(no subject)

[alexandraerin]

So, I haven't been doing a good job of following the doctor's advice or my own on the subject of productive uses of time and energy.

I also can't find my PDA, and I just realized today that I also can't find (and haven't been taking) my sleep aids that seem to have a beneficial effect on my moods. Those are easy enough to replace now that I know they're missing, but I think it's part of the big picture... and the big picture is that despite the not entirely negative news about my health, I've been finding myself in a funk.

The worst part of this is experiencing writer's block, which is not something that generally afflicts me. I can find myself written into a corner that requires some creative maneuvering, I can find myself distracted from writing... being able to sit down and stare at the screen and not being able to write... that's new. That's different and weird and frightening.

I think it's over.

The last time I noticed my age it was to make the note that I'd turned 29 and had already surpassed my goals for 30. I still didn't feel 29. I'm sure I'm not the only person at the deep end of their 20s who still catches herself thinking of herself essentially as a child. Having a doctor talk to me about my heart and my blood pressure was... I don't think I've fully processed that yet.

And yet I've got so much going on that I shouldn't be letting it get me down, much less stopping me from doing what I want to do. I had my first online D&D game night this week and it went wonderfully. I thought that would be enough to shake me out of things. It was, but not for very long. I think if I stick with it, it'll be good for me. D&D is my non-writing outlet (though there's a lot of overlap), and for the past year or so since 4E came out, I've kind of been experiencing it in bursts of 4-10 days every few months. A few hours every week seems like a more balanced approach than that.

Meh. Enough mopey-mope. It's Friday. I've hardly written anything this week if you don't count non-fiction (angry screeds and gaming stuff), but I'll have something special for everyone to read tomorrow (something I started writing to break my block, then switched to Tales of MU once I was rolling) and next week is a new week.

...

Hey, things are looking up. I found my PDA.

Comments

You're trying hard...

[rhakash.livejournal.com]

You're trying very hard to kill yourself, aren't you? I'm talking about the ongoing, very circular discussion with amber_indikaze regarding your latest DnD-post. It's obvious the discussion isn't progressing, it's obvious you get steamed up about it, and it's obvious as well that such a discussion is the last thing you need. My suggestion is to resolve it quickly, and be done with it. Indulge in something you like instead.

Re: You're trying hard...

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm writing a story with all my D&D characters in it instead.

(Except for Iskondra, because she's already in 3 Seas.)

[point5b.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I'm not the only person at the deep end of their 20s who still catches herself thinking of herself essentially as a child.

Heh - I'm well into my 30s and still doing that. Best wishes on everything else.

[mpilnick.livejournal.com]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lease.png

33 on the Ides of September, feel like this ALL THE TIME

[ego-sideways.livejournal.com]

Ah, now you've felt writer's block. Thankfully, you were able to get over it quickly, but at least now you know how it feels.

Now maybe you'll stop giving me that look.

. . .

Okay, maybe not. A boy can dream.

[zergonapal.livejournal.com]

AE you have done such great work, for the love of god if you get another writers block just push the keyboard away and come back to it later.
I'd hate to log on one day only to see "...and so Mack missed her show at the S&M club and became Mercy's bitch. The end."
That would really crush me.
Incidently I'm 31 and I still don't think of myself as an adult. Not a child but not really "grown-up" I guess its because I still like childish things as the saying goes.

[sage-blackthorn.livejournal.com]

I just got home from working the Big Bear Renaissance Faire and read this entry. I felt the need to respond, considering what I'm currently doing for a living (or non-living since business is down and I haven't gotten a regular paycheck in some time.)

I'm 34 years old, I'll be 35 in September. Not once in all my years past 18 have I felt like an adult. People have said how mature they think I am, how when I was still 14 I acted like more of an adult than many of my High School teachers. But I've never once considered myself "grown up" or felt any different than I did as a small child.

I read somewhere that this is because our culture A)Has no formal rites of passage, and B) because it has extended childhood, socially anyway, years past when a person is "biologically" an adult so there is a profound sort of disconnect between our minds and our bodies. The reason I don't feel any different compared to when I was 18 (or even 13 or 14 for that matter) is because I'm not. Biologically, I was a physical adult after going through puberty. But the society I was born into failed to mark that, failed to teach me what was expected of me as an adult at that time. In fact it still hasn't, and I'm still not sure what it means to be "an adult".

I think Daniel Quinn said it best in "The Tales of Adam". It is a story full of parables that he could not fit into his other works, but that he still felt were worth telling. In it, he sets the biblical Adam up as a primitive hunter/gatherer, teaching his son Abel the things he will need to live the hunter/gather life. By the end of the book, Abel is nearing the end of his childhood, and his father takes him aside to explain a few things about being a Man:

"A man cannot learn to be a hunter before he becomes a hunter. Hunting simply cannot be learned in advance of hunting. It's the same with becoming an adult. A child can no more learn to be an adult before he's an adult than a man can learn to be a hunter before he hunts. This is why everything is permitted to you today, because you're still a child. But tomorrow, when you're a man, the things permitted to you as a child will be permitted to you no longer. If today you smash your spear against a rock in a fit of temper, I will laugh and make you a new one, because you are a child. But if you do the same tomorrow you'll make a new spear yourself or go hungry, because tomorrow you'll be a man, even as I am, and must begin to be responsible for your life.

"This is the meaning of rites of iniation into adulthood: not that you have learned to be an adult, but that you must begin to learn. The day after initiation, your thought will be the same as those of the day before, but you will nevertheless be accorded the rights of an adult and be expected to fullfill the obligations of an adult. And you will learn to cope with both n the same way you learned to be a hunter: by beginning."

Perhaps the reason none of us in this culture feel like adults is simply because when we became Adults, physically, no one thought to notice and mark the occassion with a ceremony that let us know, in no uncertain terms "Today you become an adult, and must beginning learning what that means".