#Weeknotes S04 E02: Cognitive Salubrity

READING
I’ve finished Eric Bogosian’s 100 MONOLOGUES. I’ve flipped back and forth between monologues, kind of like how your average Catholic flips around the Bible randomly, but I took the time to read these 100, cover to cover from start to finish. I took two things away from this experience:

  1. Some of these pieces go back 30 or 35 years, and it’s scary how some of the reactionary characters depicted must’ve somehow time-traveled forward to 2023.
  2. Reading 100 MONOLOGUES while concurrently reading THE COMPLETE GARY LUTZ might not have been good for my mental and emotional health. I mean, the collection includes a book titled, PARTIAL LIST OF PEOPLE TO BLEACH, so I’m sure you can imagine.

I’ve still got a ways to go before finishing Lutz’s stuff, while still picking away at Christine Schutt’s A DAY, A NIGHT, ANOTHER DAY, SUMMER. But I’ve got a huge to-read pile, so I’ve moved QUANTUM CRIMINALS: RAMBLERS, WILD CAMBLERS, AND OTHER SOLE SURVIVORS FROM THE SONGS OF STEELY DAN by Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay up the queue.

Even if you’re someone who’s inclined to shit on Steely Dan you might still enjoy the snark that’s so cleverly (and at some points, lovingly) laid down on Donald and Walter.

In the ’70s, Donald [Fagan] favors a preshow Valium and two immediately preshow tequila shots before taking the stage. But the Cuervo Gold and the fine anxiolytics can only go so far in terms of making the night a tolerable thing.

COGNITIVE SALUBRITY
This is the type of local history that always fascinated me. I’ve always said that the first time I visited this zone of “10 square miles surrounded by reality” almost two decades ago, I knew I’d found my place. Stuff like this is why…

The Witch on Horseback Institute for Cognitive Salubrity was a short-lived new age education center and performance space founded in Trumansburg, New York in the nineteen-seventies by former employees of the Moog synthesizer company. These forgotten recordings with disgraced Ithaca experimental psychologist Noving Jumand were discovered at a library sale in Ithaca, New York in the early 2020s, and have been restored from the original LPs by the musical entity known as Witch on Horseback, named in the Institute’s honor.

“AY, OH, WAY TO GO, OHIO”
My home state, much like a broken clock, can be right twice a day…

“Ohio voters reject Issue 1, scoring win for abortion-rights supporters ahead of November” from The Columbus Dispatch.

IN THE WILD
There’s this coffee shop at my (dying) local mall that’s been around for a few years. It’s all right. It’s small, it’s local. The food and drinks are decent and the folks who run it are nice. The furnishings came from the Borders that left the mall when it closed down. They gathered dust in the closed storefront for years, before being moved to a new space to be re-used.

I spent hours at the old Borders cafe doing a lot of writing. I’ve likely sat on every chair and at every table (including the couches you don’t see) at one point, so it’s kind of like visiting old friends and seeing if I can recreate the old writing magic we once had.

September Writing

Despite my best efforts, I have juuuust enough residual guilt and shame to feel the need to justify September’s writing performance. But I like to think my therapist would be proud of the progress this post represents. No self-flagellation here. Just facts.

https://twitter.com/DonP/status/1443593731886698499?s=20

Okay, so… ::deep breath::

  • Longest Chain in September: 1 days
  • Total August days: 5 days
  • Pieces out on submission: 1
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 180

As if I haven’t had enough of the stressors listed in the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory in my life, I got to stare down two top 20 items this past month, and getting past them took up a lot of mental, emotional, and creative energy. But after some interviewing, some stylin’ and profilin’, a dash of hurry-up-and-wait, and a lot of weighing of pros and cons, I’ll be leaving the place I’ve worked for 15 years and moving to another part of the organization. Somewhere I can use everything I learned helping to move my old unit to the next level, and do the same for another.

I actually interviewed for two jobs…and I was offered both. That was another major part of the stress I was under. I was so tempted by the offer I turned down. The prospect of what I’d be facing in the job I accepted scared me a little. Which is how I knew it was the better move–after days of wrestling with it, that is.

So as far as the writing, though? I did what I could do last month. Period. I’m not pleased with it, and that’s okay. I’ll simply move forward this month. But what I won’t do anymore is beat myself up over it. I’m over that shit.

