Author: Wren

NaNoWriMo Day 8 (11/08)

Wren Leave a comment

I’ve got this song stuck in my head, “Older” by They Might Be Giants. Except, instead of the lyrics going “You’re older than you’ve ever been and now you’re even older,” they’re going “You’re further than you’ve ever been and now you’re even further.” I didn’t write much again. D&D ran a little late and things were going so well I was unwilling to end things early. 6:30 to 11 isn’t super late, but it’s definitely later than we’ve played most days. Usually we’d play from about 6:30 or 7 until 9 or 9:30. The longer sessions are definitely nicer as a the DM, but they’re also harder to incorporate into what is a rather busy month for me…

I shouldn’t be complaining. I had a lot of fun, my players had a lot of fun, and one of the characters almost died because he got kissed by a demon (not the first time it has happened to him). I’d like to spill some more details about what they’ve been doing compared to what I’ve been planning, but all my players could theoretically read this blog post and I don’t want to tempt them with meta-gaming knowledge.

Tomorrow night, after my bills are paid, checks deposited, and laundry is folded, I will sit down and write until at least midnight. I should be able to pick up some decent progress there. I will also attempt to do the same thing Thursday night and Friday night. If I can do that, I might be able to recover my numbers to the point where I’m no longer floating around the 50% mark (pretty sure I’m below even that right now…).

I know I can do this. I wonder if that knowledge is making me over-confident? I suppose we’ll see.

 

Daily Prompt

Every character has strengths and some of them are even fully aware of these strengths. Today, write a scene in which a character not only knows and relies on their strengths, but also gets over-confident and fails because they took their ability for granted. Show them failing when they should have succeeded, not because the task was simple but because they approached it without due care.

 

Sharing Inspiration

If you’re having a hard time coming up with interesting characters, one of the best places to find inspiration (and make sure it stays only at inspiration) is on forums of table top RPGs. My personal favorite, for use as both a DM and a writer, is ENworld.org.  There are just so many wonderful resources for world building and so many well-crafted NPCs and characters lying around that it is almost impossible to browse the forums without being inspired to take your character creation to the next level.

 

Helpful Tips

 

One of the keys to “originality” is to take stuff that already exists and combine it in new and interesting ways. Find five characters you like and mash them all together, trimming off the extra bits and filling in the gaps until you have one fully solid and new character. You can even do this with plots, cultures, and even entire worlds. Mix and match until you’ve got something wonderful and new. There’s nothing wrong with taking notes from existing works or creators, just make sure that all you’re taking is notes and not entire characters or places.

NaNoWriMo Day 7 (11/07)

Wren Leave a comment

Well, I’m officially further behind now. Another evening of video games (Destiny 2 and Overwatch) means little writing was done. I did a bit, thankfully, so I’ve managed to hold on to my “write every day” goal, but tonight looks like it won’t be any more productive. I’ve got D&D this evening and I realized this morning that I never actually prepared the dungeon my players are investigating. Sure, they started it last session (which was a while ago), but starting a dungeon is WAY easier to wing than doing a whole dungeon.

Because of my daily blog updates, I’m guaranteed to get writing in every day. That’s certainly helpful, but it also means that I need to write 2200 words a day to stay on schedule. More, now that I need to catch up. Given that I’ve got a lot of commitments coming up, I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to take much time on the weekend to catch up either. Part of me wants to give in because, even after 5500 words, I’m still kind of hating my story, not mention the whole “half the words I should have written by now” thing.

That being said, I feel its important to acknowledge that I hate my story because it’s about aspects of life that I find challenging. All of my reading and video game escapism is to escape exactly the things that I’m writing about. I have to go into my head, where all my worst problems exist in their strongest forms, and get close enough to them to write about them without getting so close that I get caught up by them. It’s a very fine line and, as I found out Sunday, getting caught in them has consequences that last for days.

Writing can be dangerous. I can’t try to ignore my problems if I have to walk among them. My mind is my strongest ally and my most dangerous foe. It provides me the weapons to fight back while supplying the energy my problems need to wear me down. I am my biggest problem.

This reflection on living with mental illness has been brought to you by National Novel Writing Month: “an incessant reminder that everything has a cost.”

Gee, this would up being way more maudlin than I intended.

