D. Paul Harrison - Notes on the weirdest topic, myself
Hello
Hey all! I still haven’t been sharing these anywhere, so “all” is wrong. I’m just gonna turn on the twitter integration I made after I think one more update, since I do want to get back to publishing regularly.
Notes about myself
I have a Google Keep note called “Notes about myself” that I’ve been updating with things I recognize about myself, in some vague attempt at self-understanding.
I’ve been thinking recently about how it’s probably bad my reaction to the slightest level of stress is to completely lock down, communicatively, emotionally, and creatively, and how I haven’t arranged my life in a way that reduces any amount of stress.
However, I’ve also realized that I either need ALL structure or NO structure, and trying to be in the middle of this is extremely difficult. It’s kind of a demand problem - if I schedule just a couple things, even in regular working, I find myself sitting around and waiting for that one event, which may be days away, rather than taking that time to myself.
I think this has shown deeply that it was a bit of a mistake to reduce my regular day-job working schedule without keeping to a personal schedule of other things, though that is a solvable problem. I mean, I think. I find it extremely difficult to ever take time for myself, whether it’s for my own project, or just reducing my stress levels, in a way that is meaningful. This kind of self-scheduling for creative things, and this kind of structure, just bounces out of my brain.
Which is a little ironic, because I am extremely good at estimating times and arranging things for others, and if I have a job motivation to do so, I find it easy. It’s just when it applies to just me, outside of context (or at least, an abstract context), it becomes really difficult.
Especially during this pandemic era, which justified what my brain does anyway in terms of locking down, I find myself bereft, depressed, and stressed out. It is difficult to try to figure out what to do about it, besides changing some circumstances and trying, in this New Year, to apply everything I know about managing people to, you know, myself.
Anyway, if you read this, thanks for doing so. New fiction things coming soon, I think, I am going to start publishing drafts on this blog and sharing them to some degree. At least the ones I feel I don’t want to sell, as much. Which I hope will still be good? We’ll see.
It’s okay to not be okay
“It’s okay to not be okay” is something I tell myself a lot, but it isn’t particularly helpful. I think a corollary would be “If it’s okay to not be okay, you should be working to make it okay.” Sometimes these problems seem impossible, but if I can contribute in any small way to improvement, it may help. I guess we’ll see.
Goodbye
Yep, that was it. Later!