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catharsis_logsSometimes my brain just loves to throw I-hate-you curve-balls at me. I don't know what I did wrong, but all of a sudden I'm imagining being beat up in the middle of a Tai restaurant, or being kicked out, or being purposefully given the wrong order. I hate it when I get paranoid for no fucking reason.
Sometimes I feel like just ripping my skin and muscle off and just living as a skeleton, but then, people would just find a whole new way of categorizing me.
A day back on T, and I can't handle still having my birthname. Or being misgendered in the grocery store, or handing over my card, and having my female name on it. Welp, time to get serious about changing my name, because all of a sudden I'm sick of it.
Sometimes I feel like just ripping my skin and muscle off and just living as a skeleton, but then, people would just find a whole new way of categorizing me.
A day back on T, and I can't handle still having my birthname. Or being misgendered in the grocery store, or handing over my card, and having my female name on it. Welp, time to get serious about changing my name, because all of a sudden I'm sick of it.
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Date: 2013-06-20 09:38 am (UTC)Sympathies, guy. And good luck getting the name stuff sorted out. I am imagining kind of mountains of paperwork, but maybe it's a lot easier than that? I can hope, anyway!
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Date: 2013-06-21 11:20 pm (UTC)Have you been okay? I've noticed that you haven't been on very much this month. (Not that I can really say anything lol. I was gone most of this year. But I like you, and I tend to overworry about the people I like. :) )
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Date: 2013-06-22 07:13 am (UTC)Aww, I appreciate the concern. <3 I've been having a rockier than usual couple of days for some reason, but if I've been quieter in general this month, it's probably because I've been sliiightly braver about leaving the house and doing things, so that's where some of my attention and energy has been going.
Oh heh, plus I started the month kind of tired from posting a couple of ficlets to a meme. I mean, I did it anonymously, which my social anxiety appreciated, but still, it was kind of a big deal for my brain!
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Date: 2013-06-23 05:18 am (UTC)And YAY! Fanfic! I've actually been semi-working on a Big_Bang which is tremendously intimidating, lol. Can I ask what meme?
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Date: 2013-06-23 09:59 am (UTC)OMG, I saw that you mentioned you're doing a big bang, and I think that's so awesome! :D Have you written at that length before? I totally haven't. And yes, you can definitely ask -- it was at
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Date: 2013-06-25 04:28 am (UTC)I did do and -sorta- complete a Nanowrimo once when I was a freshman in highschool, and honestly, it was a clusterfuck, and I've never been able to do it again (not that I actually did it the first time...) but I have a little more time this time around, and more of a structure. My nanowrimo was pretty much freeform and had the barebones of a plot that quickly went downhill as I tried to cram in 2,000 words a day. lol.
It's kinda complicated for me to read my friends' works. I have a much easier time reading something someone else has written if I don't know them but I'm willing to take the chance on you, so please fire off the links! :)
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Date: 2013-06-26 10:46 am (UTC)Ahaha, I kind of know what you mean about reading stuff by friends. Also complicated for me sometimes: having my stuff read by friends! So if you're all curious now that I've raised the subject, I'm totally still game, but since it sounds like the awkward-feelingness is kind of mutual, I'd also be okay with leaving it in the hands of fate whether you chance to read my particular fills or not. If, you know, that sounds like a suitably dramatic way of putting it, heh.
I think I'm still learning about the intersection between creativity and social interaction and the unique opportunities it provides for anxiety, because it's so new that I've been remotely willing to share any of what I write, or even be particularly active about leaving feedback, for that matter. Oh the excitement of life. :)
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Date: 2013-06-27 05:43 am (UTC)I think part of being human and human artists in particular is getting used to not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks. As long as you're doing what you want to be doing, and you're pretty sure you like the way you are presenting your art, fuck what everyone else thinks. I also come to art(writing) in the position of a student but a student who has more rights than your average US student because I learn things about my art at my own pace, and not from any one prescribed person. I am a student, but I am also my own teacher, and I get help along the way, but the knowledge that I accept is of more worth to me than the knowledge that is forced on me.