 

Daily Prompt

Most people enjoy action. A good action sequence can take place in almost any kind of story because there’s so much than can cause an action sequence to unfold. Chase scenes, fight scenes, races of all kinds, sports, shootouts, head-to-head combat via video games, and more! Write an action scene for your character today. They don’t need to be the primary actor in the sequence, but they should be observing it.

 

Sharing Inspiration

As a not-typically-cheerful person, I’ve often struggled with our culture’s focus on the common interpretation of what the founding fathers called “the pursuit of happiness.” As creators in general, we’re often not prone to being the most cheerful sorts. We all have our bouts of melancholy or severe/crippling periods of depression (Ha ha ha…). When I start to feel like the pressure to embrace this undefinable idea of “being happy,” I often turn toward The Oatmeal for my dose of cynical–often scatological–humor to remind me that life isn’t always about being happy and that, sometimes, all that matters is to feel energized and content. I suggest you check it out (this comic, specifically) if you’re struggling to feel alright with being unhappy.

 

Helpful Tips

Writing can be a difficult task when so much competes for our attention every time we sit down at our computers. If you’re having trouble focusing, I definitely recommend turning off the internet for a while. Disconnect your computer from the wi-fi or landline, turn your phone on airplane mode, and turn off any other devices. Turn off your second monitor (if you’ve got one), load up some CDs or setup your iPod, and then just get to work. Eliminating distractions can help you push to reach higher word count goals in less time.

NaNoWriMo Day 6 (11/06)

Wren Leave a comment

I actually got a lot done yesterday, at the coffee shop. Boosted my numbers by about 2000, which is pretty good for writing in a public space surrounded by my friends. Typically, in a situation like that, I wouldn’t get much done at all, being too busy chatting with my friends or people-watching. But it was good. Then, when D&D got cancelled last-minute (one player had homework he needed to finish, and that takes priority), I saw the entire evening stretching out before me, tantalizing as it offered the opportunity to not only catch up, but get ahead.

So I spent the entire evening playing Destiny 2. Even the period from 10-12 that I’d planned to fill with writing. So I’m still a bit further behind that I’d like to be on day 6. At the same time, I spent most of the night awake and sick because of what is likely food poisoning. I’d love to spend my time today writing, but its been hard to focus because I’ve spent so much time feeling pretty miserable. I’ve been reduced to reading and browsing the internet and even that is hard because of all the awful stuff happening in the new. Also, the book I can’t bear to leave alone is going through a super sad and tense bit that makes it simultaneously hard to put down and hard to continue reading. If you haven’t read it, I definitely recommend the “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn” trilogy by Tad Williams.

Maybe I’ll just play video games or brainstorm up a bunch of writing prompts. Or maybe I should clean my room and fold laundry. I’ve got plenty to do, I’m just pretty worn out so its hard to pick something to do. Food poisoning can be really draining. Yes, that was a joke.

 

Daily Prompt

Few characters can survive on their own. Even beyond the worries of physical survival, it is difficult to show a character acting in a world without someone to react to or play off of. A good book is going to have a mix of characters whose interactions can help fuel the plot and protagonist(s) growth. Write a scene where your character spends time with someone else and either/both characters grow as a result. Show a new relationship developing or an existing one growing stronger.

 

Sharing Inspiration

One thing that gets me really excited to write is consuming other stories, through things like books, movies, TV shows, or video games. If you want a good story that’s relatively easy to work through (in terms of time), I cannot recommend either the manga “Fullmetal Alchemist” or its anime counterpart, “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood” (and seriously just watch Brotherhood, don’t watch the other one… It isn’t worth it). The storytelling is absolutely stellar and the art is phenomenal. 10/10.

 

Helpful Tips

This probably counts as a little bit “cheatier” than most of the tips I’d post, but those of you doing your NaNoWriMo are probably constantly reminded to “write now, edit later.” I don’t know about you, but I’m not very good at doing that. Going back to re-read what I wrote the day before is an important part of getting myself into the right headspace to continue writing. Part of that, of course, winds up being some small amounts of editing. However, your goal for this month is to just produce 50,000 words, not 50,000 post-editing words. I use the strikethrough font styling to show words I want to later remove because, that way, they still show up in my word count. I don’t think it really matters so much for me because I’ve always finished with enough words over the goal to remove all my strikethroughs without jeopardizing my win, but if I wound up throwing out an entire section or chapter because I realized it wasn’t going to work? That could easily save me 1000-5000 words.

Remember: the delete key is forever and some things don’t need to be erased to be improved, they might just need a little more time.

NaNoWriMo Day 5 (11/05)

Wren Leave a comment

As I predicted, I did not get much done yesterday. I don’t regret it, though. I really enjoyed my day and feel rested and charged for a full day of writing and then running my Dungeons and Dragons campaign. A full day of storytelling! My favorite!

I realized this weekend that I have a tendency to make a lot of time commitments. I like to fill my time with projects and things to do so that I’ve got very little time to sit around and wonder what to do with myself. I’ll admit it is definitely conscious on some level since my depression and anxiety tend to take any time that I’m not occupied and fill it with fretting and too much thinking. If I don’t have the time to sit and stew in my maudlin musings, I can avoid ruining an entire day with, as John Green quoted in a recent video, “melancholy, minus its charm.”

I often feel like I’m spreading myself thin as a result of this desire to fill my time, and that often results in me spending my time doing nothing. I hope that, since I’m more aware of it now, I can find a way to better balance my proactive time and my rest time so I can eliminate those periods of time lost to depression. There’s no time like the present. Maybe I’ll make it through an entire month without looking at my entire library of video games and sadly thinking that nothing sounds fun and I should just go to bed at 5pm.

Daily Prompt

Today, consider a situation where your character can show off their growth to someone who knew them before they became a protagonist. Show them overcoming a challenge that someone close to them thinks should have stopped them, and specifically focus on how their relationship with this person changes as a result of this person’s reaction to your character’s growth.

 

Sharing Inspiration

My inspiration is, you guessed it, this John Green video. I had the opportunity to see John and Hank Green touring for John Green’s new book, “Turtles All The Way Down” and had this amazing moment where I heard John Green walk up on stage and talk about problems I’ve struggled with for years. He came out later and told us a story about a friend of his who passed away earlier this year and a song she reclaimed for him. I’d suggest watching the video if you have not already, because I can’t improve on the way he tells the story so I’m not even going to try. It was this amazing moment for me that came at a time I’d been struggling with my own depression and invasive thoughts. He immediately followed it up with a song with his own twist. Hank played Sweet Caroline and, at the bits everyone loves to shout, everyone was supposed to be silent instead of shouting back. As he said, you never really know that everyone is participating when people are shouting but you know that everyone is participating when you’re being silent. It was this amazing moment of connectivity. It was an amazing night and it was the reason I decided to do NaNoWriMo and post every day. Because I’m here and we’re all here and sometimes it is nice to just reflect on that and embrace it as much as you can.

 

Helpful Tips

Today is day five. If you’re sticking to the NaNoWriMo recommended daily word count, you should be working on words 6,665 through 8,330. If you’re ahead, good job! If you’re behind, don’t sweat it! You’ve got 25 more days to go! If you’re struggling, try a change of scenery! Go out to a coffee shop! Find a nice, cozy library to hole up inside! Move from your writing nook down to a public area around your family/friends! As urgent as this feels, remember that life should not support art, art should support life. Don’t hide away from everything around you as you write, losing touch with the world is only going to negatively impact your writing.

NaNoWriMo Day 4 (11/04)

Wren Leave a comment

Day 3 was not nearly as productive as I’d have liked. I got a little ahead in terms of posts and support, but I’ve fallen behind in word count. Today promises to be rather unproductive as well. In a certain sense, anyway. I’ve got a couple of events throughout the day and some travel to do, but I’ll have my laptop and I’ll try to get some writing done in what spare time I have. Tomorrow, though, I’ll have all day and should be able to get some real progress made. It all remains to be seen, of course.

“Writing every day is the real goal of NaNoWriMo.” I’m pretty sure that, for every day of NaNoWriMo, I can come up with a different thing to say is the real goal of the month. Really, though, there are a lot of goals. There are a lot of reasons to do NaNoWriMo. Right now, as I’m trying to pick my writing back up after way too long away from it, I think my reasons for doing it are going to be all of them.

Daily Prompt

Your character obviously has more going on than the story can tell. There must have been some formative experience in their past that pushed them to become the person they are today. What was their most important moment in their life, that led them up to the story? Write a scene as a flashback, where they reflect on that moment and how it has influenced the decision they’re about to make.

