Apr. 30th, 2010 03:18 am
Driving to distraction
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textualdevianceHad a much-needed chat with M tonight about brainspace issues and my stupid ADD and my desperate need to go balls-deep into my creative stuff lately (because I spent most of the last two years more or less deprived of opportunities for that.)
Was trying to explain that I don't go to bed when he does (when I don't have to get up early) because late nights are often my most creative and productive time. When Asia's the only continent that's really awake, the world seems quieter, and I feel like I can focus. During the day, there's just too much mental noise and too many interruptions, and I have a miserable time trying to stay on task when that happens.
No matter how creative I feel or how much my muses are working with me, I can't do what I need to do when there's so much chaos around me, and the potential for someone to interrupt me at any moment.
I was also realizing that I often stay up late when I feel like I haven't accomplished much during the day. I feel like I want to go to bed having something to point at to say, "Hey, I did this today" and if that means I stay up until dawn working on something, then that's what I do. No matter how tired I am, I can't sleep unless I feel like I've done something tangible.
Theoretically, this would seem like a perfect recipe to, essentially, work a graveyard shift. Unfortunately, because I'm also so sensitive to getting enough daylight, this tends to screw me up, because I sleep through ~six hours of sun. And it also means I don't have a lot of bandwidth available in the evenings when M's home and wants to interact, because I'm busy catching up on what I missed during the day when everyone else was awake.
I wish I knew an easy solution for this. My meds can only do so much to keep me from getting derailed during the day with the constant buzz of the world, but that's technically the time when I should be working, so I can live like normal people do.
Stupid brain.
Also, I kind of got pissed off at M tonight when it became clear that he thought this sabbatical time was just a vacation for me. The assumption that because I wasn't going to an office somewhere and earning a paycheck that none of what I have planned for this time was important enough to consider work (and thus to require giving me enough time and mental space to do it) really irritated me.
I know he didn't mean to be disrespectful, but... I have a hard enough time justifying to myself that sitting around writing and teaching myself video editing is "real" and something worth spending my time on. Even after getting a journalism degree and making some money with it, I still feel like writing isn't a real job, and to have M act that way about it really rubbed me the wrong way.
It's true that a lot of what I'm working on right now (aside from the MediaElites gig) is fandom-related and thus not something that I'm ever going to get paid for, but there's still a good reason for it: Practice. I've spent so long being a button monkey that my muses are coated in rust, and I need the fic writing and such to get me back up to speed before I go throwing myself into the novel project (among other things.) I'm also teaching myself more graphics skills, because those are going to be useful resume fodder for when I need to go earn a paycheck again.
My previous fandom follies led me to a whole new career because I learned some very valuable tech and reporting skills in the process. Yes, a lot of that time was wasted (mostly on petty fandom bullshit I should've just ignored), but a lot of it was much-needed education, too. The same is happening now. And to not have that education taken seriously is really kind of insulting. I'm never, ever going to make the kind of money or have the kind of career M has. Not gonna happen. But that doesn't mean that what I can do is unimportant. Yes, much of the world might think I'm just an overgrown teenager screwing around and leeching off of my husband, but that's really not what's going on.
FWIW, I think he understands this intellectually, and I do know that he doesn't mean to hurt me. We just live in very, very different worlds where work/career is concerned, and I think it's hard for him to grasp that sometimes on an instinctive level.
Was trying to explain that I don't go to bed when he does (when I don't have to get up early) because late nights are often my most creative and productive time. When Asia's the only continent that's really awake, the world seems quieter, and I feel like I can focus. During the day, there's just too much mental noise and too many interruptions, and I have a miserable time trying to stay on task when that happens.
No matter how creative I feel or how much my muses are working with me, I can't do what I need to do when there's so much chaos around me, and the potential for someone to interrupt me at any moment.
I was also realizing that I often stay up late when I feel like I haven't accomplished much during the day. I feel like I want to go to bed having something to point at to say, "Hey, I did this today" and if that means I stay up until dawn working on something, then that's what I do. No matter how tired I am, I can't sleep unless I feel like I've done something tangible.
Theoretically, this would seem like a perfect recipe to, essentially, work a graveyard shift. Unfortunately, because I'm also so sensitive to getting enough daylight, this tends to screw me up, because I sleep through ~six hours of sun. And it also means I don't have a lot of bandwidth available in the evenings when M's home and wants to interact, because I'm busy catching up on what I missed during the day when everyone else was awake.
I wish I knew an easy solution for this. My meds can only do so much to keep me from getting derailed during the day with the constant buzz of the world, but that's technically the time when I should be working, so I can live like normal people do.
Stupid brain.
Also, I kind of got pissed off at M tonight when it became clear that he thought this sabbatical time was just a vacation for me. The assumption that because I wasn't going to an office somewhere and earning a paycheck that none of what I have planned for this time was important enough to consider work (and thus to require giving me enough time and mental space to do it) really irritated me.
I know he didn't mean to be disrespectful, but... I have a hard enough time justifying to myself that sitting around writing and teaching myself video editing is "real" and something worth spending my time on. Even after getting a journalism degree and making some money with it, I still feel like writing isn't a real job, and to have M act that way about it really rubbed me the wrong way.
It's true that a lot of what I'm working on right now (aside from the MediaElites gig) is fandom-related and thus not something that I'm ever going to get paid for, but there's still a good reason for it: Practice. I've spent so long being a button monkey that my muses are coated in rust, and I need the fic writing and such to get me back up to speed before I go throwing myself into the novel project (among other things.) I'm also teaching myself more graphics skills, because those are going to be useful resume fodder for when I need to go earn a paycheck again.
My previous fandom follies led me to a whole new career because I learned some very valuable tech and reporting skills in the process. Yes, a lot of that time was wasted (mostly on petty fandom bullshit I should've just ignored), but a lot of it was much-needed education, too. The same is happening now. And to not have that education taken seriously is really kind of insulting. I'm never, ever going to make the kind of money or have the kind of career M has. Not gonna happen. But that doesn't mean that what I can do is unimportant. Yes, much of the world might think I'm just an overgrown teenager screwing around and leeching off of my husband, but that's really not what's going on.
FWIW, I think he understands this intellectually, and I do know that he doesn't mean to hurt me. We just live in very, very different worlds where work/career is concerned, and I think it's hard for him to grasp that sometimes on an instinctive level.
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