Dispatches from the Goblin City

  Better question: why not goblins?  I've been trying to explain the...er... architecture of my mind for years and coming up with nothing. Nada. Zilch. I wish I had a mind palace, or some orderly looking mansion to house all of my thoughts and beliefs.  I wish I could say my mind is like an elven city, a la Rivendell. But that's entirely too tranquil. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE tranquility, but that's not my brain's default setting. No, my mind is like the Goblin City from "Labyrinth." You know, the cult classic Bowie/muppet fantasy from the 80s. Remember the battle for the city near the end of the movie? Yeah, that's a pretty good representation of how my brain functions. Most of my thoughts are loud and hyper; like someone has been dosing my goblins with caffeine and meth. Imagine that Jim Henson added a rave to the Goblin City and that's kind of what my brain feels like to me. It can be exhausting, but these are the cards I have been dealt. I fi...

  Hi, hello, I'm Savanna and welcome to my little slice of the Internet. Here's the lowdown on me: I'm a thirtysomething cat mom dealing with mental health issues; a nerd of the highest order when it comes to most things in the sci-fi genre; a writer who struggles to write; a dedicated homebody whose lifestyle didn't really change because of #Quarantine2020. I currently reside in the Bay Area of California, but until 2019 I had lived my whole life in Oregon. I REALLY MISS OREGON! So yeah, I'm a Californian in the legal sense, but my heart will always be in the rainy, foggy, mushy Pacific Northwest. I'm engaged to the very best person in the world for me. Seriously, he continually surprises me with how well matched we are. Don't get me wrong, we're not perfect, but together we are perfectly imperfect. I totally ship us! Anyway, he values his privacy (especially online) and I respect him so I won't be referring to him by name. Instead, I asked him to c...

Last week was a rollercoaster of emotions. Just a recap: I rebooted this blog, then promptly fell into a Pit of Despair. You see, not all mood swings are the same and can be radically different for everyone. For instance, my fiancé noticed that some of his bad moods are brought on by what his mind is thinking about. So thoughts trigger moods. But for me, 8 out of 10 times, my mood will swing before my thoughts do. So moods trigger thoughts. It reminds me of a hostage situation, kind of.  I can be wonderfully fine, having a great mental health day, when out of nowhere my mood will darken and joy leaches away into the ether. Or I wake up feeling well, wanting to tackle some stuff, but the Ogre of Depression body slams my brain and I spend the rest of the day struggling to get out of bed. Thankfully, this mood swing didn't last for more than a couple of days. Sometimes, just sometimes, these moods can last weeks or months. Anywhoodles, my time on my Mood Swing Set completely derailed ...

I have rebooted this blog many times, but I lose steam after ONE post and disappear for 2 years or so. Rinse, repeat. But I'm sick of that habit. Truly. I want to be better. I deserve to be better. My creativity (which feels like it is on life support) deserves better. So this is me, trying to become a better writer. And a better human being in general. I'm not a disciplined writer anymore, not that I was ever really disciplined. I just had a better habit of writing in the evenings when I was still in college. Once I dropped out I let that good habit fall to the wayside. I let depression rob me of my passion for the written word. I fell out of love with writing. I let depression tell me I was just a talentless hack who would never amount to anything in this life. I believed  the lie. I became the lie. I stopped writing in mid 2016; I stopped fighting to find a reason to write. I silenced my own voice. And all the while my depression raged on, growing louder than ever and I had ...