Status update. Warning: naked and flowery.
I recently jetted off to Virginia to celebrate my yearly gathering of widely-scattered gaming geek friends. Upon return, our Organizational Guru (every group has one, right? the one who drives the itinerary, the prime community builder) asked if I'd had fun (she had been stuck doing remote work for a portion of the weekend, which was seriously lame) and also observed that she'd never seen me talk as much in person as she had over the course of this most recent gather.
I cited the venue, being larger than in the past, helping with my crowd anxiety as the primary source of any observed sense of increased ease that I might have projected. This sparked some introspection on the subject, however, and I feel it's very likely that my current situation, having divorced myself from the realm of corporate servitude and my focus on the creative aspects of my life, as well as the process of deeper self-examination and mental rewiring that I've been doing since January, was the truest source. I believe the sprawl of the house the 18-20 of us were occupying certainly helped, but the fact is that I'm just happier.
Just like I didn't realize how long and how hard I had been drawing on my reserves of energy and sanity while working nights in IT operations until those reserves were almost gone, it took an outside observation to call my attention to the fact that being away from the things that were slowly killing me has already done me profound and apparent good.
I leapt from an airplane above a sea of magma with a parachute I slowly built up over years. Initially, my feelings were a mingling of heady excitement and stark terror -- I was free of the claustrophobic confinement of that metal tube hurtling through the air, a vehicle over which I felt no real control and was sapping my will to live. At the same time, I was falling, borne up by a resource that was slowly, steadily corroding as it kept me from plummeting into the fire. It was very difficult not to focus on the fall once I was outside of the safety of my confinement.
Now, I find myself reveling in the freedom. I glance back at my parachute periodically, habitually, regarding it with a critical eye and perhaps making adjustments as I feel necessary. I know it will last a while longer, barring unforeseen catastrophic events, and thus it can be backgrounded.
At the same time, concerns I had over my own ability to focus have faded somewhat. I worried that my distractable and often obsessive nature would doom me to misusing my time and wasting this opportunity - however, my keen and fixated interest on video games, MMOs in particular, has waned sharply. I still find them of value, but I have remarkably little patience for timewasting hamster-wheel activities anymore. I have no need to turn off my brain and escape the depredations of my job anymore, to replace one grind that I dislike but pays with another of my choosing. I find I enjoy games now, but am no longer allot them the time and importance they have in the past claimed in my life.
So, too, have my admonitions to self, to jump into hyperfocus on personal goals during this time, relaxed. Going into this, I felt so sure that I would have to hit the ground running, to subsume my life entirely to the drive to write, to force myself to Work, to treat this as a Job. I'm glad I felt this way at first, but my feelings on the subject are changing as my mind blossoms from its cramped confinement and as I carefully groom it, prune it, water it and encourage it to grow. It's clearer than ever to me that I need to take my creative endeavors seriously, to afford them serious time and mental space, to allow them a true and cherished place in my life. However, right now is not the time for the stick. Right now, my mind and my self and my art all need positive reinforcement, encouragement to continue coming out of the box I forced them into for so many long years. The wild creature has been abused and forced to wallow in its own filth behind the cruel bars of a too-small cage -- now that the door is open, goading it down a certain path with a cattle prod isn't going to allow for healing and growth.
I'm not writing every day, but I am thinking about my writing project every day. (I have a hard time calling it a 'novel' yet, or 'my book'. It's a world, it's an endeavor, it's a tale. It's a project.) I'm looking at the world around me with different eyes, eyes better tuned to wonder and eager to rake up sensation and process it, use that raw material for my art and as both tools and clay for the reworking of my psyche. I am in a better place than I have been in years, mentally and emotionally, and even if no solid product comes of this time of freedom, product that I can use to continue this flight of mine, updrafts that spin me higher or air currents that keep me afloat, it will have been worth it.
I have already succeeded. I look forward to even more success in the coming months.
I cited the venue, being larger than in the past, helping with my crowd anxiety as the primary source of any observed sense of increased ease that I might have projected. This sparked some introspection on the subject, however, and I feel it's very likely that my current situation, having divorced myself from the realm of corporate servitude and my focus on the creative aspects of my life, as well as the process of deeper self-examination and mental rewiring that I've been doing since January, was the truest source. I believe the sprawl of the house the 18-20 of us were occupying certainly helped, but the fact is that I'm just happier.
Just like I didn't realize how long and how hard I had been drawing on my reserves of energy and sanity while working nights in IT operations until those reserves were almost gone, it took an outside observation to call my attention to the fact that being away from the things that were slowly killing me has already done me profound and apparent good.
I leapt from an airplane above a sea of magma with a parachute I slowly built up over years. Initially, my feelings were a mingling of heady excitement and stark terror -- I was free of the claustrophobic confinement of that metal tube hurtling through the air, a vehicle over which I felt no real control and was sapping my will to live. At the same time, I was falling, borne up by a resource that was slowly, steadily corroding as it kept me from plummeting into the fire. It was very difficult not to focus on the fall once I was outside of the safety of my confinement.
Now, I find myself reveling in the freedom. I glance back at my parachute periodically, habitually, regarding it with a critical eye and perhaps making adjustments as I feel necessary. I know it will last a while longer, barring unforeseen catastrophic events, and thus it can be backgrounded.
At the same time, concerns I had over my own ability to focus have faded somewhat. I worried that my distractable and often obsessive nature would doom me to misusing my time and wasting this opportunity - however, my keen and fixated interest on video games, MMOs in particular, has waned sharply. I still find them of value, but I have remarkably little patience for timewasting hamster-wheel activities anymore. I have no need to turn off my brain and escape the depredations of my job anymore, to replace one grind that I dislike but pays with another of my choosing. I find I enjoy games now, but am no longer allot them the time and importance they have in the past claimed in my life.
So, too, have my admonitions to self, to jump into hyperfocus on personal goals during this time, relaxed. Going into this, I felt so sure that I would have to hit the ground running, to subsume my life entirely to the drive to write, to force myself to Work, to treat this as a Job. I'm glad I felt this way at first, but my feelings on the subject are changing as my mind blossoms from its cramped confinement and as I carefully groom it, prune it, water it and encourage it to grow. It's clearer than ever to me that I need to take my creative endeavors seriously, to afford them serious time and mental space, to allow them a true and cherished place in my life. However, right now is not the time for the stick. Right now, my mind and my self and my art all need positive reinforcement, encouragement to continue coming out of the box I forced them into for so many long years. The wild creature has been abused and forced to wallow in its own filth behind the cruel bars of a too-small cage -- now that the door is open, goading it down a certain path with a cattle prod isn't going to allow for healing and growth.
I'm not writing every day, but I am thinking about my writing project every day. (I have a hard time calling it a 'novel' yet, or 'my book'. It's a world, it's an endeavor, it's a tale. It's a project.) I'm looking at the world around me with different eyes, eyes better tuned to wonder and eager to rake up sensation and process it, use that raw material for my art and as both tools and clay for the reworking of my psyche. I am in a better place than I have been in years, mentally and emotionally, and even if no solid product comes of this time of freedom, product that I can use to continue this flight of mine, updrafts that spin me higher or air currents that keep me afloat, it will have been worth it.
I have already succeeded. I look forward to even more success in the coming months.