skepticlysm

Category: Blerg

  • Feels

    Feels

    My daughter might be having a tough time these days navigating school and friendships. She’s almost 10, a high-anxiety kid, and I worry about her. I worry about her so much it makes my chest ache. It’s worse because I have done it to her, either by genetics or influence. It keeps me from sleeping.

    Last night, she got stuck on her homework and asked for help. It had to do with prime numbers and was sort of a trick question. While I googled the problem (have to these days with the way they teach Math … noooothing like how we learned it), I asked her to explain prime numbers to me. Which she did. Comprehensively.

    The question itself, I asked her what she thought was the answer. She said “yes,” which was correct. But she couldn’t explain how she knew it. I ran through it as many ways as I knew how. She didn’t get it, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t getting it. She just didn’t know how to say it. She was tired, above all. She got frustrated. Started crying.

    I told her to leave it blank, that that tells the teacher she might need to go through that part again. I told her to leave it blank because she didn’t need to be perfect. I begged her to leave it blank so she could go to sleep, because somehow we’d forgotten about the last homework problem in the whirling dance of dinner and evening decompression.

    She would not. Leaving it blank would mean not following directions.

    Breaking my heart, man. In those moments, it would be easy to get frustrated with her, not as easy to show compassion and understanding. Easy to make it worse. So many different ways to make it worse. I hope I handled it right.

    We got it sorted this morning. I thought of another way of explaining it in the shower, she was calm enough eating breakfast that she could stop and think about it. She nailed it, which is always awesome to watch.

    I am a person of big emotions. I wish that were not the case, but it is. I feel things like the edge of a blade, though the negative ones have much more punch than the positive, and take more energy to fend off. Sorry, to disengage from.

    People have always called me angry. But I’m not, not really. I’m emphatic. All the things inside my head have giant emotions behind them, and if I express these things, they probably sound loud. If I rant, it’s angry. But have you ever heard me talk about something I like? It’s the same volume.

    People remember the negative more than the positive because of how we’re wired. Has to do with the fight-or-flight systems from a time when it was about survival, not society. Those systems don’t work as well, create triggers and false-flags, when trying to thrive in our modern world. Anxiety as a thing has exacerbated as “society” progresses.

    Of late, the feelings I grapple with most are those related to my job, my daughter and my wife. The former, I have to try to not have an emotional opinion about it at all. It does not, as my emotions would have me believe, dictate my worth or my level of life satisfaction. My daughter we’ve discussed. My wife, well, that’s between she and I, but even after 18 years, the emotions are evolved, but not lessened.

    I am not afraid of my emotions, but I haven’t always known what to do with them. They used to crash over me, pummel me down. Still do when I don’t have my guard up. And at their worst, they tell me I don’t have any help, that I have to handle it myself. Alone. On my own.

    Depression and anxiety, of which I admit to having both and much more of the latter, are thought amplifiers. They turn your feelings to 11. Anxiety sucks. It turns your brain into a unceasing blender. It steals your life, your time. And that sounds melodramatic, but its true. Time wasted with anxiety is time lost. (And yes, I realize that’s a judging thought, which you’re not supposed to do; easier said than done).

    The last few days, last week and a half, maybe, have beaten me down. That means my head won’t shut off so I can sleep, which gives you fatigue, which makes it harder to dodge the anxiety. It’s a brutal cycle.

    Four years ago, I would’ve been a wreck. I got help. I saw a guy. He taught me mental kung fu. And so today is better. Today, for whatever reason, it’s easier to stand aside and observe instead of getting in a mental scrum.

    There’s that quote become cliche that says, basically, do not judge a person, you know not what they’re battling. It’s a truth.

    Yesterday, you might not have known it to look at me, but I was a wreck. Today, I can breathe a bit. Who knows about tomorrow …

    Hug your loved ones, gang. They might need it. Thanks for reading.

    (Image stolen from Weird People via the book of Faces)

     

  • White Blank Page

    Holy christ, man. A wordpress blog entry form looks just like a blank piece of paper in a notebook, white and foreboding, like the noisy silence of the ringing in your ears. It’s oppressive.