 

Sharing Inspiration

In a year where I’ve struggled to do any kind of writing, one book was enough to reach into my heart and stir my desire to create again. “Creativity, Inc” by Ed Catmull (that tells the story of Pixar and its journey from a hardware developer to the movie maker we know today) was a constant reminder of the lessons I’d learned during college about creativity and how to harness it. It also provided me with a useful reflection on how I thought about my own creativity, pushing me to reexamine my old ideations and produce new ones that better reflected my more experience look on life and more difficult creative process. If you’ve got some time to read this month, I recommend picking up a copy. If you don’t have time this month but still want to examine how you create, I suggest reading it next month or early next year.

 

Helpful Tips

Don’t forget to take breaks. Trying to cram now and get as much done as possible has value as long as you can maintain the enthusiasm, but don’t burn yourself out. Take time for something fun and don’t sweat it if you don’t do all of your day’s writing on one day. That’s why we have 30 of them. It’s okay to have a make-up day.

NaNoWriMo Day 3 (11/03)

Wren 1 Comment

 

Yesterday, I made the mistake of eating too much for dinner before settling down to work. It took almost two hours to go from having finished eating to actually productively working on something. Two long, sleepy hours of trying to decide if more caffeine or a quick nap was what I needed. Needless to say, I was quite glad I got started earlier, especially because I knew I’d need to write more blog posts ahead of time since I wanted to have a few drafts of prompts, shares, and tips prepared for the days I was going to have trouble getting reliable internet access. My writing laptop intentionally sucks at pretty much everything but playing DVDs and word processing programs.

My laptop can travel with me anywhere, but a lot of the stuff I want to do with my blog and the community I’m trying to build require the desktop/browser applications. Writing on a phone is doable in a pinch, but I’d rather have a dedicated laptop signed by my favorite authors and giving me their best instructions on how to be a writer (Patrick Rothfuss signed it and then just wrote “WRITE!” on it. Super simple stuff.).

Daily Prompt

We all enjoy stories about triumph. We all enjoy seeing characters we love succeed. In order for that to happen, however, we need to see them challenged. If we really want to see them grow, that often requires we see them fail. Today, write a scene where one or more of your characters are struggling or failing. Set the stage for a later success by showing them in a situation where they are out of their depth.

 

Sharing Inspiration

There’s a meditation technique used in various psychological care settings for returning to a calm, centered mental state while trying to work through some of the thornier types of problems. The idea is to build a place in your head that has all of the things that most relax you and then to tie it to a single word so that mentioning the word or focusing on it can bring you back to that calm place and feeling. Doing something similar is super useful for writing because relaxing and helping to clear away the mental clutter that accumulates makes it easier to get the words onto the page. If you like rain or thunderstorms like I do, there’s a wonderful website out there that can provide the perfect backdrop of sound for your writing sessions. If you want some good (video game) music to go with it, check out this playlist I made on YouTube.

 

Helpful Tips

As you get further and further into your writing, don’t forget that there is no one way to successfully write a story. To some writers, it is like a grandly designed building: everything planned out before construction starts so that everything falls into place exactly where it is needed as it is needed. To others, it is like a patchwork quilt:  entire segments are done cohesively and together, but there is no real rhyme or reason to all the parts until you start sewing them together at the end. To me, it is like climbing a mountain: I know the mountain is there and I know my goal is at the top, but the exact path isn’t something I necessarily know before hand, so sometimes I take wrong turns and need to double-back or spend a lot of time trying to overcome an obstacle before I can get back to trailblazing. You are not obligated to do it in any particular manner. Meander or make it up as you go along. Do what feels write (ha) or abandon it at the side of the road when you feel it’s not working. All you need to do is keep working.

NaNoWriMo Day 2 (11/02)

Wren Leave a comment

Yesterday, I began writing. I was up late, into the early hours of yesterday, getting my community all set up and wound up feeling exhausted all day because I’m apparently an old man who can barely function on 4-5 hours of sleep. As a result, I’m a little behind where I’d like to be in terms of word count. Not too far, maybe 500 words, but far enough that I really had to struggle to decided whether going to bed was a better decision than just powering though until I reached 1,666 words. Unfortunately, the decision was taken out of my hands once I started dozing off around 11:30pm. Sometimes, I can write quite proficiently when I’m dozing off. Last night was not one of those nights.

