Strange self-awareness

I've been having these really bizarre moments of self-awareness lately. And it's not pleasant self-awareness. It's the sort of thing where you realize that you exist and everything you're doing and have done have happened to an actual person and that person is you and everything gets existential for a bit and you can't quite get over it for a while.

The first incident was on Tuesday. It was night, and I was at my grandparents' house like I usually am on Tuesday nights. My grandparents were asleep, and I went to the bathroom and noticed myself in the mirror. Maybe it's because they have a lot of mirrors in their bathrooms so I saw myself reflected more times there than I'd see myself reflected in most bathrooms, but I saw myself in the mirror and thought, "This is me. This is the body I pilot. I am looking at a human's body, and it is my own. It is the one associated with me. This is me. I see actually me in the mirror." And it was one of those moments and I had to leave the room and just sort of calm down for a bit.

The second incident was on Wednesday. I was in a bathroom again and I saw myself in a mirror again, and the same thing happened. Not quite as intensely, but it happened.

The third incident was on Thursday. I realized, after two days of writing-related difficulty, that my characters didn't feel real to me and never quite had. There's a certain extent to which I'm willing to stretch my definition of "reality". I accept the world around me as real in the sense of physical reality. I accept the things in my head, like my ideas or imaginations or the parts of my mind I personify, as reality in my head - you might call it head-reality. I accept religious things like God and angels as real in not just a physical sense (in that they are things that exist not just in my head) but also in a surpassingly-physical sense - like a super-reality, one might say. I accept stories and fiction as reality in their own contexts - not like I actually think things like A Wrinkle in Time or The Great Gatsby or Doctor Who happened with real people, but I accept them as having a sort of continuity that makes them "real" in their own contexts. There's different kinds of real.

Anyway, I'd been having trouble with my writing. I didn't feel motivated to write, and I didn't care about the story. I kept productive during those two days by writing some details about one character's backstory (or rather, things he did before the story's start) that would help me further the story's point if they actually appeared in the story, but I don't think I'm going to be able to conveniently work them into the story. I don't think that's what made me come to my realization, but I did realize that I hadn't been able to see my characters as real. I was invested in them and their relationships, but I didn't feel like they were real. I didn't believe in them. And as a writer, you have to believe in your characters and you have to think they're real on some level. It just wasn't working for me.

I told all my grandpa about this today while I was hanging out with him. He asked me how I was going to deal with it. I thought about it for a moment and said, "I'm going to stay away from mirrors." He laughed. I went on.

"I think I'm going to dissociate for a bit," I said. "I live in pretty much a constant state of dissociation - just doing things and not really thinking that it's me who's doing them. Just doing them. I think the reason other people don't think about these things like I do is because they're busy doing their own lives and not thinking about the fact that they're the ones doing them, that they're actually them, doing things in their bodies, in this reality. So I'm going to distance myself from the fact that I exist and just think about other stuff. Which is kind of the exact opposite of my problem. It's kind of ironic."

(My grandpa thought this was all quite interesting, and he said something to the effect that this is why he likes talking to me. We can get curiously philosophical together.)

That's been my experience with realizing that I'm real and that I exist and I pilot a body in the physical world and weird stuff like that. Interesting stuff to think about, as long as you don't have to think about it for too long.

All things end

Being a college student, I have found myself in a place in which college students find themselves all the time. I have found myself in the position of having to take and study for the semester's finals. This is extremely stressful, especially since I've had a class that was very difficult for me and actually damaged my entire self-perception. I'm really only good at academics - well, that and writing - and if I'm not doing well in a class, I feel like I'm not good at my purpose, which is admittedly true. It's also incredibly stressful and occasionally debilitating.

I am also in the position of having to say goodbye to my classes, which is also a bit difficult. I have problems with leaving and losing things, and this has so far been the hardest college semester to end, for a variety of complex emotional reasons. I'm going to miss my classes, which were insightful and interesting. I'm going to miss the class environments, which were wonderful and welcoming and genuinely pleasant. I'm going to miss my acquaintances, who I grew attached to despite not really forming strong emotional bonds with them (that's difficult for me to do, and there was barely any time to do so). I'm going to miss my teachers, who all taught so well.

There's a phrase I've been using for a very long time, and it's helped me cope with reality very well. The phrase is "all things end". It helps me with good things and bad things. It's been increasingly relevant here.

All things end; anything good is going to leave, and I may as well enjoy it while it's here while knowing it won't last forever so I don't have to deal with the pain of growing too attached to it. Thinking something will last forever is a great way to appreciate it while it's here and never recover from losing it when it finally has to go. If you know it's going to end, you can enjoy it while still being informed as to the reality of its impermanence.

All things end; anything bad has got to end sometime, even if it ends when your life does. If you know that something bad will end, it somehow makes it more bearable. You might not know when it ends, but every moment you spend is a moment closer to its end. Sometimes, knowing that it will end makes it bearable.

All things end; neutral things will end just like good things and bad things end. Learn what you can learn from them while they're here. Then move on to the next thing that comes into your life and learn what you can learn from it. Once it's gone, something else will come into your life, and you must learn from it, too. Repeat.

All things end; this is how I'm getting through losing the people and things I've grown attached to, the stress I have to push through, and the miscellany surrounding.

Don't shame people for liking things.

I went to see Catching Fire with my sister and some family friends yesterday. My sister loved it, as did I, and it made me rather happy to see her enjoying it so much. She previously stated that she didn't want to read it because "it's about a million kids running around and killing each other" (she didn't care when I corrected her count to twenty-four). But now she likes it, and it makes me happy to see her enjoying a piece of good fiction. I don't know why she likes it (I presume she came to believe that it has a good plot and that it is interesting and engaging), but no matter why she likes it, she likes it, and it makes her happy.

I have two friends (twin teenage girls) who have yet to read or watch The Hunger Games and who were also originally aversive to the idea for much the same reasons that my sister was. However, through conversations with me about it, they found out that it has themes of revolution as well as a love triangle. These things interested them. They like revolutions, and they like love triangles. (They happen to positively love Les Miserables, which features both of these things).

Some people who knew my two friends wanted to read The Hunger Games because of its love triangle might think they were just stupid teenage girls being stupid teenage girls. The love triangle (and the inclusion of romance in general) is a common criticism of The Hunger Games. It's a series associated with teenage girls, a demographic commonly seen as stupid and immature, and anything that "panders" to them is considered equally stupid. Since teenage girls supposedly love romance and love triangles, the love triangle featuring Katniss with Peeta and Gale is often seen as stupid and unnecessary, and people who like it (especially if they're part of a target audience who is often denounced by those who supposedly know better) are shamed for it.

To be honest, that's pretty stupid and unnecessary in and of itself. And when I refer to "that", I mean "shaming people for liking something". A less-mature person might shame my two friends for being interested in The Hunger Games largely because of its love triangle. They'd accuse them of stereotypically conforming to the unintelligent target audience of the series and embodying everything that's wrong with people who read fiction like that. Why would anyone to do that other than to perpetuate snobbery and make themselves feel superior, though? Saying you shouldn't like something for whatever reason shows an astonishing lack of confidence on the part of the person saying that. Sometimes, people have stereotypical interests not because they're stupid or for the sake of conformity but because they genuinely like them.