    It’s not like I haven’t been writing. Up until the last month, I’d been dutifully keeping a journal, sticking to the routine. And then the routine got blown the fuck up, even though it probably shouldn’t have. These things happen. It’s important, when your world goes sideways, to give yourself room to fall off the horse, then walk around and rub your metaphorical ass for a day or week or month before hopping back on.

    Last year, or maybe the year before (‘m getting old and these things are starting to run together), one of my friends said, over and over again as the boulders of ill fortune piled up, “2015, We will overcome you.”

    That’s 2017 for me. Well, for us, really. It all affects my wife and kid as much as it does me. Medical bills piled up. My fucking car is cursed. Yes, I said cursed, like Christine, only with an appetite for inconvenience and financial disaster rather than blood.

    In the past year, the car’s list of ailments includes: turbo diverter valve failure, oil housing gasket failure, water pump, thermostat, oil pan gasket, valve cover gaskets, vacuum pump failure, a blown run-flat tire and, most recently, the clutch crapped out ($3,800). If you were to add all that up, it comes to a grand total of more than I paid for the fucking car 24 months ago.

    I do not recommend anyone buy a Mini Cooper. Okay, sure, it’s hands down the most fun I’ve ever had driving a car. Not even close. But … the financial burden of fixing the thing is enough to bankrupt a family. I mean, it’s tallied up more than twice as much in repairs as its worth, as what’s left to pay it off. Mini Cooper: Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter.

    What else? Oh yeah, had a blood clot in June. Three of them.

    And then … AND THEN … I got laid off. Did the unemployment thing (which isn’t a thing, really, for as long as it takes them to pay you). Haven’t written much since that happened.

    So yes, my habit got disrupted. It would be easy to feel shame for that, to plunge into the self-flagellation and negativity I’ve often turned to. Thing is, talking negatively to yourself, about yourself, gives you an excuse. It gives you an out. It gives you a “why bother” mentality.

    Why bother.

    I’ll tell you why bother. You are what you think you are. If you take precedence as truth, then how do you ever change, get better, evolve? It’s one thing to give yourself a mental pep-talk “come on, shithead, you can do this.” That serves a purpose. But saying things like, “I never stick with it” … that serves no purpose other than to allow you to wallow in your comfortable misery. It lets you be passive. It lets you not try, lets you quit before trying.

    Not trying is not the same thing as failing. Failing in an effort is akin to the act of destruction necessary for creation.

    Life is that blank page, oppressive in its nothingness. You can either let it crush you, or you can do what you really want. Either way, the choice becomes a habit, and habits are hard. Good ones are hard to keep, bad hard to keep away. Its how you deal with the setbacks that matters.

    Doodle if you have to, but fill it with something until you figure out what’s really supposed to go there.

    …

    …

    Hey, look. The page isn’t blank anymore.

    More later.

     

    Also, apologies for all the cliches and shitty metaphors. heh.

  • think

    I started Makers (by Cory Doctorow) today. I was all of 16 pages into it when I had to put it down. No, not because it’s bad. So far, it’s pretty damn good. But because after the fifth page of cool ideas, I found myself thinking about the author as much as the story.

    From what I remember reading about Doctorow, he pretty much knew from birth he was going to be a writer. His parents were intellectuals and no doubt removed any obstacles preventing him from pursuing his path. They encouraged him, guided him. Taught him to think.

    I’m speculating. I only know what I’ve read from him, and what I admire most are the ideas that come out of the guy. He’s thrown away more good ideas than I’ve ever had.

    I assume this is because first, he believes in himself and what he’s doing, and second, he is a very good thinker, which is a rarity these days.

    Thinking is hard. Look at this election cycle. How many times have you been at work in the last six months and heard someone repeating nonsense from Fox News or CNN or whatever horseshit “media outlet” they watched/read the night before. I’m guilty of it. It’s much easier to read/watch and borrow than it is to think about what you’re taking in, perhaps do a little bit more in-depth reading on the subject and come up with your own personal take on the topic.

    Even the smartest people you know are guilty of it.

    I think it’s deplorable.

    It’s only excusable in one sense: our education system isn’t teaching us to think anymore. Test scores are the thing. Read, memorize and regurgitate. Where’s the thinking part?

