Blessings and Resolutions

First things first: Tolkien’s Day! Whoo-hoo!  Today is Master Tolkien’s birthday, everybody, and as such, because I always like to do something symbolic on this day, I’ve opted to post today instead of yesterday… That being said, off we go:

Because I am already switching the Top-X Books-of-the-year lists to Inkwells and Daydreams, I won’t post my Top-20 Books of 2014 here, as I’d planned originally…  well, I won’t post it there, either, but instead a Top-15!  Turns out, because of the “low” number of books read (only 40 this year, egad!), I have to make do with a shorter list this time around…  Oh well, let this be a lesson for me to try to keep up with myself during this year and every other one from now on…

So, because I want to begin this year afresh, I want to hug every blessing I’ve had as of late, and then make a huge scary step that will have me pumping myself up so I can actually make my projects happen!  The hugging of the blessings will consist in enumerating everything that’s been valuable and gratifying, of course.  The huge scary step will consist of me posting out in the open my 2015 resolutions!  Hehe, they’re basically my work plan so I can keep myself in check and know that there’s people watching me now and I’ll have to keep up to my writing dates!  I’ve tried something similar previously, and it sort of worked, so now I want to experiment this way.  It’s very Julie Powell, I know, but hey, I’m drawing inspiration from her, and I need the pressure!

First of all, the hugs to my lovely blessings:

·         I’ve found the love of my life, a man who not only fulfills my every need but also offers me new adventures, creative challenges and things to learn about.  A man who knows the importance of healing, growing and evolving and who is always ready to lend a hand to anybody who needs it for those same ends.  A man who’s honest and kind and nerdy, and that’s hot! (Ten points for anyone who knows the source of that one, another ten for whomever gets the pun, and thirteen for Stephen Cole, who is surely laughing at this and knowing that I mean it even through the joke, and because regardless of what’s being said online, he would be the perfect 13).

·         I finished Wideawake and sent it to an agent… hooray!  Not that I’ve had any luck yet, but that’s the first scary step that any writer always has to take, and it’s a blessing that I found the courage to do it.

·         I have two books on Amazon Kindle, and that’s not a bad number so far…

·         I have so many good memories to share, from so many places of England and Mexico, as well as many other places of the world; some might be shared through stories, others maybe verbally at gatherings, but they’ve all been blessed with joy and harmony.

·         I’ve got so many friends in the mentioned and unmentioned places of the world, and some I know in person and others I don’t, but they’re all bright little beacons that I follow when I need cheering up, serious advice, or maybe just a funky laugh!

·         I’ve got an amazing family, loving and supportive (with our highs and lows, just like most, but always there for each other) (and who are worth taking last week’s post momentarily down for; in a few weeks you will understand).

·         I’ve had the chance to come and see Alanis again (and will be forever grateful that I had the chance to say good-bye to Michigan last year, my ternurita).  Not only am I sharing her room again, but she sometimes comes back up on the bed with me, something that she didn’t do for the few months I last visited…  That’s a huge blessing for me…!

·         I have managed to keep up a blog for a year now, yay!  And have opened another two, all of which I have huge plans for…  I am officially a freelance writer, and that’s something that the disbelievers will have to get used to…  I have come this far now, and I feel proud.

·         I have three things to say about the following picture: 1) it doesn’t matter if it’s blurry, it’s still one of my favourite pictures ever taken, 2) it is the perfect image to show how far I’ve come, all I’ve become and all the blessings I’ve received, and 3) it’s a picture with a story: a past and a future, the things we choose to take with us and why, the roads we take to get to where we want and the thresholds we cross when we find ourselves in front of them… this picture is a blessing in itself!

 

And now, for the big scary step… drumroll... My resolutions for 2015 are:

1.       By the end of January I will upload Tales from the Rooftop on Amazon Kindle (yes, I mean Cuentos de la Azotea, English version!)

2.       By the end of January, as well, I will have the intro, full chapter list, cover letter, synopsis and pitch for the non-fiction book.  (Oh, I will not be posting actual titles for my non-published stuff on this entry, just so you know…  But every success I post when I see I’m managing these resolutions will contain those titles, of course!)

3.       I will take a month to copy and clean all the notes I’ve been doing during my research for my five-part saga

4.       I will take 5 months to write every segment of the first book of the saga, to have the first draft of that novel ready for editing

5.       Every month I will upload an entry of each blog weekly, whatever it takes.  My days of choice for them will be Monday for Clarity Found, Thursday for Inkwells and Daydreams, and Friday remains for That Voice in my Head, but I retain the right to change it in any given week because of eventualities or just external reasons

6.       I will translate of The Shadow Behind (that’s right people, my mission is to have both my Kindle books in English this year, so those of you who want to read La Sombra Detrás will get to at some point this year…)

7.       I’ll give myself a day each month (to be selected as they come) to relax and try to come up with a new short story for the second collection.  I won’t pressure myself with it, I’ll just do my best and if by the end of the year I have six or seven workable short stories, I will feel blessed…  If I have twelve then I will probably YouTube my happy dance, I don’t know…

8.       I’ll open and keep my YouTube channel for literary, healing and creative purposes

9.       I’ll give myself time for plenty of reading, lots of learning, Doctor Who filming, many rituals of different kinds, and to always say hi to my people through every social media and of course in person

10.   I will read at least one more book than last year (might have to do this each year till I manage to get to 52 again…  please don’t let 2013 to have been a one-time thing!)

11.   I’ll also do something symbolic on the anniversaries of all of my favourite authors

12.   I’ll be kind to myself and remember that sometimes I can only do my best, and my best shall be rewarding because it will be done with love…!

 

Anyone thinks this is too much?  That I’m putting too much on my plate?  Well my dears, this is what I’ve been doing lately, anyway…!  Let’s say that this is why I got so overwhelmingly tired over the past few months, even though I was doing other types of writing.  In any case, this is the amount of work I chose to go into, because I love it and because I can’t imagine my life without it…

So there you go…  Eek!  Now I have to make it happen…  Excuse me for a moment, I’m going to be writing for the next 347 hours, nobody disturb me please…!

Cheers, world!  And happy New Year!!

Sincerely,

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, dreamer, healer, lover.

One more for the road...

Another one of my life-eras is ending as you read these words.  Another one, yet again marked by the constant search for my own person, my professional success, and of course my place on this blessed Earth.  During the past few months, just like always before, I have not stopped knocking on doors, I have not stopped pumping my legs so that they get me to my destination, and most of all, I have always kept on wishing…  Granted, I nearly lost hope sometime three months ago, and was this close to settling down in the wrong sense of the word…  I’ve come to realize that if someone tries to map out my life through this blog and some of the other writings I’ve done, there could be two outcomes: one, that they would be amazed at my strength, passion and stamina to undergo my healing and become who I’ve always known I’m meant to become… or two, that they would be miffed and impatient at my utter insanity.  Either way, I’m fine with it.  Either way, I shall keep on writing.  Either way, I shall always remain the Fool and keep plunging in, because if one thing I’ve learned is that you really get nowhere if you don’t jump in! This time around it’s been the same, and I’m nowhere near landing, cos I’m having so much fun flying around!

Wait… that came out weird… let me try again… Yeah, here goes: remember that moment sometime during The Trilogy of Five when Arthur Dent learns to fly because he kind of forgot to land?  I feel a little bit like that, or a lot, rather!  And now I’ve got my own Fenchurch to fly around with!  Or, er, maybe Stephen’s Arthur and I’m Fenchurch, you know, whatever…  Not that that matters, so moving on.

What I’m trying to say, is that those of you who’ve travelled with me over the past year have witnessed the pain, the confusion, the anguish, the crazy ramblings and one or two overenthusiastic displays of feelings for men I’d just met (Tom Hiddleston does *not* count.  He’s an actor, he’s not real in my life.) (Oh, wait, Stephen is an actor… erm, yeah, but he counts.  He’s real here and now with me, enough said.).  Those “statements” within the blog were obviously jokes, but some people took them too seriously and they came back to hit me in the face a few months ago…  I know sometimes jokes have an element of truth behind them, but like my friend Laura said the other day, anybody who knows me will know that such truth lays in the fact that I deeply wanted to find something real; so maybe it was my way of telling the Universe “Hey, something like this but even better, please?”…  And you know what? It worked!  Cos seriously, when I say that I never got physical with like 90% of the men I fancied or dated (hardly ever both at the same time), I’m not exaggerating… but I do know now, that was my own doing, because there was always that something I didn’t like and it just kept making me want to stick to my list!  Everyone told me that I was crazy, and that I would never find a man who could ever fulfill my every requirement… To all of you who said that, I have to reply:  you were right!  Stephen Cole doesn’t have a car, but he meets all of the 42 remaining requirements, and he even added a couple of his own that I didn’t even know I wanted, so yeah, I’m keeping him!  No one really needs a car in England, anyway, so I was going to cross that one off the list at some point.  (Those of you who actually enjoy driving or whose commutes would not be happily handled without a car may be free to disregard that last line.)

Right, but what about the rest of my life? What else has changed?  Well, I brought Wideawake to full completion and sent it to an agent, so that’s a huge deal for me…  also, I’m translating my short story collection and starting a whole new non-fiction book, besides continuing work on the Pentacle series.  Everything I start I will finish from now on, not like in past years, when I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor working on a novel just to flick it away because it disagreed with my reasons to write it… or like with Pentacle itself, which I’ve reset five or six times now!  I will finish those books and you will hear from me!  Oh, wait, that came out like a threat… Eh, I will finish those books and my name shall be known!  Still a bit dark overlord-ish, but yeah, works better…

The business thing, well, that one fell through, but I have just opened my proper healing page online and you’re all welcome to check it out… (ahem, advert! http://clarityfoundinmindandspace.com/). (Yeah, I didn’t think it though with how long that name is…  I might change it later on, but Clarity Found will remain…).

There is one thing I must do, though, and that is to thank everyone who’s been with me on this wonderful path, reading me and lending me their ears and shoulders; friends and family and mentors; from the youngest to the oldest; all far away so close, as we’ll always be…  We may not talk as often as we’d wish, and see each other even less, but let me tell you this, I have not, any single moment, stopped being grateful of everyone who’s touched my life… well, it took me a bit to acknowledge that those who brought the darkness were actually blessings in disguise, because they steered me into this particular path, but you all know what I mean.

This seems like an end-of-the-year closing entry, but I’ll still write next week… that’ll be my Hobbit verdict, however, like last year’s…  And the New Year’s one, on the first Friday of 2015, will be my read-in-the-year-top-20 book list…  this, nonetheless, is the end of an era for me, because once again I’m leaving London, but mostly because I have finally found what I was looking for, and this farewell to the city marks a new beginning for me.  Of course I’ll keep searching for the rest of my wish list, namely my getting myself sorted as an author, and lifting the online business so that I can manage my life as well! (Please Universe, you see how hard I work, make it happen?).

Anyway, I suppose I wanted to close the year with an account of what you’ve seen me go through, and brief answers about what I have and haven’t managed, but more than that, I wanted to close the circle from when I started a year ago to the moment I am now, so that next year starts fresh and new because the healing will have taken place!

I wish you all the best…  Merry Christmas, Hanukkah or Winter Solstice (or anything else you might celebrate) (or all at once!), and see you next week to talk about Bilbo Baggins and his quest again!

