Music Monday: Maps...to the Future

I'm still in recovery mode from ConCarolinas this past weekend. What a great experience! What that means is that my Music Monday post is late...and this song is very appropriate to how I'm feeling after that experience. "This is the way back home..." This weekend was the way back home to who I am when I'm not stressed out, when I'm a writer, when I can chat with someone in my second language...it was good for my soul, and while I had my doubts I really proud of myself for going. 

I was on a panel about the songs we use in our writing, and this one also speaks to me about my Orana Chronicles characters and their journeys...especially one very special Clawsharp. No spoilers, though...at least not yet.

So please enjoy Ireland's Eurovision entry for 2021 (did you really think I'd be over that so soon? Please, ask my roommates from this weekend how many times I mentioned watching the Fire Saga movie or just a rerun of Eurovision!), Maps by Lesley Roy.

Maps

by Lesley Roy

I'm gonna let down all the armor

Let out the power that I've been hiding

Not afraid of the monsters, of the nightmares

That I've been fighting

Easy to run, harder to stay

Finding colours in the grey

Thought I was done, but I got it wrong

I fell twice, I'm twice as strong

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

I had to take all of the long ways

All of the wrong ways

'Cause I couldn't see

All the signs, all the mistakes

Pointing one way to get back to me

Easy to run, harder to stay

Finding colours in the grey

Thought I was done, but I got it wrong

I fell twice, I'm twice as strong

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

My soul is a map, my heart is a compass

I am the road

There's only one way to go

This is the way back home

My soul is a map, my heart is a compass

I am the road

There's only one way to go

This is the way back home

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

I've been searching all the wrong places

I've been trying too many faces (I've been trying)

Only one way to go

This is the way back home

Putting on my Confessor Face: on Terry Goodkind and Inspiration

Read this one, I mean it.

Yesterday I learned of the death of an author that had a profound effect on me as a wanna-be fantasy author, Terry Goodkind. While I did not read everything he wrote, I did read the entirety of the Sword of Truth series. A review of this series never made it to my book blog, Well Read, but I wanted to do an overview here, and tell you why I believe this to be an important series to read.

I am one of a few, I'm learning, who write fantasy but aren't really fans of the "classics" in the genre, such as - steady yourself - Tolkein. I loved the Hobbit when I read it in 4th grade (age 8/9) but I moved on immediately to try to read The Fellowship of the Ring. While I'm sure both of my parents thought me to be a reading prodigy and sort of a genius, that book fell flat with young Nancy and I will admit that I never picked it up to try again. To this day I have read bits here and there and seen the movies, but I just couldn't.

If you look at my list of life changing books, the genres are all over the place: Wuthering Heights (with a modern understanding of the problematic parts), The Historian, The Percy Jackson novels. It was probably not until I discovered The Sword of Truth series, at the recommendation of a good friend and fellow gamer, that I had the idea that I might like to write novels. I had written other books in niche genres, but you know that feeling when you are reading something and you think that either you wish you could live in that universe or "I wish I had written this?" Both of those applied to Wizard's First Rule.

As I said in my Facebook post about Goodkind's passing, "the Mother Confessor, the Seeker, the Mord Sith, even Darken Rahl were such well rounded characters, dancing right up to the edge of being a Mary Sue (Richard) but not faling into that trope." We all want to write the character that saves the world. Goodkind reminded me that you can do that as well as show all the trials and tribulations leading to that win, and still have the story of the everyman at the end of the novel - or series. 

In addition to my life as a writer, Goodkind has also influenced how I think about my life as an interpreter. I have blogged before about how much I identified with the character of the Mother Confessor, Kahlan, in respect to my DayJob™ and interpreter decorum here:

Terry Goodkind has quickly become one of my favorite authors, and he describes in his Sword of Truth series a character who serves as a judge of sorts...she is called a Confessor, and he talks about her wearing her Confessor's face. I do that. I wear my Interpreter's Face. Impartial. Objective. A mask. The line "sometimes I wish someone out there would find me" rang out to me, causing me to recall those times that I stood outside the huddle of support, wishing for someone to hand me a tissue or take my hand in comfort...but remaining quietly in the background, Interpreter's Face on.

and here:

I've compared this before to the 'Confessor's face' that author Terry Goodkind created for his character, Kahlan Amnell, in the Sword of Truth fantasy series. Confessors are women that are born into a magical sisterhood and have the ability to discern truth from lies (by basically taking over the mind of the person and leaving them a slave to the Confessor, but that's beside the point here). From Temple of the Winds:

Kahlan was wearing her Confessor's face: the blank expression that showed none of her feelings.

