#omphaloskepsis

[veliseraptor]

I understand why "make bad art" can be an effective rallying cry for some, but for me personally it has never worked; my entire perfectionist being locks up at the idea of making something bad. For me, it just feels like if something is really and truly bad then what was the point of doing it at all? Personally, I don't find it motivational or encouraging.

The two things I have found that actually do help me are a combination of "I'll fix it in post" (the first version doesn't have to be good, it can be polished up later) and "not everything I make has to be my best work."

don't get me wrong I'm still very bad at accepting either of these things, but I've personally found them more practicable than trying to tell myself it's okay to "make bad art."

[noosphe-re]

Etymology of ‘omphaloskepsis’ (via etymonline.com)

[storiavitali]

These days, I try to hate myself for more constructive reasons than my coffee consumption.

I must choose my battles so to speak. I cannot rake my weary soul over self involved coals any longer. I find it much easier to accept myself than deny myself due to some unrealistic ideal my ego conjured in the name of perfection.

Ultimately we expire and return to the primordial silt from whence we came regardless of how heavily we scrutinise our flaws or squander our finite existence.

Making choices to nurture your future self is tremendously more satisfying than drifting through moments unlived in some calculated rush to the finish.

[paradife-loft]

...I get really cranky at writing that I feel like is trying to depict a character experiencing something that’s in some way universal - as opposed to trying to depict the specific, bounded, inherently limited experience of just the single character with their particular location in the world. this is very much an established pattern for me.

the thing that bothers me about that, though, is - am I picking up on an actual difference in writing styles, on something that’s actually located in the text and how the text is generally communicating with readers? or am I just... seeing depictions of anything that feels a certain type of foreign to my own experience, and perceiving its mere existence as carrying the extra baggage of an attempted universal statement?

(hard mode: how possible is it to even depict something as arising organically out of a character’s individual unique place in the world, as being just about who they are and not a statement on Humanity In General, when that experience is one that often is pushed in broader cultural narratives as being applicable to everyone (or at least everyone who isn’t Being A Person Wrong)?)

[veliseraptor]

was talking last week with my therapist about how I feel like one of the single biggest things that has stuck with me as a result of being pretty severely mood disordered from a young age has been this deeply felt idea that like. the world doesn't care.

as early as middle school I realized very fast that it didn't matter how awful I felt, it didn't matter if I was crying in the bathroom or wanted to die, I still had to go to class and do my homework and act more or less normal because it didn't matter, maybe there would be some leeway one time but the second, or the third, pull it together, suck it up and deal. which kind of became my mantra, suck it up and deal, because nobody cares how hard you're struggling, lise, you have to do it anyway.

and that's sort of. continued to carry me forward. and on the one hand maybe it's a good thing because it keeps me roughly functional, at least at a baseline in my daily life, so far. there's only been one time when my employer actually noticed that I was severely depressed and it was starting to impact my work (and lo and behold! it was in the context of 'concern over performance' and I was basically told that I should go to therapy, a thing I was already doing). in general I suck it up and deal and do it anyway and it sucks and it's hard and it hurts and I hate it but there it is.

sometimes there's been parts of me that like. fantasize about breaking. about having a total collapse and just not being able to suck it up anymore, and I know that's not actually what I want, what I actually want is for the world-at-large to understand that I'm trying and it's a lot of work to do what I do and sometimes I'm going to fall short and I need that to be okay, but there's always the underlying knowledge that it just won't be okay, that if I fall short that's it, I lose my job, I lose my friends, I lose.

(and there are people, lise, for whom it's already true that they're there, aren't you lucky, really, to be able to be like this, to be able to keep going, to push through and suck it up and at least manage even when you don't want to, some people don't get that much so really you should be grateful. it could be worse. stop feeling sorry for yourself.)

I'm not actually in a terrible place right now. overall I'm handling pretty well, generally, my mood is fairly stable on a macro-scale, I'm dealing, more or less. but I'm also very tired and sometimes I wish I could just look people straight in the eye and go "yeah I just can't right now. and I might not be able to for the rest of the week, either." and have that be. you know. fine.

[veliseraptor]

got emotional about old livejournal friends who have disappeared from my life today in therapy.

like, i had my online friendship horror stories but on the whole the people who (metaphorically) listened to me pouring out my sorrows as a middle- and high-schooler, depressed and profoundly lonely, kept me alive through those years.

(those of you who are still here possibly reading this post: thanks!!! can't say it enough.)

and for many of those people I don't know their real names or where they lived or anything about them, and I have no idea where they are now or what they're doing, they've fallen out of my life completely, but I still think about them and I wonder sometimes if they still think about me.

just. to those people I only ever knew by username and are now ghosts of deactivated accounts commemorated on a livejournal backed up on dreamwidth but were an integral part of my very difficult teenage years.

[veliseraptor]

the better I get to know my mother as an adult the more I'm like. wow I really am my mother's daughter in terms of my emotional issues. but I feel like this has mostly meant a deepening of my compassion for her and also a deep sorrow that I don't really know how to help

[veliseraptor]

like. just to get real personal here on my own personal oversharing blog:

I am a sadist. I like hurting people. it is fun for me and I get pleasure out of it. this has been true for me for a very long time.

I also spent, oh (checks) a decade and change avoiding it and certainly not naming it because it was bad! it made me bad! not allowed! I wasn't even naming the thing for most of that time. pretty much the only outlet I had was (legitimately) whump fic. because there I could safely hurt characters in a way that wasn't morally Wrong.

(at the time. I am given to understand winds have changed on that front, too.)

it's not that I was judging anyone else, and I was aware of kink as a thing, and I was even writing it for some of that time, but I never, never would have owned the idea of sadism being something about me. just fun porn power dynamics, don't think about it. don't think about what, specifically, you find sexy. don't fantasize about the Bad things. if you must, position it from the role of the submissive, the masochist. and make sure that it's apparent that the dom or sadist is, first and foremost, there to fulfill a need. they shouldn't, you know, want it just for themselves.

at this point I've...mostly...gotten out from under being way in my own head about this. but it still pops up sometimes, little doubts, little hesitations, little oh this reaffirms your suspicions about yourself being a secretly horrible person.

but it took me a long time.

i wrote like a trigger (get me ready to shoot) for very specific and very personal reasons, and I don't think I could've written it even five years ago.