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Okay so. I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing here.
I sat down, with the vague intent to continue on an assessment due tomorrow night that I am behind on.
Yesterday, in class, while getting distracted looking for a very specific bookmark, we opened some other tabs in our browser to maybe look at later - check what the hell it actually was (given we have, not just years of bookmarks, but also, in an attempt to start organising the few hundred tabs we had open on our phone, we dumped them en masse into our bookmarks as well.) Opening our laptop today, Firefox was open on a substack article called AREN'T YOU WASTING YOUR TIME? by woundtheory. In it, they are their processing and expressing their feelings in the one-week leadup to the release of their first book.
We began re-reading it. We haven't finished reading it by the time we logged into dreamwidth for the first time in, oh, almost 18 months.
Before we opened our laptop, but were sitting on the couch, simultaneously wanting to work on our assessment - or, maybe more accurately, wanting to want to work on it - while also wanting to avoid, avoid, avoid, I was thinking about thinking.
While trying to get us into the right frame of mind to work on it, I noticed how, shortly before hand, I had felt a little more interest in working on it than I was now. I was thinking about how I don't seem to ever want to do anything Right Now, because that closes off the possibilities of all the other things one could theoretically be doing. I briefly noted that we are probably feeling unmotivated because we're not getting our (pretty limited, imo) social needs met. We had some vague thoughts on motivation, and what we consider "lining up our brain for a task" which, now that I write that, feels like it's two-thirds just finding and leaning on feelings of motivation for a specific thing, at the expense of closing off other options. I noticed how my aversion may be related to the pressure there is to work on it, and what an issue that may be when I graduate - I'm (we're?) going to be a healthcare worker, we're (I'm?) genuinely very interested in this profession, interested in a wide variety of topics, very keen to help people in this way. We're going to need to do extra research and work outside of actual time with clients.
If the Need to do that work prompts this aversion more than my interest in the topic and in helping people motivates us, how the hell are wei going to manage to do right by the people we support?
We opened our laptop, and began reading the article.
Earlier today, we read a short post one we'd seen before a long time ago, about how young children are poets until they learn how to use words "normally." We felt some desire to try out writing poetry. We read this substack, and felt some desire to write a book. woundtheory briefly mentions having done a little of some other art, and we think about how we've been considering drawing again lately.
Yesterday, we were thinking about some guy - we're not going to double check the details now - who believed that geniuses weren't born, they were made. Who, with his wife, home educated their three daughters, including spending hours on playing chess each day. The eldest began to win competitions fairly young, then the middle child outpaced her, and the youngest soon overtook both her siblings, and was beating adult champions as a child. Once, when the youngest was very small, her father found her in the bathroom one night, with the chess set and pieces. He told her to leave them alone, and she says, "they won't leave me alone!"
I think about the way most children grow up now, spending as much of their time awake at school as not, surrounded by age-matched peers, learning a huge variety of different things; parents having a workplace to go to rather than doing a craft at home that the children can be around. This isn't a criticism of having options, opportunities; it's not a criticism of children getting a broad education, or having a choice in what they do.
It's me wonder if that's the reason for our lack of direction, our inability to choose one option at the expense of others. What's the solution? To intentionally choose one direction, to intentionally close off the other options? How do we make this work best when there's multiple people in here, how do we make this work best when we have so many little impulses, desires? How do we move in one direction, when no matter which direction we face, we are pulled away by other directions?
When we danced, we attended classes consistently. We rarely practiced at home, on our own. Same with martial arts. A friend occasionally organised life drawing sessions, and this was, for a long time, some of the only times we drew. We regularly feel interested in things when we read about them while scrolling, engage in them with other people, and we all desire to continue the pursuit within moments of being on our own.
We live in an isolated society; how are we meant to find people to do these things with? How are we meant to get people to understand how beneficial it can be to do things with others? How are we meant to organise this, when we've learned that people tend to be unreliable, tend to agree that this sort of thing might be something they're interested in and then flake? And, a question I always must ask when I find myself upset at other's behaviour - am I being a hypocrite; do I do this to others more than I realise?
We began reading a substack about writing as expression, as art, as processing, and so we opened up dreamwidth, and we wrote.
There's a lot more we could have said, wanted to say, but it didn't want to be here on this post. That's okay, we suppose not everything needs to be shared in one place.
I sat down, with the vague intent to continue on an assessment due tomorrow night that I am behind on.
Yesterday, in class, while getting distracted looking for a very specific bookmark, we opened some other tabs in our browser to maybe look at later - check what the hell it actually was (given we have, not just years of bookmarks, but also, in an attempt to start organising the few hundred tabs we had open on our phone, we dumped them en masse into our bookmarks as well.) Opening our laptop today, Firefox was open on a substack article called AREN'T YOU WASTING YOUR TIME? by woundtheory. In it, they are their processing and expressing their feelings in the one-week leadup to the release of their first book.
We began re-reading it. We haven't finished reading it by the time we logged into dreamwidth for the first time in, oh, almost 18 months.
Before we opened our laptop, but were sitting on the couch, simultaneously wanting to work on our assessment - or, maybe more accurately, wanting to want to work on it - while also wanting to avoid, avoid, avoid, I was thinking about thinking.
While trying to get us into the right frame of mind to work on it, I noticed how, shortly before hand, I had felt a little more interest in working on it than I was now. I was thinking about how I don't seem to ever want to do anything Right Now, because that closes off the possibilities of all the other things one could theoretically be doing. I briefly noted that we are probably feeling unmotivated because we're not getting our (pretty limited, imo) social needs met. We had some vague thoughts on motivation, and what we consider "lining up our brain for a task" which, now that I write that, feels like it's two-thirds just finding and leaning on feelings of motivation for a specific thing, at the expense of closing off other options. I noticed how my aversion may be related to the pressure there is to work on it, and what an issue that may be when I graduate - I'm (we're?) going to be a healthcare worker, we're (I'm?) genuinely very interested in this profession, interested in a wide variety of topics, very keen to help people in this way. We're going to need to do extra research and work outside of actual time with clients.
If the Need to do that work prompts this aversion more than my interest in the topic and in helping people motivates us, how the hell are wei going to manage to do right by the people we support?
We opened our laptop, and began reading the article.
Earlier today, we read a short post one we'd seen before a long time ago, about how young children are poets until they learn how to use words "normally." We felt some desire to try out writing poetry. We read this substack, and felt some desire to write a book. woundtheory briefly mentions having done a little of some other art, and we think about how we've been considering drawing again lately.
Yesterday, we were thinking about some guy - we're not going to double check the details now - who believed that geniuses weren't born, they were made. Who, with his wife, home educated their three daughters, including spending hours on playing chess each day. The eldest began to win competitions fairly young, then the middle child outpaced her, and the youngest soon overtook both her siblings, and was beating adult champions as a child. Once, when the youngest was very small, her father found her in the bathroom one night, with the chess set and pieces. He told her to leave them alone, and she says, "they won't leave me alone!"
I think about the way most children grow up now, spending as much of their time awake at school as not, surrounded by age-matched peers, learning a huge variety of different things; parents having a workplace to go to rather than doing a craft at home that the children can be around. This isn't a criticism of having options, opportunities; it's not a criticism of children getting a broad education, or having a choice in what they do.
It's me wonder if that's the reason for our lack of direction, our inability to choose one option at the expense of others. What's the solution? To intentionally choose one direction, to intentionally close off the other options? How do we make this work best when there's multiple people in here, how do we make this work best when we have so many little impulses, desires? How do we move in one direction, when no matter which direction we face, we are pulled away by other directions?
When we danced, we attended classes consistently. We rarely practiced at home, on our own. Same with martial arts. A friend occasionally organised life drawing sessions, and this was, for a long time, some of the only times we drew. We regularly feel interested in things when we read about them while scrolling, engage in them with other people, and we all desire to continue the pursuit within moments of being on our own.
We live in an isolated society; how are we meant to find people to do these things with? How are we meant to get people to understand how beneficial it can be to do things with others? How are we meant to organise this, when we've learned that people tend to be unreliable, tend to agree that this sort of thing might be something they're interested in and then flake? And, a question I always must ask when I find myself upset at other's behaviour - am I being a hypocrite; do I do this to others more than I realise?
We began reading a substack about writing as expression, as art, as processing, and so we opened up dreamwidth, and we wrote.
There's a lot more we could have said, wanted to say, but it didn't want to be here on this post. That's okay, we suppose not everything needs to be shared in one place.
