021: One Cubic Foot of Snow is Two to Three Gallons of Dirty Water
Normally these things are very structured, but I've decided to, as you've guessed, do something a little different today, which is just sort of writing off the top of my head. If it's bad, as Kurt Cobain once said, these people are just gonna have to wait.
The last couple weeks have actually been fairly eventful, but purely in a personal way. My sister-in-law got married in a beautiful ceremony to her partner of several years. The dinner was excellent and the reception was amazing and I took the best selfie (well, the spouse was in it, so it was an us-ie) I have ever taken. I actually ended up there a day later than my spouse and the wedding party because the kiddo opened their school play the same weekend, so we had to stick around town an extra 16 hours or so. Luckily the wedding was within a short driving distance outside of the Chicago metro.
Said play closed last night, and I managed to catch a matinee performance yesterday, and it was great. And by great I don't just mean "pretty good for a high school play" but genuinely great. The theater program at kiddo's school is pretty astonishing: somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 kids work on each production, and only one adult is on the show full time--the director. Everything else is student-led. The lighting, the sound, the set design, props and costume manufacture, all of it. Between the fairly inspired choice of play and the overall work by the kids, it was just a lovely experience. One of the reasons we moved to Chicago was to provide opportunity for the kiddo, and I think that's really paying dividends now.
Another development of this past couple weeks, and specifically the last couple days, has included the abrupt turn from fall to winter. Halloween was indeed nice, and then it actually got warmer for a bit, up into the 70F range, but then quite suddenly it has dropped into the 30s. We got a tiny bit of snow last night, which is both incredible (basically everyone around us from Fargo to Indianapolis has had an appreciable amount if not a full-blown blizzard) and sad (man, I really hate the first snow of the year because it's just pathetic in its vigor; little pizzly pellets that would have been more impressive as rain.) Regardless, part of what prompted today's change to this format is the sun streaming through the window in the sunroom. I decided to finally use it, and the Bluetooth keyboard I bought months ago for my tablet, to sit in the sun, among the trees that surround the room, and write as I had intended this room to be used when we moved in this past April. The windows are open just a bit, being on the third floor and having the radiators on, to get some breeze moving through, and the rustling of the remaining leaves is quite calming. If I were a more regular, prolific writer, even a journaler, I could see this as being a nice spot for doing that. Indeed, that was the purpose. Unfortunately, most of my generative writing is in scraps on my phone's note app.
Which seems like a good enough segue into the work portion of this nugget. I am making slow progress on THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which is to say I think I add a new section every few days. I have finally begun reading one of the intended influences on said work, Jack/Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure, and I'm hoping this winter I finally get around to absorbing much of the other work that is going into this as well. Some of it is stuff I've seen or read already, but much of it is also the things that influence those things: Ghost in the Shell, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, even more Philip K. Dick, that sort of thing. I have a list somewhere that I only ever seem to keep adding to.
Confession time: I am actually writing this in order to put off working on the next episode of the podcast. (Thanks to anyone that's been listening so far; despite the impression I'm giving here, I really do love working on it.) In fact, a lot of my work is done in order to avoid other work. It is, somewhat ironically, the only thing that keeps me moving some days, this desire to not do something I'm actually intending to do.
And they said I don't have ADHD.
Anyway, the actual actual purpose of this whole newsletter project is to promote the work I'm doing, which is typically PART FOUR of the normal format, PROMOTION. Instead of all the specific links and everything, I'll just give you the main linktree, and if you'd like to make with the clicking from there, you're more than welcome. I appreciate it a lot. (Ha ha, quirk of the tablet, the ol' link doesn't seem to want to link, so here it is: https://linktr.ee/rickiep00h Lord knows what's going on there). I am, incidentally, about to post on the Patreon as well, so if you'd like to see that, for as little as a dollar a month, you can.
Anyway. I should maybe move on as far as "productivity" is concerned. Get that Patreon thing up. Maybe eat some breakfast. Start editing the podcast. I don't know. Between the time change, the temperature change, and the general shortness of the day, it's been very difficult to do anything but switch into hibernation mode, sleeping all day and eating entirely too much and generally trying to create a den in which I can disappear. Today is, in fact, the earliest I've been up all week, and most of the time my "productive" time is mornings. Not in the "waking up at the crack of dawn and watching the world wake up while calmly prattling away into the magic electron box" so much as "waking up because the cats demand tribute and then several hours later actually getting work done." Basically, the earlier I get up, the more time I have in the day to avoid doing things and/or the more moments I have in which to capture the actual elusive part of motivation. I don't remember who said it (nor when), but it's that idea of some percentage of success being showing up. Showing up is in and of itself setting yourself up for success. For me, showing up is acknowledging the tendency for me to be my own biggest barrier. The siege against my own unambition.
So I don't know if I have any actual advice or anything particularly sage to say today, but I do have commiseration for you. The autumn struggle is real. I hope you get through it. I hope I get through it.
(If you like this weirdly bleak/hopeful note, please share it with your friends. If you're a friend receiving this from someone, I'd love for you to check out the web archive of this whole shebang, and if you like it, please consider subscribing. I update it hilariously irregularly, it has a totally different format from this particular instance, but I still somehow enjoy doing this and people tell me they enjoy reading it, so maybe you'd like to read 'em, too.)