If my two friends like love triangles, they like love triangles, and that's all there is to that. They like something. The thing they like has a lot of badly-written examples, and these badly-written examples are often used to characterized or stereotype the people who tend to like them (or, rather, the people who are given them in the fiction directed at them), but just because you're a teenaged girl who likes fiction that depicts complex romantic relationships and feelings where three people are involved doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Ultimately, it just means you like something, and if you find examples of it in fiction that you like, then good for you! Awesome! Read those books! Watch those movies! Fiction should make people happy, and if it makes you happy, that's fantastic. If it makes you happy, then it's fulfilling its goal. And if you read and watch things that make you happy, then you're helping the people who wrote such things fulfill their goals as writers, and that's honestly kind of beautiful.

In which I talk about how there's not familial abuse or anything in my novel and why this is cool.

A rather big reason I like my current novel: the way it portrays family as experienced by someone with a mental illness. I'm aware that family intolerance and abuse exists, especially in cases with mental illness, but I'm also aware that there are many cases where the family isn't intolerant, abusive, or otherwise harmful towards the family member with the mental illness, even they don't understand the person's experience or know what to do about it.

I don't know for sure, but I'm willing to bet that there are less families that are abusive/toxic towards people with mental illness than there are family that are abusive/toxic. And even if that's not the case, I've seen a lot of abusive or dysfunctional families in fiction, to the point where I'm beginning to think they might be just plain overrepresented. (Which doesn't mean realistic representations of abuse are not necessary; they are, but representations of another kind of reality would also be good.)

And another thing I don't see a lot of in fiction: family members or relationships that are toxic but not necessarily abusive or caused out of ill will on the part of the toxic person. The novel I'm writing has a character - the mentally-ill protagonist's aunt, who looks after him for most of the story as he undergoes recovery - whose actions have a mostly negative affect on her nephew until it is made very clear to her the effect she's having. When it's pointed out to her that she needs to change, she does so to the best of her ability. Furthermore, all her toxic actions are born from the fact that she has an inherently nurturing and protective personality and doesn't know what to do with it when she's finally presented with a target for her nurturing and protection. All of them. It's not because she's bad/selfish/dysfunctional/bad at dealing with people/[insert other negative trait here]. It's because she really, really wants someone to look after (preferably in a mother/child kind of relationship but with aunt/nephew being acceptable, too) and when she's finally put into that kind of situation, she's ill-prepared for it and she doesn't realize that a mentally-ill young adult (and thus, from her perspective, vulnerable) shouldn't be treated the same as a child.

Maybe I don't read/watch enough things with families in them, but I honestly don't remember the last depiction I saw of a family that wasn't dysfunctional or significantly not-ideal in some way. Which isn't to say that I'm trying to write an ideal family or anything - I'm trying to write a family that I think is realistic - but many of the families I've seen in real life aren't like the families I see in fiction, in that they're not as dysfunctional. (Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I can think of some examples of families portrayed in a positive light, where none of the members are or were harmful to each other in any way, but a lot of the time, one of, if not the, main message of the piece of fiction was about how families are or can be good.)

I don't know, I'm just really happy about portraying something that 1. I don't think is portrayed very much in fiction, or 2. isn't likely to be portrayed in this kind of story.

NaNoWriMo

I - I've a bit of a confession to make. And a bit of an apology.

As of now, I have quit my NaNoWriMo novel to write another project.

NaNo was too stressful for me to keep up with - I should have known it, I should have known that my anxiety is too much to have me successfully write a novel AND deal with school and live and people and et cetera - but I AM still working on something. I've got another novel idea, one that I think has much more "heart", so to speak, than the last idea did. And given that I'm only setting myself a 1,000-words-a-day daily wordcount (as opposed to a 2,000-words-a-day daily wordcount), I think I can make it. And the subject matter is something that will prove sort of relaxing/enjoyable/pleasant for me (while still making for a good plot, of course).

Sometimes, you've just got to know when to give up, you know? And here you go. This is me knowing when to give up. This is me trying to ignore my limits for the who-knows-how-manyth time and of course being pushed too far. This is me knowing what to do with my time regardless. This is me taking what, for me, was a stupid idea and making it better.

Cheers.

Telemarketers

A telemarketer called while I was eating ice cream and watching Monty Python (something I haven't done for a while). I was quite irked but I went out of my way to be nice to her. I like going out of my way to be nice to telemarketers. I hear people talk about how they like antagonizing those people, and I don't think that's very nice because telemarketers have a rubbish job, and they KNOW it's a rubbish job, but it's theirs, and I don't know how many people are kind to them (not many, I imagine), so I make it my job to be kind to telemarketers.

The Importance of Irrelevance (or, My Meeting with My Psychologist)

I went to see my psychologist today. The thing about going to see my psychologist is that I always end up saying something with her, but I can't ever really think of anything to talk about beforehand, and even though we always end up having a good conversation, it never feels like the conversation was about the thing we should have been talking about, whatever that may be.

A lot of things happened this time around, but there were two interesting things in particular. One of them was that I had two...I wouldn't call them "panic attacks", but they were more like, say, "anxiety fits that manifested themselves in very physical forms". Like twice during that meeting, because of what we were talking about, I felt my heart rate go up, this stuff aching pain in my neck, back, and shoulders, difficulty breathing, dizziness, etc. I actually have this feeling rather frequently these days. I had it at least one today before I had to see my psychologist. I'm able to physically detect them now. And they are now very very physical. That was interesting.

The other thing that happened involved me explaining something Doctor Who-related to my psychologist. It was very on-topic and if I remember rightly, she practically asked me to tell her about Doctor Who. (She knows I like that show.) As I explained something, she noted that I sounded and seemed much more excited and animated talking about it than I seemed while talking about the other stuff. She used this as evidence that I actually really like Doctor Who, to the point that it might be something "important" to me, something that I "love". And I actually got really sad when she said that, because Doctor Who (and the rest of the things I get excited about) aren't that important. Like the only things that give me any sort of pleasure aren't important. They're not productive (with perhaps the exception of writing, but it really depends). They don't involve real-world skills or concerns. They're not responsibilities, they don't help anyone. They're not important.

And for some reason or another, it makes me feel really really sad that the only things I care about are unimportant things. Like they tell you to make your life about the things that you love or that make you excited; the only things I love or get excited about are stupid, trivial things. And the "important" things like school and doing things for people are really dull most of the time and sometimes outright painful. They're certainly getting harder, for a host of reasons.

Though my psychologist did mention that I got excited about books. (I agreed and then rambled on a bit about The Great Gatsby. Again, this too was perfectly warranted by context.) She pointed out that my intent is to become a high school English teacher. I always did sort of intend to use the books I like in the classes I teach. (Provided they're part of the required curriculum. But many of the books I like are the sorts of books that are taught in schools.)

She then pointed out that, in the future, my teaching will be important. My books will be exciting and interesting. Something that is interesting to me right now but not terribly important will be the entire foundation for my employment in the future.
I suppose it's okay for my life's main interests to be totally irrelevant if they (or at least some of them) are going to become important later on. I guess it's okay if my main reasons for living are unimportant if they're going to help me do arguably the most important things in my life later.

