dotsandlines (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dotsandlines) wrote2013-01-05 07:02 pm
dotsandlines) wrote2013-01-05 07:02 pm
Entry tags:
How not to spend a winter afternoon.
Lunch, then a couple of hours with a blanket, occasionally a cat, and my Kindle with my story imported onto it. Nice, so far. Read read, annotate annotate, take this line out, add this line here... la la la.
Kindle: *ffzzt* *reboot*
Me: ...
Kindle: I'm back! :D
Me: ...wait, I was on note #97.
Kindle: Everything's fine! :D
Me: ...you claim the last one was #56. ...Oh, crap.
So yeah, that happened. First time it's done that to me. I lost two cozy hours of editing and about 50 changes. I am pretty baffled. Going to try to catch up again tonight, but that...sucks.
On the other hand, the story is going well. I feel like it's becoming less disjointed. Or perhaps my mental organization of the story is less disjointed - ha! Same benefit, in the end. Still have notes for new scenes, too, so I should be able to reach the next mile marker before the end of the month. ...In around working on a sewing commission, of course.
---
I read an article the other day that had an interesting thesis. And though it's aimed at your stereotypical guys whining about how girls don't like them, I think there's something worth reading for the rest of us, too. The ideas have hung around in my brain since then.
The main idea is that what people DO is important, more so than what they ARE, or what they claim to be. That sounds daunting until you consider that each of us is far more in control of what we do than what we are, and that it's a more concrete metric anyway.
Tying this back to my Kindle mishap today: You can argue for hours about whether I am (or want to be) "a writer", but the fact remains that I did write some stuff. It's not a lot, but it exists. It's a thing that happened, a thing that I did. You can argue that I am not a writer by definition, fine, I don't care; you can't take away the fact that I did it.
I'm also biased toward this view because my depressive side looooooooves to talk in absolutes about things that I am and that other people are. Based on what, well, dogma. But it can't argue with things like I wrote a bunch of words or I played a 50-minute playlist on Dance Central this afternoon, and so I remind myself of those. And geez, those are fairly easy things. I haven't even tried to learn a new language or climb Mount Everest or anything.
The part that I haven't fully digested yet is the idea that other people notice this. I've labored under the assumption that people like other people because of what they are, generally. You just ARE charming or attractive or whatever, and people flock to you. But there's something to be said for seeing things through this lens of actions taken. If you are charming, how that plays out in practice is that you tell entertaining stories, or ask good questions so that people feel like they can relate to you, etc. If you are sitting there as an inert object, you aren't actually doing anything charming. Attractiveness, well, maybe that's a bad example. Or maybe not - because let's be real, being a completely inanimate object only gets you so far in that arena, too. People who are attractive in real life have interesting skills, know things, relate to people, etc. They do things.
The things that I do aren't useful-to-other-people in a way that's usually helpful in real life. I've offered to help people learn to sew when they express interest in learning, but I'd have to become some sort of wandering seamstress ronin to put that into action on a regular basis.
I do tend to do favors for people - even if they're not close friends - because well, that's what you do. So maybe that's an example of an action leading to good things in the world. I feel guilty about things like that, not because I feel I'm being used (I never volunteer for things I wouldn't want to do) but because I worry that it looks desperate. I don't mean it that way. So if I think about interfacing with the world less as a giant test of my innate worth and more as an arena where I do things and other people do things, and together we make things happen (be that a game campaign, planting a yard or raising a barn), that's a more understandable mental framework for me. Hell, that sounds like fun.
A lot of what I put out there into the world is remix-based; I don't consider myself a hardcore content creator. But I do things. I love doing things. I LOVE doing things. And I don't like New Year's resolutions (because I hate New Year's, and wish they would have left it on April 1 when our hemisphere is not dark and cold and awful) ...but I have decided during this past year to identify things that I love to do, and do them. Do what you have to do to keep your grownup life moving, and do what you love to do. Writing makes me happy. Gardening makes me happy (OK, most of the time). Dancing like a pure goofball makes me happy. And so I try to do them as much as I can.
I'm going to keep doing things, and I hope everyone finds things that they love to do, to make, to bring into existence, and get on that. I hope I find more outlets that are (to me) original and be brave enough to try those, too.
Man, if half of the target audience for that article got up and made something - I don't care if it's a Halo mod that I will never see in my life - how many more cool things would exist? What other stuff would get done? It's mind-boggling.