Cheers and blessings!

Communication skills: my lacks and hopeful improvement...

Ok, here’s what’s going on in my life…  Last week I was not even able to look up a short story or do a picture thing again or at least grab one of my old essays so I could do the progress thing I said a couple of weeks ago, but instead I came up with an apology two days later, pretty much because that’s how hectic my life seems right now…  Yes, I get what some people say, I don’t even have a job, and I’m traveling left and right and up and down England, but there’s a reason why I’m doing that! (Besides love, I mean).

Oh, we’ll start with that one…!  There’s a key answer I give when asked why I decided to settle down in England, and that is, and shall always, be “For love”.  Granted, the meaning of that has changed as of late, although 99% of the people usually think that there was always a boy involved in my emotional attachment to this country.  However, no one seems to realize that before I met Stephen, I never had anything remotely close to a British boyfriend, ever, during the 20 years between the day when I first set foot in London to the moment that he and I became official.  So, yes, the meaning of the answer has changed, but only to make it stronger than ever…  I have talked extensively on these pages about my love for England: the way my energy vibrates on this land, the way my words flow better than anywhere else, the way I feel like I can really show enthusiasm for history and tradition and myth, and not be mocked about it; the way I can read in any public place or transport and won’t have anyone come and bother me about trying to look smarter or more important than the others around me…  the way I can walk and not feel oppressed by weather, the beautiful architecture that stimulates my fantasizing, the way the rain caresses my skin and the cool wind makes me feel light and energetic, the way the music and other sounds in public places seem to blend in with the scene most of the time and feel nice instead of clashing with my inner world…

Yes, Mexico is extremely beautiful too and I gladly invite anyone who wishes to visit or move there to do so, I’ve stated that multiple times as well, get over it…  Thank you for bringing it up, but is that really necessary, every single time?

I’ll talk about that guilt-trip of mine in a minute, but first let me wrap up the other issue so we can move on a bit more organically…  Thing is, now that I have the greatest reason ever to strive for my chance to stay here, there is also the political situation the country is going through…  The UK government, like in any other nation’s, is house to certain people who care more about their own wealth than about the country’s actual needs.  Of course, this is a story we see everywhere in the world.  Basically, if we were to put a group of people in the same room, where every single person was from each different country, and we told them to raise their hand if specific groups from their country’s government are more concerned with filling up their pockets than with the actual guiding of the nation and providing real welfare for the inhabitants, possibly 98% of them would raise their hand…  The rest might either a) might not have a nation due to ongoing power wars in their native territory, b) might not be aware of the political climate in their country and thus it would have been our mistake to have put them in the room because we did not make a fully well-researched selection of these people, or c) might blissfully be from New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, or any other of the handful of countries that has close-to no political controversies or impending-doom social issues.

All right, well, none of that’s new to anyone… Problem is, that as plenty of those politicians in this country are blaming the current economic problems on the immigrants, then a girl like me, has to work extra hard to prove she deserves the visa, especially after previously running into the same problem in both countries, England and Mexico, when looking for a job: I seem to be overqualified to be hired in a lot of the things I applied to, what with having a UK Masters, but at the same time I was underqualified to work in a lot of other things, what with having only teaching as a background…  Hence, my best option is to create my own business, right?  Sure, that’s a good idea, except that these things don’t get launched in a matter of months, so I have to work really really hard at it…!  Really really really hard!  So it might seem like I’m just travelling around, but I use most of my commuting time in planning, note-editing, formulating my work plans, reading (which is also part of my literary life, obviously) and trying to type up stuff when I’m not too dizzy… otherwise I’m staring lifelessly at the world around me because every once in a while I just end up so exhausted that my brain just takes off somewhere to rest where I cannot bother it…  I want to say that a couple of times it has just remained back at Glastonbury, while other times it most probably just went ahead to my place and got in bed to wait for me, cos I really doubt that it has the energy to try to look for somewhere new and take in new sights and information that at this point could not even be processed if I tried…

Then there is the one or two days a week that I get to run around London with a Sonic Screwdriver in my hand being chased by aliens and whatnot, and that’s just as tiring as it sounds… it’s also just as fun as it sounds, which is why I am enjoying it so much, just as I am finding it so pleasurable to be doing my literary research and planning my way of life while I’m traveling back and forth…!

So, yes, before anybody asks, I am having the time of my life, and when I repeat “really hard” over and over that does not mean that I am having a bad time, cos on the contrary, these past months have definitely been the best months of my life!  Thing is, there seems to be a belief that if a person is enjoying themselves then they are not working hard enough…  And I carry so many of those guilt-inducing ideas and stuff with me since times unknown…  I’m working on releasing them, because they’re slowing my progress: all of that having to explain and justify myself even though no one has asked me about it is a real time-waster…!  On the other hand, I can finally understand why sometimes people might think I am saying things that I’m really not, and hopefully I will reach a point when I can actually stop myself from altogether doing it.  They pretty much go hand in hand: I over-explain or become quite enthusiastic in saying a particular YES or NO at something, overcompensating for a wish not to have to justify myself, and that’s when people have thought that I feel differently about certain things.  So there you go, I’m still learning (yay!), and actively trying to stop these misunderstandings from happening, which is even cooler, cos I really want to be perceived as someone who says things as they are, with no more or less meaning than I intend them to.  I think I’m already a bit like that, because some of my friends have told me lately that that is one of the things they appreciate most about me, so yay again!