Maybe one's life interests don't have to be important all the time. Maybe the things that give one's life meaning don't have to be useful or important or objectively significant right now. Maybe it's enough if the important things for now are boring and painful and the important things for later are enjoyable and interesting and the opposite of painful.

Halloween Costumes and Vicarious Joy

Halloween. It's yet another one of those things that I'm nuts about and that most of my family doesn't care for. Even those who do like dressing up or partaking in the festivities aren't as involved as I am. For example, when my younger sister expresses interest in putting together a Halloween costume, she isn't as interested as I in making sure everything is present and sometimes doing clever and unusual things to make sure the costume is exactly as desired. She also doesn't care as much as I do if the costume doesn't get finished. For me, being unable to finish and wear a Halloween costume would be a crushing loss, something that would put a tremendous damper on my favorite time of the year. For her, it would just be a bit of fun she wasn't able to have, and that would be it.

Sometimes, I forget that she's not as invested in Halloween as I am. I had this fact very clearly brought to mind about a week ago, when she was telling me about how she wanted to dress up as Ariel (from The Little Mermaid) and, as she Googled pictures of Ariel costumes and cosplays, I advised her on what she could do and how. I even offered to buy things for the costume and eagerly volunteered to let her borrow any garments or objects I owned if they would help her with her costume. (Note: this was a patently absurd offer, because there is absolutely nothing I would conceivably have that would even remotely fit in with a Little Mermaid costume.)

I kept making suggestions as to how I could help her with this costume, as I got more and more enthusiastic, she turned to me and said, "You know, you don't have to get so excited about this. It's not that big of a deal."

It took me a few moments to get my mind in such a place so that I could even conceive of Halloween not being "that big of a deal". It took me a few moments more to realize that the concept of Halloween not being "that big of a deal" could apply to my current reality.

"No, really," my sister went on. "And you don't need to do all this stuff for me."

"Oh. Oh, alright," I said.

"Why does this matter so much to you, anyway?"

"I guess I'd just really like to see you achieve this goal and have a nice costume. 'Cause, you know, family members want to see each other have a good time and succeed."

"Having this costume isn't 'succeeding'."

"I guess it is to me."

She didn't get it, but then again, she doesn't get a lot of things where they concern me. We continued our image search, admiring good costumes, deprecating bad ones, and expressing puzzlement over pictures of things like women with babies and men wearing costumes of Mario the plumber (things neither my sister nor I thought were very logical results for "ariel blue dress").

"You know," I said after a while, "I think I know why I'm so interested in you getting this costume together."

"Yeah?"

"It's because I know this isn't the case for you, but I like Halloween a lot, and it's kind of important to me. And the costume is important, too, and I know you're not as big on Halloween as I am, but I guess people like to see people - especially their family - succeed at things they think are important. And I know it's not important to you - it's not really important - but I guess, since it's a big deal to you, I want you to be able to do it."

"Well, thank you, then," she said. "That's very nice of you."

"And you've explained directly that it's not that important to you," I went on.

"Though it'd be nice."

"Yeah. But I'll try to keep in mind the fact that it's not that important to you, and I won't force my enthusiasm on you. Because, you know, that's just not what you do."

"Yeah."

In that moment, I got an insight into the minds of mothers who force their daughters to take dancing lessons because that's what they liked doing when they were young or fathers who make their sons play the sports they were never able to play in their youth or parents who force their children to go to whatever schools they deem "good". It's mostly well-intentioned, hopefully, but it exists because of a misunderstanding on the parts of those who force others to do things based on other senses of what's important.

Then again, I don't think there's anything wrong in being inordinately pleased over some little pursuit on the part of your loved ones, even if they don't think it's such a big deal. It gives them a little personal pleasure and it gives you a lot of vicarious pride.

Comfort the Disturbed, Disturb the Comfortable - Mental Illness Awareness Week

It's Mental Illness Awareness Week.

This may mean nothing to some people, and it may mean everything to some people, but if one has read many of my recent blog posts, one will know that I feel rather strongly about the issue of mental illness awareness. Naturally, I have something big planned for this week, some great manifesto or well-thought-out speculation to share.

Well, I don't.

I spent most of the past few days trying to think up something to write about, coming up with a single relatively silly idea (which, while interesting, was not the great contribution to Mental Illness Awareness Week that I wanted to make), then coming up with a bunch of ideas (none of which really stood out to me as particularly interesting or strong), then coming up again with a single idea. This single idea, however, was not silly, and it was perhaps the exact thing I needed to write. And, to make a satisfying idea even more satisfying, it relates to art.

Have you ever heard that saying, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable?" It occurred to me that it's very applicable to the issue of mental illness. Any sort of mental illness of any variation in severity is enough to qualify one as "disturbed", where "disturbed" could mean "having great difficulty with something that most people would find easy" or "recovering from something hugely traumatic" or "unable to cope with life on a regular basis because of how one's brain works". And while I acknowledge that not all neurotypical people have easy lives (far from it; misery and hardship can strike anyone), there must be something very comfortable in having a brain that works properly and which you don't have to constantly fight.

The mentally ill are the disturbed, and the mentally well are the comfortable. I will comfort one and disturb the other.

To those living with mental illnesses:

First off, I don't pretend to be able to speak for all of us, and I know that I have it pretty easy in comparison to some of you folks. However, I can somewhat understand your problems since I am, after all, one of you, and, using my experiences and the experiences of the many mentally ill people I have known, I can hope to make some sort of statements that you might relate to and that might comfort you. If say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.

While I can't say that your problems are normal (since the reason we even have a concept of mental illness is because it is not what people normally experience), they don't make you bad or wrong or dysfunctional or even sick. At least not by necessity. Different people handle different things in different ways - it's just something that happens because we are all very human and thus all very different from each other - and as long as the way you handle your mental illness does not hurt others or yourself, however you choose to handle it is perfectly fine.

If you're one of the roughly one out of four who have a mental illness, ideally you can treat it with professional help and/or medication, but if that's not possible, then know that (at least in some cases), it is still possible to cope with what you have. Depending on what you have, you can either learn coping tactics for how to deal with things that cause you trouble and aggravate your mental illness, or you can learn to avoid certain things while still functioning in life. Your life may look very different than other people's lives, but it will still be a life, and as long as you're pleased with it, it will be a perfectly sufficient life.

People talk about "recovery", like you get better from your mental illness someday, through a lot of therapy or a lot of meds or a lot of luck, but that's not always what happens. Some people do not recover from their mental illnesses. Actually, I could speculate that most people with mental illnesses don't "get well". But that's okay. Maybe you don't have to recover. If you're hallucinating grandiose scenarios that aren't remotely happening or so depressed that you literally cannot get out of bed or unable to go out in public for fear of panic attacks, then you need help and hopefully you get better, but that doesn't mean your problem is going to go away. You might get to a point where you just sometimes see things you can tell are probably not there, or you might have trouble motivating yourself because life is empty, or you might have to work up a great deal of courage before going out into crowds. But even those challenges aren't those experienced by most people, and you're still not entirely "well". That's not bad, though. Not everyone functions completely well or easily, and that's okay. We live in a world where things aren't perfect and where people have struggles. Some have more struggles than others, and some people's struggles may be fewer but greater, but everyone's struggles are real, and if you can cope and if you can be okay with who you are and what you're like, you don't need to worry about "recovering" or "getting well".

