in the mirror hypnotized I’m haunted
Yesterday, I mentioned on Bluesky that I’d heard this guy suggest a way to break the doomscrolling Ouroboros we all seem to be stuck in right now: when the urge to resume doomscrolling hits (our brains asking for dopamine), make a choice to be creative instead. Satisfy the brain’s desire for dopamine by making something, instead of chasing that hit from the Internet. It takes a little bit of time, and requires mindfulness, but he says it worked for him.
So I’ve been doing that for a few days, and I have noticed a measurable decrease in my stress and agitation. Instead of looking at the news and hoping for The Headline, I’ve been writing down story ideas, working on this thing I needed to turn in at the end of last year, and playing around with the design of my website.1 And that’s been surprisingly fun and satisfying2! It’s amusing to me, how difficult it was to find a simple theme that just recreated what I was able to do in the Before Times, and I’m not 100% satisfied with it, but the sense memory associated with “tinkering with my blog” has taken me back to a time that wasn’t necessarily happier, or better, or anything like that — I remember how hard it was for me and my family in those day — but it does take me back to moments when I felt like I was making something that mattered3. There was so much fun to be had back then, when we all generally agreed that Nazis were bad and behaved accordingly.
While I was under the hood of my blog, I came across a rather large drafts folder, with a few dozen incomplete posts that I abandoned for one reason or another. One of them, which I posted yesterday, was actually a repost from earlier this year (I’d forgotten that I put the unpublished part of my post into a different post, and now I’ve created a timeloop paradox. Sorry about that), which some of you helpfully pointed out to me.
When I was looking at the unpublished stuff, I found things that were last edited 12 years ago, and almost every year, since. I saw a clear picture of who and where I was in my life then (not always great), and I understood why I didn’t post them. But there were some others that I thought were kinda nice, and I must have talked myself out of posting them for some reason.
I am going to be the person I needed then, and supportively tell my past self that it’s absolutely good enough, he’s good enough, and here is a lovely thing he wrote a long time ago:
Pushing myself through this heavy membrane that separates me from the rest of the world, feeling it stretch and stretch and refuse to break long after it should have.
Then, all of a sudden, it snaps and I’m through it and I’m breathing again and I can feel the air and the world.
And I’m not as tired. Or maybe I’m tired, but I’m tired like a person is tired, because just moving forward is like one of those dreams where you go as hard as you can just taking one step and then another and it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere.
I’m trying my best. I’m doing my best. I know it’s all I can do, and I tell people that when you do your best you should feel proud of yourself no matter what the result but motherfucker that’s hard to do when gravity feels stronger wherever I am than where I’m not.
So I make myself do stuff. I make myself get out and run, and I hurt my leg again and it’s so unfair and I cry and I feel stupid and I just want to give up but I’m not going to. I’m not going to let it win.
I walk a little bit and my leg starts to work that cramp out on its own and pretty soon I can run again. I can’t run as fast as I want to but at least I can run. It’s a bigger victory than it should be but it’s also very small. But it’s something and I need it so I take it.
I’m tired and I don’t want to go anywhere but I press against that goddamn membrane as hard as I can and I go to my friend’s house and I play games and I try real hard not to let them know how bad I feel because we should all just have fun.
And we have fun, and it feels good to be around my friends, and for a little while I forget to feel bad.
I get home and make myself write a story. It isn’t the story I want to write, but it’s a story that I need to write, and it helps me get out some stuff and I remember why I’m a writer.
Me from the past, that’s really sweet and I’m happy for you to embrace the part of you that is a capital-W Writer. I don’t know why you thought you shouldn’t post that — maybe you wanted to say more, or felt too vulnerable — but it’s enough, and so are you. I am standing on your shoulders, doing my best, just like you were. It gets better, buddy, and I need you to know that.
I love you.
- I think I’ve settled on Structure Lite, from Organic Themes. ↩︎
- In the old days, I had to make any changes to my blog by hand. I had to open up a text editor and do it all in html. I still haven’t wrapped my head around CSS, how styles are inherited, and how to use a stylesheet. I never learned how to use scripting or anything, because I would absolutely break things if I did. ↩︎
- I had no idea. ↩︎
Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
<3
Times now are why I garden, write, and do mosaics.
I thought yesterday’s salt and cooking post sounded awfully familiar…
🌮
Three cheers!
A cheer for Wil from the past, who got through it!
A cheer for Wil from the present, who shared it!
A cheer for Wil from the future, who has so many great experiences to have, and so many wonderful ideas to share!
Thanks for encouraging yourself and the rest of us with you. You are a spark of light in a rather dark world. Thanks.
Pingback: in the mirror hypnotized I’m haunted | M'chelsMusings
I found this phrase in a quilter’s blog years ago: Creation before Consumption. It got me into my studio first thing in the day, instead of trashing hours of my life also looking for The Headline (during its current regime and its previous one).
I’m loving these pearls from your Drafts folder!
Dear Wil:
As always, this is a wonderful post! I hope you realize what a wonderful person you are, married to another wonderful person, and with two wonderful sons. I really miss my random encounters with you on the JoCo Cruise because in addition to being a fan, I always felt that you treated me like a friend. I can’t handle the cruise anymore, but if you ever come up to an event in the Bay Area, I will do everything possible to come and see you! ❤️