August Writing

  • Longest Chain in August: 13 days
  • Total August days: 27 days
  • Pieces out on submission: 2
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 175

I will evangelize the use of data-driven decision-making because my gut tells me it’s the right thing to do.
C.L. Mah, “The Middle Manager’s Oath”

I need to look at my progress from the macro level because otherwise my brain only sees the holes on the days I don’t write . It only sees how August’s numbers are lower than July’s. It knows that there were days in August where only the bare minimum was done, especially since I log what I do in each X calendar entry.

I need more data before I can draw too, too many conclusions about my writing process. But some things are clear…

  • I’m writing more consistently over 2021 (and the last two months of 2020) than I ever have. Ever.
  • By my back of the envelope calculations, I’m writing an average of 5 days a week so far.
  • It helps that I can identify reasons for most of the gaps. I might not consider them all good reasons, but still.

I’m very curious to see what a year or two of this data will show. What sorts of patterns might reveal themselves. I feel I’m on the right track, though. At least, that’s what my gut tells me.

July Writing

  • Longest Chain in July: 21 days
  • Total July days: 28 days
  • Pieces submitted in July: 2
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 148

Looks like I was unequivocally back on my bullshit in July. Not bad for how overwhelmed I was feeling for a spell. And not just with returning to the office, but with a bunch of ideas for stories and projects that kept coming at me faster than I could write them down. Of course, in my heart of hearts I know a lot of it is no good, but you never know until you get it all down.

But I pulled it together. Finished and submitted a short story, and put out another piece for a reprint anthology. (Fingers crossed!) That was probably my key breakthrough for the month: getting back into the joy and the pain of the submissions process…

June Writing

  • Longest Chain in June: 5 days (twice!)
  • Total June writing days: 22
  • Total 2021 writing days: 120

Okay, better. Better than the past few months, anyway. And as far as a six-month writing run goes, it’s the best I’ve had in, I dunno, ever.

120 days. Call it four months out of the past six. In other words (::back of the envelope, counts fingers, carry the one…::)–that’s like 4 and a half-ish days a week, right? Not a bad start toward rebuilding my process to be something more sustainable.

May Writing

  • Longest Chain in May: 7 days
  • Total May days: 17 days
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 98

I said May wouldn’t be better than April, but I guess it wasn’t much worse. It’s okay, though. I have the programming I caught from Balticon 55 to thank for getting me back on the writing horse this time. Can’t help but pull the writing stuff out when you’re around other writers, even virtually. And even though it was mostly writing to keep my fingers moving, I need to remember that it’s the sort of thing that got me back on the horse last November for a good few months.

Forgive the markup of the March/May days. I thought it’d look misleading otherwise.

April Writing

  • Longest Chain in April: 8 days
  • Total April days: 17 days
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 81

Time flies when you’re down in the dumps! Almost forgot to put this up.

It’s been a little harder to get back in the saddle than I anticipated it would. Illness didn’t help–got knocked out for a few days there. I got the flu shots and two COVID vaccinations, but being inside for the better part of a year, who knows what my immune system is no longer prepared for. And, it’s crunch time at the dayjob. Anyway, I can’t blame it all on those things. Best to focus on what I managed to get done.

I did better than March, but not by much. May will not be better. That’s okay though. Well, not really, but I’m letting it be okay because if nothing else, I’ve collected more data points that I’m hoping will prove or disprove some theories I have about the natural rhythm of my writing process. That is, when it’s unencumbered by the usual self-flagellation. Coming up with some interesting things, though.

But man, I can’t wait to see if this actually leads me to finish shit.

March Writing

  • Longest Chain in March: 10 days
  • Total 2021 Writing days: 64

Not a great month. But, 64 writing days since January is better than my usual track record. When you throw in last November and December, it’s the best 5 months of writing I’ve had in years! Anyway, like I said in my last Weeknotes, the haze is lifting, I think.

I’ve been through this before. I hit some kind of bump and I find myself with almost zero capacity for any kind of creative work. It usually stems from a combination of depression, anxiety, and general exhaustion. I try to fight it for a bit, of course. Push through on willpower. But eventually everything creative stops and I feel like a general loser for a month or four until the haze lifts or something pulls me out of it.

Except this time. I did a few things differently.

First, I didn’t fight it. I let the slump happen.

Second, I actually watched the slump take its course. This was a risky move. I mean, what if it was another week/month/six-months/eight months until I could write again? Well, I gambled against having racked up 5 months of the most productive writing I’ve had in years. As well as, you know, all the other times I got back on the horse and had a productive period whether it lasted a week, a month, whatever. I decided that the worst likely outcome was that one day in the future, I start up again.