So, this is my healing path, the never ending road that that I love walking, and sharing as I do…  Although there is still that noisy, overcompensating thing I also have: the need to bring Mexico up every time I speak wonders of England.  I will go out on a limb here and say that, since most people ask the question “You don’t like it there?” when the other winces or shrugs or hesitates at the mention of said place, I might have been taking things way too personal since the beginning (so, like 25 years ago).  That, multiplied by seven when I went back to Durango after living in cultural and friendship bliss for two years in Ann Arbor, being instantly tagged as “malinchista” for feeling the way I did; and then multiplied by another nine or ten, when years later people made a point of excluding me and saying that I was not Mexican because I did not like the music they were playing at parties or nightclubs (or cars or on the streets) (the bad kind of music, I mean.  We’ve talked about this, remember?  Twice.  Go back and check.  Thanks.).

Anyway, my character if I were in a mutant or magic movie would be an empath.  Blimey, that came out of nowhere, didn’t it?  Um, let me go back a bit…  Remember how we’ve also gone into the fact that I do have hypersensitivity, all in all in every area, from skin and smell and stuff, to feelings, and to the emotions of my closest ones in particular.  This is a thing that I view as a rather pretty gift, because most of the time I am fully able to connect with the person and clear things up or help them heal from something, or just provide emotional support, even though it’s taken me years to polish my abilities so that I don’t either take it personal and feel hurt if what the person is feeling is anger or impotence, or so that I don’t feel completely responsible for the person’s rise from that state of mind and soul.  Because of this, I always felt very morally wrong whenever one of my aunts or cousins of closest friends tried to sell my own birth country to me, as if I was despising the country and everything it entitles, which included them as well…  But I’m not and I never was!  I can understand the misunderstanding, however, because I do feel pretty strongly about the things I don’t like, and I hold my right to not like them even if that makes me become an absolute outsider, to the point of my lack of knowledge of anything that goes on in their personal lives because I’m not invited to their normal reunions, and thus no one fills me in on the gaps…  For instance, a few weeks before my return to England, a close friend of the family got married, and I had a very weird moment of isolation when not only did I realize that everyone at the table I was sitting in was talking about stuff they’d done on class trips or many other reunions that I hadn’t been at, but I also discovered that someone I thought was one of my closest friends was dating someone new, and I was completely out of the loop.  The question arose in my mind: If this guy and I are such good friends, why did he not tell me this?  We’d been talking almost every week I’d been in Durango, so I should have known, right?  Erm, wait… why is it that I took something like that so personal and felt completely left out, when more than half my friends have not yet heard about my own relationship from a first-person basis?  Well, before you answer, I’ll say that yes, in that case I was completely an outsider, not that any of those implied are less my friends or anything, cos they will remain dear to me no matter how far away I am, but I should not have taken it so personally because I hadn’t really been part of their group anyway!  They were all in the same Masters, in the same work place, in the same trips and conferences, whereas I was always waving from afar.  And still, it took me about two years and a half to learn that not because you’re starting a new relationship, now you’re going to go around to each one of your friends and say “Hey, guess what?”.  Yeah, I *had* to learn that, because it never quite occurred to me that most people don’t go yelling it all around, particularly because there is not much time left for that, if what you’re trying to do is get to know this new person…!   Yeah, I now get as well why some people get offended about that, too: “Now you’re with someone new and you’ve forgotten about us, your true friends!”.  Sigh.  All we can do is our best, and the best for us, at that…  Everyone else, if they’re truly our friends, they will understand our happiness, our need to cope with it in our own way, and our need to make it happen in our own way as well…

Wait, how did I get from politics and visas all the way to this…?  Not sure, but let me add something: in all the subjects I’ve studied, all the things I’ve seen in the world, there is nothing more interesting to me than human psychology, relationships, and evolution of personality and soul… there is nothing more beautiful than those moments when I say “Oh, that’s why!”, whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that I am understanding…  And I will also say this: I will always believe in the human race, even as I give my glum explanations of world politics and economy and stuff up there at the beginning of this entry, I will forever cheer humanity on its path of healing and evolution, and love and hope and brightness!

Cheers and blessings all!!

 

Things I learned today

In all honesty, I was planning to do the lazy thing and post today something that I’d written earlier in my life, not because I don’t want to write anything new today, but because I really really really have to finish Wideawake today…  However, as I searched in my files and opened old school essays, or short stories from various workshops, or even the Top-whatever lists I have been promising different friends I would post on this blog at some point, I realized something I was being slightly blind to… well, many things, hence the “Things I…” part of the title up there…  As of now, this will be a bit of a taster of what’s to come over the next few weeks, because I do want to expand on each and every one of the subjects, and keep a few promises along the way, but, as I said, I really really really, truly, need to finish my novel today (for personal reasons, not excruciating deadlines or anything, so no worries, my friends, I will come back next week fresh and ready to start with the first subject on the list, which has been a long-standing promise not only to my readers here but even before that, to myself because I did my BA in International Relations for a very specific reason!).

OK, and the list goes…

1.       I have to learn to deliver my political views in a way that they will be taken seriously… I do not have to change my writing style to do this, I just have to be confident.  Well, maybe I have to change my writing style a *little* bit to deliver certain ideas, but there is always a space in creativity that allows for a more serious air in order to introduce a serious subject, without damaging the essence of the style on which the idea is delivered.

2.       If I take some of my essays from school and post them here as they are, and then do a follow-up on each one of those subjects, I might get away with leaving a trace of my evolution as a person, a student, and a writer all at the same time…  It might be scary as hell, because of how uncooked those essays are, even though I normally got good grades for them, but the reason I *didn’t* post one today is precisely because it *is* scary as hell…

3.       The Tudors don’t fit into any of my TV show categories…  No matter how I rearrange that Top 30, it always ends up on its own…  And that’s because I turned out to be wrong about The Musketeers, which brings me to:

4.       OK, this one is killing me…  let me take a breath and

and…

and (whimpers)

and say it already!