We are taught as interpreters to do this - to an extent. We are conveying communication and by necessity that involves emotion, so I am never that 'blank,' but it is not MY emotion you are seeing. It should never be my emotion.

So I am properly mourning a life that never, ever, intersected with my own save through a recommendation heeded, a book series read/consumed, and inspiration sought and given. Thank you, Mr. Goodkind, for sharing your work with us and inspiring us to go forward, better understanding ourselves and our world.

In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. -part of the D'Haran devotion to Lord Rahl, Sword of Truth series.

Notes from Exile: Week Two in the DayJob

Old Main Building, Clemson

I know that I have titled this "Week Two" but it really doesn't feel that way. The first week was only three days of classes and two days of absolute soul-crushing stress, so I'm not sure that makes a week. Instead, I am fairly sure that it has been about six months since I was celebrating my last week of the weirdest summer break I've ever had.

In retrospect, that's pretty normal for the first week of a semester, so I guess I should be glad that it didn't seem like a year. Interpreting into a camera has been very different from sitting in the front of a classroom and interpreting, and has made me very aware of the fact that I am not suited for Virtual Remote Interpreting (VRI) that is taking over the market these days. I spend most of my time playing dispatch - chasing down zoom links and Canvas sections, which is not that different from what I would be doing in the office on campus.

I do miss having my office mate across the desk. I miss catching up with people from the other offices in our building while waiting on my lunch to heat. And believe it or not, I miss the two hours a day on the bus from here down to campus.

When I envisioned my semester working from home, I have to say this was not what I thought it would be. I was looking forward to a bit of DayJob work, interpreting my class three times a week, getting some novel work/marketing done, and maybe having time to run out for some interpreting gigs here and there. Last week felt more like someone put me in a runaway roller coaster car and pushed me onto the track, swinging me just close enough but not quite to be able to feel like I've gotten anything done successfully. I would just feel like I was catching my breath going up one of those Scream Machine-esque hills before plunging back down into Zoom rooms that weren't allowing the caption writer to enter and videos to transcribe that were due to disappear from Canvas long before I could get the work done. I did not touch anything I've written the entire week.

I finally broke down and got int touch with my beta reader for an upcoming stand-alone novel in a new universe to suggest that we get together to go over her feedback. I'm putting this manuscript up for #pitmad in September, so there isn't much time left before that (if I don't get any requests, I will just put it in the pipeline for self-publishing). We got together at the weekend and went over the novel with a fine-toothed comb and a couple of glasses of wine and I felt the most like myself that I have since March.

Surprising? Yeah, me too. I've been basically with my partner ONLY since March, and I thought that I was introverted enough to be okay with that. I was wrong. It was a good time, socially distanced, and I basically bathed in hand sanitizer when I got home. This does not signal a rapid return to weekly girls nights out, retail therapy, or any of the social outlets I had in what my partner and I lovingly are calling "The Before Times." I'm still far too concerned about falling ill with COVID to return to my old life. I was becoming legitimately concerned for my own mental health, and this jolt may have recharged my ability to wait for safety to return so that we can stand in each other's kitchens, cooking, laughing, and relaxing into our friendships and letting go of the DayJob stress.

For now, though, it's back to my desk, in the office I share with our dogs and the house that has been my world, more or less, since March. I'm just a little better able to handle it.

Well...It's been a MINUTE.

Litchfield Beach, SC

I'm doing better with at least thinking about updating this blog, y'all, I swear.

So this past weekend I had a marvelous time hanging with my tribe - the South Carolina Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf crowd. Our annual conference was on Pawley's Island this year and even though I didn't make it to the beach (other than to snap that photo right quick from the boardwalk on Sunday before we drove home), I still came away feeling refreshed, renewed, ready...and REALLY TIRED.

Like down in my bones I cannot keep my eyes open one more second if you ask me to stand up I will crumple kind of tired. I am still that tired today, two days later.

This kind of gathering is good for my soul because I live in a family where no one but me signs. I work in an office where no one but me signs (because our other interpreter here is a contract/part-time type of employee and I never see her outside of the classes we team). I basically live in a world where the majority of people I know and call friends and family-of-choice have only a marginal understanding of my career and if they know any signs, it's basic communication.

Now, this is the point at which I apologize for omitting the disclaimer that I am not a CODA nor any other kind of native user of American Sign Language, but the fact that my first exposure to visual language came around the age of 10-11, I claim it as my second language. I think and dream in ASL more than English, even now. I'm constantly thinking about how something I see on telly or hear on the radio would be interpreted. It is part of me, even if I don't have native fluency.