The last couple weeks have actually been fairly eventful, but purely in a personal way. My sister-in-law got married in a beautiful ceremony to her partner of several years. The dinner was excellent and the reception was amazing and I took the best selfie (well, the spouse was in it, so it was an us-ie) I have ever taken. I actually ended up there a day later than my spouse and the wedding party because the kiddo opened their school play the same weekend, so we had to stick around town an extra 16 hours or so. Luckily the wedding was within a short driving distance outside of the Chicago metro.
Said play closed last night, and I managed to catch a matinee performance yesterday, and it was great. And by great I don't just mean "pretty good for a high school play" but genuinely great. The theater program at kiddo's school is pretty astonishing: somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 kids work on each production, and only one adult is on the show full time--the director. Everything else is student-led. The lighting, the sound, the set design, props and costume manufacture, all of it. Between the fairly inspired choice of play and the overall work by the kids, it was just a lovely experience. One of the reasons we moved to Chicago was to provide opportunity for the kiddo, and I think that's really paying dividends now.
Another development of this past couple weeks, and specifically the last couple days, has included the abrupt turn from fall to winter. Halloween was indeed nice, and then it actually got warmer for a bit, up into the 70F range, but then quite suddenly it has dropped into the 30s. We got a tiny bit of snow last night, which is both incredible (basically everyone around us from Fargo to Indianapolis has had an appreciable amount if not a full-blown blizzard) and sad (man, I really hate the first snow of the year because it's just pathetic in its vigor; little pizzly pellets that would have been more impressive as rain.) Regardless, part of what prompted today's change to this format is the sun streaming through the window in the sunroom. I decided to finally use it, and the Bluetooth keyboard I bought months ago for my tablet, to sit in the sun, among the trees that surround the room, and write as I had intended this room to be used when we moved in this past April. The windows are open just a bit, being on the third floor and having the radiators on, to get some breeze moving through, and the rustling of the remaining leaves is quite calming. If I were a more regular, prolific writer, even a journaler, I could see this as being a nice spot for doing that. Indeed, that was the purpose. Unfortunately, most of my generative writing is in scraps on my phone's note app.
Which seems like a good enough segue into the work portion of this nugget. I am making slow progress on THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which is to say I think I add a new section every few days. I have finally begun reading one of the intended influences on said work, Jack/Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure, and I'm hoping this winter I finally get around to absorbing much of the other work that is going into this as well. Some of it is stuff I've seen or read already, but much of it is also the things that influence those things: Ghost in the Shell, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, even more Philip K. Dick, that sort of thing. I have a list somewhere that I only ever seem to keep adding to.
Confession time: I am actually writing this in order to put off working on the next episode of the podcast. (Thanks to anyone that's been listening so far; despite the impression I'm giving here, I really do love working on it.) In fact, a lot of my work is done in order to avoid other work. It is, somewhat ironically, the only thing that keeps me moving some days, this desire to not do something I'm actually intending to do.
And they said I don't have ADHD.
Anyway, the actual actual purpose of this whole newsletter project is to promote the work I'm doing, which is typically PART FOUR of the normal format, PROMOTION. Instead of all the specific links and everything, I'll just give you the main linktree, and if you'd like to make with the clicking from there, you're more than welcome. I appreciate it a lot. (Ha ha, quirk of the tablet, the ol' link doesn't seem to want to link, so here it is: https://linktr.ee/rickiep00h Lord knows what's going on there). I am, incidentally, about to post on the Patreon as well, so if you'd like to see that, for as little as a dollar a month, you can.
Anyway. I should maybe move on as far as "productivity" is concerned. Get that Patreon thing up. Maybe eat some breakfast. Start editing the podcast. I don't know. Between the time change, the temperature change, and the general shortness of the day, it's been very difficult to do anything but switch into hibernation mode, sleeping all day and eating entirely too much and generally trying to create a den in which I can disappear. Today is, in fact, the earliest I've been up all week, and most of the time my "productive" time is mornings. Not in the "waking up at the crack of dawn and watching the world wake up while calmly prattling away into the magic electron box" so much as "waking up because the cats demand tribute and then several hours later actually getting work done." Basically, the earlier I get up, the more time I have in the day to avoid doing things and/or the more moments I have in which to capture the actual elusive part of motivation. I don't remember who said it (nor when), but it's that idea of some percentage of success being showing up. Showing up is in and of itself setting yourself up for success. For me, showing up is acknowledging the tendency for me to be my own biggest barrier. The siege against my own unambition.
So I don't know if I have any actual advice or anything particularly sage to say today, but I do have commiseration for you. The autumn struggle is real. I hope you get through it. I hope I get through it.
(If you like this weirdly bleak/hopeful note, please share it with your friends. If you're a friend receiving this from someone, I'd love for you to check out the web archive of this whole shebang, and if you like it, please consider subscribing. I update it hilariously irregularly, it has a totally different format from this particular instance, but I still somehow enjoy doing this and people tell me they enjoy reading it, so maybe you'd like to read 'em, too.)
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