Aaaahhh

Athos is not the best male character in literature!  Argh that hurt like hell!!

OK, so, I said that I would do an entry on each topic on this list, so I will get into detail once I’m in the right mindset for this, but for now I will only say this: yes, he is pretty great, and he will always be, just like all musketeers, of course (well, just the four of them that we know as the Musketeer characters from that era, but I’m guessing you already knew what I meant), and he is unequivocally the most noble one of all male characters ever and whatnot, but he is just not healthy…  And I wish I could say that I’m just coming to this conclusion, but it’s been on my mind for a couple of years, and just a few months ago, by realizing how hard it was for me to read the Vicomte de Bragelonne series, I realized that that was one of the things which was impeding me to go through those four books as fast as I’d wish…  My reason for this, and probably a lot of you already know this: the guy’s just not healthy… leave aside the drinking problem (that was probably not even an issue back then), but, deciding not to love ever again just because of what one woman did wrong ages and ages ago?  Yes, even if it was as bad as they showed it on the current TV show, still, no.  I mean, and I’ll try my best to say this without spoilers, but to go *that* long without someone to love? Not even when he had his son?  That’s just wrong, psychologically speaking…  (now add the drinking problem, cos, yeah, I would have probably not even gone after him back then just because of that).  Thing is, I have been going on and on for weeks about a woman’s right to ask for love, and the Doctor’s right to seek love again, and about how it is a perfectly natural and necessary part of the deal of being human (and, or, er Gallifreyan…) , so why put Athos at the top of a list if he is actually choosing not to have that, even though it is one of the main reasons he lives in continuous emotional pain?  Yes, he will definitely remain on the list, but I have to seriously rearrange that thing, cos it’s dated…   I mean, being born in a generation that has given us Faramir in Literature, Rory Williams on TV and Edward Bloom on Cinema, I cannot just go “Oh, Athos was all noble and good for his times’ standards” and whatever, because some of those standards do not apply to the psychological health that my list requires in order for someone to be at the top of the list…  Wait, Faramir was not from our time (and *possibly* not our land, either, or at least Universe… cos I don’t think anybody has found any archeological proof of Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves and all those battles the books talk about, have they?) (Super-quick side note: anybody who dares answer my last question seriously, I will send you a permanent tickling curse that I have on my Harry Potter mobile app, I don’t care if you are only thinking it, or commenting it other-where.  I will locate you and I will send it.).  Now that I think about it, Edward Bloom was a pathological liar.  Hm.  So I should reconsider that list, then…

5.       And while we’re on that subject, there is no way that Ten and Rose made a better couple than Brennan and Booth… just no way.  I know, I’ve been side-blinded, er- blind-icened, no, blindtented, oh blimey! Blind-sided all summer, probably because I had that unrealistic marathon running with myself and I ended up binging on Doctor Who just weeks before we began shooting because (surprise surprise) I did not time myself right, but still, Brennan and Booth, come on!  Those guys rock!  It doesn’t matter that I never liked David Boreanaz’s  face, that’s not the point, I’m talking psychology here, remember?  Oh, but I just hit myself in the face with that one, didn’t I?  Thing is, I have a current Top 20 on TV couples, and only one of those two can make Top 5 within that list.  Hm… serious thinking here…*

And:

6.       I think too much about character psychology…  I mean, I have spent all year trying to understand this guy’s psychology, right?  This summer and autumn of filming I’ve been driving my director/producer and my co-stars crazy with random questions and unnecessary detailing of things that I would eventually not even need anyway, or that I would end up forgetting. (Newsflash: all this time I thought  I was Ten because of the utter loneliness and the I don’t want to go thing, when it turns out that all along I was One because of my absolute OCD when it comes to prop continuity and my incessant mispronunciation of lines and forgetfulness of names…  er, he was ill, what’s my excuse?  Okay, I need to dial it up a notch, got it… ) (Yes, yes, yes, I gotta be my own me, I know, that’s completely unnecessary, you know?  I was just using that for comedic relief…) Well, all of that and for what?  Only to now get myself side-tracked by a paradigm-shifted FBI Agent in a cool Crime series because I just realized, by page 161, that there are numerous ill-fitting plot points in my novel, and that one of them (that I fortunately already fixed) was the backstory for my own FBI Agent Andrew Carter!  So there I go into character psychology again, yaddah yaddah yaddah, and realize the two female characters also have gaps that by now should have been filled…  But the other thing is, a year ago I wrote the exact same scene in Wideawake than I had written in The Shadow Behind like seven years ago!!  Argh, so now I’m stuck at that page, sorting thru that one moment that I know I need but I have no idea how to reset so that I’m not plagiarizing myself!  So, am I going to finish editing tonight? No.  Do I feel okay with it? No.  Am I going to complain and whine and stuff about it for ages on end? Nope!  I just needed to rant, that’s all…  Besides, this is fun!  It’s a healthy way for me to sort through these matters here, cos I can see a bit clearer after I distance myself from them…

Yeah, but Doctor psychology is bloody fantastic, and I’m never letting go of that one…!

(And yeah, you can add my boyfriend to that pile, although I’m reconsidering my discourse methods here as well: If my original intention was to be mysterious about his identity in order to bring in the element of surprise, but the fact that our production had to be stalled for longer than I was able to keep my literary resources going, would it be worth it if I reset the technique so that by the time the videos are uploaded, the new readers who come in here and link into them or vice versa can have a No way moment when I unveil his identity for the second time?  Er, it would be a fun experiment to conduct, if it were not for the fact that everyone who knows us knows we’re together, and that we’re completely open about it and that anybody who does a search of us will find the other right then and there…) (We interrupt this blog to bring you an extremely subliminal author/actor product placement here…) (Did it work?) (Is anybody right now on Facebook or YouTube looking for Sandra Tena or Stephen Cole?) (No?) (Oh well, I’ll try again next week…) (Um, I sense I should end this conveniently long series of parenthesis.  It was fun while it lasted).

