Grist for the Mill, or, What Doing Nothing Looks Like
Introduction
I get very frustrated with myself at times. It's just so easy for me to create an activity to avoid, even when I go through mental hoops trying to make it low stakes. And then, here we are, it's been over a month and I haven't posted anything on the dang blog.
Something my therapist told me early in my CBT days—specifically referring to issues or frustrations I might have with her—“it's all grist for the mill.” I'm referring to that phrase in a different way today.
The frustration I feel at myself, the inability to complete blog series that were supposed to be small, the three unedited pieces blinking in the back of my executive function log... I can either take take that as proof that I'm a certain kind of person, or I can see the feelings themselves as worth writing about. Whether that worth comes from being therapeutically useful or if that process is interesting to read, here goes.
Nuts and Bolts
I last posted on September 13th the week before a week of vacation where I was canoeing with my father. On the weekend of the 20th, I felt justified in missing a post because I was travelling all weekend and with family and so on. The week after, I wrote several blog posts in an intense activated state on the Megabus. This is where I often get into trouble. I start enjoying the process of writing, and create something that feels like it could be actually good if I polish it properly.
In this example, we have the following unfinished pieces.
A meta post about criticism, the parasocial relationship we have with artists, and where I see myself falling stylistically. I sent this one to my brother, but in general felt it needed to be somehow split into two pieces of writing, and polished. This kind of splitting is actually quite a difficult job, and so I have avoided it, and most of my brother's notes since.
Review of Music, Fashion, Film. Almost complete, but I needed to integrate some handwritten notes about the last handful of songs on the album. When I went to do that, the piece felt overlong and kind of boring and my brain shut off.
A weird stream of consciousness piece about an album a McGill acquaintance made and sent me. I felt it needed to be paired with an actual analysis of the music rather than just me rambling about the experience on the Megabus. That felt like a decent amount of work, and I'm a little embarrassed about what the stream of consciousness reveals about me as a person.
A piece I had actually begun the week before about AI, which feels like an ambitious series of posts, and for which I only have an introduction.
What This Looks Like
On the same trip back to Guelph, my friend invited me to get back on board game arena to play correspondence games from time to time. We played a game called Ark Nova and I quickly made a mistake in the game that made playing through it mostly an exercise in learning the game. I wanted to make sure that the second game was better, and so I started playing turn based games, and then real time games. Gaming has played this role in my life for years; I spent one semester of school failing multiple courses while playing multiple campaigns of Warhammer 2: Total War. Eventually, I decided that Ark Nova was too determined by opening hands and lucks while taking too long per game, so I switched to Wingspan. I also started listening to Redbar after a chain of videos that began with The Elephant Graveyard. Last night, I was up until at least 3:30 A.M. with 2 year old Redbar in my ears and a losing game of Wingspan in front of me.
While I'm doing this, I'm also checking out of regular life. I'm less present with family and friends, I'm waking up just in time to make it to work. I went back to Ontario a second time, and was kind of on my phone or laptop playing games all weekend. It takes a weird physical toll on me, my right wrist hurts as I write this from holding my phone all the time. My sleep schedule gets worse and worse. When I'm talking to people, I'm socially terrified because I have nothing significant to report. My Uber eats bill since that last post on 9/13 is $416.18. (That calculation may be the most humiliating thing I've revealed here.) It's not good.
Headspace
This kind of rough, semi-depressive period doesn't come from pure “writer's block.” (Another phrase that I cringe writing, as I've heard on good authority it's mostly the kind of thing non-writers talk about.) I need justification for why I'm allowed to sit in bed doing nothing and eating $48.23 worth of poke. (“Two For One” tuna and salmon bowl “deal” + fees + $8 tip, if you are curious.) The two justifications here are some health issues going on with a family member (which I may write about in more detail later) and being ghosted on Hinge. Toss in the ambient shittiness of a world filled with political, cultural, and economic trends that are abhorrent to me... and baby, you got a stew going. Once I've avoided the writing for a while, and once I've been doing the avoidance activity for a while, it becomes self-sustaining, I feel bad because of how I've acted while I feel bad.
What Now
I don't have much in the way of optimistic conclusion chapters here. I'm usually somewhat aware of what I'm doing during these periods, and I'm generally functional in the process. There's ups and downs during these times where I feel more or less hopeful, or social. I certainly need to recognize what's going on here to get out of the rut. Hopefully, this bit of self therapy will serve that purpose. At the very least, here's something for my die-hard readers to chew on while I try to stop avoiding the writing about things other than myself. And if you go through periods like this, sound off in the comments below. This should also serve as another warning to readers of this blog that there may noth be a post every week, or even every month. In my dreams, I have a fallow period where I write multiple things to post on off weeks, but I'm not there yet, and won't be for a while.