You go through an astonishing amount of trouble every day, trouble that the rest of the world cannot comprehend, and you deserve a bloody medal for it.

To those not living with mental illnesses but possibly around and beside them:

First off, I'm going to try to be respectful of you when I say these things, and I might get some of my perceptions of you wrong because I am not one of you, and we with mental illnesses have perhaps some negative preconceptions of you (as you have negative preconceptions with us), so if I say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.

While it's not possible for me to speculate how your minds work (given that I am not one of you), it is quite likely that (unless you have previously suffered from a mental illness) you will not be able to comprehend what people with mental illness go through everyday.  Do not tell us our problems are "normal", because despite that a relatively large percentage of us have such problems, the reason we even have terms and diagnoses for mental illnesses (and why the field of "abnormal psychology" has that name) is because they are not normal. The fact some of you say that "people with OCD should stop worrying about unimportant little things" or "people with depression should just cheer up and stop bringing everyone else down", or "people with anxiety need to chill out" show that they do not understand what we go through nor why these things are quite impossible for most of us.

Just because you cannot understand us, however, does not mean that you can't respect us. You can read things written by people with mental illnesses (and, sometimes, truthful, unbiased medical descriptions of what's going on with us) and, if you know someone with a mental illness, you can (hopefully) talk to them about it and hear them tell you what's going on with them personally so you can better understand how to help them. 

Don't take my usage of the word "help" to mean that you should feel personally obligated to "save" people with mental illnesses, though. Because you can't do that. You may well be a very helpful and good person, but you do not possess the superhuman powers necessary to "save" someone from depression or anxiety any more than you have the ability to "save" someone from cancer or asthma. No matter how much good you bring into the lives of mentally ill people or how much you help your mentally ill friends cope with life, don't ever think of yourself as a "savior to the mentally ill", because you're not. You don't have that power.

The brain is an organ. While it has quite a few differences from lungs or hearts or kidneys (which all have quite a few differences from each other), it can get sick or be "abnormal" like any other organ can, and it should be treated as an organ. The only thing that really separates how we perceive the brain from how we perceive other organs is that it is happens to be the organ that serves the purpose of letting us make choices and control things. It doesn't mean that it can control itself.

You hear about mental illness recovery all the time, but the truth is, not all of us "recover" in the sense you'd think of, and that's okay. We don't need to be like you to be okay. You are who you are, with your own challenges and abilities, and we are who we are, with our own challenges and abilities. You are not the yardstick for success. And that's okay.

For those of you who are accepting and supporting of us, I possibly shouldn't thank you for doing so, as we are human beings, and it's your duty to accept and support your fellow human beings (and not a polite act for which to be thanked), but I am going to thank you because, being a good human being aside, you put up with some things that must try you and confuse you, and that's no small thing. Thank you.

And now, concluding this, I'm certain I haven't done a lot of good in "comforting" the disturbed nor "disturbing" the comfortable. Probably the things I said to people with mental illnesses came off as either platitudes or known facts, and probably the things I said to people without mental illnesses came off as the same. But who knows. Maybe someone with a mental illness will be reading this and be comforted by my affirmation that what they're going through doesn't make them "wrong" and that, if they never fully "recover", they're okay. And maybe someone without a mental illness will be reading this and be disturbed by my proclamation that they are not able to "save" people with mental illnesses, nor can those with mental illnesses control what they have in the ways the neurotypical would often like to them they can. And maybe something I've said here is relevant, regardless of what it was intended for or what it accomplished.

New Publication, or, What I Learned from Welcome to Night Vale and Put Into a Story

I recently got a piece of flash fiction accepted by a literary magazine called Grim Corps. Specifically, my story was in their online flash fiction series. The story can be read here. (At least, it can be read there throughout the month of October. I'm not sure what will happen to that page when the October issue is no longer the most recent one. I'll find out and fix that link as necessary.)

The story is extremely short, but for those who can't or don't want to read it, it's about a family moving into a house and then noticing that something is rather...off. There's a doorknob that looks exactly like an oak leaf unless you're looking directly at it, there are whispering voices in the bathroom, there's an oven that plays the first few notes of "The Sound of Music" when the food is done. Basically, it's a bunch of small, surreal events that the family at first would like to get rid of but slowly adjusts to, treating them as perfectly normal things because, for them, this is normal. They come to get used to it and even like it, which they can do because, even though some of it is kind of creepy, they understand that it's okay because it is the way it is, and knowing that makes it less weird.

I'm dedicating a whole blog entry to this story because there's a bit of a story behind it, and it involves a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale.

Some of you reading this might know what Welcome to Night Vale is. For those of you who don't, it's a surreal comedy/horror podcast about a town called Night Vale, which is a very surreal place where bizarre, Lovecraftian things happen on a regular basis. Its format is that of an NPR-style radio program whose announcer reads off the daily news (with events like a mysterious glowing cloud appearing out of nowhere and joining the school's PTA or a five-headed dragon running for mayor) with a sense of mundanity that is either creepy or hilarious or both, depending on who you are.

The reason these surreal or horrifying events are treated so normally in Night Vale is because, for the people in Night Vale, things like that are normal. The weird is the everyday, and they never thought it was strange to begin with, or if they did, they quickly adjusted their worldview to match their circumstances.

Welcome to Night Vale was the first piece of fiction I really got into after my mother's death (which was, as of now, six months ago). A lot of strange things had been happening since her death - or, at least, things I considered strange, because my life simply hadn't contained those things before. I had previously been using references to and interest in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a coping tactic, since I interpreted that work of fiction as (intentionally or not) conveying the message, "Sometimes, weird and drastic things happen, and it plunges you into a series of weird events you weren't expecting and that you didn't necessarily want, but it happens, so get over it and embrace the absurdity of the universe."

Whenever I enjoy a piece of fiction and can tell it will become important to me, I say to myself, "Alright, what am I going to learn from this?" Because as soon as something becomes important to me, it can teach me things and I will listen. While my life isn't nearly as weird as life in Night Vale, it's still a series of events that, for rather a while, I considered strange and almost surreal. When I realized that the strange can become a part of one's everyday life and that one can come to consider almost anything as normal if one needs to, I figured out how to cope with my own life.

In some ways, what Welcome to Night Vale taught me was the opposite of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The message I got from Hitchhiker's was that of things suddenly changing and having to cope with it as a matter of adjusting to new things. The message I got from Night Vale was that of strange things being a way of life and not having to think about adjusting to them because maybe life was always like that and maybe it's just a different sort of normal after all.

Now, if you're familiar with Welcome to Night Vale, one would expect that I don't think the people of Night Vale should come to trust their surroundings, as they are unpredictable and frequently actually malevolent. This would be correct. Strangeness and unfamiliar events are perfectly fine, but there comes a point at which one should not naively trust the new developments to be safe. 

If one is going to have to live with something, though, one may as well get used to it and accept it as not a strange development but a part of one's life, no different than any part of one's life that existed before and that one was used to. That was a life lesson I learned from a Lovecraftian humor podcast, and I thought I could retell it in a story about a haunted house that turns out to be not so much "haunted" as "just a bit uncommon".