 

Yes, I did auto-plagiarize myself just now anyways, with the title of this entry…  But then again, I needed an outlet and I have it at the tip of my fingers, right, and these are things I learned today, and all because of my writing and my searching for something interesting to upload, AND my search for how to fix my own storyline so that it doesn’t have the same elements from my own storyline!  Hehe, those words cannot be helped from now on…  I have many storylines, and they are all my own…

So cheers then, and thanks for coming by… just the fact that you’re all peeking in to see what I’ve come up with this week gives me motive to construct something out of letters and words, which makes me really happy then that I didn’t use one of my old writings just now!  Not that it won’t happen in the future, but just now I feel like I cleared a bit of clutter from my brain, which is always good…!

Cheers then!  Much love and blessings!

Sunsets and Thank Yous tonight

I’ve been trying to get my head around the enormous number of things that I have to do now that I know how to make my way in life.  Oh my (Time)Lord, that sounds a bit portentous…  Oh, darn I just lost my right to a cookie…  Oh well, I’ve just overdosed on chocolate covered biscuits anyway, so I can make as many references as I want to Doctor Who and not worry about that…

However, this is a serious day for me, because the answers I have been looking for all my life have finally arrived (the endorsement for me to do what I love to do most in life, if you will), but since I’ve still got to make my way through the logistical part of it, I will get solemn for a moment.  I was going back and forth between uploading a picture that symbolizes my state of mind or rambling on about the actual boggled state of my head instead, and I came up with a version of both; something that will speak to you about my lands, my personalities, what I’m leaving and receiving, my writings and my passion.  Nonetheless, I also wrote something about it… not so much to make you think what I wish you to think about it, but because I have the words to describe what it is in my head and heart and soul, and I do not wish to keep them apart from the images…

I took these two sunsets in Durango some weeks before coming back to England, the first two photos from the entrance of the building where my parents work, the other one from my room at their house… sunrises and sunsets have always meant a lot to me, and now that I’m looking for inspiration to finish the third draft of my novel, Wideawake, I feel like it’s a sunset for it, because once I hand it over it’s like I am starting a closing chapter on that period of my life.  I like that.  I love it, in fact, and I am getting so much inspiration from the people I love, those close and those far, everyone who has always cheered for me and knows that my children come in due time even if a year “late”, that I can’t find enough words to say thanks…  I realize that I’d said last year that by that December I’d be sending the book to an agent: What the hell was I thinking?  That was putting too much pressure on me, and on my characters as well!  But this time around I’ve had more than enough time to work it out, slowly and steadily, with the support of tutors like Anne Aylor, whose input was invaluable, from my friend Nikolas and my sister Gina, who have not read it yet but have been kind enough to let me speak about Thalía and Andrew Carter and Mara Sanders, and know them as well as I do, and now from my wonderful Stephen, who’ll be receiving the book shortly for further cleaning (and by me writing this here and making it public, I’m making a binding social contract and commitment that I shall be working towards with myself; with the people who I care about and any kind strangers who take a peek inside this entry, as my witnesses!) (Ahhh!!!)  (Love it!!  The pressure of it and the emotion of it…!!).

However, I said “my lands” and so far I am placing only Durango in a visual here… I’m mentioning my parents, though, because it means a lot that I took these pictures from their work place and the house I will always be proud to call home as long as they’re there…  I am a creation of them, and they have given me and taught me so many skills and work ethics and habits, that Wideawake becomes their grandchild as easily as I call it my child, make of that what you will…  It’s only because of them that I have managed to be here in England now, and it’s because of what I’ve learned from them that I can start smelling success really nearby…  So they receive my absolute thanks as well, and one day we will all look back and see my path and consider how scared I was a year ago to not be able to fully finish a novel in less than a year, and how happy I am now that I am being able to put everything I have ever learned (and am still learning) to practice, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it…  And it makes me wonder: Who knows how many people I will be able to teach these skills later on to?

And to that land that I am giving you as a visual… the land that made me ache so much that I was able to grow to be the person I am now, to the land that holds cherished family and friends and familiars as well, to that land I also give my thanks!  Now it’s my time to step over here (as soon as I figure out the logistics, like I said), but worry not Durango, cos I will vouch for your beauty and your warmth and send you people over to see you and touch you and enjoy…  I can see it, too, you know?  I’ve said it many times before…  Nothing in my way I feel about England changes how much good I actually think of you.  There are many houses and places we call home, in an automatic way, you see, and my parents’ house is in your midst, of course, but what if it was otherwhere?  That is a different kind of home, that’s the memory one, the cherished and nurturing one, the one we can always return to for comfort and warmth (lucky humans that we are); but there is also that other home we have to build ourselves as adults, whether we decide to change cities or not, and I have already chosen mine… We have talked about this, remember?  And even now I hear you ask why I’m not even typing in Spanish, and I can only say, we have already talked about this too!  My time will come to write in that language again, but for now think of me as the one who grew in mind, body, and creativity from your deserts and your mountains, and your insane winds and from your rain, and took it all to create a galaxy in the arms of the home she afterwards chose…  Thank you Durango, thank you forever, and I’ll be seeing you soon!

 

So I may not be writing as lengthy as I usually do on this lovely Friday, but trust in me that I am putting as much passion in it as I usually do…  I am stating, decreeing and wishing really really hard for the enjoyment of the sunset of this book, so that it has a refreshing, rejuvenating sleep and rises beautifully when its time to wake up with the Sun comes!!

