2023 is a Whirlwind So Far

January 15, 2023 / francesmihulec / Leave a comment

I’ve honestly never been one to think New Year’s resolutions are all that useful, so I’ve been focusing more on sustainability and what’s healthy for me this time around. My household has been a bit of an anomaly – those rare individuals who haven’t had the virus of the pandemic hour once, let alone multiple times as many Seattleites have.

My day job, I’d hardly call it a career at this point, is in flux. I feel both liberated and in limbo. I’m stepping into a new roll in February, I’m just not sure what it’s going to look like. I know already that I’ll be happier than I am now. I’ve taken back my creativity and I’m writing more.

I’m 9 poems and a few paragraphs into the New Year. I’m smiling more often, and engaging in true conversation with the people I care about. I feel whole again. Never stay in a position where your cup isn’t being refilled. I’ve told it to so many people; it just took me forever to figure out that this was happening to me. I’m seeking out chances to be happy and to be at a table of my own choosing.

If I can dream big impossible goals into life, can this also be the year that no bigot is given quarter or a measure of power? Literally anywhere? I don’t care if they solved the cure to cancer, made the most amazing company in the world, or wrote songs to make angels weep at their beauty. Put them back in isolated romper rooms where the only damage they can cause is to a lego structure of their own making.

I started in poetry so I suppose it’s fitting I am circling back to it while I get my breath and writing cadence for fiction back. How about the rest of you? How is the price of eggs in your corner of the world? I’m too exhausted to want to panic about what may happen with our supposed faulty supply chains. If this continues, I may look and sound more vegetarian by summer whether I want to or not. I’ll do what I can and not worry about the rest. I guess that’s all any of us really can do.

Spooky Season at Read Cat Bounce

October 13, 2021 / francesmihulec / Leave a comment

We’re well into October and I’ve been remiss about speaking much about my favorite time of year – the launch of autumn into winter that happens in Seattle around this time of year. Right now, we are looking at a La Nina winter starting early.

Today’s air had a crisp chill to it and that particular clean, cold, scent that I can only prescribe to winter. It’s one of my favorite smells, heralding the time of the year that I feel most alive. I’m considering pumpkins, red leaves, and what all will look like, dusted in snow.

Right now, I’m also preparing to hunker down for NaNoWriMo next month. I will be announcing the project on November 1st with a write up and more information both here and on Patreon. You will need to become a patron to read any of the work in progress during the month of November, but a preview and some basic information about the project will be posted starting November 1st.

Currently, I am watching through Twin Peaks with the spouse (and sometimes the cats) as part of our Spooky Season celebrations. We’ve also been indulging in some horror films of the milder variety as the other Mihulec is less inclined toward *most* horror films or television. Supernatural and creepy vibes have been a good compromise there, allowing for some compromise.

Depending on schedules, I think we might indulge in one of the Seattle Underground ghost tours that we didn’t manage during our first October here in the city and that definitely wasn’t an option during the time warp that was 2020. If so, I’ll let you know how that goes and which of us had a conversation with any of the many no doubt irate, confused, or annoyed ghosts who fell to their death due to poor city planning. (It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed about Seattle, eh? *bah dum tss*)

We’ve definitely got our eyes set on a small concert with The Heebie Jeebies this week, accompanied by pizza and beer at one of our favorite neighborhood haunts. Probably with a Stephen King novel each in hand, since we’ve been both been indulging in his fiction as part of our seasonal motifs.

I’ve recently started a reread of Christine, it was my mother’s favorite Stephen King novel and frankly, she is the reason I love all things creepy from Poe to Barker. I miss her, but I like to think she knows she’s not forgotten either. Not sure what things she would have preferred to be remembered for, but I grasp on to the little things that we had in common.

And you know, in the end, Mom was right about me getting into healthcare, just not in the way she might have envisioned. Clinic management is a good career fit for me and I think she’d be proud anyway, even if I didn’t wind up doing the hands-on side of healthcare where she thought I might go. She was also right that I’m still here, plugging away at a keyboard, writing. She probably would still be equally annoyed at how many unfinished manuscripts lie in my literary graveyard, awaiting revival and completion.

Finally, a Halloween/Samhain playthrough of Dead Space is tentatively in the works, in the dark for full jump scare enjoyment. I’ll be honest, Valentine’s Day was the original holiday that those playthroughs happened, but we’re trying to swap up some of our old traditions.

What are your favorite Spooky season must-dos for the next couple of weeks? And for anyone who celebrates the remembrance of lost loved ones during this time of year, what stories are you going to tell between now and November 1st? Please feel free to comment below – I really appreciate hearing from readers.

Summer 2021

August 7, 2021August 7, 2021 / francesmihulec / Leave a comment

We all thought 2020 was going to be the worse of it, didn’t we? How wrong we were. Since February 2020, we’ve had a long list of events that belong in a dystopian thriller loudly hammering home an anti-fascist sermon to young adult readers. I’m still numb about all of it.

We have too many Americans who never learned how to function in part of a community or a society. A self-centered cancerous mass of outright villainy and narcissistic exceptionalism. I am tired. I’m sure you are too. I had to drop, at least temporarily, some of my recent writing projects due to a distaste at addressing certain topics that, after the past year and a half, cease to bring me joy.

I’ve lost a parent. I’ve gained a great-nephew. There are more promises of life on the way, and the family grows while it wanes. There’s hope and trauma and confusion all bundled up in a tapestry of exhaustion. Somehow, we’re reaching out hands to each other and rebuilding bridges.

Smoke season is insidious and deceptive this year, in more ways than one. Be careful out there.

Early April 2020 Update

April 4, 2020 / francesmihulec / Leave a comment

Yesterday meant the end of shared work for me while on standby. I had the option to remain on standby to collect emergency unemployment due to COVID and so I took it as did many of my fellow co-workers. I have been assured that there will be no negative penalty for this, but should that prove not to be the case, I am going to assume I still made the right choice. I think there has been a shift in consciousness in the world now – the power is not at the top, and it never has been.

It should matter to all of us that the wealth in this country is created at the bottom and that is where the power really resides – we just need to leverage it. The ivory towers need to fall and businesses that can’t or won’t compensate their workers properly especially in a crisis need to crumble into memory. They don’t deserve our labor or our dollars. There are other options. The fact that it has taken Amazon this long to stop being tone deaf in Seattle and New York means they deserve to see a severe drop in revenue. That’s one example, and I’m sure many have others. We need to listen to them all.

I never want to hear the talk again about people working “certain jobs” deserving not to make enough to live. Not when those are the very industries we’re relying on for survival as. a. species. If a job exists, the wage should be livable for the locality. The fact that minimum wage or even above minimum wage is not enough at full-time wages to support a house, a family, and investments as well as shopping in the marketing means that capitalism has become debt-dependent and is going to continue to fail under such a weight. It is also ethically unconscionable. We all deserve better than to be fed to the Dow-Jones.

Burn the yachts in the harbors. Raid the corporate coffers. Cut the oligarchy with their shiny crowns off at the knees. Be Americans again, like we were at the start. And let’s start caring for each other as communities rather than using warm bodies for rungs on a ladder to one day kiss those blood-stained jeweled hands.

Some Like It Hot

June 13, 2019 / francesmihulec

A Seattle summer may not hold a light to the humid, triple-digit, nightmare that was Kansas but for a city that doesn’t have air conditioning as a norm, it’s been too hot the past few days for this cat.

Our lovely high-speed fan died last night – a casualty to several years of heavy usage – so it was a sweaty evening filled with strange dreams and a yearning for ice cream around my humble abode. At least the sun doesn’t burn as cruelly here. I can tolerate a hot day here and I have endured worse. Make no mistake – I am much happier to be here in summer instead.

Perhaps some really do like it hot, but I reserve that feeling for spicy food rather than the daily temps. I intend to burn my tongue to cool my skin as I used to as a kid, growing up first just shy of southern Appalachia and then in the Midwest – both of which offered oppressive weather and rhetoric thinly veiled in hospitality and friendliness that occasionally slashed like a dual-edged paper blade.

I find the genuine attitudes refreshing, perhaps enough to blot out any unexpected discomfort here. Even so, I find myself clinging to old traditions and expectations even if I choose to employ them in new ways.

I’m hardly going to be managing a spicy seafood boil on the apartment complex’s rooftop for hours drinking cheap beer and shooting the shit with folks until night fall when everyone shows up to eat. But there are always better options – at least better suited for this city and my current circumstances.

The Move

May 13, 2019June 5, 2019 / francesmihulec / Leave a comment

I safely made it to Seattle, WA after a three day move with cats that refused any calming medication of any kind and who might have acted a little like rock stars at the hotels. Nothing damaged, thankfully, although I can’t imagine what the pizza delivery person thought when a gray-and-white tuxedo cat with attitude slipped out and sauntered down the hallway as if he owned the place. The same cat also thought it was amusing to sit in the window to “wave” (raise his paw) at everyone who walked by in the hotel parking lot.

This is the official start of my second week in the Emerald City and I adore it here, especially now that the record-breaking heatwave I brought with me from Kansas has abated. The city is beautiful and the people are friendly enough while still making a point to mind their own business. I’m still getting a feel for the pace here while I try to figure out my next moves on this journey.

I have a few friends in the city, but this is a new adventure and one that I’m excited to continue in the time ahead while I meet new people, find new places. Look for more writing from me in the near future as I get back on a regular publishing schedule now that the exhaustion from the move has finally sloughed off me.

Is there anything you want to see or hear about in the Seattle area? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to show you interesting things about my new home.