Disability Superpower: A Troubling Trope

When I was writing my last blog post (regarding my theory that Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is an accurate depiction of a person with PTSD and thus a mentally ill fictional protagonist), I asked some people I knew if they could give me some examples of fictional characters with mental illnesses. (This was, incidentally, why, at the beginning of that entry, I listed the characters I listed.)

One person provided some specific characters, whom I did not list because they are not commonly perceived as being mentally ill and the status of one of them as "mentally ill" is largely speculation based on actions and patterns of thought that aren't much explored in the work said character is from. However, this person also cited obsessive-compulsive disorder as a (canonical or speculated) trait of many fictional detectives "because they're so detail oriented."

The deduction that many fictional detective have OCD because of their eye for detail (which is pretty much a requirement to be a successful detective) sounds at first like a stereotypical generalization, but, like many stereotypical generalizations, it really does appear in fiction. The title character of the television program Monk (a detective drama) has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is alternately treated as an actual illness, a source of comedy, and a veritable superpower. And if speculations on TV Tropes * (a website dedicated to cataloging patterns of characterization and storytelling that appear in fiction) is to be believed, Hercule Poirot (in some depictions) has it as well. Even the great Sherlock Holmes (in adaptations and in the original canon) displays some leanings towards disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome or ADD (though different adaptations may emphasize certain traits over others, and some adaptations may characterize him as having different disorders, or perhaps as having no disorder at all).

However, mental illnesses are not the only disorders whose fictional representations often "compensate" with incredible powers. How many fantasy tales have blind characters whose lack of sight gives them other abilities, like precognition or mind-reading? How many science fiction stories feature someone who loses a limb only to receive a prosthetic replacement that makes them amazingly stronger? How many fictional wheelchair-users have incredible minds to make up for their lack of mobility?

TV Tropes has another page dedicated to examples of this characterization tool. The article is titled "Disability Superpower"** , and that's a pretty accurate description of what these characters have.

I'm not sure if I wish writers would just give more realistic examples of this trope or if I wish they'd just stop writing it altogether. In some cases, it makes sense. Many real-life people who lack one sense will, as a matter of functioning in life, have to strengthen their other senses, to the point where their abilities may seem superhuman in comparison to those who have all their senses. And, for whatever reason, there does seem to be an actual connection between mental illness and creativity (thus perhaps justifying the existence of all those fictional artists whose ambiguous disorder allows them to become creative geniuses). At least those make sense.

Characters whose "superpower" have nothing to do with their disability are, in my opinion, also acceptable if their skill doesn't negate their disability. Even better if their "superpower" is something a person might realistically be able to do Forrest Gump, for example, is an extremely good runner and athlete, and he's extremely obedient. Both of these things get him very far in life (with his athletic ability getting him into college and garnering him fame as a runner and his obedience serving him well in the military), to the point where they may be equivalent to other characters' superpowers, but they do nothing to affect his lack of mental capacity.

Disabled characters whose "superpower" has nothing to do with their disability (or is only tangentially-related), however, need to be very well-written or otherwise written "differently" than normal for me to feel comfortable with them. The popular webcomic Homestuck has a character (Terezi Pyrope) who, for much of the comic, was "blind", but she had synesthetic powers that compensated for her lack of sight. If it weren't for the fact that I enjoy her personality and like her as a character, I would probably dislike her depiction, as her extrasensory abilities are such so that she may as well not be blind at all. (In fact, Homestuck deals similarly with disability so frequently, I may well end up writing another blog entry about this.)

How, then, should writers go about writing disabled characters "differently" while still giving them "superpowers"? Well, if you're writing a realistic fiction novel, where "superpowers" are really just extremely honed skills that any normal human could have, write them exactly like that - extremely honed skills that any normal human could have. After all, people with disabilities, physical, mental, or otherwise, are normal. They're just different in regards to some of the things they can do or what they have difficulty doing. It's entirely possible to have a blind character with amazing oratory abilities and write them the same way you'd write a sighted character with amazing oratory abilities. The only real difference is that the blind character wouldn't be able to see their audience. (Hey, maybe their blindness could help them in that regard. In which case that would be an example of disability bolstering one's other abilities in an entirely realistic manner. If you wrote a story featuring such a character, you could probably get a fair bit of mileage out of that fact.)

The reason this sort of thing is problematic is because it gives non-disabled readers an unrealistic expectation of what people with disabilities are like, and it gives disabled readers a somewhat insulting picture of their demographic. While seldom explicitly-stated, there are usually troubling undertones to the "disability superpower". Some of these suggestions include the ideas that disabled people are only valuable if they have something to "make up for" their disability (thus devaluing the person themself), disability automatically comes with some kind of power (thus making real disabled people without any "superpowers" feel inferior to fictional characters), and powers like these not only make up for the disability but make it so that it may as well not exist (thus invalidating the difficulties of actual disabled people, whether they have any special skills or not, and providing a very cheap attempt at "representation").

I understand that most writers are not disabled, because most people are not disabled. However, if you are going to write about disabled characters and give them any kind of "powers", that's all well and good, but please write it realistically. Please write it in such a way so that it doesn't trivialize the disability, suggest that people with disabilities are all fabulously gifted, or devalue people with disabilities. People are people, and they're all valuable in some way. Please don't make non-disabled people think that the only disabled people who are valuable are those who have some kind of power that more than compensates for what they lack, and please don't make disabled people think they have to be twice as skilled as their non-disabled counterparts to be seen as half as good.

* The cited page can be found here.
** The cited page can be found here.

In Which I Put Forth that a Certain Bow-Wielding, Revolution-Leading Heroine Is an Example of Mental Illness in Fiction

If I asked you to name some fictional characters with mental illnesses, who would you think of? Doubtless the psychopathic Joker from the Batman comics would come to mind, or perhaps the less obviously deranged but no less sociopathic Hannibal Lecter. Some people might be further able to name Alex from A Clockwork Orange (a mentally unstable violent teenage delinquent), Jim Moriarty from the BBC television show Sherlock (an all-but-outright psychopathic adaptation of the character Professor Moriarty from the original Sherlock Holmes stories) or even Renfield from Dracula (a mental patient whose obsession with blood and consuming life leads him to do things like eating flies).

What do these characters have in common? Well, they certainly fit the common definition of "crazy" (even though many actual mentally ill people do not seem "crazy" by society's standards). And all of them exhibit some kinds of violent tendencies or perverse interests. None of them are really treated sympathetically, and certainly none of them are heroes.

These characters are unfortunately very indicative of how mental illness is treated by writers and the media. The vast most of fictional characters with mental illness are unsympathetic, and those that are sympathetic are either unrealistically-written or have stories or characterizations based around their illness, to the point where it is hard for the audience to imagine the character having any sort of experience that isn't related to mental illness. The outlook for mental illness representation is pretty dim, and many people must wonder when they'll finally get a hero with mental illness whose adventures are not determined by their disability.

Would you like to know the name of a fictional hero with mental illness whose characterization and storyline isn't about mental illness?

Katniss Everdeen.

