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Sep. 27th, 2024 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkatkinaThe irony of getting hit with a bug after that last post --
Anyways, I've lost most of this week to a mean little flu. 38C fever, all the body aches, nose like a facuet. I'm picking away at this post in an attempt to focus on something concrete for a while, though I expect it'll take the day (or a couple of days).
(It wasn't COVID, ostensibly. I took four tests, all negative. Who fucking knows, though; certainly I'm wading through worsened brain-fog right now but that may just be normal flu recovery.)
Focus is an issue. Particularly with creative stuff.
SO I mentioned last post that I'd done some leafing through old LJ posts lately. Some of it ended up hitting like a fucking brick, and I've been turning over that time period, who I was then, over in my head since. It's been occupying my thoughts. The different brain I had ten, fifteen years ago. How my perception of self was different.
In a pretty key way, how my engagement with creative stuff was different.
There are multiple reasons for this. One is that different brain, I think in a purely physiological way. I read those old words and I can smell how little brain fog I had then. I was tired and overwrought but burnout hadn't kicked in yet, and covid hadn't happened. I was fiery.
Pretty importantly, I also was not involved in any other manner of social media: which I genuinely think getting deep into tumblr and, for a little while, twitter, changed the way I engage with long vs shortform content.
(I don't want to be a boomer about it; when I rail against it it's because I don't like the changes it's wrought in me, bit by bit. And I don't think it's a bad thing to have "fast" social media, putting aside issues of algorithmic content delivery: I've participated in chatrooms since the days of IRC and it's where I've found some of my best community. But there's a void in public online life left by slow, non-algorithmic, primarily social sites, and I feel that void in my own habits and my brain. Be the change you want to see, etc, but I don't think it's possible to really go back. So I keep trying to find and engage with new ways to fill that same hole.
I don't know. It's all very abstract, because what's missing is something that was ephemeral and hard to define even when it existed.)
All that to say I can feel my brain is way more dopamine-seeking than it used to be. I don't get rewarded for long-investment things like I used to; they don't feel "fun" anymore.
Which blows, hard. I've been trying to train my brain back into it but it does feel something like trying to swim up an avalanche. It makes even working on personal projects REAL fuckin hard; it's why I was so proud of Pillow Talk last year, even though that was clearly fuelled by sudden autistic hyperfocus rather than the more patient non-neurochemistry-motivated elbow-grease that pretty much everything else takes these days. I was still something. I did something.
But I can't summon up hyperfocus at will, and I spent a good chunk of my 20s training myself out of hyperfocuses before I knew what they were. So. it's elbow grease or bust, baby, and I'm fuckin tired of literally everything being hard.
The other part of it is a crippled creativity. This one's been increasingly chewing my ass for something like fifteen years.
It's less that something specific happened (although I can point to Events, as demonstrated by some of the LJ entries I came across in my hunt). More a long slow grind-down that's been happening since I first started pitching my own ideas, way back in art school, and getting bemused looks and lukewarm responses. This one hurts to think about too much, but what it is is basically that I don't think my ideas are good. Bone-deep. Individual input does not nudge the bar; I have too many years of a much wider dataset that says my shit is not engaging.
And the thing is, this is something I push back against when other people say they feel this way about their ideas -- I do believe there's an audience for everyone! Except, I don't think whatever slim audience there is out there for my stuff, I'll ever find it.
So for years I've functioned under the "make the art you want to see and make it for yourself alone", but it kind of turns out that a closed system does eventually lose energy.
The stupidest part about this is that I can see the catch-22 I make of it.
You don't get engagement with something unless you have consistent output. I stopped having the capacity for consistent output years ago. But engagement fuels the motivation to output consistently, but the only way to engage is to be consistent...
and the exhaustion and insecurity put a tripwire across this. It sounds so easy on paper to just cut the gordian knot: just engage! Just be consistent! But I have tried that for years, in different ways, in different spheres, with different people, and every time either I fall flat on my face or something good starts and then ends because the other person or people lost interest, or because I fucked up somehow, the rat in my brain gets another electrocution and I get more scared of trying.
It's especially frustrating when I have an actual idea and an iota of excitement about the idea; I want to DO something with Constellations, I really do, but I spend most of the time I partition off for trying to write or draw second-guessing myself and my ideas instead. Not even to mention the shambles my RP and collaborative creative life is in, mostly self-inflicted.
I've even had a few friends straight up invite me to talk about my shit with them and this ^ all up here means that I take that invite and I half-ass it. I've been in "do it for yourself" mode for so long that when the opportunity comes up to share, I just! choke! because I'm nervous! and it's stupid!
So, in summary: scared of trying, too tired and stupid and foggy to force it.
Man, I'm frustrated living in this brain. Aside from the persistent semi-depression that is just kinda hanging out lately, this is the main problem I'm grappling with lately, personally speaking. I keep hoping that sketching out the problem for myself will suggest a route out, but as yet: no luck. I bash my head against it regularly by trying to work on Constellations, so it's been top of mind.
right, I think that's all for now, I'm very tired and I've been picking away at this for a good long time. I'm going to go lay down.