    You don’t get it in undergrad, either. Undergrad is a continuation of the same methodology you get in high school. Read the book, take the final, get a grade. In grad school, you finally start getting into thoughtful education. They want you to think then, or at least, that was the case for me.

    But what happened when I got out and started work? Do the job. Don’t think about the job, or anything remotely existential, just do the job. Thinking isn’t required, for the most part. Perhaps a bit of problem solving now and again. I’m speaking about myself here, but I wonder how many of you can relate. I’ll bet most of us don’t operate in environments ripe for the cultivation of new ideas.

    And ideas are the thing. Ideas (followed by action) are what change the world.

    I’m venting here. Frustration at myself. I’ve been trying to work on the plot for a new book for the past couple of weeks, and it’s like walking through mental quicksand. And  I keep asking myself, “why is this so fucking hard?”

    Because I haven’t been thinking. I spend my days checking off boxes on to-do lists and then surfing the web. I can’t be the only one.

    Food for thought, anyway.

     

    edit: not bagging on teachers. I think they are largely hamstrung by the system. Also, I’m giving serious thought to becoming one of them.

  • musing, but not a-

    Sitting here sitting in front of the proverbial blank white page. What to write. What to say. What to think and how to think it. How to change thoughts to action. How to step over, through, around the artificial barriers and fucking MOVE. Forward. Sideways. Maybe backward. Inaction is the enemy.

    Internally, building pressure. Rivets straining, beads of condensation rolling down the skin. A moment of explosion comes. Will it be destruction or creation?

    Why wait on it? Why not hit the button and blow the shit up?

    I never wanted this blog to be about my brain problems. My failings to launch. It always comes back to that, some galactic apology to the world for not living up. To you, whom I don’t even know. To my friends, family. To my wife and daughter.

    The fear of failure breathes failure into being.

    It all sounds so melodramatic this way, typing it out, putting it out there. And yet, it’s smaller than the accompanying emotions. Inside, they aren’t cries of quiet desperation. They’re throat-tearing roars. But the surface is calm. Mostly.

    I guess you do have to hit rock bottom to change. You have to be desperate. You have to unlearn behaviors, thought patterns. The brain is the enemy. It wants you to stay, even if you’re miserable because it understands where it is and what’s going on. It understands the threats.

    It lies. Always.

    “Barriers.” The word was said to me yesterday. I think it was said because I wasn’t thinking along the same path as the sayer, but it made me think about the word, and then the word became a question, which became a thought process.

    Every time I hear something that’s not in line with my preconception, I say, “No.” I always come back around to it, but my instinct is the negative, and that’s from fear. My gut reaction is one of fear and safety.

    Our brains are hardwired for fight-or-flight. They are meant to keep us safe from all threats. Most of our environmental stressors in modern day ‘Merica aren’t life-or-death, however. But our brains don’t know that. Most can mitigate that. Those of us with anxiety disorders have a bit more trouble. Fighting the irrationality isn’t as simple as saying, “shut up, brain.”

    Which is to say, I don’t mean to put up barriers to my “success.” It’s like a mental Spartan Race, with obstacles to fight through as standard operating procedure. Some of those take more training to overcome than others.

    This is a bunch of metaphorical bullshit. The short version: change is fucking hard, even if you really want it. I think you may have to resort to mental chicanery.

  • Mass Media Consumption

    I’ve made my living writing, basically. Not the kind of writing I want to do or enjoy doing (mostly), but writing nonetheless. I believe in the power of something well written. I believe that if you do it well enough, people will pay attention. Maybe not the whole world, but at least the people you’re trying to talk to (or with). The right words in the minds of the right people can change the world.

    I’ve had arguments with people in my profession about this. They say no one reads. No one follows you. It needs to be shorter. It needs to have video. It needs hashtags and blah, blah, fucking blah.

    I studied this shit extensively in grad school, and I could give you lectures on things like Two Step Flow, Diffusion of Innovation, Agenda Setting Theory, and my favorite, Uses and Gratifications. (Wellllll, I could if I went back and re-read my papers on these theories; it’s been awhile, but the fundamentals are still there.)