That being said, it still felt delightful to be getting back to writing, even if I’m still not sure where my story is going or what it’s really going to wind up being about. The verb tense and narrator have changed twice so far. The person (as in, first person or third person) has only changed once so far, but I wouldn’t bet against it happening again. I’m excited to get home from work and get back to writing this story! I hope your writing efforts are starting off well!

Daily Prompt

As writers, or creators in general, we often feel we do our best work in a safe space we’ve identified. Be it a quiet office, the privacy of our bedroom, or the bubbly atmosphere of our favorite coffee shop, we all have a place we feel is key to doing our best work (or maybe even key to doing any work at all). What places does your character have that make them feel comfortable like this? How do they handle when one of these spaces is invaded? When one of these spaces is taken from them? Write a scene about your character dealing with the loss of one of their favorite places and how they try to protect or reclaim it.

 

Sharing Inspiration

I am a giant nerd. There’s no pretending that’s not true and I like to embrace it when I can. If this case, I embrace video game music from games I’ve enjoyed. Good video game music is obtrusive enough to be noticed, but not so much that it demands focus until you actively put the game aside to listen to it, at which point it reveals its hidden depths. This makes it ideal for me when it comes to writing or focusing on a difficult task. One of my favorite collects (partially for nostalgia and partially because of the variation in the music) is a one-hour video of route music from various Pokemon games. Check it out and see if it helps you buckle down and focus when your mind begins to wander away from your writing.

 

Helpful Tips

The best trick I have up my sleeve is perseverance. Write every day, even if it’s not a “full” amount. Sit down, open your notebook or word document or whatever, take a look at what you’ve got so far, and add to it. Repetition is the key to building a good habit and even a few minutes here or there is enough to keep it up. Write every day and write everywhere. Don’t skip a day because you’re busy. Bring a notebook with you or find a way to get your document onto your phone (google drive is excellent for mobile document editing) so you can write on the go. Write on breaks, between meetings, and while waiting for the bus (I don’t think any of you take the bus, but you know what I mean). Just write. As Shia Lebeouf famously said, “Just DO IT.” Or, if you’d prefer, as every author I’ve ever asked for their best advice has said: “WRITE!”

 

NaNoWriMo Day 1 (11/01)

Wren Leave a comment

Hello Everyone! It has been a while since I posted. I’ve been rather busy with moving and getting over a toxic situation, along with starting something new and wonderful. But now it is November and that means it is National Novel Writing Month! As I’ve done the past couple times, I’ve given myself a challenge on top of writing the 50,000 words of a new story. This year, I am doing 50,000 words AND managing/leading a small support community of other people participating in NaNoWriMo.

Since I hate to waste, I’m going to share the tips, suggestions, and writing prompts I posted for that community on my blog every day, along with a small commentary on what I’ve been doing or how writing is going for me. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo as well, good luck and I hope some of my stuff helps!

Daily Prompt

As a Human, we have more senses than we typically consider. We wrap them up in a neat little package as “The 5 Senses,” but isn’t hunger a sense? What about how you know where all of your limbs are when your eyes are closed? How you can feel the passage of time? Today, write about your character feeling something through their senses. Pick one to focus on more deeply or make one up for them to have that no one else does and explore what’s that like for them.

 

Sharing Inspiration

This is the song that I heard today that helped me narrow the focus on my story. I’m not entirely sure how yet, but I know that I’ll figure it out as I go along so long as I get going.

 

Helpful Tips

I don’t know about you guys, but having a blank page on my computer screen, staring me down, is super terrifying. If you’re having a hard time facing down an intimidating blank page, I suggest starting your writing with a bunch of notes about thoughts you’ve had. Just jot some things down as quickly as you can. If you’re working on world-building, start a glossary. It’ll get you past the blank page AND help you keep track of important events, places, or people you mention or create. If none of these help, just find a bunch of text, copy it, and paste it into your document. Once the page is no longer so blankly white, it’ll be easier to face.

If you’re having a hard time staring at your computer all the time, or your eyes start to feel super worn, or you start getting a headache after sitting down to work, you’re probably struggle with the dreaded blue-light issue. Monitors create a huge amount of off-white bluish light that is (no joke) scientifically proven to be bad for your eyes and to negatively impact your ability to sleep. To counteract this effect, I recommend the program f.lux. It is available for free and the website is super friendly. I have this program on literally every screen-bearing device smart enough to run it. The ability to chance the color temperature of my monitors lets me work on a computer all day and them come home to more computer work without developing migraines. I highly recommend it. If you get it and want suggestions, feel free to ask.

