Emotional Downsizing

Welcome Nika Harper to WWdN! She’s sharing this guest-post-story-thing with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Check out other stories and writing at nikaharper.tumblr.com and various reading/gaming on YouTube. Her penchant for unusual cocktails is the genuine best.

The first thing to go is the easy stuff; the junk that you needed to clean anyway.
Boxes, trash, procrastinated piles of rubble left behind from a trip to the electronics store or a night in with pizza. Normal things that should be cleaned, are broken or useless but nonetheless make up a small percentage of your life. Yes, you feel strong, but relief is fleeting. As soon as it’s gone, it’s forgotten.
You won’t notice the missing burden, the assumption is it was never there.

The second thing is organization, and it comes at a cost.
Plotting every step of your routine, shuffling and sorting the necessities from the unique items, crafting mental boxes like “fun” or “useful” or “special.” Applying sortable tags that make the culling easier. Categorize, agonize, simplify, look with the eyes of a stranger.
“Good for me.”
“Reliable.”
“Exhausting.”
“Better in memory.”

The third thing is utility, and it requires diligence.
You can survive with nothing, sustain with little, thrive with ample, drown with excess. Those labeled boxes drip and overflow as you toss them, one by one by one, closing your eyes and trusting instinct.
Pretend there isn’t room. Pretend you already don’t have it. Look away, throw away, push harder, squeeze tighter.

The fourth thing is sentimentality. It hurts.
Everything disappears, someday. This time you make the choice.
Take pictures. Hold it close. Store it in your memory. Let it go.

The fifth thing, and the last one, is everything you’ve forgotten.
Overlooked comforts. What made your life your own. What separated hotel from home. Everything you took for granted, reached for, and had nothing but air to grasp. The feeling of loss.
Yet, it’s over. The repair, the replacement, they begin along the way. It’s exhilarating to live on bare minimum. Only what you need. A restart. The elation of being lean and agile. The first step in a clean new life. The ability to build up what is needed, nothing more.

Then the second step is doubt…

Step Away

Welcome Shane Nickerson back to WWdN! He’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. He’s the genuine best.

I think it’s possible that we’re all tired. Tired of hearing from everyone about everything. Tired of keeping track of every friend we’ve ever known on Facebook. Tired of the incessant swirl of opinions from the loudest and most abrasive. Tired of a life plugged into a buzzing hive mind. It’s tiring. It’s exhausting, actually. It’s changed us.

I unplugged my blog this year. 900 entries all about me. I could no longer justify a need to share everything with everyone, and could no longer justify making friends, family, and random people I crossed paths with into content. I wrote to be heard. I wrote for the attention and validation. I wrote because I’m pretty sure I overestimated the need for my voice in the global discussion about every single thing. I like to believe it’s that, and not the possibility that I’ve simply lost the interest and resolve to open myself up to scrutiny. Why bother?

I recognize the irony of posting this on a global forum.

I haven’t missed the feeling of writing something and then waiting for approval, followed by slight disapproval, followed by all the things I’m wrong about, followed by personal attacks. I’ve all but given up on Twitter. Facebook is like an old smoking habit I just can’t seem to kick. “CAUTION: FACEBOOK HAS BEEN PROVEN TO CAUSE FRUSTRATION AND ANGER AT PEOPLE YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT IN YOUR PAST.” Snapchat is on my phone, but all of it seems to be advancing us to the next lonely stage of wireless interconnection. I don’t know what we’re doing.

This contact…this impersonal contact filled with good-natured barbs and thumbs ups and “sorry for your loss” and “my dog had the same thing :(” and grief that sounds uncannily like self promotion and silly pictures and omg please read this, and you won’t believe what happens next!…this contact is not enough. It’s methadone for a deeper loneliness; a lifelike mannequin for an actual person. And still we reach out from the darkness to the light of a small screen. Favorite. Like. Thumbs Up. Whoa! Too far. You didn’t know him. My opinions matter the most. Hear me. I’m right. You’re wrong. Let’s take someone down. Repeat.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Stepping away from it all seems a logical choice, although unlikely. I wonder if the novelty of instant connection to everything is wearing off, or if it’s just worn me out.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter at all.

I Like Bacon

Welcome r stevens to WWdN! He’s sharing this guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Check out his podcast with Danielle Corsetto (Coffee & Cider), his merch, and also Diesel Sweeties. He is the genuine bacon-making best.

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Unlike Sir Mix-a-Lot, I could in fact lie about my feelings with regard to big butts; but there is no way in space I could lie about how much I love Wil’s pets. I aspire to some day pet them all!