    Most university media programs focus on teaching you how. This is how you write a feature. This is how you write a press release. This is how you write an ad. Though I suppose these days it’s, “this is how you write a blog with the highest amount of SEO terms possible so as to get the highest amount of page views.”

    And that’s the kicker. Eyes-on equates to good enough. But it isn’t. I’ve quit watching the news because a house fire isn’t a news story (sorry, Matt, it’s not). “If it bleeds it leads,” is not a long-term viable strategy, it’s a way to make sure the “ratings” are up so the media source can justify its rates to potential advertisers. As it stands, the “news” doesn’t tell me what I want to know.

    But back to my point. I believe in quality. I believe in the power of good writing, of good ideas and good execution. And maybe I’m wrong, but …  I think if you make good things, people will come. They’ll read or view, and if you’ve done it right, there’ll be discourse.

    I usually feel like I’m on an island with this, but I read a really awesome column on Medium today, and this part really resonated with me:

    Your problem is that you make shit. A lot of shit. Cheap shit. And no one cares about you or your cheap shit. And an increasingly aware, connected, and mutable audience is onto your cheap shit. They don’t want your cheap shit. They want the good shit. And they will go to find it somewhere. Hell, they’ll even pay for it.

    The truth is that the best and most important things the media (let’s say specifically the news media) has ever made were not made to reach the most people — they were made to reach the right people. Because human beings exist, and we are not content consumption machines. What will save the media industry — or at least the part worth saving — is when we start making Real Things for people again, instead of programming for algorithms or New Things.

    So what will matter in the next age of media?

    Compelling voices and stories, real and raw talent, new ideas that actually serve or delight an audience, brands that have meaning and ballast; these are things that matter in the next age of media. Thinking of your platform as an actual platform, not a delivery method. Knowing you’re more than just your words. Thinking of your business as a product and storytelling business, not a headline and body-copy business. Thinking of your audience as finite and building a sustainable business model around that audience — that’s going to matter.

    Joshua Topolsky

    The ideas he’s talking about (especially that bit I bolded), those are the operating philosophies I incorporate into my day job, into the things I do for the bike shop and other small businesses I work with (or have worked with). That was the philosophy I used for my movie column for 11 years.It isn’t about the numbers. It’s about the connection. It’s emotional. If you do it well, the people you want to read it probably will, and then they’ll do the unthinkable: They’ll remember they read it and MAYBE talk to someone about it.

    It isn’t about the numbers. It’s about the connection. It’s about meaning and value. It’s emotional. If you do it well, the people you want to read it probably will, and then they’ll do the unthinkable: They’ll remember they read it and MAYBE talk to someone about it.

    I mean, how much shit did you read on Facebook today that you actually remember?

    Take your time.

    /end mind dump

  • All That Mental Bullshit

    All That Mental Bullshit

    Last week, I published a short story on Amazon.

    It’s called “The Ticket,” and it’s a end-of-the-world-what-would-you-do-if kind of story.

    I’ve had it bouncing around in my head for years, though I initially envisioned it as a screenplay. The opening scene was a bunch of military guys busting into a base and attempting to steal a RLV (reusable launch vehicle) to get off the Earth. Lots of gunplay and action. I still think if it ever gets picked up, that scene has to be there (along with a whole character arc for Anya).

    It’s maybe the only story idea I’ve ever had where the ending came to me before the beginning. I’d never tried to write something knowing where I was going before, and the results were … weird? I’m happy with how it turned out, but it did not turn out how I envisioned. These things have a mind of their own.

    But the point of the exercise was to put something out there. Full disclosure, I have a couple degrees in mass communications and have been making a living off my writing since 1996. That kind of writing means little to me, however. Since I was in sixth grade, I wanted to be a novelist. One might think that with that goal in mind, all my decisions would’ve been made to line up.

    Nope. Not even a little. I don’t think I thought it was realistic, financially, so I didn’t really pursue it. Grabbed my minor in creative writing, sure. Wrote a serial fiction series for the college newspaper. Submitted a short story to one adult fiction contest (placed “honorable mention”). And that’s been it.

    Somewhere along the way I became afraid to try. I’m horrified to fail at it. It’s become such a core part of my identity, that I’m not sure who I’d be if I found out I wasn’t really good enough. Better to not try at all. You know, all that mental bullshit.