I think also that the whole 'not giving a flying fuck about what other people think' is really especially hard for artists. I think anyone that thinks that they're an artist, or has passion for their work (and a desire to keep learning) know or have the idea that all art created is a reflection of the artist themself.
I at least, expose a small part of my soul or self in my art. My poetry especially. I think that's why it's so hard for me to shape a story, because my entire life is one stream of consciousness. There is no structure to it, and my realizations have no structure to them. I've gotten very good over the years at describing my emotions and how I feel, and having a basic love for 'purple' prose (or beautiful especially vivid description) that it's hard for me to write and/or plan a concise story with a solid beginning and end. For me, writing is as close as I've ever come to true spirituality and for me (apparently) spirituality has no order.
And now after that deep foray into my philosophy of writing, gimme the link(s)! :D
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Date: 2013-06-28 08:20 am (UTC)Hee! Well, if that's true, I must be a master at it by now -- I mean, with all the years of practice I've been putting in!
I'm so, so interested in what you have to say about having trouble writing self-contained stories with beginnings and endings, and about writing approaching a form of spirituality for you, because both those things ring so true for me. I mean, I'm an atheist, and spirituality isn't really a thing that I do, but when I try to understand what it means to the people in whose lives it does have an important place, I think about the way I feel about stories. And I feel like the degree to which it's interwoven with my life does play a part in the difficulty I have creating discrete story-shaped objects I can polish and show to other people, because -- it's not like on the one hand, there's my life, and then on the other hand, occasionally I sit down and write things. My ideas are always there, and I don't really have the distance from them to know how to package them for someone else's consumption.
I think part of it for me is that I've spent so long really not worrying about whether anyone would find any value in what I come up with, because I wasn't going to let anyone see it, and I was the only one it had to please. And that's been wonderful for me -- it's one of my best coping mechanisms these days, when once it was almost impossible for me to let go of self-consciousness even when I was writing purely for myself -- but making the transition back to thinking how to invite an audience into these worlds I create, that poses its own challenge.
And part of it -- and I don't say this as a contradiction of your philosophy, I say this because this is mine, and it affects the way I work -- is that my goal isn't to give zero fucks, it's to give as many fucks as I think an individual piece of feedback warrants. Which is maybe overly ambitious of me, to hope to calibrate my reactions to that degree? Definitely it's super, super hard, and I think that shows in what I've managed to write and post so far: these aren't the stories that speak to the depths of my soul, they're the ones I thought I could have some fun writing and not get overinvested in, and to the extent that I've failed with them, I think it's by compartmentalizing too much and cutting myself off from them while I was still trying to write them, because I didn't know how to let myself care and still be brave enough to keep going.
BUT ANYWAY, an email from me will be heading your way shortly. :D
Wall O' Text
Date: 2013-07-02 04:51 pm (UTC)If I actually want to do this, I really really really have to be in the right mood. The problem with me is that sometimes I give too many fucks about an individual piece of feedback.
I guess I'm learning to have patience with myself and the people who give me feedback. I have a lot, read: A LOT of impatience with people who aren't just critiquing my work and leaving feedback, they tell me that I 'should' change my story, and that I 'should' word it this way to make it more palatable for my readers. (Where I have the most frustration with this is topics and subject matters that most of society isn't very appreciative of. Also, sometimes in my poetry (ah the woes of being a poet) people want to change my incorrect grammar, when, NO, I don't want to change that, the grammar is like that for a REASON.)
For me, critique, and feedback, and being betaed work the best when it's me asking questions and getting them answered (and of course, for my prose; keeping an eye on my tenses and grammar) rather than having someone dive right in with no guide.
I can usually word these questions in a non-spoiler way too, like "what do you think of paragraph five on page ten?", but if they give me any unsolicited advice especially on my plot, subject matter, or characters, that imply that I have to change something, they basically put a big fat sign over their face and advice that reads: 'ignore me'. XD
And wow, I sorta went on a giant critique rant there! :)
I guess for me it's a little harder to separate my 'stories for other people' and 'my stories' from each other. Typically, if I'm only writing for an audience I have no enthusiasm for it at all. Then I get worried about which things might be socially unacceptable, which things people mind find weird and attribute to me and then it goes down in a whirlpool straight down to Davy Jones' Locker of Dead Manuscripts.
