Husky mind

Recently, I was rejoicing quietly about the fact that I had been communicating with people in a professional capacity without excessive post-comms rumination. I didn’t do anything directly to attain this freedom, though I thought I might be able to trace its provenence. Regardless, it felt like I’d magically put things in their rightful place, instead of amplifying their importance and peril.

And then my grandma took bad and was taken into hospital, and there was not much for me to do to help. So, what little I could do, I did, peripherally and imperfectly, and then I tore it apart afterwards for every imperfection. The situation itself was, of course, important and perilous. But my part in it…largely uninfluential. I tried my best to help in a situation where people more capable than me were already handling everything, and that was all I could do. But it triggered my self-absorbed belief that if I’m not the MVP I don’t deserve to be playing. So I wasted a bunch of thoughts retroactively optimising my conduct – wishing that I’d been, at the very least, flawless in my execution of said peripheral tasks, so I could escape the fate of being considered, by any objective measure, a net loss.

And then I went to read to kids at my son’s school, and failed to maintain an appropriate level of order. The teacher handed me a pile of books and directed me to a room with the kids, which was not exactly what I’d expected things to look like. Straight off, I made the mistake of being ambiguous about what behaviour would be acceptable, because I hadn’t figured how this whole thing was going to work. So I spent most of the rest of the time trying to convince them to stop playing with toys and listen to stories instead. And then I sat in a tornado of self-criticism for most of the following night, unable to sleep for thoughts of how I should have handled things better, what this said about my parenting, when and how I could redeem myself, how irritating my incompetence must have been… A violent stampede of thoughts, altogether too concerned about myself, unable to simply accept my conclusions and go to sleep.

And I know this is why, generally speaking, I’m better at the things I do than most other people. Because I literally obsess over my flaws, at a rate completely out of proportion with the attention they deserve for normal human functioning. That does result in accelerated progress. But it also results in needless suffering. And, sometimes, it’s not worth it.

It’s why I also have a tendency toward avoidance; avoiding things that don’t matter because my brain will act like they do, and avoiding things that could matter because I’m scared I’ll crumble under their weight. If I’m going to do things, I prefer to have no choice in the matter. I’d volunteered for the school reading, and that was what made my inner critic more vicious, because to be anything less than perfect when I’m inflicting myself on others is a mortal sin.

But I am wondering if the problem is that my brain is built for bigger, tougher problems. Perhaps I’m like a husky without a sledge to pull. So I’m fabricating sledges to give myself something to do.

The only way to test that hypothesis, though, is to hitch me up to something heavy. Voluntarily. Are there any easier hypotheses to test first?

Conservation or conversation?

high contrast black and white, grainy photorealism, winding path made of words

My last bunch of posts have been scheduled in advance.

And I changed my theme to try out some of the wordpress functionality that I have been thoroughly ignoring for some time. Then I regretted it when I saw the results, but ploughed on bravely.

And I connected this to my Twitter account. My barely broken in Twitter account with 100 followers that rarely tiptoes beyond vss365 prompts and replies to Lex Fridman.

Then I didn’t like how it displayed the first post, so I deleted it, and panic-disconnected, then added silly AI images to my posts, then reconnected, and then it didn’t display the same way again so the images made no difference, but hey, at least we all had fun.

I seem to be trying something new. Something somewhat uncomfortable.

I might even stretch to a complete blog overhaul, given I’ve now spent several hours just making it look not too horrific to bear. Though that does sound ambitious.

I had been conserving myself for a long time, because for a while after my last relationship, getting through the day was the priority, and that didn’t feel guaranteed. But what once was a survival tactic has now become an easy habit. One it’s probably time to break. After all, what could I be conserving myself for, if not this?

I’m better when I write. That part’s simple. So…why not also make it a little bit complicated? Just a little bit – just enough to let it feel serious. And why not expend some of my preciously conserved energy on it too? At least enough to let it feel real.

I don’t know where I’m going, but if I don’t go, I’ll never find out.

Flight.

Time. Timetimetimetimetime. Where does it all go? Nowhere, you’re the one going places.

I’ve been off on many tangents lately. Flittering about through fiction, illustration, leopard geckos and past traumas. And I keep coming back to the issue that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fully indulge myself in the explorations I wish to pursue. Quite often, I stop myself from starting because I know a thread left half-pulled is infinitely less satisfying than one left in the weave.

I suspect I need a radical change. A change more radical than I am probably willing, at this point in….’time’, to make. And so I also suspect that things may be about to get more uncomfortable for me, until I reach the point where I become willing to make it. But I’m holding out hope, still, in this relatively comfortable place, that there is an alternative of inching forward toward the precipice, throwing things over the drop, so that when I get there, and peer over the edge, I will see the landing, and feel reassured that I won’t break my legs. That the change will no longer be so radical that I feel I will need to spontaneously grow wings.

But it would be pretty cool to have wings, I can’t deny that. And the thing is, maybe I have them – maybe I’ve spent these years of life growing them. I don’t know. All I know is I’ve never really flown before. Maybe the only way to find out if you can fly is to fall a great distance, and see if the wind catches in your feathers.

I’ve tried flying a few times before – I didn’t kill myself, but the landings were hairy, and I didn’t arrive at the intended destination. It hasn’t felt fair to take that leap with a five-year-old on my back. Not because I fear he would suffer materially, if things went bad – he’s lucky to have a lot of people looking out for him. But if I land badly, my mind will likely become an inhospitable place for a while, and I probably wouldn’t be able to shield him from that. I would be less pleasant, all my demons made manifest. And it wouldn’t be his fault, and it wouldn’t be his choice.