    Thing is … I know deep down it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. The fiction writing thing. I’ve only ever felt content when that was what I was doing with the majority of my time; that’s happened twice. Am I good enough to make a living? Who knows.

    What I know now is that I have to try. I have to focus my efforts to that goal, and it’s something I’m unaccustomed to doing. I don’t know how. I lack the self-discipline. annnd there’s more mental bullshit. I will overcome.

    It was horrifying to stick a mostly unedited short story out on Amazon. I’m still scared to put a link to it on Reddit (where a little self-marketing could be an uptick in sales). Anxiety is a bitch.

    Right now, I’m writing this blog to write something, a mechanism to get the fingers typing and the routine built into the day. I’ve spent one month and change writing and publishing and dealing with that first story. It’s time to start the next one. I just have to figure out what that is. Oh, and I’m going to go ahead and compile my giant stack of random short stories I’ve written over the last 20 years into a “book,” and upload that thing, too. What the hell, right?

    Just don’t ask me to read my reviews

     

     

  • Talking About the No Hitter

    Hey, I’ve written 2,000 words in the last two days. Yay, me.

    And no, you may not. Not yet.

  • Journal Entry: Why Write At All?

    That’s what my brain throws at me most days.

    Why write? You like the idea of being a writer more than you like writing. You’re not that good at it anyway. You’re just going to not finish whatever it is you start. And it’s going to suck. You don’t even have an idea of what you want to write. I need a big chunk of uninterrupted time. But I have so much to do at work on the computer, and then when I get home, the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer screen (as I pull out my smartphone and literally waste hours of my life checking updates, statues and random pics that enrich my life in no way because it’s so much easier to do nothing than something that might be fulfilling or of value). blah, blah, bladeefuckingdah.

    That shit. That shit right there. That’s my brain. Every minute of every day. Doesn’t necessarily have to be about writing, mind you. Pretty much everything in my life gets fed to my mental woodchipper the same way.

    I know, after nearly two years of ACT therapy, that the bullshit in your head is your worst enemy. And my life is fundamentally better by several orders of magnitude than it was when I started.

    And still I struggle. I’m using writing as a means of discussing this because on a level of importance to me, it’s way up there at the top along with my relationships with my beautiful wife and daughter.

    But I’m coming around to the idea that most obstacles in life are there because we put them there ourselves. Fill in the blank with whatever you want. Working out. Painting. Helping others. Anything you know you should be doing but aren’t.

    Mine’s writing, which is as simple as typing with passable subject/verb agreement. I mean, what’s so hard about it, right? Just fucking write. At a basic level, it’s that easy. Open a blank doc, get out a clean sheet of paper, unwrap a new Moleskine (they’re my favorite), and open the thought spigot.

    Only it also isn’t. Not when you have a head full of bullshit (and a lot of us d0). The underlying reason is some sort of fear, and the voice of fear is so loud in your head you can’t even hear it anymore, don’t recognize what it is. It’s machine code. It’s mental autopilot.

    And it’s bullshit. It isn’t real. Nothing in your head is real. It’s just thoughts. They have no substance. You can’t interact with them physically. How does something with no form, no gravity, no actual presence control you so totally?

    Because you’re not paying attention. You’re not here. You’re not now. You’re not dealing with what is.

    I started typing this because I read a column by a sports blogger I follow about how he lost his unborn daughter at week 36 of the pregnancy. Stillborn. Real. It happened.

    And there he was blogging about it. Moving forward. Dealing with his life head-on.

    My gut reaction was to cry, because the situation could’ve happened to my wife and I when our daughter was born at week 36 of the pregnancy, weighing just over four pounds. Gut punch number one.

    But then I recognized the strength of that guy, to hold it together, do what he needed to do, and even have perspective on it while it was happening.

    If he can do that, I can make myself throw some words on a blog. And then maybe I can pound out some more in the form of a short story. And maybe I can then learn to quit beating myself up for being afraid to fail, and let myself try and learn. Maybe I can let me off the hook just a bit.

    Because beating yourself up for your failings isn’t productive. It does no good.

    There’s only now. There’s only forward.