Time Sinks
What I shouldn't be doing with my time.
Timesinks
or: Procrastinating for the Sake of Sanity.
21 March 2020.
Wondering what exactly timesinks are? Don't worry, I made it up. But physics can be weird, so idk, maybe?
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The idea is this: a heatsink serves to divert process-generated heat away from the process so that the whole thing doesn't overheat (my inner scientist is showing here).
In the case of time that process is, you know, existing. Tedious business. Under every normal circumstance, time flows into the past like heat dissipates into space. Do something you love and it flows a little faster (dense matter), do something you hate and it melts away glacially (air).
But time is a tricky thing to deal with when you're depressed. You want to do the things you love, but you don't. You want to be functional enough to do the things you hate when you must, but you aren't. And suddenly, time is trapped. You are trapped in a vacuum with all your time, endless time, and you wonder, how did it ever go by as quickly as it did when I was young? You feel like you are doing nothing, nothing worth your time, but doing nothing adds only to your guilt.
So what do I do with my time? It has to go somewhere, hasn't it?
I waste it. I go looking for timesinks to keep the process running and my brain from frying. Bless the internet for endless opportunity to suck in excess time. Keep in mind though: it is virtually impossible to actually "waste" time at all. Not all my timesinks are equal in their surface productivity, mind you, but there is some value to all of them. So, yeah, I cleaned the flat. I should do it more often as it stands, anyway. I watched some beginner piano lessons on Youtube. I'm sure that will come in useful, sometime. I also took a depression nap to timejump two hours into the future. Well, yes, that wasn't one bit purposeful, but what it did was give me a break. One I needed.
I didn't get any writing done today in these our quarantined times. Unless you'd count some late-at-night ramblings comparing my coping mechanisms to heat exchange components in electro-mechanical devices. At the very least I proved to myself that I can still follow through on an idea. That's something.
Happy Spring everyone!
Eurovision 2020
or: 'Tis the Season to be jolly, and a little gay, fa la la la!'
1 March 2020
I am so hyped.
UPDATE April2020: I am so gutted.
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The gayest season of the year is upon us: Eurovision, when a whole continent collectively looses its marbles to the magic of glitter, sequins, and wind machines. The six hours of madness that is Sanremo in February did little to appease me so far, but day by day the entrys are rolling in and deliver just a tight little stab of excitement.
Every now and then it's nice to be reminded that my brain is, in fact, still capable of endorphin production. A little more consistency would be nice, buddy, but no pressure, you do you, in your own time.
Hobby Horses for the Discerning Writer
or: 'Creative ways to waste some time, get off-track, and let off steam as a writer'
6 May 2020
My personal choice of task to be working while not working is foraging for evocative stock images and coming up with a title to create mock book covers. Often enough a story idea will come up in the process, and while I certainly invest too many hours on making things fit together *just* right, I still think the exercise is worth the time. The creativity involved taxes a visual part of my thinking, as opposed to the imaginative creativity I need for writing the words.
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That‘s the way I think about my trusted hobby-horse on good days. On bad days, my motivation changes somewhat.
Some days I can‘t. I can‘t draft, can‘t plan, can‘t edit. I‘m still coming to terms with the fact that I *shouldn‘t* tear myself to shreds when my mental state just shuts down the writing valve. It happens.
I used to fling myself into day-long working fits of obsession over inconsequential details, but with work and therapy my workflow begins to resemble something healthy finally. Realistic goals, taking breaks, structured days. But when I can‘t, I occasionally will allow myself the headlong dive into hyperfocus and invest hours into detail work and writing-appendent-or-associated-tasks-of-creativity – WAOATOC instead of WIP.
What do you do when you want to be creative and not write? Drawing, designing, worldbuilding, daydreaming, those are the hobby-horses in my stable.
Note: I‘m not selling anything, the portfolio site just comes with my subscription at no additional cost, and if I don‘t put them someplace I am going to fiddle with things indefinitely.