Cheers and I will keep you all updated!!  And so many many many thanks for your constant support!!

My England in a Heartbeat

Stephen and I have been traveling up and down the country for the last couple of weeks, and the ride’s not over yet.  God and Goddess, I’ve been wanting to start a blog entry just like that for a while now, la la la!  (Doing happy dance around the room) (Well, no, there are too many suitcases on the floor, so goes out and happy-dances up and down the porch stairs with the view of Glastonbury and the Tor and tower…) (Much better!).

Oh, but before I really start, I have to ask forgiveness from my readers for my absence last week; I have been computerless for a while as well as on the move, so it’s been hard to keep up with myself once again… but my projects remain and soon you will see my other blogs as well as (hopefully) my books coming out too.  Now, where was I…?

So, yes, we have been pretty much zig-zagging (or more like heart-monitoring) England lately, all thanks to my classes in Newcastle, his brother’s birthday, and both of our filming days in London and Windsor… Ah, saying that we travelled between London and Windsor is cheating, you say, since they’re so close together?  Wrong!  Windsor is about three hours away from where I live in Greenwich, or maybe more, because even though it’s right outside London, there is too much land to cross before getting there; it really doesn’t matter whether we go by bus, train or car, distances like those are quite long anyhow…  Then again, there’s something about the Gypsy trek we took that is making me look at things differently now, or rather beautifully again… as we lugged our bags from house to house and coach to train and hotel to train and back again, he wearing his hat and leather jacket (which makes him seem as an Indiana Jones adventurer type, though he claims otherwise) and me in dangly earrings and beady necklaces (more for effect than practicality), I was reminded once again of  my love for looking up.  Granted, it’s not that easy to look up when you’re dragging a case and rushing for the train or trying to find the hotel in the wrong street, but that moment you realize that even in those situations you can still look up and admire your surroundings, you know you’ve found bliss.  I know it sounds simplistic, yet I don’t mean about when this happens just in the cities you visit, but also in places you know well already but still find new things that catch your eye, or when you’re hiking and are able to keep looking up even though the altitude might make you dizzy or you’re afraid to lose your footing, or even in your own town, at instants when you find hidden jewels you hadn’t been aware of during the previous ten or twenty years of your life…  Thing is, that little moment, when you’re able to appreciate your surroundings even when you’re too tired or too focused on something else, that’s the moment when you plant yourself in the present tense, with no other worry than to be in the here and now, and not even that’s a worry!  This is one of the things Eckhart Tolle talks about in The Power of Now, and it’s so simple and easy to do, that when you manage it, you feel surprised at why you don’t do it more often, or why others don’t do it as well…

What I’m talking about is the contrary to what I’d been complaining of during the past few weeks, which, in case anyone’s forgotten, is that I’d been too tired to look up lately, and even worse, had to force myself to turn and enjoy the sights when I intuitively knew they were coming into my eyesight!  Now, there are two visual things I recently enjoyed enormously: one is the sight of the Tower Bridge from the train on my way to London Bridge Station (that I talked about a couple weeks back), and another is a brief moment during my trips between Newcastle and London when I was waiting for my train back to Greenwich and I tipped my head at the platform, so as to look at the full length of the Shard as the train approached and blew my hair back…  The Shard is a pretty cool building, even though I am rather partial to the old architecture instead of the new one, but there was something about that moment, in the midst of my tiredness and the crowd, that I felt that for the first time ever, my good-bye was being organic… OK, to begin with, you’re right, I’ve still got weeks left in London before I have to move up to the North East, and also, with London it is never a good-bye!  It is a “See you later” at most, because of course I will be called back there over and over again.  It’s like the city thinks I’m a yo-yo or something, because it draws me in and then throws me back out with such a force that I end up spinning for weeks before being pulled back in…  Only this time it is me that’s making the choice!

There were many things about this wonderful trip I’m doing that are making me more and more sure that I’ve made the right decision, and also that my love for London is something that will never get stored away as a simple memory…  Remember how I said that there are some places in this country that makes me think I want to live there even though my younger friends make me feel old as the buildings? (lol?) Well, Glastonbury is definitely one of them (and happily no one’s made me feel old here); Morpeth as well, though it’s too far away… there is also Durham and York, and Leeds and Bath or even Manchester, if I were looking into bigger cities…  Bristol I have yet to see, as well as Nottingham, but judging from what I am told about those places, I’m quite sure I will like them enormously.  Given that most of the smaller towns I’ve been to are more retirement villages than tourist attractions, I’ll not be moving to any of them (probably not even Morpeth) yet, but as long as I am in means of visiting places like Alnwick and Corfe Castles (and absolutely everything else in-between!), as well as all the stone circles that for some reason last year I never got to reach for lack of means, I will be a happy traveler…

As for London, oh my London, however did I complain so much about you over the past few weeks?  I have my right, I know, and I don’t take back any word I said, but that’s why I admit that it’s healthier for both of us that I move away, and you know it more than I because you’ve been telling me so for about a year!  But hey, if I had not been so adamant to return to you I would have never met Stephen, and I would have never been able to open the doors that have presented in my path, so we both win, don’t we?  I am happy and I am leaving my positive imprint within you, either with my Sonic or my crystals or my hands; and last time I ran around in costume, I touched the Thames, and I knew just as much as you have always known, that I had to be there –in you- to be able to reach out to everywhere else!  I like that I still have my base in your midst, but my home is somewhere else; I hear your words because I’ve been gifted, and now I look up and see the Tor and tower through Stephen’s window and I wonder how it’d ever been if I hadn’t persisted so much on returning for the Summer, “To try to get my novel published”, “Just for Mani’s Doctor Who”, “To get my books and other treasures back”, “To see what would happen…”.  It was to see what would happen that I contacted Newcastle about my business idea when the program opened, and it was to see what would happen that I applied to carry it forward this year instead of next, and it was to see what would happen that I remained for the Autumn when my Summer stay was done…  But my rule while in London for over four years has been to always follow my instinct, even if it means changing my course on my way home out of a last-minute whim…  Er, no, getting on the wrong train or on the right bus but different direction does *not* count!  I am in no way justifying my direction awkwardness by making it mystical… Although, I should…  I could market it and make millions!  Hm, I sense a second business stirring up… ;)