Yes, I am talking about Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I bet you wouldn't have thought Katniss, the Girl on Fire who bravely took her sister's place in the Hunger Games, had any sort of mental illness. "But she's so normal and well-adjusted!" you might say. Yes, well, a number of people with mental illnesses are normal and well-adjusted. "Mental illness" doesn't mean "abnormal" anymore than, say, "blind" or "wheelchair-using" mean "abnormal". (And if you think disability does preclude normality, I urge yourself to educate yourself on the nature of disability as well as normality.)

"Well, this is all very well and good, Jude," you might say when you get past the initial shock, "but please tell us why you are making this absurd statement about Katniss Everdeen's mental capacities." (Unless you know why I'm saying this. In which case, sit back and enjoy the show. And unless you don't want spoilers for The Hunger Games or just don't enjoy talk about that series in general. In which case, you should probably stop reading because those things will ensue.)

I trust most people who've read past this point are familiar with The Hunger Games. (If not, please read a synopsis from elsewhere as I'm providing a commentary, not a summary.) If you are familiar with it, you will know that Katniss's father died in a coal mine accident, which caused a huge personal crisis in her family. An event like that is enough to give someone post-traumatic stress disorder, and growing up somewhere like District 12 is traumatizing in and of itself. Certainly it couldn't have helped Katniss's and her family's recovery. It is very logical to assume that it would have resulted in PTSD, which is classified as a mental illness.

"Now, where are you getting this from?" you may ask me further. "Right, it makes sense that Katniss could have PTSD, but does she even display any symptoms?" Yes. Yes, she does.

Up until and including their time in the arena, Katniss constantly distrusts Peeta (especially in regards to his claims that he's in love with her). She believed it was an attempt at manipulation, when other people might have simply believed him. Well, symptoms/effects of PTSD include emotional numbness and avoidance. Katniss's lack of trust in Peeta could definitely count as the results of such qualities. Furthermore, Katniss has a tendency to get irritated with people, sometimes abruptly and unnecessarily so. Irritability and the tense feelings accompanying are common of PTSD. And after Katniss experiences the Hunger Games themselves and their brutality, her symptoms intensify and branch into recall and sleeping trouble.

A lot of people tend to fault Katniss for the aforementioned things, but what a lot of people don't realize is that she has an actual mental illness - post-traumatic stress disorder - and while her behavior is certainly not ideal, it's the very legitimate result of traumatic events. 

"Now, Jude, this is all well and good," you say. "I can see why you think Ms. Everdeen has a mental illness. But why should I believe she was intentionally written as such when it's not even mentioned in the books or films?"

Well, that question's answer is a bit self-evident. Do you think there are any therapists in District 12? Do you think there's anyone specializing in psychology? Do you think Katniss's family would have been able to afford therapy even if there were therapists around. No. Of course not. The folks in District 12 are having a hard enough time managing their physical health and survival. No one is going to have the education to become a psychologist or psychiatrist, and no one is going to have the money to afford that sort of thing. I doubt they'd even care about that in the Capitol. (While the Capitol is very rich, I don't know if they really care enough about the mental health of their citizens to have psychiatry around as a practice, and I doubt the people at the Capitol would be willing enough to admit to having a mental illness for such a practice to even be profitable.)

If Suzanne Collins were to procure a canon diagnosis for Katniss (or Peeta, or Haymitch, or any of the other characters who come to exhibit symptoms of PTSD - because I don't think Katniss is the only one who's been through enough trauma to have it), that would probably break our willing suspension of disbelief and ultimately go too much out of the way of the story to make us blatantly aware of something that's ultimately not that important. Because while mental illness is an important issue (especially in real life!), Katniss's story ultimately wasn't about her struggling with the aftermath of traumatic events like her childhood or the Hunger Games. It was about her fighting for her family and friends and standing up to the government when it got increasingly dangerous to do so. It wasn't about her being mentally ill. It was about her being brave. And that, my friends, is something anyone, regardless of (dis)ability or mental (un)wellness, can do.

"Alright, Jude," you say. "We understand your point of view. We understand why Katniss is a realistic, well-written portrayal of the mental illness of post-traumatic stress disorder. We even understand why her lack of diagnosis is acceptable and relevant. But did Suzanne Collins really mean for you to make this kind of analysis?"

Well, you've got me on that one. I am unaware of anything Collins has said on the subject, and it seems like PTSD was at least slightly intended. It would be an astonishing coincidence if all of the qualities she gave Katniss made her what seems to be a good, researched depiction of mental illness where this sort of thing wasn't even intended. However, unless Suzanne Collins says something about the subject (or if she's already said something and I don't know it), I think it is acceptable and good to interpret Katniss as a trauma survivor with post-traumatic stress disorder and thus a person with a mental illness. And besides, you know what they say - "The interpretation of a work of fiction is ultimately left up to the readers." I've found this theory reiterated on the internet, so I'm definitely not the only reader who interprets Katniss this way. I'm not the only person who's reads The Hunger Games and found not another psychopathic, violent madman but instead a wonderful heroine whose mental illness is not only not dehumanizing but in fact a sign of strength - she can survive horrible things, even after her mind has been permanently affected by her circumstances - and (wonder of wonders!) doesn't hijack the story but adds to it, giving her another set of challenges as she bravely fights for what's right.

A ukulele interlude

And now for something completely different.

Some of you may or may not know that I have the special talent of ukulele-playing. I figured I'd put up a recording of me playing a ukulele. (It's not actually my ukulele that I'm playing here; it's my sister's, but she doesn't play it, and since it's literally just lying about the house, I decided I'd try to figure out how to play it.) I specifically figured I'd play the song "Make Me Moo", which is by a very interesting band called the Residents. Look them up if you're unfamiliar with them. This is not the oddest thing they've written.

Anyhow, here's the song.

Why Electronic Publications Are Actually a Pretty Great Thing

Hello. First off, I have the pleasant and exciting news of a publication in Emerge Literary Journal (to which the link will take you). I have been waiting for this since perhaps the month of May but probably sooner. I am very excited about this new publication, something my dry speech is not letting on but something that is very much the case.

Second off, I'd like to recount an interesting conversation I had with my grandpa today.

We were talking about books and publishing, and he (bless him) has a sort-of aversion to technology, and he was telling me about how e-books and the like are going to run print publishers out of business. The implication of "evil newfangled technology" was present in how he said it.

I had to correct him on that matter, citing Stephen Frye's thoughts of, "Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators." As long as there are people who like to read and truly value the art that goes into creating a physical book (for while there's nothing wrong with e-books, certainly, there's also nothing wrong with the beauty of a physical collection of words), there will be a group of people who want physical books, and there will be a supply to meet this demand.

And furthermore, I told him, there is a particular benefit to e-books and online literary publications that print books (bless them) just don't have.

Namely, electronic writing is much easier to distribute to large numbers of people.

When a book is available to buy and download online, anyone with internet access and sufficient funds can purchase it and get it usually instantly. This is probably a larger demographic than people who have the ability to find books at bookstore (or maybe order the physical things from the internet) and sufficient funds. (Also, I'd like to point out that print books, for perfectly reasonable reasons, are often much more expensive than e-books. So there is that as well.) But basically, it's oftentimes just easier for one to get an e-book than a print book, and if your goal is wider readership (as opposed to creating a nice object or looking "prestigious"), then there can be no harm in having your works published in electronic format.