Anyways, I've lost most of this week to a mean little flu. 38C fever, all the body aches, nose like a facuet. I'm picking away at this post in an attempt to focus on something concrete for a while, though I expect it'll take the day (or a couple of days).
(It wasn't COVID, ostensibly. I took four tests, all negative. Who fucking knows, though; certainly I'm wading through worsened brain-fog right now but that may just be normal flu recovery.)
Focus is an issue. Particularly with creative stuff.
SO I mentioned last post that I'd done some leafing through old LJ posts lately. Some of it ended up hitting like a fucking brick, and I've been turning over that time period, who I was then, over in my head since. It's been occupying my thoughts. The different brain I had ten, fifteen years ago. How my perception of self was different.
In a pretty key way, how my engagement with creative stuff was different.
There are multiple reasons for this. One is that different brain, I think in a purely physiological way. I read those old words and I can smell how little brain fog I had then. I was tired and overwrought but burnout hadn't kicked in yet, and covid hadn't happened. I was fiery.
Pretty importantly, I also was not involved in any other manner of social media: which I genuinely think getting deep into tumblr and, for a little while, twitter, changed the way I engage with long vs shortform content.
(I don't want to be a boomer about it; when I rail against it it's because I don't like the changes it's wrought in me, bit by bit. And I don't think it's a bad thing to have "fast" social media, putting aside issues of algorithmic content delivery: I've participated in chatrooms since the days of IRC and it's where I've found some of my best community. But there's a void in public online life left by slow, non-algorithmic, primarily social sites, and I feel that void in my own habits and my brain. Be the change you want to see, etc, but I don't think it's possible to really go back. So I keep trying to find and engage with new ways to fill that same hole.
I don't know. It's all very abstract, because what's missing is something that was ephemeral and hard to define even when it existed.)
All that to say I can feel my brain is way more dopamine-seeking than it used to be. I don't get rewarded for long-investment things like I used to; they don't feel "fun" anymore.
Which blows, hard. I've been trying to train my brain back into it but it does feel something like trying to swim up an avalanche. It makes even working on personal projects REAL fuckin hard; it's why I was so proud of Pillow Talk last year, even though that was clearly fuelled by sudden autistic hyperfocus rather than the more patient non-neurochemistry-motivated elbow-grease that pretty much everything else takes these days. I was still something. I did something.
But I can't summon up hyperfocus at will, and I spent a good chunk of my 20s training myself out of hyperfocuses before I knew what they were. So. it's elbow grease or bust, baby, and I'm fuckin tired of literally everything being hard.
The other part of it is a crippled creativity. This one's been increasingly chewing my ass for something like fifteen years.
It's less that something specific happened (although I can point to Events, as demonstrated by some of the LJ entries I came across in my hunt). More a long slow grind-down that's been happening since I first started pitching my own ideas, way back in art school, and getting bemused looks and lukewarm responses. This one hurts to think about too much, but what it is is basically that I don't think my ideas are good. Bone-deep. Individual input does not nudge the bar; I have too many years of a much wider dataset that says my shit is not engaging.
And the thing is, this is something I push back against when other people say they feel this way about their ideas -- I do believe there's an audience for everyone! Except, I don't think whatever slim audience there is out there for my stuff, I'll ever find it.
So for years I've functioned under the "make the art you want to see and make it for yourself alone", but it kind of turns out that a closed system does eventually lose energy.
The stupidest part about this is that I can see the catch-22 I make of it.
You don't get engagement with something unless you have consistent output. I stopped having the capacity for consistent output years ago. But engagement fuels the motivation to output consistently, but the only way to engage is to be consistent...
and the exhaustion and insecurity put a tripwire across this. It sounds so easy on paper to just cut the gordian knot: just engage! Just be consistent! But I have tried that for years, in different ways, in different spheres, with different people, and every time either I fall flat on my face or something good starts and then ends because the other person or people lost interest, or because I fucked up somehow, the rat in my brain gets another electrocution and I get more scared of trying.
It's especially frustrating when I have an actual idea and an iota of excitement about the idea; I want to DO something with Constellations, I really do, but I spend most of the time I partition off for trying to write or draw second-guessing myself and my ideas instead. Not even to mention the shambles my RP and collaborative creative life is in, mostly self-inflicted.
I've even had a few friends straight up invite me to talk about my shit with them and this ^ all up here means that I take that invite and I half-ass it. I've been in "do it for yourself" mode for so long that when the opportunity comes up to share, I just! choke! because I'm nervous! and it's stupid!
So, in summary: scared of trying, too tired and stupid and foggy to force it.
Man, I'm frustrated living in this brain. Aside from the persistent semi-depression that is just kinda hanging out lately, this is the main problem I'm grappling with lately, personally speaking. I keep hoping that sketching out the problem for myself will suggest a route out, but as yet: no luck. I bash my head against it regularly by trying to work on Constellations, so it's been top of mind.
right, I think that's all for now, I'm very tired and I've been picking away at this for a good long time. I'm going to go lay down.
