A Down Week and A Ramble
I recently heard from a little birdy that people have been wanting to comment but have thought “what do I even say, I don’t know what to say?” If you have this thought, maybe just tell me if you found something interesting in the post? I don’t know for sure, I’m not great at introducing myself to new people either.
There won’t be any pictures, this week will mostly just be me finding an excuse to put words down on the page.
As a result of last week’s long trip (Fort Williams & Glenfinnan) I did nothing this week. I went complete degen mode and re-applied my “monitor tan.” Really that tan is just dark circles and poor self-care, a bad habit for someone like me, who tends to binge things more than schedule them.
The reality of being an adult reared its head. I have to clean, cook, workout, write, read, and then do it all again? And then the next day I have to get groceries? How do people not go stir crazy? I guess they do, that would explain so much. How is it that I am both constantly running out of groceries, yet so many things expire? Man, it’s so much energy. My parents are superheroes. Knowing my mom is going read this makes me want to delete that. Why? Who knows, exposing vulnerabilities is hard.
(An extra paragraph break to reinforce the textual jump in direction)
There’s a concept I learned about recently in regards to eastern medicine and their theories of mind. Kapha, Vata, and Pitta. Kapha is described as an earth like slowness, a tendency to ramp up into activities that accompanies a sense of self that does better with consistency and resolve. Vata, associated with air and space, often referred to be the fleeting mind. The ADHD terminology tends to apply best here. The final type, Pitta, tends to be considered more of a fire-y passionate type. Think of the dedicated son-of-a-guns who are beyond determined and just chew their way through medical school or another PhD.
I’d like to think of myself as the first type, the Kapha. I tend to always do best once I can focus all of myself into one task for long periods of time. When I was writing my first thoroughly finished novel, Project Nomad, I would go on 5 hour long stints of raw editing focus. The time would fly by like the matter of minutes for me. The same happens when I can really dig into a project or idea in a story – when I’m ‘in the flow’ working on Ergonoplex (a nearly finished short story) hours absolutely dissolve in my mind. Time passes by faster than when I game or do any other hobby, it’s scary, truly.
But it’s so hard to say, the characteristics of your own mind when there’s nothing you can exist in but that mind. Times when reading one page feels like a chore. Or when I cannot seem to focus for the life of me. Most of the time, for me, that simply means I have to reduce the stimulus currently assaulting my mind. If I reduce, minimize, and simplify that is when I do the best. One task, and only one task, without anything else bothering me. I get my best work done towards the ‘end’ of my working hours, whether that be on schoolwork or my work on my craft, or at the end of a gaming session.
However, getting me to shift tasks feels wholly impossible. When I dedicate all of myself to that one thing for the day I’m completely wiped out. Trying to get myself to do anything feels impossible. There’s a sense of what I’m going to call impulse that most people have that I have just never found from myself.
For example, after a class is done the room instantly sparks into chatter. How do people even develop conversation topics fast enough for chatter to start up like that? How is it possible to have such an instantaneous reaction out of nothing? Out of pure silence? It feels like a spell being cast on the classroom.
Once I get over that impulse, once I get going, then I tend to ramp up into quality product.
Just for funsies, here’s the first few lines of that short story I talked about earlier. Does it grab your attention, does it make you want to read more, does it make a lick of sense, does it make you want to hurl? Feel free to let me know:
