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I've been working on the following concepts this year, which range from sneaking suspicions to epiphanies. In Douglas Adams' "Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", these would be the boxes packed away in the subconscious that, very very rarely, one has the opportunity to unpack.
Mine are not full of penguins.
~*~ Just because someone is a narcissistic bully does not mean a damned thing on my end. This has involved some pretty intensive moments of not reacting in the moment, then vivisecting the fuck out of the big red candy-like buttons said bully had been punching on my personality. In other words things are much calmer at work, even though the job itself is underemployment to a comic degree.
~*~ People react very differently now that my work-personality flavor has switched from "terrified of being fired" to "indifferent competence". Confidence keeps out the riff-raff, apparently.
~*~ When I'm on campus I'm so damned content that random strangers have struck up conversations with me, as one lady said while we waited for the walk signal, "You just look so happy." Strangers, small talk, smiles; the last three things I'd ever suspect to coincide.
~*~ Elementary school laid several head trips on me that I'm only now seeing as lies. It's now sunk in that smart /= effortless learning, and I've gotten the hang of persistent effort in the last few years. The most recent realization is still so new as to be a bizarre hypothesis: I'm not really lazy. Mr. F tells me he's never understood that belief of mine, where it could even come from, but in school I was always "irresponsible, a procrastinator and unwilling to do the work". I was also reading my mom's scifi and college textbooks in fourth grade, daydreaming when I wasn't outright reading (for pleasure) in class, and have always had problems with meaningless work. Add in the seasonal depression right after the teens and 'laziness' feels true. But I begin to think it never really was true.
~*~ I am not entirely neurotypical. I need to stop thinking that if I just tried harder and was tougher and more disciplined I could finally achieve normalcy. These little things that make me comfortable are not barriers I need to get over, they're tools like taking extra oxygen up a mountainside. The big flaming sign on this one was that my dad quit smoking and in short order took up one said comforting habit big time. Self-care by way of harmless oddity=good. Yeah, so not fighting that battle anymore.
~*~ My next area of concentration is to embrace the shitty first draft. The latest development of this is to write the sparkly thing right away and then worry about how the story gets there, instead of worrying about context and never getting that inspiring image solidly down.
Mine are not full of penguins.
~*~ Just because someone is a narcissistic bully does not mean a damned thing on my end. This has involved some pretty intensive moments of not reacting in the moment, then vivisecting the fuck out of the big red candy-like buttons said bully had been punching on my personality. In other words things are much calmer at work, even though the job itself is underemployment to a comic degree.
~*~ People react very differently now that my work-personality flavor has switched from "terrified of being fired" to "indifferent competence". Confidence keeps out the riff-raff, apparently.
~*~ When I'm on campus I'm so damned content that random strangers have struck up conversations with me, as one lady said while we waited for the walk signal, "You just look so happy." Strangers, small talk, smiles; the last three things I'd ever suspect to coincide.
~*~ Elementary school laid several head trips on me that I'm only now seeing as lies. It's now sunk in that smart /= effortless learning, and I've gotten the hang of persistent effort in the last few years. The most recent realization is still so new as to be a bizarre hypothesis: I'm not really lazy. Mr. F tells me he's never understood that belief of mine, where it could even come from, but in school I was always "irresponsible, a procrastinator and unwilling to do the work". I was also reading my mom's scifi and college textbooks in fourth grade, daydreaming when I wasn't outright reading (for pleasure) in class, and have always had problems with meaningless work. Add in the seasonal depression right after the teens and 'laziness' feels true. But I begin to think it never really was true.
~*~ I am not entirely neurotypical. I need to stop thinking that if I just tried harder and was tougher and more disciplined I could finally achieve normalcy. These little things that make me comfortable are not barriers I need to get over, they're tools like taking extra oxygen up a mountainside. The big flaming sign on this one was that my dad quit smoking and in short order took up one said comforting habit big time. Self-care by way of harmless oddity=good. Yeah, so not fighting that battle anymore.
~*~ My next area of concentration is to embrace the shitty first draft. The latest development of this is to write the sparkly thing right away and then worry about how the story gets there, instead of worrying about context and never getting that inspiring image solidly down.
