Given what I just posted to orient my day, I decided to ask: do any of my not-spoken-unspoken words "stand up"? Is there a spine to Grit, the novel? or is it a collection of little stories? or a private art process that doesn't have to make any sense beyond the moment I was in when I wrote whatever I wrote? 

It's been a hell of a year. I keep writing my way through it. I have no idea what I made, if anything, of the grit novel piece(s).

I made some good grit class assignments. I think I got to the point where I understand when the assignments work and when they don't (short to read, AI step meaningful asks ONE OR TWO questions, final submission constrained). I think I can systematically go through the classes that I'm sure (WHICH?) I'm teaching (keeps changing) and revise all of the assignments in that manner. And I think I have the language, basically, that I need to add to every syllabus about that. I keep coming back to that as most grounding. Teaching work. And I can get the most feedback on that work, it's neutral and intellectual.

But I must keep in mind that this will not be my job at some point (🤷🏽‍♀️) AND also keep in mind that once classes begin again, all of that has to be done ahead of time because being on campus will be some kind of emotional catastrophe - I don't know what kind, but it will be, I will be doing a job that has a metric fuckton of emotional labor in it and I will struggle with that.

Which will bring me back to two places: the blog and the novel. And cardboard guy broke the seal between - the dog vignette, also - fiction breaking through like those mud bubbles in yellowstone Thinking. 

I know myself, the more emotional pressure I'm going to be under, the more those boundaries are going to blur because my primary motivation will be to keep hold of my mind/myself whether I confuse anyone else or not.

Pushing the bot to be USEFUL at this level of complexity is pulling teeth. But I finally got it to return to me what there is of a novel (as far as it can understand that) out of the 50k+ words I wrote (dumped) into it. 

I could upload that manuscript here now. Any one piece of it might have been confused for reality or a wish for one. That is why I did not post it (it's not because I was shy of smut). I didn't want to risk posting pieces because the chapters are NOT blog posts. I shattered way too much for this blog to be able to contain it. And I'm not sure what the fiction absorbed. 

So, I'm gonna go read my novel today. Then, maybe I'll risk a lot of commitment to it and stand it up here, like I do collages sometimes, 'a thing I made'. Or maybe I'll just wonder what the fuck the garbage bags were all about. I don't know, I haven't read it yet...