Third, and most importantly, I actively fought my natural tendency to berate myself for falling off the horse. And let me tell you, it was not fucking easy. But if there’s one thing I can point to that made the difference between the past three weeks and every other time I felt blocked, this is it.

And so after three weeks with only 2 writing days, I seem to be back in the saddle as of this past Sunday. We’ll see how long this lasts. We’ll make some notes, and we’ll see what happens.

Until then, I’m…

#Weeknotes S03 E11

This one’s mostly about the writing process today. And I’ve got Sunday sauce on the stove so this’ll be quick.

THE CHAIN
Okay, the streak was broken this week. It’s all good!

  • This week’s writing chain: 4 days
  • Total days in March: 11
  • Longest chain in 2021: 33 days
  • Total days in 2021: 62 days

Remember how I kinda forced things last week, but as a way to experiment to see what happens? Well, now I have an idea. Sure, I kept up the momentum the day after, but only to find myself inexplicably in bed for 4 extra hours the next day. Coincidence? Maybe. I tried to grit my teeth and push through for two more days. But the two days after that, I noped out of it all like I should’ve done in the first place.

I spent a lot of that off time dumping stuff into ye olde writer’s notebook and zoning out to music. It’s actually two of the ways I recharge my artistic batteries but here’s the thing–I’ve never purposely paused to do that. Here’s what usually happens, in order:

  1. Pause writing for one reason or another. Could be simple exhaustion, depression, life circumstances, abject laziness, etc.–it’s all happened at one time or another.
  2. Beat myself up from anywhere between, oh I dunno, three days and six months.
  3. Zone out to music or some reading, dump my brain into a notebook, and maybe get the gumption up to start writing again.

Thanks to years of therapy and medication, I’ve been working to notice these things ahead of time. Last week, it paid off and I was able to bypass Step 2!

LISTENING
I picked up Lake Street Dive’s new album OBVIOUSLY. I’ll write up more about it later, but suffice it to say I caught a couple of nice AOR/Yacht Rock-y grooves. I tweeted about them too, which kinda started me on a path I don’t want to go down.

I mean, it might’ve been a little bit overboard to then proceed to livetweet my most recent listen my most of the latest Bill Champlin album LIVIN’ FOR LOVE. It wasn’t every track, so I’ll jot down my review later.

Now that I think about it, I’m torn about livetweeting albums listens….

IN THE WILD
I could interpret Mazikeen draping herself across my keyboard as her way of reinforcing my need for self-care, but I get the feeling that it’s not entirely about me.

#Weeknotes S03 E10

Finally made time to visit the chiropractor for the first time in 8 months. My neck and back begged me for it and I haven’t been paying attention to be honest. I do okay working from home as ergonomically as possible but I just don’t have the Aeron Chair/adjustable desk setup that I have in the office which I haven’t been in for a year now(??) and that takes an inevitable toll. Let me tell you, I needed the visit badly judging by the sick cracks that came out of my neck. I wish I had a mic handy; I could’ve recorded the cracks and licensed them out as sound FX. The adjustments really rang my bell, too.

I mention this to point out how it’s finally getting through my thick skull that self-care really has to be a conscious process. More than just preventive care or care that addresses a specific or acute problem. It’s a bit of a juggling act, like it was when it came to last week’s writing…

THE CHAIN

  • This week’s writing chain: 7 days
  • Total days in March: 6
  • Longest chain in 2021: 29 days (Another record!)
  • Total days in 2021: 57 days

I might have been more inclined to cut myself some slack last Friday if I hadn’t been posting my monthly writing progress the Monday before. In fact, if three months of data indicates that roughly every 4 weeks, you have a day when you’re just not feeling it, then maybe you should run with it.

Thing is, I’m more worried about shooting for a month of consecutive writing days. But that’s how the whole “writing chain” concept is supposed to work. It’s kind of insidious by nature. Still, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a little experimentation.


READING
Random things from the transom…

WATCHING
I neglected to mention last time that I binged BURIED BY THE BERNARDS. It’s similar to THE CASKETEERS which I adore and was the reason I checked out the Bernards in the first place. BURIED is definitely its own thing but the heart of the two shows is the essentially the same–the vagaries of a family-owned funeral business.

IN THE WILD
Don’t be fooled by sleeping pictures of Asher Mir lately! The only time I can capture him is in between attacks of the Zoomies!

He plays hard. He attac hard. He eats treats hard. He sleeps hard.

He’s a role model!