And as for online literary publications (which have so far been the majority of the publications in which my works have appeared), they seldom cost anything at all to read, so they are usually available to literally anyone who has internet access. This is especially important when one remembers that print literary magazines are, unfortunately, not as widespread or well-known a phenomenon as books (print or electronic). Electronic publications have the advantage of being more easily-stumbled-upon during casual searches of the internet, whereas I imagine it's unlikely that one would find a print equivalent while not particularly doing anything at home or in a coffee shop or wherever one uses the internet. And while I admittedly don't know what editors for literary magazines (online and print) or Legitimate Publishing People do, it's safe to assume they Google-search the writers whose work they've been sent, and having something out there on an online publication will not only prove that you're good enough to get published somewhere, it'll give them a sense of what your work is like, a very good thing to give them.

The most important thing about online publication, however - and this is my personal view, though I'm sure it's shared by many others - is that it allows your work to be seen by numerous people. Not just numerous people; potentially lots. Ideally, a writer - and indeed an artist of any kind - wants an audience. A writer wants a wide audience. A writer, truly believing in their craft and truly believing it will affect people for the better, will want it to be read by the world; the world will almost certainly benefit from it, too. Having work published online will not guarantee worldwide readership, but it will certainly make it a possibility, something that print publication, while still wonderful and beautiful, couldn't even dream of.

"So," I concluded to my grandpa, "e-books and stuff aren't really going to run print publishers out of business, and electronic literary publications are actually a pretty great thing."

"Oh," he said. "I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me."

The Many Ways to Like a Thing

I'm back in school. In fact, I've been back for a while (i.e. a few weeks). For those who didn't previously know, I'm a college student, and class is once again in session.

I was talking to my grandfather about my classes (because I spend a lot of time with my grandparents, and they take a great interest in everything I do - they've been listening to me ramble about my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which I may or may not blog about in the future).

"Do you like your classes?" he asked me.

I had to consider the question. The subjects were English, history, and math - fairly pedantic, at least by my standards. (I took astronomy and psychology in my first and second semesters of college, respectively, and this semester is my third.) I didn't dislike the classes, if that was what he meant. I was going to say something to that effect before it occurred to me that there's more than one way to live something, and there's more than one thing to like about a situation like a class. You might not like the subject matter, but you might like the teacher, or the way things are taught, or the specific parts of the otherwise-dull subject that are taught, or that you're going over things you already knew but in a different way, or that a once-confusing subject is finally, finally making sense.

"You know, I do like them," I said. "I like my English class because I understand the stuff we're talking about and there's a lot I can add to the discussions, I like my history class because we're basically going over stuff I studied for fun as a kid but we're revisiting it and learning it in different ways, and I like my math class because math is finally making sense and I'm not dreading it." (I am horribly mathematically-challenged.)

"Good." He smiled. "That's good."

It was good. It was good that I was enjoying my classes, and it was good that I identified the way that I liked them, and it was good that I'd realized that there are many ways to like a thing. I think that, if people understood that, they would broaden their spheres of what they "liked", and we'd just be slightly happier in general.

In Which I Was Disturbed Over a Norse Myth, and What I Did About It

I'm submitting a short story of mine to a literary magazine, and it just made me realize a very interesting place to get ideas for writing - things that disturb you.

And I don't just mean in the sense of "things that scare you". I'm referring to when you hear or see or learn something that bothers you so much that you can't get it out of your mind and it keeps nagging at you and making you perpetually uncomfortable. It can be a real-life concern that disturbs you. It can be a philosophical concept with arguable bearing on real life. It can be a philosophical concept with tremendous bearing on real life. It can be a decision someone (maybe yourself) made that you're perfectly comfortable with except for one small fact. Really, it can be anything.

The thing that disturbed me and inspired this piece of fiction was a Norse myth that I read about two years ago in a class I took on the subject of Norse myths. At least, it was supposed to be a Norse mythology class. It turned into more of a "Why Loki is awesome" class. (I had the privilege of being introduced to the character of Loki through the actual Norse myths rather than the Marvel films, so I am therefore able to appreciate him on a completely different level.) We basically read a bunch of Norse myths (most of which involved Loki) and talked about them.
Now, the day finally came in which we read "The Binding of Loki". The way the teacher introduced it, she made it sound like, "Okay, everyone, the fun is over. Time for something serious and sad." And the way one of my classmates (who was the most knowledgeable about and fond of Loki) reacted to it, he made it sound like, "Oh no, this is sad."

I won't spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it and would like to, but it doesn't end well for Loki. It ends with him in a painful and hellish situation (involving being chained up with a snake's venom dripping over him). It leaves him really unable to go anywhere or do anything and it somewhat brings to mind the end of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (minus the specifics of being turned into a blob of living jelly). He wasn't able to trickster his way out of it. He was stuck there until Ragnarok (and, if you think the Norse myths are true - which I don't, but I frequently imagine stories to be true - then he's stuck there still).

The thought of something like that happening to this beloved character was very upsetting and it stuck with me for quite a while. I couldn't stop thinking of Loki chained up with snake's venom dripping over him, and it all culminated in a short story written at around midnight when I couldn't sleep. It's very...abstract, one might say, and other than the fact that the Loki myth is mentioned a few times in the story (with the narrator comparing himself to Loki) and that the narrator finds himself in a similar position at the end, it really doesn't bear much resemblance to the story at all. However, I needed to get out my feelings regarding the story about Loki, which disturbed me and upset me that much.

What's funny is that, almost as soon as I wrote the story, I felt better about the story. It wasn't that I realized it was just fiction. It was that I did something with the feelings I had. I took the story and made something out of it. Maybe it was because I showed myself that I had power over it - power enough to make something out of it. I'm not really sure why the bad feelings stopped, but the point is, they did, and what's more, I got a story out of it.

It was a silly thing to get upset over. It was a very silly thing to be "disturbed" over, certainly. But the fact was, I was bothered by something, and I made art based on the thing that was bothering me. It was something I'd heard that I could not let go (or that would not let me go - I'm not sure which was the case). And now I have a story to which I am submitting to a literary magazine.

If you ever come across some information or situation that makes you feel viscerally uncomfortably and will not let you go, try making some sort of art out of it. Even if it doesn't make you feel one bit better, you will at least have something to show for it. And not only will that mean you've brought another wonderful thing into the world (because all art is, in its way, wonderful), you'll have exercised some power over the thing because you used it to create.

The Vegetable Game

I have recently made a great discovery. Specifically, it is that of how to get kids to eat their vegetables.

It involves playing something called the Vegetable Game.

The rules of the game are as follows: you put a piece of the vegetable in front of the child, and you repeat the name of the vegetable in increasingly comical tones. If the kid laughs, they have to eat the vegetable piece. (Eating a piece of the vegetable, to prove that it's not poisonous and for your own nutrition, is optional). You continue playing until the kid has consumed their entire serving.

I was playing this last night with my little cousin, who did not want to eat her cucumbers. She had three slices in front of her, and I told her that, if I could get her to laugh by saying "cucumber", she'd have to eat a slice.