So for me personally, I have to write what I want to write and basically focus on trying to get that as polished as humanly possible, and at the same time steeling myself for any bad reactions. -and reading about how it's hard for you to care about the stories/works that you '[think you could] have some fun writing and not get overinvested in' I really agree with this and 'to the extent that I've failed with them, I think it's by compartmentalizing too much and cutting myself off from them while I was still trying to write them' I think this is a really hard thing for me to do as well, if I don't have that small piece of my soul (or at least a creative smidgen of interest) in my work, it's a sure way to the story graveyard. :) -but also at the same time it's hard to have that piece of soul in there and not care too much when someone rips it to shreds. Kind of a catch 22-
This is the most thought-provoking conversation, OMG.
Date: 2013-07-06 10:13 am (UTC)I mean, I hadn't even been thinking about beta readers or critiques on a work still in progress, because that's so far outside what I'm emotionally equipped to handle at this point in time. Like, I'd love it if someday I were able to work with someone else to figure out how on earth to make my stories go the way I'd like them to, because I think I might find that really helpful, but for now, about the most I can handle is saying, "Do you see any obvious typos? Does it remotely make sense? Are you overwhelmingly horrified by anything? Okay good, online it goes, thank you." And sometimes I skip that too, if I've hit my emotional limit and my choices are to post something potentially flawed or to post nothing at all.
So I've got this, you know, vast emotional vulnerability, which I try to deal with in different ways. But for me, thinking about my hypothetical/eventual audience and how to best to reach them isn't really optional, because -- and this is something I don't think I ever fully articulated until just now -- but to me personally, the point of polishing something into an Actual Official Story-Shaped Object is to share the ideas in it with other people. Which means two things: first, I won't go to that effort if the only person I'm trying to please is myself, because as much as I like the end result when I do put in the work, it's much better value for my time to jot it down in a much more relaxed sort of way, trusting myself to decipher my own shorthand and to accept my own digressions and foibles; and second, if I take everything I care about out of a story, and fill it only with things I think other people will like, there's no point in that either, because my entire goal is to share things I enjoy and care about with other people, and if I've thrown out the first half of that description, it doesn't matter how well I succeed at the second, because no amount of popularity will make the exercise anything but hollow.
And yeah, I think I just matched your wall of text. :) But I want to add that I really love your introducing the concept of patience (with yourself and others) here. It's so easy for me to go straight to fear when I'm thinking about people's reactions to my work, and even when I'm trying to convince myself that that's really unnecessary, that still leaves fear at the center of the conversation -- but thinking in terms of patience shifts the entire frame of the internal argument. Which might come very much in handy. So thank you!
Re: This is the most thought-provoking conversation, OMG.
Date: 2013-08-01 06:35 pm (UTC)And then, sometimes I just have to read it more than once (or twice, or three times) before I can come up with a good response. Sometimes I can just burst out with a response straightaway but other times I'm veeerry slow about absorbing information and responding to it in a meaningful/timely way. :)
So, in order to make this hopefully less of a wall-o-text I'll finish this comment and add a second comment to your response replying to the actual post.
Also, I'm sorry I haven't been around very much. I've spent most of the summer being a vegetable. :)
Re: This is the most thought-provoking conversation, OMG.
Date: 2013-08-03 09:50 am (UTC)Because, yeah, being slow to absorb and respond to information: ahaha, I know how that works. (See also, every time someone has turned to me right after we've watched something, and asked, "So, what did you think?" *flail* I don't know yet! Ask me again in half an hour, maybe? Or like... half a week? If you're looking for a fast turnaround?)
So yeah, no worries, okay. <3 You know better than me how to juggle your priorities to keep things running more or less the way they ought.
Re: This is the most thought-provoking conversation, OMG.
Date: 2013-08-01 06:58 pm (UTC)P2. Yeah, I'm working on a big_bang right now (which is intimidating all on its own) and I'm 'required' to have a beta and "Do you see any obvious typos? Does it remotely make sense? Are you overwhelmingly horrified by anything? Okay good, online it goes, thank you." sounds about perfect. I often need help with tenses and grammar and sentence structure. (I like to think that a lot of what I write can be comprehended -and even liked- but can also have more correct forms of sentence structure. Sometimes I just like the way a sentence feels grammatically correct or not and sometimes I really don't and some restructuring has to be done. Mostly those tenses and tense-changes. Man, they get me every time.)
P3. That's really interesting! (To respond personally to this paragraph) I suppose that I might want to share some of my ideas with other people. (For me, most of the fun of writing IS coming up with a great/unique idea and sharing it in a good/unique way. So, yes.) but my first inclination was to say "y'know, first I write something according to my specifications and then I re-read and sometimes restructure according to how I think people will react."
It's almost a gut instinct for me (AFTER I've completed a story) to think of all the ways in which someone could interpret my work in a negative way (including myself) and I think sometimes by doing that, I kill something before it even happens. It's a constant in-progress adjustment of my view towards the world in that sorta "I don't give a fuck," sort of way and "You can like it or lump it." But first I guess... I have to accept the work MYSELF? Sometimes it's hard for ME to accept the things I write. So it's almost like a work of self-acceptance AND a 'facing the world defiantly' sort of thing. So yes, V.E.V. "Vast Emotional Vulnerability" is very much also a part of my life, darn it.
P4. A lot of the stuff I say in terms of self-realization and 'therapy talk' is what I've learned myself or absorbed in recent conversations with myself and others. I sometimes feel like a hypocrite when people tell me that something I said shifted their point of view in a good way, because I'm still struggling as well with the things that were 'inspiring' in the first place to other people/my friends.
But then I just have to think. It's a sharing of ideas (much like writing is) and I don't learn very well if I try to absorb something important on the first try. (see above comment *laughs*) I constantly need to reiterate and repeat the things that I've learned and found interesting or else it ceases to be relevant for me in some ways. :)
So yeah, there's my potential essay for the month! *laughs*
very belated reply, pt. 1
Date: 2013-08-22 09:25 am (UTC)...And sorry also that I am definitely not going to be able to fit my thoughts about the rest of your (awesome) comment into words tonight. Well, maybe there are a couple of points I can cover:
-Very agreed that there's a difference between liking to read or think about something and wanting to enact it in real life... as you'd think that anyone who had ever enjoyed a horror movie or a bloody thriller would be able to realize, but seemingly not.
-It can be so hard to pick a tense and stick to it.
-My response to the last part of your comment can perhaps best be summed up as follows: yes, yes, YES. I think it's so important and so true that we can help people by passing along ideas that we're still working on ourselves. Like, we don't have to be perfect and have everything under control to have encountered (or come up with) thoughts that could be of use to other people. And I think it's really cool that sometimes the people who can help us most are people who are actually having the same struggles that we are, and that sometimes, the assistance can be mutual.
And now I will slink off to bed.
Re: very belated reply, pt. 1
Date: 2013-08-29 02:55 am (UTC)On the other side of that however, is I'm writing a series of poems that I'm hoping (very very vaguely) to submit for the Yale Younger Poets Awards in 2014. (because there's no way I'm gonna write around 45-64 poems AND revise them all by October) I'm very very proud of them and I feel honestly like they're some of my strongest work(s) yet but that honest feeling also feels a little dangerous, because I might think that it's strong, but someone ELSE might think the exact opposite. But I'm having fun writing them (fun really means more 'religious, emotional, spiritual, experimental experience' but yeah.) so screw what anyone thinks. It's one of those nice projects where you can feel yourself improving as you go.
[in a weird segue(this has been a weird day anyway) I could see the last paragraph used somehow in social justice as well. *musing vaguely* it's like people looking down on a straight white dude standing up for gay black men because 'he doesn't know what it's like' and yeah, that is VERY true, but are you honestly shutting down an honest supporter (who happens to be in a majority standing) just because he's NOT a minority. For some strange reason my befuddled brain doesn't understand that right now. I can understand not appropriating the culture and experiences of a minority, but to forbid the majority from speaking out for the minority just because 'they don't know what it's like' seems to me like shooting yourself in the foot a little. Hmmm.]
Re: very belated reply, pt. 1
Date: 2013-08-31 10:47 am (UTC)And that is so cool about the poems you're working on! It matters so much to care about what you're working on -- at the same time that, yes, it's scary too -- and it sounds like this is a really good project for you. Yay!
I don't know if I see a whole lot of the social justice phenomenon you're describing, so I can't so much comment... I mean, I can imagine it coming from a frustrated/exhausted place, where it's jarring just to associate with people who could so easily harm instead of help, or maybe from allies who haven't really internalized the point of the whole exercise? Or I guess if you've got someone 'splaining when a signal boost would be more appropriate. But yeah, it's... The pessimism and perfectionism of anxiety and insecurity, I think, can make it extra hard to navigate questions of how good you have to be at a given thing to be allowed to give it your best try, and to sort through what other people have to say on the topic. Definitely, it's something I'm still working on.
very belated reply, pt. 2
Date: 2013-08-24 08:54 am (UTC)Not to make it sound like I used to have doubts but now I magically don't, because ahahaha, I have so many doubts. But like, I just spent a week feeling like a thing I wrote was maybe terrible, because past experience had told me it would get at least a little bit of attention and it kind of didn't, so I mean, I didn't spend the whole week brainstorming every possible thing that could have been wrong with that fic? Except that I also kind of did. And I think one of the major things keeping that week from being agony is the fact that I did, fundamentally, believe in what I'd written -- I could see flaws, and I could believe that there were flaws (maybe grave flaws) that I didn't see, but I did think that on some level, what I'd written was good. And when I think about times in my life when I didn't have that, I'm thinking about times of my life that were really, really hard.
But the other thought I have reading the third part of your comment is that I think we're talking about two different ways of caring about what people think. Because it's a completely different thing to decide that you care what someone thinks, than it is to care only because you can't make yourself stop caring. And of course the second kind of caring, where it doesn't flow from any of your values or desires, it's just something that's happening to you for no reason except that you can't shake the instinct that's telling you to -- THAT kind of caring makes total sense to want to be free of. Because if you find yourself in a place where other people's reactions are relevant to your goals, then it's good to be able to think about them and take them into account -- but if you never get to make those choices in the first place because your brain just starts screaming at you and won't shut up, that's anything but helpful. As I discover every time my mind goes so blank with anxiety that I can't even be sure if my sentences make sense anymore.
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2 WARNING: STRESS + MENTIONS OF INTENSE ANXIETY
Date: 2013-08-29 03:07 am (UTC)The thing that got me a little about this person's comment was they implied that I should go to my friends for help, to do a silly dance with my friend, to take my mind away from the anxiety (but -and which this blew my mind a little in a not-very-good-way to get away from dealing with my anxiety in an 'unhealthy' way with my Xanax. -which she obviously misunderstood because I only take that shit when I feel like I'm either going insane and/or want to die-) but the flaw in that statement is that I don't feel anxiety about 'friends' themselves, or that I even HAVE someone I can go to and not feel terribly self-conscious dancing in front of/with.
And then people (usually on Tumblr) tell me that; 'well if your friends make you that anxious maybe it's time to get new friends' and I'm all: IT'S ANXIETY-INDUCING TO HANG OUT WITH FRIENDS AND IT'S ANXIETY-INDUCING TO MAKE FRIENDS (way more so than hanging out with friends) SO WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO??? I think what she doesn't understand (like you might, maybe in a different way, but at least more than her presumably) that for me, the anxiety does not just 'go away', it's pretty much always there. I distract myself, read a book, I look up from the book *boop* anxiety, I read a stressful part of the book *boop* anxiety, a character I like is in trouble in a not-good-way (usually surrounding some kind of abuse) *boop* anxiety, someone argues in the background *boop* anxiety, someone laughs *boop* anxiety.
It's a neverending cycle and I am SICK OF IT. *snarls*
And then there I managed to get from talking about general anxiety as relating to sharing writing and instead talk about how anxiety and depression have combined into a super-form designed to make me miserable at certain unpredictable times.