That is why those people that I was with over the weekend are precious to me. I may know them so well that I call them friends or fam. I may have just met them THIS weekend. It doesn't matter - when you find your tribe and you share this language, this culture - this interpreter brain, whether Deaf or hearing - you're home. My hands and eyes are aching from all the extra work that they were doing over this weekend. But I wouldn't have traded a second of it - well, okay, the weird mushroom stalk I discovered in my pasta at tea on Friday night could go, for sure - for anything.

They get me, y'all, in a way that no one that isn't an interpreter can. I love my husband more than I can express. I love all of my greyhound and wolfhound friends, my Rennie fam, my Glisson fam, My Girls that I see almost every week...but this is different. I've said for years that I want to do some kind of scholarly research into sign language interpreters as a third culture, not just a Venn diagram crossover of the sets called Deaf and hearing.

Maybe it's time to look for a master's program. Maybe.

But for sure, I need to have more of my tribe in my life, and not just once or twice a year at the conference - so that it won't be quite so many minutes between feeling this heard/seen/understood.

And here y'all thought I was going to complain...

Not today.

Okay, earlier today, but not now, even though the sun is creeping up and into the window I'm sitting in front of and making it darned near impossible to work because I CAN'T SEE...

Nope, still not complaining. I am instead starting a new way of working - may or may not have asked permission or cleared it with the higherups but you know, sometimes, to quote Christine Kane, you have to "leap and the net will appear." At least I hope there will be a net.

This is a time of change in my office. Great change. But only for me. After seven years of sitting at a certain desk in a certain office within our suite, I am being relocated. At first, I was angry. I have been here the longest! Why am I having to move? But now, I'm starting to look at this arrangement as a new way to work - semi-digital semi-nomad life, here I come.

So I was going to get myself all worked up over having to be out of my office today, but I'm not - I'm in my office now wherever I am. It's a scary thing for someone that had needed the stability of a 9-5 job for most of my life, but it's turning out to be more okay than I thought.

More time for writing when I'm not chained to a desk. More time to sit in a comfy chair and read my prep materials. More time to be me, rather than the poor team player that I always seem to end up being. More time, less office. Yeah. I think the net is appearing.

Hey, I just noticed the purple and orange in the photo up there. Huh. Coincidence?

New Year, New You? Nope.

So how many of you (admittedly, 5-6) Lettuce Readers have already given up on the New Year's Resolutions that you made a few weeks ago? Yeah, me too. The difference is that my resolutions were actually achievable this time - set out your clothes for work the night before, make sure that the coffee pot is ready to go before you come stumbling in for some liquid courage at 6:55am (wow, that might have been a little more disclosure than I meant to have this early in a blog post), make time to write every day and the time in between lunch and class doesn't count.

I'm writing this having just polished off two lovely vegetarian sliders with Palmetto Cheese on top, and I've come to work in a long sleeve t-shirt and jeans if that tells you anything.

Before the end of 2018, I started listening to a podcast by my sister-of-choice, Elizabeth Dunne. It's called #FLAW3D and it is brilliant, insightful, and funny, just like she is in person. I swear. But as with everything that occurred after 12 April of 2018, I was going through the motions with her podcasts and other content under the #FLAW3D brand. In fact - I will admit this if you swear not to tell her I said so - I am embarrassed to say that while listening to her podcasts on the bus on the way to work, I fell asleep. Every time. That has more to do with my level of exhaustion and nothing to do with her content, I swear. My life for most of last year could be represented by the photo above - a long hard slog down a cobbled road devoid of all color.

I also listened to them out of order, because I had started doing that with another podcast I am addicted to listening to called And That's Why We Drink, a Paranormal and True Crime Podcast. The personal information that MUST BE LISTENED TO IN THE ORDER IT WAS RELEASED SO THAT YOU CAN CREEP ON THE LIVES OF THE PODCASTERS is not the point of the podcast there. But with Elizabeth's podcast, it is.

I mean not the creeping part. I would never. I'm having too much trouble remembering to call her Elizabeth rather than 'liz, as I have known her since uni, so there's no way I've got an ulterior motive here. Plus, she is the mother of my eldest niece, so I am versed in the real Elizabeth.

And y'all, if you will just listen to #FLAW3D you will hear the real Elizabeth. She is unabashedly open about everything that she chooses to share - and what she doesn't.

Anyway! So I listened to the first episode of #FLAW3D today - the topic was becoming a digital nomad and working with your spouse - and it was terribly relevant to me not because Hubs is going to quit his job and we are going to open up THE NEXT BEST BIG THING anytime soon. It was terribly relevant because it was just the dose of, "You want to do that? Well, why not?" that I needed. Yesterday was a hard day in the universe of my day job - so bad, in fact, that I couldn't even bring myself to escape to Orana like I normally do when the waters get rocky. I did manage to finish a chapter in the next Clobberpaws, but that was it. One chapter.

