judges were, I was congratulating the girls who won.  Because they deserved to win.  They were beautiful.  They gave excellent performances.  They worked hard.

And so did I.  It just wasn't what the judges were looking for.  They were looking for a girl who looked like the quintessential Tennessee stripper.  They were not looking for someone who looks a little bit too much like a novelist that dons stripper shoes after dark to battle the dark forces of her own expanding waistline.

So, the dream might've been a very realistic replay of events that have already happened, or it might represent something that's been on my mind a little more.  The other contest I feel like I don't have a hope of winning.

Let's call this the Indie Writer Contest and it involves seeing some measure of success as a novelist at some point in the foreseeable future.  Honestly, I'd almost rather be going up onstage to compete against girls I know have already got me beat.

I have a very long-held, and probably irrational belief, that some people were born to be winners.  Some people were born to be the very best at something.  Some people have the talent, the determination, the connections and the sheer good luck to climb to the top.

And I am not one of those people.  I never have been.

If life has taught me anything, with all my repeated scraps and bumps, with falling down and getting up again and again, it's that I was not born to carry the first prize.  I should not-- and do not-- toil to become the very best there ever was.  Because I never will be.  I was never meant to be.

And yet, here I am, working my ass off.  Day after day, writing novels, trying to find new social media to sell my work through, ordering business cards with clever quips on them.  I try anything I can think of.  Somewhere down the road something has to work.  I keep telling myself that.  Even though reality functions more like this: somewhere down the road something might work.

So why try?  Why enter into a contest that I can't win?  Why try to be something so few people can successfully be?

Because I may never have been destined for first place, but that doesn't mean I have to be a loser.  Too many people assume that, if you aren't on top, you must be crawling in the dirt.  It doesn't work like that.  There's always a second prize, a third place, a fourth, a fifth.

There's always that one sorry rung above the losing place.  I've clung to that rung so many times, working desperately not to drop off and sink to the bottom.  (And sometimes I've still fallen, despite my best efforts.)

If I become the best pole dancer I can be, even though I'm not the best there is, I'm still pretty damn impressive.  If I become the best novelist I can be, I probably still won't gain any recognition for my work, but at least I'll produce a good story or two.  If I become all the many things I want to become, I will never be the best at any of them, but the combination of my skills will make me a unique and many-talented individual.

If I reach my old age, and I can look back and say that my life was not boring, I will consider it a success.

That's the prize I work for, the prize I'm quite certain I can win.  And, of all the prizes out there, isn't that one of the most rewarding?

Been Away Awhile

I haven't posted in forever.  And, hey, there's a new layout!

I haven't posted lately because this blog was, until today, called "Life After Stripping."  Well that didn't happen.  It was also about "going off-grid".  Yeah, that didn't happen either.

In fact, one might say a whole list of things I planned to happen didn't happen.  Either because I trusted the wrong people or... no, mostly because I trusted the wrong people.

It happens.  I've spent my life refining the careful skill of trusting the wrong people.  I would claim to be a master of the art, but I've seen some of the people my coworkers trust.  For example:

"The cops are calling me because my boyfriend borrowed my car out to a friend of his who used it as a getaway car in a robbery-- all while I was out of town!  Now I need an effing lawyer!"  If you hear someone screaming this in the changing room at work, you know you're a stripper. :)

Or any time I go back to fix my hair and find a girl in tears because, "My baby-daddy just <insert outrageously crazy, stupid, careless, reckless and destructive thing here> and I don't know what to do!"

So, yeah.  I'd say I'm a pro at trusting the wrong people, but I know other people who show me what a true novice I really am.  For example, after getting thrown out of our apartment and spending a couple nights in a hotel, my then-fiance (now husband) and I decided to place our trust in some really wonderful friends who gave us a place to stay for a whole month until our next apartment was ready.  A true pro at trusting the wrong people would have gone to stay with someone who would have:

A.) Stolen their belongings, then denied it.
B.) Sold them into sex slavery for drugs.
C.) Raped them, then stolen their belongings, then sold them into sex slavery for drugs.  Then denied it-- to the cops who came asking questions later.

So, obviously, I'm not too much of a pro at trusting the wrong people.  I get it right about half the time, and I suppose I've done pretty good at trusting the right people where it's really important.  I have a husband whom I love and trust completely.  I have very good friends that I trust as well.  These are good things.

Anyway, we stayed at their place for a month, then moved into our new apartment.  It is from this new apartment that I now write.  Obviously, I'm back to stripping.  I've lost a bit of weight, which is never a bad thing.  I've published a second novel, and I'm working my way through a third.  (And a fourth...)  I'm not sure anyone actually reads these things, but I keep putting them out anyway.

I think that more or less covers what I've been doing in the time since my last post.  That, and getting married.  Did that.  Beautiful ceremony.  Everything was perfect, which really surprised me because you always hear that several things always go wrong somewhere in the process of getting married.

I always promised myself I'd stop dancing when I got married, but practical considerations kind of got in the way of that.  We could live on my husband's salary.  But if we did, he wouldn't be able to pursue other business interests, and we wouldn't see as much of each other.  And hey, we're newlyweds.  We want to see a lot of each other.

What else...?  The piece of property we bought was a scam.  (Trusting the wrong people...)  Or maybe it wasn't a scam, but there was a huge "problem" with the paperwork.  Which is just as well.  We're here and I'm not driving 3 hours just to get to work and back.

Still dreaming of that house that I'm gonna build.  It's just a way off.  A long way.  And I'm not complaining.  I have a wonderful husband.  I have a roof over my head and food in my stomach.  I even have my novels, though I'm not sure anyone's going to read those...

Future Goals: Going to start a youtube channel and put up amusing videos about stripping.  I can't do this now because I'm a little under the weather, but as soon as I'm all fixed up, this is going to happen.  Wish me luck. :)