About the trips that I’ve been making lately, with my perfect partner and his suitcase full of fancy dress, and our Gypsy blood running through our veins (…well, *he* knows it for sure, whereas I can only assume… but come on, have you seen my family? On my mother’s side there are 6 of us who live other-where, a grandmother that has three houses and travels all-year-round between them, and the remaining 5 who travel for a living, plus we all have partners who either follow or lead us, or both at the same time!  And on my dad’s side there’s 5 of us who left home, but all the rest are keen on traveling, if only for enjoyment; so I think that I get the Gypsy blood from my mom’s side, but there is something of it on both sides, because out of all, the most Gypsy-like are my sister and me…)… Oh, yes, about the trips!  Right, to begin with, my boyfriend is starting a career as an actor, so he had his script from the play he’ll be on this weekend to read on trains and coaches, but as it also happened, given that we were going to his brother’s 40^th birthday party as Amy and Rory from Doctor Who, Police Woman Amy and Centurion Rory actually, that was costume one (er, because it was a Fantasy-themed fancy-dress party, not because we’re kooky or anything… well, yes, we’re quite kooky, but that’s a whole other matter); then there was also Halloween, so he had his V for Vendetta costume in the mix as well (I was Wonder Woman, but I had my costume back in my closet in Greenwich, so my case was not as fancy as his…), and then of course there was his Doctor outfit, since we’d be filming in Windsor and some bits of London too… again, my costume was in my closet in my room, so I did not seem as professional an actor as he did, hehe, but do let me promote my man, cos he’s quite good at what he does…!  What prompted him to get into acting you will have to ask him yourselves (link! https://www.facebook.com/theonemantheatrecompany?pnref=lhc), but I'll let you all know that it was because of that that we met in the first place… Have you all guessed who he is yet?  Nah, try to guess first… yeah, go on…! (Hint: he’s the other Doctor in the Imaginarium Fan Productions production!) (How did you like that for a narrative device?  Just trying out stuff, bear with me, wink wink!).  For some of you this is no news at all, for the rest, I will briefly tell the story, cos it’s always worth telling that the first time that he caressed my hand we were posing with our arms around a Dalek right in front of the Tor, and the first time we held hands was just moments afterwards, when we were doing the group hug around the darned thing!  I’m sorry, around the Dalek, I mean…  I’ve been watching the Peter Cushing movies with him for the last couple nights and I’m all Daleked out, as anyone who knows what I’m talking about might imagine… for anyone who doesn’t but might be curious, research it, cos they’re sooo worth it!  And keep an eye out for scenes with elevator shafts!

Seriously, though, being with someone like him has so many perks, all of those that I’d almost lost hope I would see coming my way… I mean, it’s not only the vast amount of sci-fi and fantasy DVDs we have on queue for dinner time and stuff, but also the hours and hours of talking about our twisted theories on the stories we watch or read (and the fact that we understand each other!), and how much he can teach me about history, spirituality and politics, or his perfect English accent (that he of course is completely oblivious to), or the fact that at Comic Con, while we were both dressed as our own Doctor character, I had the chance to say “Let me get the TARDIS and then we can go home”… sadly I didn’t have enough money, and as Comic Con is *not* the best place to steal a TARDIS, however fully out of character it seems to even say such a thing, we had to take the tube…  So there you have it, the reason I have been so happily rambling on about this man for weeks, and the reason I wanted to drip feed him on my readers, cos otherwise it’d lose its magic!  Both the situation and the narration, I mean… or rather, the situation *within* the narration, cos the situation by itself cannot lose its magic by any means…!  Also, I had been waiting for the first episodes to air to make my revelation, but there have been some slightly huge obstacles come our way, and things are moving at a slower pace than we’d like…  Meanwhile, we’re persevering and the production carries on… just be patient, cos it’ll be so worth it, I promise!!

Want to hear one more precious little thing I discovered?  The type of house that I used to wish I could live in, that is, not a house but a flat in a tall building from where I could see the city expanding underneath and perhaps some of the marvelous sights, like St Pancras or the Tower Bridge (I already had the Shard and the Gherkin visible from my last window), has changed dramatically into a ground-floor flat in a community kind of town where I can have my own garden and grow veggies and fruits and from where I can walk down to work or the market to get the rest of whatever I might need while saying hello to the neighbours… (Gasp!!  Sandra wants to take up gardening and talk to people!!  Who is this person typing, then, and what have you done to the *real* her??)  Yes, I heard all your questions, and rest assured, it’s still me, just exercising my right as a wise person and as a woman to change my mind as to how and where I want to live my life from now on… And completely happy with that choice!

So then, I close this entry with a beautiful thought on my happiness and everything I’ve found at long last: I took a turn in a last-minute whim and I found my way home… *smiles blissfully*

May you all find what you’re looking for as well, or may you have new dreams if you’re looking for new things to reach out for, too! Have a happy weekend or week, and always keep smiling!  Cheers!

 

One more thing…  As I edit this I’m seeing how obsessed I’ve become… Pavlov me!  If I don’t mention anything about Doctor Who on the next entry, give me a cookie!

 

 

…if I do mention *it*, just let me be…  It might only mean that I’m a hopeless case and the world will have to live with my obsessions…