Finding The Bear That Helps You Make Things

Welcome Angela Webber of The Doubleclicks to WWdN! She’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. You can get her band’s latest album, “President Snakes” on Bandcamp, listen to her comedy/RPG podcast, “Gosh Darn Fiasco,” watch her web series about cats, or follow her on Twitter and Tumblr. She is trying very, very hard to be the genuine best.

Hello everyone! As that introduction says, my name is Angela and I am a self-employed creative person. I’m in a band, I write things, I tell jokes, and I generally try to make things as much as possible. This is really really cool. But also: it’s sort of terrible. Like many creative types, I live with depression and I’m pretty bad at being self-motivated, I’m full up with imposter syndrome and I have enough negative self-talk to sink a Bucklebury Ferry (or larger water-traveling vessel, that was just the first one I thought of). But I do it—I make things all the time, and it’s my job, and I’m actually a pretty happy person these days. I’d like to share with you some of the ways I’ve found to make myself happy in a motivational post I’d like to call:

FINDING THE BEAR THAT HELPS YOU MAKE THINGS: Using negativity for positive ends

Oh god, a bear! — See? How can you be afraid of this guy? He’s so cute!

It is so easy to hang on to the negative things in life. I, just for a quick example, remember negative online comments much, much longer than positive ones. Logically, I know this is ridiculous. People who hate my stuff don’t matter, and people who like me and my art are really the ones that should care about. I tweeted something about this once, about how I wish I could remember the positive things more than the negative ones, and my friend Michael gave me some really great insight. It’s a survival instinct to watch out for the bad things more than the good ones. If you live in a forest with a scary bear and a bunch of delicious berries, you need to keep that scary bear on your mind all the time. You need to hide your food and yourself, you need to avoid the bear’s territory—and no matter how delicious those berries are, that bear is going to be bigger in your mind. This applies to internet comments, to drama, and to rejections of all kinds.

So what do we do with this, when we’re supposed to be all self-motivated and CREATIVE? How do we keep our energy up and ourselves happy? Well, I take negativity and I embrace it. If these negative thoughts, these scary bears, are the ones that are going to stick in my mind anyway, I might as well find the bears that help me. Here are some thoughts that keep me going.

Continue reading… →

Jenn & Trin Do Friendship at the Problems

Welcome Jenn & Trin to WWdN! They kindly answered some questions written by Will Hindmarch, made up just to share with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Their friendship is the genuine best.

Jenn & Trin are the community & event directors behind Cards Against Humanity. They co-host a podcast called Friendshipping, a weekly discussion about friendship and mental health. Every week they answer audience questions, like “How do I stop feeling jealous of successful friends?” or “What if I have a crush on my BFF?” or “Should I ask my friend why she unfollowed me on Twitter?”

Will Hindmarch caught up with them via some of the communications technologies that are so popular right now and asked them a few questions about podcasting and friendships and windjammers…

Q: If you were to describe your podcast to someone who is not a friend of yours, perhaps someone sitting next to you on an airplane, how would you describe it — and where would each of you be likely to help move the conversation thereafter?

Trin: I recently spoke with a woman who told me that she goes on annual cruises with her friends of 30, maybe 40 years. I told her that her story was especially interesting to me because I care so much and so deeply about friendship that I record myself and my good friend Jenn talking about it every week, and we put it on the Internet. That’s the crux of it for me – we just truly give a shit. If I were trying to get someone to listen to the podcast, I guess I’d tell them that it’s two women giggling and complimenting each other for 20 minutes, and they eventually give people advice on being a more empathetic person and better friend.

Jenn: Friendshipping is what I needed when I was younger. I wasn’t a particularly good friend, and I thought I was doomed to feel that way. But that’s not true! No one is doomed. It turns out, friendship is actually a skill and you can improve at it. No one’s a perfect friend, but you can improve. So our podcast is for anyone who wants to make new friends, or strengthen their current relationships. Plus, it’s an excuse for me to hang out and talk with Trin for an hour on Monday mornings. We have to cut out about 40 minutes of our giggling. Trin literally makes me cry of laughter before I’ve even had coffee. Best way to start the week.

Q: What’s the secret origin of Friendshipping and/or its theme song?

Trin: We asked our friend Molly Lewis to write a song that could be anything as long as it was very short and included “Do friendship at the problem.” We trusted her entirely and we were not disappointed!

Jenn: Molly is a genius.

Q: What’s the bold future of Friendshipping as/or beyond a podcast?

Trin: We’ve long considered branching out into other projects! Right now we hold friendship advice panels at the PAX conventions called Making Friends in Geek Spaces. Our 50th episode is going to drop in a few weeks, so we’re old pros at this stuff. Now’s the time to experiment.