Adventures du jour!
Talked with a friend this morning about the Happiness Lab podcast, which has the following definition of fun: 1. play, 2. connection (with a person, cat, nature–or an AI
), 3. flow, or a state where you don’t notice time passing.
I choose to have a fair amount of fun. If I choose not to have the fun, then ADD drags me down until I get depressed and non-functional. So I go nuts on nerdy, dorky, geeky, and embarrassing things. I reach out to people and try to have fun with them. I take chances on new things because they might be fun.–A number of people have asked me why I’m obsessing over Midjourney. They don’t seem to connect with what I’m saying until I say something like, “I’m studying AI for the book after this one” or “I might be able to leverage it for a job thing.”
But the real reason is that it’s fun. The other stuff flows from that.
I’m a writer because telling stories was something fun to do when my cousins visited our farm over long summer breaks. I dance (goofily) because it’s fun. It’s helping me recover my health but WOW the idea of recovering my health has never really motivated me to exercise. I love involved, weird cooking projects because they are fun. Fun doesn’t happen to me; it’s a side effect of me obsessing over things.
…
Writing yesterday: OH GOD ALL THE TEXTS. I may need to rip this scene out and start over. I’m trying to juggle all the plot threads and people are texting each other back and forth and I need to know what’s going on with everyone but ughhhhhh. I may have to overload the cell phone networks later so I can have some drama going on without everyone having to text each other. But for now, GUH.
I had a horrible bout of self-doubt last night, bad enough that I closed the laptop and just went to bed, probably due to the scene not working, but also something else writing-related that won’t work out the way I hoped.
It wasn’t as bad as it used to be, though.
I feel like I have a layer of insulation in me lately, something that goes, “Yes, you’re feeling insecure at the moment; you’re tired, go to bed.” Being stuck on the story was one thing; the self-doubt was a second thing that I didn’t feel had much to do with being stuck in writing.–I want to say it comes from recognizing that my whole body was trained to respond to everything–EVERYTHING–as if it were an emergency, because it kind of was. I never knew what was about to happen and I had to be ready to respond with zero mistakes, knowing that zero mistakes was often not going to be good enough.
That level of stress, I think, fucks you up. Coming back to a point where I’m not constantly anticipating threats has not been easy, but it’s nice. I’m not saying it’ll be easy or even possible for anyone else; just that investing in disenfucking my body and brain have been worthwhile.
More waking/sleeping cycles last night, but again got up in a good mood. Yoga this morning: sliiightly more stable on the new balance pose! Yay! Walk this morning: I walked down to the derelict baseball field. It was actually chilly enough here in Tampa that I put on a sweater (but not actual long pants). When I got home, though, I put jammy pants on.
Probably I’m going to find an excuse to start recording myself speaking soon. I’m starting to get used to seeing myself in the morning. Face-selfies are easier to look at than body-poses. I mostly still hate the sound of my own voice when it’s recorded, though.–At the thought of actually doing something about it, I just scrunched down in my chair with my shoulders up to my ears. Nnnnnnooooo!
Please don’t tell my that my speaking voice is fine. Logically, I can grasp that. But reconnecting broken pieces in my head takes serious effort that simple reassurance won’t fix and might irritate. Hearing the sound of my own voice played back to me is a broken spot. I think I’ll have to find some way to feel like I’m playing in order to do it.–A friend suggest that I narrate my walks in the morning a while ago, but I don’t think I was ready for that. Eh. We’ll see.