So I guess that's my New Year's aspiration post, even though I hate the timing of New Year's resolutions: right when my willpower is in the tank. But I can feel jazzed about life in general. So that's what it's about.
Kindle: *ffzzt* *reboot*
Me: ...
Kindle: I'm back! :D
Me: ...wait, I was on note #97.
Kindle: Everything's fine! :D
Me: ...you claim the last one was #56. ...Oh, crap.
So yeah, that happened. First time it's done that to me. I lost two cozy hours of editing and about 50 changes. I am pretty baffled. Going to try to catch up again tonight, but that...sucks.
On the other hand, the story is going well. I feel like it's becoming less disjointed. Or perhaps my mental organization of the story is less disjointed - ha! Same benefit, in the end. Still have notes for new scenes, too, so I should be able to reach the next mile marker before the end of the month. ...In around working on a sewing commission, of course.
---
I read an article the other day that had an interesting thesis. And though it's aimed at your stereotypical guys whining about how girls don't like them, I think there's something worth reading for the rest of us, too. The ideas have hung around in my brain since then.
The main idea is that what people DO is important, more so than what they ARE, or what they claim to be. That sounds daunting until you consider that each of us is far more in control of what we do than what we are, and that it's a more concrete metric anyway.
Tying this back to my Kindle mishap today: You can argue for hours about whether I am (or want to be) "a writer", but the fact remains that I did write some stuff. It's not a lot, but it exists. It's a thing that happened, a thing that I did. You can argue that I am not a writer by definition, fine, I don't care; you can't take away the fact that I did it.
I'm also biased toward this view because my depressive side looooooooves to talk in absolutes about things that I am and that other people are. Based on what, well, dogma. But it can't argue with things like I wrote a bunch of words or I played a 50-minute playlist on Dance Central this afternoon, and so I remind myself of those. And geez, those are fairly easy things. I haven't even tried to learn a new language or climb Mount Everest or anything.
The part that I haven't fully digested yet is the idea that other people notice this. I've labored under the assumption that people like other people because of what they are, generally. You just ARE charming or attractive or whatever, and people flock to you. But there's something to be said for seeing things through this lens of actions taken. If you are charming, how that plays out in practice is that you tell entertaining stories, or ask good questions so that people feel like they can relate to you, etc. If you are sitting there as an inert object, you aren't actually doing anything charming. Attractiveness, well, maybe that's a bad example. Or maybe not - because let's be real, being a completely inanimate object only gets you so far in that arena, too. People who are attractive in real life have interesting skills, know things, relate to people, etc. They do things.
The things that I do aren't useful-to-other-people in a way that's usually helpful in real life. I've offered to help people learn to sew when they express interest in learning, but I'd have to become some sort of wandering seamstress ronin to put that into action on a regular basis.
I do tend to do favors for people - even if they're not close friends - because well, that's what you do. So maybe that's an example of an action leading to good things in the world. I feel guilty about things like that, not because I feel I'm being used (I never volunteer for things I wouldn't want to do) but because I worry that it looks desperate. I don't mean it that way. So if I think about interfacing with the world less as a giant test of my innate worth and more as an arena where I do things and other people do things, and together we make things happen (be that a game campaign, planting a yard or raising a barn), that's a more understandable mental framework for me. Hell, that sounds like fun.
A lot of what I put out there into the world is remix-based; I don't consider myself a hardcore content creator. But I do things. I love doing things. I LOVE doing things. And I don't like New Year's resolutions (because I hate New Year's, and wish they would have left it on April 1 when our hemisphere is not dark and cold and awful) ...but I have decided during this past year to identify things that I love to do, and do them. Do what you have to do to keep your grownup life moving, and do what you love to do. Writing makes me happy. Gardening makes me happy (OK, most of the time). Dancing like a pure goofball makes me happy. And so I try to do them as much as I can.
I'm going to keep doing things, and I hope everyone finds things that they love to do, to make, to bring into existence, and get on that. I hope I find more outlets that are (to me) original and be brave enough to try those, too.
Man, if half of the target audience for that article got up and made something - I don't care if it's a Halo mod that I will never see in my life - how many more cool things would exist? What other stuff would get done? It's mind-boggling.
So I guess that's my New Year's aspiration post, even though I hate the timing of New Year's resolutions: right when my willpower is in the tank. But I can feel jazzed about life in general. So that's what it's about.