Oh, but it’s so clear that I’m holding myself back. And I’m not sure there’s a rationalisation that can withstand scrutiny. I’m scared, that’s all.

Hayley

The only woman I’ve ever really viscerally wanted to be is singer-songwriter, Paramore frontwoman and ‘hair dye tycoon’ Hayley Williams. And that’s not a thing borne out of fandom, especially, though I have come to appreciate her work in recent years. It’s because part of me resonates so keenly with her, in a way I can’t really explain. Part of me believes I could have been her – should have been – if only, if only I hadn’t failed at being, in all the necessary ways.

When I was younger I was downright jealous of her, and I masked it with disdain. But I was the one who was scared to sing. I was the one who was scared to be in community. I was the failure, and I knew I had no right to criticise her, so the disdain ate at me, and wouldn’t let me forget it.

As I grew older and wiser, I let myself admit that I even enjoyed Paramore a bit. But they remained a ‘guilty’ pleasure. I didn’t want anyone to know I listened to them, and any time I did, which wasn’t often, I felt oddly on display. Who can hear this and what must they think!? As if anyone would think anything at all.

Her solo material was what let me reconcile my complicated feelings about her. We have some important similarities. We’ve had some importantly similar experiences in our lives. We have similar faultlines. We’ve learned similar lessons. But through that and despite it, she was able to continue becoming the success that she is and deserves to be. And I…well I never even seemed to begin. I had been holding that against myself, and she, more than most, reminded me.

What were the differences between us that led to our divergent paths through life, even as we traversed similar terrain? How was she able to build and maintain a fulfilling career, while every avenue I even thought of pursuing collapsed around me in short order? Why could she sing and I couldn’t? Why could she integrate and I couldn’t? We were both in pain, so my pain wasn’t the reason. How could she do it, and do it so well, and I couldn’t do it at all?

Well, there are very good explanations, of course. But that’s another tale.

Strange times

I’ve been skimming the surface of my life again lately. What am I avoiding?

We are living in strange times. It seems trite to say – what part of the modern era hasn’t been strange? But things seem to be getting stranger. Whenever I think about it, I also can’t help but to think about how tiny I am. A speck, floating on the strange breeze which, one day quite soon, might become a strange hurricane. I have no power here.

I know I have power. And I could use my power, in allegiance with others, to potentially enact some kind of response to whatever strange change is rising. But I’m scared that it will catch me unaware. I’m scared that none of us are predicting it accurately. I’m scared there’s just too much to the story, and that even our best minds fall short. I’m scared it’s going to come down to luck, for almost each and every one of us, which way we get cast by the strange wind that’s coming.

So this skimming I’m doing of late; I think I’m putting my head in the sand. Playing video games instead of living my life, because I feel preemptively trapped and disempowered. As I imagine what decisions I may be called to make in future years, I’m playing scenarios out in my head and regularly finding myself in a hypothetical location where acting in accordance with my values risks my personal safety, and I’m wrestling with the fact that I think, as a mother, I would probably surrender my values for my personal safety. And I don’t like that. Not least because I fear preserving my short-term personal safety could come at the cost of my long-term personal safety. The future is a strange, scary knot.

In part I’m getting way ahead of myself. But, in part, too, I feel like I’ve let myself be left behind. Something is going on in the world, bigger than all the things going on, and I don’t understand it. Not even a little bit. And I’ve sensed it coming for years, and I’ve told myself I was being melodramatic. But now it’s still coming, and it’s closer, and I still don’t know what to do with it.

But that’s not a good enough reason to do nothing.

Intermittent

It’s hard, once you stop, to start up again.

My life is set up to be intermittent. That’s not my preference, it’s just the way it is.

As much as I inherently rail against routine, I do better with consistency and, knowing this, I have tried to seek it out. Unfortunately I have not been able to collaborate with the main actors in my life to create a level of daily consistency for myself. Instead I have a reasonably predictable, undulating, biweekly cycle, during which different areas of my life flash on and off for multiple days at a time. I live in binary. All or nothing.

I’m good at all.

I’m good at nothing.

The switching…I’m not so good at that.

I waste a lot of energy trying, and regularly failing, to make the transition from one to the other. My life demands I simultaneously switch one area off, and another area on, according to its schedule. The whole point of the cycle is that all things have their place, but what if I can’t get to that place on time, because I wandered too far into the depths of the other place and I haven’t found my way out yet?

I did better when, despite my schedule conspiring against me in ways I was unable to remedy, I constructed consistency for myself. Daily consistency. A reliable thread. Anything less simply adds to the chaos, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise.

The most successful thread I constructed was writing daily. Writing meaningfully and intentionally every day. But life got noisy and I let it lapse. I let myself lapse. I dropped the thread. And that was a mistake. A mistake all too familiar.

I haven’t figured out, so far in my life, how to keep on doing anything.

The only daily consistency I’ve had in recent months is my morning coffee. Its effect is dopaminergic enough and its procurement easy enough to ensure its inclusion regardless of my week’s topography. But everything else is up for grabs, and up for debate.

And that is, quite possibly, the crux of all my problems.

Nobody except me cares, really. It’s not their problem. I couldn’t make it their problem if I tried. I did try, in some cases, so I’ve learned that lesson. There’s no point looking outward.

This is my life. How do I fit myself into it?