It worked. It more than worked. It worked so well, she actually enjoyed the game and ate way more than the bare minimum of three slices of cucumber. It was also tremendous fun for me (finally, my debatable skills as a comedic actor can be used) and it was effective in getting her to eat.

This of course only works if you have a kid who can actually agree to such a game, but things do work more easily when you turn them into games, and the Vegetable Game is a very fun game for both parties involved. Supervisors of children, go forth in this knowledge of a new, exciting way to get kids to eat vegetables.

When Stress Ruins Fun

First off, I apologize for how little I've been blogging lately. Things have come up in life, and it hasn't helped that, try though I might, I haven't really been able to find anything to blog about that might be of any interest to anyone else.

That said, in the midst of the relative business of my life (going out and doing things with family members, getting things together for my upcoming return to school, things such as that), I've learned something that I probably should have understood long ago and that I understand now and that I think is relevant to everyone.

For a while, I understood that my aunt, sister, and sister's friend were going to go out and do some fun activities together, which I had been looking forward to partaking in along with them. (Yes, I'm a boring, dull introvert, but sometimes I like to get out and do stuff with other people.) They'd been planning this event for some weeks now, and though I wasn't very involved in the planning (it was mostly my sister's affair), I knew I was allowed to come along if I wanted. They were going to go to the movies, hang out in enjoyable public places, and go back to my aunt's house for a Doctor Who marathon. These are the sorts of things I tend to find very fun and enjoyable, and I was counting on having a good time.

What no one was counting on was how absolutely busy life got in the days preceding that. It wasn't that anything big or even stressful happened; it was just that I found myself, in the days coming before the supposed day of fun, I got dragged along to do other things with and for other people. Some of them were also fun (like meeting a friend at the summer fair my town has every year), some of them were more along the lines of jobs and work done for other people (like babysitting young, rambunctious cousins), some of them were just events I had to go to for the sake of other people (like my cousin's fifteenth birthday party). But because I found myself caught up in other activities, all of them one after another, I found myself stressed-out enough so that I just knew that, if I went with my aunt and sister on their little adventures, I would not enjoy it for lack of energy and excess amounts of stress.

Something fairly interesting happened the day before we were going to follow up on our plans, however. I had a bit of a breakdown.

It wasn't huge; it mostly involved me getting very tense and nervous and needing to hide from other people lest my being around them cause me to be even more nervous. I couldn't interact with people in the relatively polite and sociable manner that I'm typically able to interact with them. I had trouble forming sentences, and when someone came to talk to me, my thoughts always followed the lines of, "How can I get out of this as soon as possible?" I was in survival mode, and I was not having fun.

I don't know if this is the result of my clinically-diagnosed anxiety or if it's my often life-impeding introversion or if it's just an odd quirk of mine, but when I do high-energy things of any nature, I find them inherently anxiety-inducing. I could be having an excellent time, doing exciting things that I absolutely love doing, but I'm still experiencing anxiety. Maybe I just acknowledge the fact that excitement is a form of anxiety, and that being "anxious" doesn't necessarily mean one is "nervous", but having a good time stresses me out and tires me, and I need to recover from it. And I had been doing anxious things (some enjoyable, some not-so-enjoyable) for quite a few days in a row, and I had to stop.

This made me very unhappy, because I had been looking forward to what my aunt and sister were doing, and I wanted to do them. But I couldn't. The energy was not there. My anti-stress levels were depleted. I couldn't even deal with minor social interactions, and all I wanted was to be left alone. Thinking about the following day's fun events were not helping, and they only made it worse. When the fear of activities became even greater than the stress that would probably result from them and not worth the enjoyment I would get, I knew I'd had enough. 

After calming down somewhat, I explained this to my aunt and sister, who were fortunately very accepting of the fact, even though they would miss my company. (My family is, in general, very accepting of the fact that I experience more stress than usual people, even if they don't always understand some of the things it makes me do.) I compared it to someone who has heart problems and has gone with their friends to an amusement park whose rides would cause health problems if they rode them. It would be wiser if the person didn't go on the rides, but they'd really want to, and perhaps going on the rides wouldn't kill them, but it would certainly put them in a great deal of discomfort and pain that should have been avoided.

It was telling them this that I realized my anxiety really is a health limitation. It keeps me from doing things that I would enjoy, and it makes a number of everyday activities more difficult. I can't drive because my fear of driving and the sense of panic that has always happened the few times I've gotten behind the wheel has kept me from learning how. In stores, I never ask people for help with finding things because I don't trust my ability to make coherent sentences when put in the terrifying position of explaining something to a stranger. I have to use the self-checkout at grocery stores because interacting with cashiers, while finally possible now, is more trouble than it's worth. It's a health limitation, and I've been so used to living that way, I've failed to realize it.

I understand that anxiety like that isn't something most post people actually have to deal with on a regular basis, but I do think there's something I learned from this that anyone can appreciate. Sometimes, we don't know our limits or else we willfully ignore them, and sometimes it takes the aftermath of pressing ourselves to realize that the limits even exist. All of us only have so much we can take where things are concerned, and we sometimes have to feel it to know it. Fortunately, I was able to find my limits before anything terribly bad came of them, and hopefully other people can learn how to do the same.

Burnout

After a remarkably successful month of fiction writing, in which I believe I wrote over 9,000 words' worth of fiction (and I didn't intend to include that reference, but apparently I did), I have found myself in the regrettable position of feeling completely unmotivated as far as my writing is concerned and with barely even the ability to write semi-coherent poems.

My problem is that I am far too real of the fictitious nature of fiction right now. Fiction is imaginary; we all know that. We all ought to know that. However, we should never have to know that fiction is fake, and especially not when we're reading it, and especially not when we're writing it. It's said that, if you don't believe in your story, no one will, and I personally can't bring myself to believe in any story, my own included.

It's one thing to read someone else's fiction, something that didn't originate in your own mind and thus something you could possibly believe in. It's quite another to write your own and understand, from the beginning of the process to the end, that you have come up with this, that it is your job to make it good and make others believe in it. It's almost like being expected to take shelter in a structure you're currently building.

I can't think of a single tale worth telling, a single story that hasn't been written before, a single character or idea or concept worth believing in. It's been great so far but frankly, I'm exhausted right now, and if I'm going to be even more frank, I've been exhausted ever since last year, as far as writing and being able to tell good stories has gone, and it hasn't gotten significantly better.

I'll be frank again. I hate talking about this weakness on this blog, because while I'm (thankfully) nowhere remotely near being a "famous writer" and thus don't have "famous writer" expectations on me (i.e. to be a shining example to all other writers out there), I do know there are people who read this who look up to me as a writer, and to them, I am the "shining example", and being so blatant and nearly pessimistic (even though the pessimism is caused by perceptions of my current reality and expectations made by judging off of the continual nature of this reality)...well, I just don't think it's good. There are other places I can essentially complain, why am I doing it here?

That's a very good question and I haven't got an answer, but maybe it's to show that writing, at its heart, is a very miserable business and we do it anyway and I don't know why and it probably makes us insane but it's what we do so we do it. And that tiny part of me that isn't stained with cynicism and that doesn't regard reality wants to say that, even if we could choose not to, we'd never consider doing anything but what we're doing.