From productivity yesterday to feeling like a vegetable today. Didn't feel like work, or play, or social time either. Still too tired and frail from being sick to do anything requiring much effort. So there you are.
Vera came by and we went for a walk and coffee, which was nice. I couldn't go too far since I was just too tired, and the weather was cold and the wind blowing.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
One more note about writing and creating
I worked a long day today, and noticed myself thinking and doing some things that made me reflect on the process of creativity.
I worked too long actually, without a break. I was on a roll, as they say. I wanted to finish the treatment I was writing. I did, then took two edit passes to clean it up. Then I thought, Aw, just let me finish the whole package and gather up the reference images I had around the project. That turned into another project, as I wanted to convert some old .bmp's to .jpgs.
Meanwhile I hadn't eaten much all day and was getting really hungry. But instead of just stopping, I took yet another glance at the treatment, and by then I was subconsciously pretty ticked off. Angry at myself for having neglected my own needs.
If I had been my own girlfriend let's say, I might've been bitching at myself to get the hell up and let's go out to dinner already. Or complaining why I was neglecting her and obsessing over this work that could just as well, or even better, wait until tomorrow.
But for the meantime, I saw the impact pushing my needs and my self aside created on my work. It actually made me look at my days work and see it in a worse light. With the first and second edits, I still felt good about the piece, but by the last pass, the luster was gone and I read it with a 'dry eye.' I'd written it with fun and passion, but I ended the day without fun or passion, and that's not good.
The effect I'd see that having is to make me return to worrying over it the next day. Or I'd worry, 'maybe I'm not as good as I think.' Useless thinking. When the real goal and need for the creative person is to simply create as much as possible. That is how you grow, learn and stay alive really.
Especially at the idea phase. Stay positive, hungry and happy. Work on that draft, work out that story, do an edit or two. Then put it aside. The next day, work on the next story, work on a new idea or new part of the project. Keep it limber. Keep the energy flowing and loose. Then the third day maybe, go back to the first and do another pass. Submit it or share it with someone else for a review and maybe talk out 'next steps' with them, then move on. Onward and upward.
I see how though, with the critic getting in the way, you end up 'hemming and hawing' over things, not just the work but it goes into life too - and that takes up too much time and bandwidth, even though it's this low-level thing and can almost be subconscious sometimes.
The critic belongs in the garbage. The only time to bring it out is at the end. Let it get off on cutting things up, but it has no place in the early creation process. It can guide to an extent, but needs to know its place, and that's in back, not in front.
Someday I'd like to write a story/metaphor about that.
I worked too long actually, without a break. I was on a roll, as they say. I wanted to finish the treatment I was writing. I did, then took two edit passes to clean it up. Then I thought, Aw, just let me finish the whole package and gather up the reference images I had around the project. That turned into another project, as I wanted to convert some old .bmp's to .jpgs.
Meanwhile I hadn't eaten much all day and was getting really hungry. But instead of just stopping, I took yet another glance at the treatment, and by then I was subconsciously pretty ticked off. Angry at myself for having neglected my own needs.
If I had been my own girlfriend let's say, I might've been bitching at myself to get the hell up and let's go out to dinner already. Or complaining why I was neglecting her and obsessing over this work that could just as well, or even better, wait until tomorrow.
But for the meantime, I saw the impact pushing my needs and my self aside created on my work. It actually made me look at my days work and see it in a worse light. With the first and second edits, I still felt good about the piece, but by the last pass, the luster was gone and I read it with a 'dry eye.' I'd written it with fun and passion, but I ended the day without fun or passion, and that's not good.
The effect I'd see that having is to make me return to worrying over it the next day. Or I'd worry, 'maybe I'm not as good as I think.' Useless thinking. When the real goal and need for the creative person is to simply create as much as possible. That is how you grow, learn and stay alive really.
Especially at the idea phase. Stay positive, hungry and happy. Work on that draft, work out that story, do an edit or two. Then put it aside. The next day, work on the next story, work on a new idea or new part of the project. Keep it limber. Keep the energy flowing and loose. Then the third day maybe, go back to the first and do another pass. Submit it or share it with someone else for a review and maybe talk out 'next steps' with them, then move on. Onward and upward.
I see how though, with the critic getting in the way, you end up 'hemming and hawing' over things, not just the work but it goes into life too - and that takes up too much time and bandwidth, even though it's this low-level thing and can almost be subconscious sometimes.
The critic belongs in the garbage. The only time to bring it out is at the end. Let it get off on cutting things up, but it has no place in the early creation process. It can guide to an extent, but needs to know its place, and that's in back, not in front.
Someday I'd like to write a story/metaphor about that.
Working and writing and living
I've gotten back into the swing of creative writing, back to an old project that I pitched to my teacher. He had asked I send him a written version along with writing samples if I had them. Unfortunately I can't find the final draft and suspect it's back home in California on a USB stick. Scary thought, all that work - the only copy of that version of the story that took me about a year to write, one hour once a week, every week, while working a full-time stressful job as a senior graphic designer down in Silicon Valley.
Any rate, so now after most of the day spent writing, I recreated a 3 page summary of the story from memory, and gathered up the best of my reference art from the project.
All in all, I'm recovering fairly well from my near-death experience 3 weeks back. A sudden severe asthsma attack woke me in the middle of the night. There doesn't seem to be a way to say 'I couldn't breathe at all' that people believe you could do for several minutes and still be alive, but whatever that way to say it would be, that's what I was doing.