Wisdom, Intelligence, and Unanswered Questions

Wren Leave a comment

I don’t know if this is a discussion most people have with any kind of frequency but, as a D&D player, I’ve often discussed the difference between wisdom and intelligence.

The trickiest part of the whole discussion is that it feels like the distinction is super clear in your mind, but the actual explanations you try to provide always wind up feeling hollow, inadequate, or you just can’t think of any. The popular explanation in D&D groups follows the “Tomato Explanation” of character attributes. “Strength is your ability to crush a tomato. Dexterity is your ability to dodge a tomato. Constitution is our ability to eat a bad tomato. Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad. Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad.”

There are any number of jokes that go along with this (my favorite is pointing out that a tomato-based fruit salad is salsa and then someone else declaring that I’m the party’s bard now), but they all ignore that you could easily make the argument that describing salsa as tomato-based fruit salad is actually an aspect of intelligence. As is knowing that tomatoes don’t pair well with most fruits. Any time a player makes a claim about how the mental attributes work, another player could make a convincing argument that all of those examples are actually just all a part of the same attribute.

Then, when you take these discussions out of their D&D context, you continue to run into the same problem. Is making good decisions really the result of being wise, or is it an aspect of being intelligent? Are you able to anticipate the outcomes of your actions because some innate part of you understands the correct choices or are you able to predict the end results of what you do because you can understand all the variables and their consequences? Hell, is this even a distinction worth making at all?

I’m fairly certain that wisdom and intelligence their own, discrete things. Maybe their differences aren’t super apparent when people have relatively similar amounts of each, but more extreme example make it much more clear.

Take, for instance, this software developed I worked with at my last job. He pushed at the very edges of what our code was able to do, creating these incredibly complicated activities that expanded what our customers thought was possible and laid the groundwork for future expansion beyond even that. He was probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. At the same time, by the end of his first year at the company, I was the only person who could work with him. I worked with him for almost two years and the next longest anyone else worked with him was 6 months. Third was 7 weeks. To put it bluntly, he was a condescending asshole who constantly belittled and insulted his coworkers, even if it wasn’t on purpose most of the time.

His example makes it pretty clear that intelligence isn’t something you can substitute for wisdom or charisma. On the other hand, one of my current coworkers is a super nice and competent guy. He’s better at his job than I can hope to be in anything less than a decade (we have the same job, he’s just the Senior version of it) and he has these piercing insights into how our whole team functions, along with being able to talk through things with people so that they come to see their best course of action. However, if you explain a new idea quickly, he can struggle with it for a bit before it finally clicks for him. Which shows plenty of wisdom can’t be substituted for intelligence.

To put it simply, I think wisdom is the ability to explain and intelligence is the ability to learn. I think the reason people have a hard time distinguishing between them is that they feed into each other. If you can learn easily, you are better equipped to explain things and being able to explain things well means that you have more opportunities to learn, even if you’re just learning from yourself. I can explain stuff to people very well because I know a lot, which means I can draw upon a lot of different comparisons so that what I’m explaining is housed in terms that are easy to understand. I also couldn’t begin to count to the number of times I’ve suddenly had a flash of insight into something when I’m trying to explain it so someone.

Despite the similarities between wisdom and intelligence, I think it is important to be mindful of the differences. If you start to conflate the two, you can wind up in a lot of awful situations because you relied too heavily on one when you needed the other. I can easily recognize when something I’ve said is wrong or has been misinterpreted based on people’s reactions (intelligence), but being able to anticipate that reaction and changing it beforehand (wisdom) is always better than apologizing and clarifying. Sure, it isn’t entirely reasonable to expect myself to always be able to do that, or to even spend so much time measuring my own words, but making a habit of sticking my foot in my mouth is also a pretty shitty way to live, even if I apologize afterwards.

I reflect on this a lot, specifically in the terms of thinking about how my communication affects other people. I spend more time measuring my words than I do speaking. To be honest, one of my biggest issues with myself is just how much I censor myself when talking to people: how much effort and energy I put into delicately phrasing things so as to not offend. This blog is supposed to be part of my effort to not spend so much time holding my silence, but I find myself avoiding certain topics and thoughts I’d like to explore because I know family and friends read this blog.