Did I mention that I started said chapter LAST NOVEMBER? Yeah. Not my best day as a writer.

But this morning's listen left me with feelings. All the feelings. Why not give up my cushy 37.5 hr/week job where I know what I'm doing and how to do it...if others would just stay out of my lane and let me do it. Why not just keep writing as a hobby and sort-of side gig...even though seeing that three of my books sold all in one day makes me so happy that I literally cried for a few minutes. Why not do what I love, rather than working at a place that I don't love as much as I used to do so that I can afford to do what I love? Things to ponder.

The best bit was probably when her guests, Erin Booth and Tannia Suarez (co-founders of efftheoffice.com) talked to Elizabeth about how for couples that both work jobs outside the home, they have only a few precious hours in the evening to spend time together. Then on weekends they are planning to spend time together but are either too exhausted or want to pursue things that make their individual souls happy - cue the entrance of guilt and resentment.

Hubs and I do that very thing. We get home late. We struggle over what to eat for our tea. We struggle over when to eat or to actually eat at all. We collapse on the sofas and watch an hour or two of television and then go to bed. That is not a life well lived.

So while I'm still processing episode one and moving on to episode two, let me again recommend that you go to FLAW3D.com and check out the podcast and Elizabeth. You won't be sorry. Now if you will excuse me, I need to completely rethink my entire life. New Year, New Me? Nope. Just New Me - a work in forever ongoing progress.

In which my inner language geek speaks...

GEEK spelled in British Sign Language.

People ask me all the time why I do what I do - lately, my answer is to carefully shrug my shoulders whilst trying NOT to reinjure my right elbow or smack my right hand against anything - but the answer, if I'm honest, is language, or languages. I did not go into interpreting because I have a need to help people. I did not go into interpreting out of some need for social justice or a desire to work in a disability-related field. I don't see Deaf/HOH people as needing help or as a disability community - I see them as a language minority. I went into my current field because it means I get to work in my second language every day - to the point that I think, dream, and even speak verbally in ASL (take a moment and feel sorry for my husband, won't you?).

Well, today I had a moment when I just got all giddy and, since interpreting tends to be solo work for the most part, I had no one to share it with that would understand it. I was watching some British Sign Language videos on YouTube in the name of professional development and I had just watched a video showing how to sign 'meeting' in BSL - and I got it. I don't mean I could see and understand the sign and then reproduce it. I mean I looked at it and due to my knowledge of ASL, I could understand WHY that was the sign for 'meeting.'

Last week, hubs and I had a discussion about why it is harder for some people to learn a second (and third and so on) language than it is for others. I likened it to the reason why it is hard, at times, for Deaf/HOH kids in school to learn English without a firm foundation in ASL first. If I had not had such a good education in not only vernacular spoken (American) English, I would not have been able to understand ASL to the point that I could then extrapolate that onto BSL and that video. You cannot learn a second language if your first language isn't strong enough to form comparisons and, to use my favorite metaphor, hooks. You can't learn ASL without a strong foundation in English, for example, to hook that new set of grammar rules and vocabulary to what you already know.

For people who say that isn't true, and that as long as you have a rudimentary understanding of your native or first language you can always learn a second language through study and repetition, sure, you can I suppose. But think of it this way: I never had a good grasp of mathematics. Never. I mean I can't even do the four basic functions without having to get a calculator to check my answers. I have no confidence in my own ability in that subject. I have no solid foundation in maths, so when I went to hook my new level of maths (Algebra and the like) into what I already knew, the hook fell. The foundation wasn't solid enough to hold it.

But my borderline obsessive love for learning languages has come from the fact that growing up I not only knew that you say 'I was going to the store' but also that it is not acceptable to say 'I were going to the store' and why. Miss Pritchett and Madam Gring-Whitley would be proud to know that they were right - I hated those verb conjugation sheets, but they helped me understand why you must change the form of the verb in order for the time component of your message to make sense. It helps me now when I remember to add the sign that indicates when the verb is happening, has happened, or will happen - so that I am clearly understood.

So back to the BSL video - it was because I know the ASL signs/classifiers for a person, the concept of 'meet' and 'meeting' and because I know what the word meeting can mean in English, that this sign made perfect sense to me:


That is building on your foundation. That is what made my inner language geek so very happy. I love it when I come across things like that and often don't make that connection until afterward but man. That is why I do what I do. THAT RIGHT THERE.