productive or not
Sep. 28th, 2023 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonanimastarted anne lamott's bird by bird last night, even though i'm in the middle of one other book and an audiobook. i like that she begins by describing the eagerness of her creative writing students to get advice on publishing, emphasizing that they have to write for the love of writing first, then publication may follow (unlikely), then maybe making enough money writing to live on (even less likely). fuck all those online courses that promise to teach you how to get published, how to write a best-selling fantasy series, how to sell your novel, how to get an agent.
lamott describes writing as an act still worthwhile—like a person you love, an exercise of emotional and mental fitness, a type of exploration. like stephen king, she recommends writing at the same time every day. king called it scheduling time with the muse instead of waiting for it. eventually, the muse learns to show up on time.
after the first chapter, i sat at my new writing desk for ~500 words of freewriting. a simple vignette about a woman who spontaneously buys a set of paints. i enjoyed it, though the baby-blue, plastic bic xtra smooth mechanical pencil was hard on my fingers. my sister used to get big pink bulbs of skin on the sides of her fingers from holding pencils too long.
i took friday and monday off to enjoy a long birthday weekend. my concentration's a wash. all i can think about is napping. at work they served hot dogs and cheddar flavored chips and grocery-store pumpkin cupcakes, on top of the pizza lunch my department ordered to see off our interns. the little ginger one who gets under my skin just asked if he could help me do anything in his last few minutes-- i said it would be great to have any progress he's made on the last writing assignment we gave him and he went back to playing on his phone. i would prefer a flagrantly shiftless do-nothing to this fake corporate-sunny shit from someone who doesn't want to actually do anything. i won't miss the sighing and staring at his computer with one hand in his hair as if these low-expectation assignments are the greatest burden. more likely it's boredom. here i am, after all, looking for any distraction from rewriting the content on a 5 year old website to reflect a product we're hastily putting out because leadership seemingly just realized that we've rebranded to promote things we don't actually offer, so here's a new thing we're offering to distract audiences from the thing we're promoting that we don't have, except the decoy product doesn't work as promoted either. god.
four visits into my planet fitness membership and i already feel a positive change in my mood. there's something about going to the gym that feels better and more effective than all my other attempts to get fit. maybe it's the simple neurosis of capitalism telling me the only reason to keep doing something is if i spent money on it, maybe the multi-step commerce ritual of it, maybe the diversity of activities that prevents boredom. maybe the sense of community. there's a 60-something woman with bleached blond hair who i've seen twice now on the same treadmill. this time i noticed she had one book open on the control panel in front, another book off to the side waiting, headphones, and water. it was like a tiny little office and i was surprised at how lived-in a machine like that could look. it seemed downright cozy.
lamott describes writing as an act still worthwhile—like a person you love, an exercise of emotional and mental fitness, a type of exploration. like stephen king, she recommends writing at the same time every day. king called it scheduling time with the muse instead of waiting for it. eventually, the muse learns to show up on time.
after the first chapter, i sat at my new writing desk for ~500 words of freewriting. a simple vignette about a woman who spontaneously buys a set of paints. i enjoyed it, though the baby-blue, plastic bic xtra smooth mechanical pencil was hard on my fingers. my sister used to get big pink bulbs of skin on the sides of her fingers from holding pencils too long.
i took friday and monday off to enjoy a long birthday weekend. my concentration's a wash. all i can think about is napping. at work they served hot dogs and cheddar flavored chips and grocery-store pumpkin cupcakes, on top of the pizza lunch my department ordered to see off our interns. the little ginger one who gets under my skin just asked if he could help me do anything in his last few minutes-- i said it would be great to have any progress he's made on the last writing assignment we gave him and he went back to playing on his phone. i would prefer a flagrantly shiftless do-nothing to this fake corporate-sunny shit from someone who doesn't want to actually do anything. i won't miss the sighing and staring at his computer with one hand in his hair as if these low-expectation assignments are the greatest burden. more likely it's boredom. here i am, after all, looking for any distraction from rewriting the content on a 5 year old website to reflect a product we're hastily putting out because leadership seemingly just realized that we've rebranded to promote things we don't actually offer, so here's a new thing we're offering to distract audiences from the thing we're promoting that we don't have, except the decoy product doesn't work as promoted either. god.
four visits into my planet fitness membership and i already feel a positive change in my mood. there's something about going to the gym that feels better and more effective than all my other attempts to get fit. maybe it's the simple neurosis of capitalism telling me the only reason to keep doing something is if i spent money on it, maybe the multi-step commerce ritual of it, maybe the diversity of activities that prevents boredom. maybe the sense of community. there's a 60-something woman with bleached blond hair who i've seen twice now on the same treadmill. this time i noticed she had one book open on the control panel in front, another book off to the side waiting, headphones, and water. it was like a tiny little office and i was surprised at how lived-in a machine like that could look. it seemed downright cozy.