I've also had some shit to deal with today that I think I'll write about in a fresh journal entry.
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2 WARNING: STRESS + MENTIONS OF INTENSE ANXIETY
Date: 2013-09-08 07:48 am (UTC)But yeah, I mean... it's sweet, in a way, when people who don't know what extreme anxiety is like try to help? But they have no idea what they're talking about, and sometimes their advice is about as useful as if they were saying, "Well, when I'm feeling nervous, what helps me is to fly up and hang out on the moon!" That must be nice for people with space helmets and rocket boots, but as for us... :(
The thing about getting help from friends, though... Sigh. I'm reminded of a really affecting short story I read once, that-- Well, the gist of it (which, warning, I found extremely invalidating) was that it might be really hard to let go of coping mechanisms that upset your loved ones, but that their love for you will be enough to get you through it. And some people found this story really touching and inspiring, but to me it was tremendously upsetting, because I was not capable of drawing that kind of comfort from the fact that people cared, or from anything they could offer out of that caring. That's just -- not the way it worked inside my head. At all.
So... sympathy.
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2
Date: 2013-08-29 03:21 am (UTC)Sometimes I have a pretty rare thing happen to me. Sometimes I feel content with what I've written. Yeah, I could see some improvements that could be made, yeah, maybe I'm disappointed I didn't get comments or whatev, but I put it out there. I wrote it, and I put it out there, and I was fine with it. It was something that didn't really need recognition. (for me, things start to get complicated when people DO start to recognize my work lol.)
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2
Date: 2013-09-08 06:27 am (UTC)(And about recognition -- ahaha, tell me about it.)
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2
Date: 2013-09-13 10:56 pm (UTC)Also for me it's hard to compliment someone... honestly? I have a hard time taking any kind of compliment from someone myself so often I don't believe that they will believe what I'm saying about their writing. (that it is good, and so on and so forth.) Which helps explain a little bit my hesitance in commenting/complimenting your poi ficlet. This is me doing it by the way: I really liked it, and your writing is very solid and fluid at the same time (both in good ways). :)
When I really love something (a book, a movie, a tv show etc.) it's very hard for me not to pick it to pieces. I still love it, but I still pick out flaws and ways it could have been better and I'm a writer myself (also a bit of an editor too...) so it's very hard not to see the possibilities inherent in every piece of art out there. (which sometimes gives me trouble in the fact that I like my own predictions for a show better than the actual result and allow myself to feel disappointed.) What I am slowly learning as an artist and as a human being (and I mean slow) is to simply let things be what they are (including myself in that statement) and enjoy them the way they are and accepting that some things cannot be changed.
And I could probably write five essays on what I've just written about so I'm gonna leave it there. (lol)
(PS. And this is a lot of me simply thinking out loud and about myself, so if there's anything somehow negative in this comment please don't attribute any negativity to you as I did not intend any negativity to either myself or you. Damn I'm wordy today... I'm getting back into university-brain. xD)
Re: very belated reply, pt. 2
Date: 2013-09-14 12:43 am (UTC)Interestingly, I seem to pick apart other people's writing mostly when they're someone I like or who reminds me of myself -- making it pretty obvious that in my case, what's happening is that I'm projecting my own insecurities. (You could say that second-guessing is my brain's tragic way of showing that it cares.) That's for when I have a hard time not focusing on the flaws disproportionately, though -- like you, I think I'm kind of always on the lookout for things that could be made better. It's just that most of the time, if I do notice something that to me seems like a flaw, I just shrug and keep going, assuming it's a story I enjoy. And actually, it's something I find really reassuring, that I do perceive flaws in stories -- and keep enjoying them anyway. It's nice to be reminded that a thing doesn't have to be perfect to have value.
Anyway, I really agree with your thought about putting ourselves in our commentary as well as our own writing. And aww, thank you for the compliment on mine! I think I'd totally just concluded that it hadn't been your cup of tea -- which would have been fine, but this is extra nice. <3
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Date: 2013-06-28 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-28 08:24 am (UTC)