I thought my life was over. It was the first time I'd ever had a severe asthma attack, so I didn't know what was going on and in that life or death desperation, I didn't even think to try using the inhaler I had. But I seriously doubt I could've gotten enough air in to inhale in those first minutes, when I actually faced death.
I ended up spending a week in the hospital. They released me too early, my GP said, after listening to my screwed up lungs. And I felt like it. I was scared. To make it worse, all the time my mind was also still going nonstop, thinking of the past, thinking of a certain toxic woman. Thinking of the feeling of being shamed and betrayed, the feeling of injustice, and all that. I couldn't stop it or shut it up, even as my body was still struggling out of a precipice, clutching on the edge of a cliff and too weak to pull itself fully over the bank, and stand shakily upright again.
And then there were those life goals, the future, or something. I could barely even lift my eyes to look at the horizon. When I did, a few weeks later, I felt dizzy and disoriented.
I had been accepted to a writing program just two days before I nearly died.
Now I saw, there is my life goal - to write stories - finally here in front of me - acccessible, possible, as it had never been before. And there is my death. And over there is the devastation of the past, the stress and pain of which, in no uncertain terms, had helped bring me to the point of that death.
At that time, just 2 short weeks ago, I could barely move on. My mind clutched onto death even as my body was trying, needing to recover, as my soul needed to recover and be free.
A friend of mine put it straight to me, urged me to have an open conversation with the woman in question, to get the crap and pain off my chest that I'd dragged along all this time, and after that, 'when you leave the hospital, start a new life.'
For the 2 weeks that followed, I didn't have a sense of any new life. I struggled with isolation once I got back to my apartment, feeling too low in energy even to go buy food for myself and too weak within myself to even call friends and ask them to help me. I could barely even speak from all the coughing, and it took a lot of energy to say more than a few sentences.
Once the near-death was over, people who'd shown up for me went back to their lives and own problems, which happened to be pretty real too in some cases. Along with my housemate Alex, who's consistency really impressed me, my friend Phillip also stayed in touch, but he had to get away from his own relationship problems and go back home for a while. Clarisse got ill, Sven was managing his ongoing house-drama, and Mike was well, being Mike. Thankfully my counselor finally called and offered to come by and visit me and help me buy food. I was really grateful for that.
I'm getting stronger slowly, and now I can face things and see them slightly clearer. I can let go of that past. If not with love, then with anger and strength, but one way is better than no way. I can put it in its place and go forward. I still don't know what the future will hold, but after working on writing all day today, I feel positive and focused for the first time in a long while.
Any rate, so now after most of the day spent writing, I recreated a 3 page summary of the story from memory, and gathered up the best of my reference art from the project.
All in all, I'm recovering fairly well from my near-death experience 3 weeks back. A sudden severe asthsma attack woke me in the middle of the night. There doesn't seem to be a way to say 'I couldn't breathe at all' that people believe you could do for several minutes and still be alive, but whatever that way to say it would be, that's what I was doing.
I thought my life was over. It was the first time I'd ever had a severe asthma attack, so I didn't know what was going on and in that life or death desperation, I didn't even think to try using the inhaler I had. But I seriously doubt I could've gotten enough air in to inhale in those first minutes, when I actually faced death.
I ended up spending a week in the hospital. They released me too early, my GP said, after listening to my screwed up lungs. And I felt like it. I was scared. To make it worse, all the time my mind was also still going nonstop, thinking of the past, thinking of a certain toxic woman. Thinking of the feeling of being shamed and betrayed, the feeling of injustice, and all that. I couldn't stop it or shut it up, even as my body was still struggling out of a precipice, clutching on the edge of a cliff and too weak to pull itself fully over the bank, and stand shakily upright again.
And then there were those life goals, the future, or something. I could barely even lift my eyes to look at the horizon. When I did, a few weeks later, I felt dizzy and disoriented.
I had been accepted to a writing program just two days before I nearly died.
Now I saw, there is my life goal - to write stories - finally here in front of me - acccessible, possible, as it had never been before. And there is my death. And over there is the devastation of the past, the stress and pain of which, in no uncertain terms, had helped bring me to the point of that death.
At that time, just 2 short weeks ago, I could barely move on. My mind clutched onto death even as my body was trying, needing to recover, as my soul needed to recover and be free.
A friend of mine put it straight to me, urged me to have an open conversation with the woman in question, to get the crap and pain off my chest that I'd dragged along all this time, and after that, 'when you leave the hospital, start a new life.'
For the 2 weeks that followed, I didn't have a sense of any new life. I struggled with isolation once I got back to my apartment, feeling too low in energy even to go buy food for myself and too weak within myself to even call friends and ask them to help me. I could barely even speak from all the coughing, and it took a lot of energy to say more than a few sentences.
Once the near-death was over, people who'd shown up for me went back to their lives and own problems, which happened to be pretty real too in some cases. Along with my housemate Alex, who's consistency really impressed me, my friend Phillip also stayed in touch, but he had to get away from his own relationship problems and go back home for a while. Clarisse got ill, Sven was managing his ongoing house-drama, and Mike was well, being Mike. Thankfully my counselor finally called and offered to come by and visit me and help me buy food. I was really grateful for that.
I'm getting stronger slowly, and now I can face things and see them slightly clearer. I can let go of that past. If not with love, then with anger and strength, but one way is better than no way. I can put it in its place and go forward. I still don't know what the future will hold, but after working on writing all day today, I feel positive and focused for the first time in a long while.
Listening to a teacher
Nazi leader Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert's book "Nuremberg Diary."
Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Goering: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Goering: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
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