Mikiesboy

I hope their blueberries taste better than our cultivated ones. I usually only buy frozen wild blueberries. Yeah, i'm blub-snob, so sue me. Anyway, nice chapter. I enjoyed the Naren/Miri interaction scene. It was interesting. Another great chapter in this outer-space story.

So, same as me then.

Glad you're still here.. and yes, a special thank you to the boss for sure. And congrats for 10 years!! 🎉

So, groceries got...i managed to NOT buy donuts cuz they were already 3 days old. Remember the old days when old donuts cost less? Do these? Nope not at all. So I got stuff from our list, qualified for the 10% off of fruit and veg you buy. Yay. Paid over $10 for 4 apples. They cost more than meat. However, ground pork was $1.99 per pound, so yes bought a batch of that for the freezer. I came home and baked oatmeal squares and a lemon blueberry loaf... so someone besides me will be happy about that. Now, I have a cardigan to continue to work on. The back is done, now starting on the front panels. 🧶 Hope you're all having a good and productive day.

i read it didn't have a name until 2015. i was reminded about this yesterday at the doc's, and again this morning when my Serenity app said to visualize clouds and see them moving across the sky. Well, i cannot conjure them up to see them. However, i understand the concept and can still use that somehow in my meditations. I have no idea what my IQ is and don't believe that VITA Mahjong really is the way to find out.

I added a new blog today....topic: Aphantasia. I've mentioned this before, but it's come up again in my life, so i did a bit of research and thought i'd write something about it.

“The only failure is quitting. Everything else is just gathering information.” —Jen Sincero (born 1965) writer, speaker and success coach

When I close my eyes and try to conjure up a red apple, or a cloud, all I get is a blank screen. No pictures, no colours. Just the actual darkness of my closed eyes. For most of my life I assumed that was normal. It turns out it has a name: aphantasia. So the 'mind's eye' is the experience of seeing something without any light entering your physical eyes. Close your eyes and picture a familiar face, or an apple, and that internal image is your mind’s eye at work. People with aphantasia, like me, don’t create those conscious mental images. Researchers estimate that somewhere between 2 and 4% of people are like this [according to Psychology Today and Aphantasie.org]. Some of us also don’t have an internal monologue, though I do, and I mostly wish I didn’t, but that's for another blog. It also means that “picture this in your mind’s eye” and “count sheep to fall asleep” are just metaphors to me, not literal descriptions of what other people experience. I can count, but there ain’t no sheep. Yesterday my eye doctor asked me to repeat a test I’d had two years ago. She called it “the clicker test.” I had no idea what she meant. Nothing. Then she showed me the printout of my previous results, and I remembered instantly because I’d seen it before. Two years ago, nobody called it the clicker test, so when she asked, my internal search engine came up empty. It had stored the experience under different words, and the label she used didn’t match anything. Once I had a picture to look at, the memory came right back. Because I don’t store visuals, I store concepts and words. That means I don’t get instant visual recall. When you ask me if I remember something, my brain opens a background app to hunt for the information. I might say “no” at the moment, but the app keeps running quietly until the memory just pops into my head hours or even days later. This may also help explain why I sometimes can’t remember a TV show we watched the night before, much to my husband’s frustration. I’m not ignoring him, and I’m not being careless. The answer is just still loading. Knowing all this has changed how I treat myself. I’m not broken, just different. I don't worry about it, but it's helpful to know because it explains a lot. It explains how I write. I don't see characters at all. No clue what they look like. I can have an idea but never see it, but my brain writes it quietly. I can write a chapter or paragraph and then days or months or years later, the story is there finished. I just need to write it down. So try it now: close your eyes and picture an apple. What do you see?

“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.” —Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024) Poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator

Hello my friend! It's good to see you. I hope you're okay. Thank you for reading this. The world can be scary, lately i find myself trying to not see certain things, and finding ways to help myself and make my world a little smaller. But, I don't want to disappear completely. Thanks again! 💙

Oh boy . . . a haunting? I suppose your younger self can haunt you from a mirror. I don't think i'd want to see my past self… living it was bad enough. Great chapter. This should be fun.

i don't think i've read any of your work other than if you entered Secret Author or and Anthology. This was an interesting beginning, pricked up my ears certainly. And if you're posting as you go ... don't disappoint us. Just sayin'.

I'm glad this worked for you, Luke. I do my best to make things feel real. I need to believe for a story to work. Thanks for reading and for your comments.

You're not late! That's the good thing about books, they are usually around for a long time. And you're right, asking why things are the way they are is important. I think too often we are afraid of what the answer may be. Sometimes we should be. But exposing wrongs should be done. Thanks for coming to read this.

She's rather good with words!