Maybe this is one of the reasons I feel like I haven’t made much progress in the past few years. Maybe I feel like I’ve stagnated because I’m blocking my own words, feelings, and responses in favor of giving other peoples’ higher priority. Maybe I’m writing this blog post without any insights and only unanswered questions because I don’t want to confront the truth that’s sitting right in front of my face, but is still somehow hidden from my conscious sight. Or maybe I’m just going to keep asking myself this question for my entire life, and this entire blog is just one more way to explore possible answers.

Wisdom says focusing on questions gets you further than focusing on answers. Intelligence says that some questions have no answers and just mulling them over is enough to promote growth and mental development. I say that, like almost everything in life, the answer to this particular question is going to be something along the lines of “take care, but not too much.”

We Try Things. Occasionally they even work.

Wren 1 Comment

So, I’ve once more been struggling with my depression. Big surprise there. Kinda snuck up on the back of some of the stuff I was writing last week and just overwhelmed me when I wasn’t paying attention. Luckily, with my renewed focus on watching for it and the help of my friends, I was able to notice it quickly and come up with a few plans to circumvent it.

Historically, working out every day has been a good way to deal with my depression for a few reasons. There’s the health reasons, studies that suggest that regular exercise can have a significant positive impact on one’s mental well-being. There’s the easy reasons, that I’m generally too tired after a heavy workout (and those are the only kind I do) to be anything. Then there’s the mental reasons, that I’m finally making progress on one of my big goals by losing weight. All of that together leaves me at least neutral for as long as I can keep it up (usually 3-5 weeks) though I get almost nothing else done.

Another, more mentally productive, way to deal with my depression is by creating something. Writing is often a good way for me to take a step away from everything and let my mind work out my problems through my stories. When I was in college, working on building a set for a show or helping put together some internal improvement project for the theater was always very relaxing, letting my focus and keep busy while leaving my mind free enough to work through things in the background. Unfortunately, I’m not very good with music or visual arts, but I’m certain those would be just as helpful. Anything that gets me focused on and engaged in the act of creation always helps.

Sometimes, even working a lot (at my job) can help, if I’ve got the right kind of projects. Put in some overtime, rake in that delicious OT pay, and start making even more progress toward being debt free. A good amount of rewarding work (people recognize what I’m doing as being useful and I can contribute to the good of my team/company) is just the right kind of mentally exhausting. I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing to let my problems in and then I’m too tired to make myself fret about anything.

All three have worked individually in the past. Unfortunately, none of them would last for long. I wear myself out to the point of not being capable of working out again, or I get finish a project and can’t figure out the next steps, or I finish whatever work project had me so focused and I’m unable to find a new one to fill that hole. Eventually, they all come to an end.

Which is why, this time, I’m trying all three at once. Work 10 hours days and try to get super invested in an interesting work project. Workout immediately after work. Come home, eat something, have a cup of tea to help me stay awake, and then write/try-to-write until 11 or 12. The idea being that, when one of the three fails, I should still have the other two continuing on to prop me up until I manage to get the third one going again. So far, it’s working out pretty well.*

First, I pushed myself too-hard in my workouts initially and had to really dial it down, but that means I’ve just got a little more time and energy for writing. Then I picked my workouts back up again, full-force, and was too tired to write for a couple of nights, but since I workout after work I was able to continue investing in my latest work project.

Unfortunately, there are still some flaws. After an entire week of this, I hit Friday and couldn’t do anything after 1:30. I had to run a meeting about my project which taught me a lot and forced me to herd cats for an hour and a half. Senior Coworker Cats. Some of whom had been at the company longer than I’ve been alive. I went home pretty much immediately afterward and decided to take all the pictures off my phone as my day’s project. 800 pictures later, I played a few rounds of video games with friends and went to bed.

All-in-All, it seems to be working aside from a few quiet moments here or there were I just kinda feel sad, but those are growing shorter and less frequent after only a week. Maybe, if I can keep this up long enough, they’ll disappear entirely.

 

 

*Side-effects of the pursuit of three major goals may include drowsiness, irritability, a zombie-like demeanor, and a severe allergic reaction to social interaction. But hey! At least you’re not a depressed sack of sad!