Reboot Post (a.k.a. Hobbies Are Nice)

I've let this blog go way dormant and for the same reason as before - I'm way too hard on myself when it comes to my writing skill and the topics I want to tackle. So, I'm trying this again. And I'll try to go easy on myself.

What motivated me to start writing was something not writing related. I started to teach myself guitar for the first time in 14 years and so far it's going well. When I first tried to learn guitar, I had approached it like I had done with other instruments back at my high school band class. I picked up books and tried to learn the technical stuff, like scales and reading sheet music. I'd play the scales over and over while I tried to memorize their note positions in the sheet music. I made sure that I got the first note patterns down before I moved on to the next. I needed to make sure that I was getting those scales down correctly.

People who are self-taught can already see the problem here: I wasn't really playing anything. The end goal was technical mastery, but I wouldn't have learned a single song by the end of this approach. I had set up a regimen that wasn't any fun and wouldn't even result in something tangible that I could enjoy. This was ok in a class setting, where you had other people to talk to and work with, but it was a boring routine to try when you're by yourself.

Thinking about this now, it's a small wonder why I hung on to that system for about a year. Why did it took me so long to quit?

My approach this time is different. When I started again a few months ago, I insisted to myself that I learn a song - any song. Hell, I made it real easy for myself by typing out "easy acoustic guitar songs for beginners" on Google (yes, even Bing) and I came across a whole lot of tutorial videos and tablatures for music that is not only attainable to play at my level, but fun too. I was even pleasantly surprised to have found a couple of songs that I knew and loved growing up (post-grunge era alt-rock & new wave 80's... yeah!). Then I tried to play, knowing full well that I'm going to sound like crap. However, I made sure to note any improvements in my playing, no matter how small. It was important for me to see that my hours of practice were not in vain.

So far, I can sort of sing and play a passable version of "Mad World" (a rendition of Gary Joules' cover of the Tears for Fears song, aka "the Donny Darko song") and play and butcher the lyrics to "Wonderwall," by Oasis. I'm also working on "Blackbird," by the Beatles because, why not?

Working on "Blackbird" has been the most fun so far. I can kind of play all the riffs to the song now, and even sing it... kind of. I remember how hard I struggled with just the first three chord changes. Seeing how far I've come since then applies a level of significance that can fuel my motivation. Sure, playing the song is still like driving in stop and go traffic at the moment, with a lot of pauses between riffs to re-position my wayward fingers, but I hope to smooth it out with a lot of practice. I'm just happy that the practice has been a lot of fun.

As I started to improve my skills at guitar, my mind turned toward writing. I know I stop short of typing out a single word because I feel like my ideas aren't any good. If I do come across a good idea, I stop short of writing it down because I'm afraid that I'll muck it up in the execution. What's worse is that I feel like I'll never get any better than where I am right now. I liken it to being stuck in a fog, with no road or sign post to show the general direction of where I should be going.

This is in contrast to how E.L. Doctorow had put it. At least he had a road. And headlights.

I think the reason why I feel stuck is because I'm still not used to the idea of writing as being a process. I've grown up writing as a student in a binary way, my essay is either finished or not finished. So, I have learned to ignore the little adjustments I've made to any given work. It doesn't help that I have not written with any regularity, so that neural pathway (or whatever) in my brain that recognizes progress has atrophied, either due my perfectionism or low self esteem. This has lead to writing attempts which the only motivation was to get it finished, which, upon failure, didn't do my sense of worth any good. All I had to show for when I failed this task was that I screwed up. I had forgotten how to sift through the mess to find the good bits that tell me "hey, writing is totes worth trying again."

At any rate, my other hobby has kind of pried that pathway open a bit, enough for me to want to give this writing thing one more go.

I'm going to try to be kind to myself and I'll try to note progress. Learning to write isn't too much different than learning guitar in that there is a final picture in my mind's eye that I'm going for. But I feel that image is far more complex than any pop song that I can play, full of tiny details that I can easily obsess over and lose my way by. I have to remember that that image is just a temporary thing and, much like playing a cover of a song, I'm allowed to deviate and re-deviate from it as many times as I like. Bonus points if that effort looks and sounds good in the end.

Apparently, Now I'm Posting Weight Loss Stories

I've been so frustrated with writing that I decided to try other projects for a while like, for instance, weight loss. One thing led to another and now I was compelled to write a little about my progress so far. Below is the first post in my myfitnesspal.com blog. I'm reposting it here because, well, why the hell not?

I restarted my weight loss journey toward the end of November 2013 on the notion that I’d give it “just one more go at it.” That casual attitude helped me move past my normal anxiety about starting things and before I knew it I dropped 5 pounds the following week (as expected due to the drop in water weight from reduced food and sodium consumption), and a steady two pounds per week till I ended up at 217lbs from my starting weight of 229lbs. The 11lb loss really lifted my spirits and brought in a warm sense of well-being. That wonderful feeling came with the thought that losing the weight was very possible. It also gave me the false notion that it was pretty easy, as the lifestyle change was relatively painless. Or so I thought.

The holidays arrived and I was inundated, as many of us have been, with so much good food. A lot of it was cooked by other people too, so a lot of the portions that I recorded on my food diary were estimations at best, and wild guesses at worst. There were definitely a few days where I got tired of guessing portions and didn’t log in food for the day. The first day I didn’t log in any food was the most frustrating – I thought, “Was I giving up on the whole thing?” But I recognized the irrationality of that line of thinking (something therapy has trained me to notice). I told myself that I was just going through an emotional ride and that I can make things right once things settle down a bit. I had to put in extra effort in willpower and awareness in order to keep from losing myself in all the holiday craziness.

Now that it’s been about a week since the start of the new year, I’m happy to say that I’ve only gained 1 pound back. If I were to compare this minor regress with the progress I made the first three weeks, I’d be devastated - probably devastated enough to just outright quit. But, again, I recognize how irrational that is, so I pat myself in the back and try to accept the fact that had I not tried at all, I could have fallen off the wagon completely. I consider the fact that I didn’t a victory.

I thought I could keep a perfect weight loss streak going, to the point that I could have lost 70 pounds in 7 months. But the holidays has taught me that it's never going to be perfect. I'm liable to slip every once in a while. I've learned that in order to get back on track I’ll have to start really paying attention to what I'm doing on a weekly, or even daily basis. Part of that increased effort is being grateful, not just when I lose weight, but when I cut myself some slack for slipping up. I still have a goal in mind (150lbs by October of this year), but I'm not giving up if it looks like I'm not going to make that goal. After all, I still lost a total of 11 pounds. If I was still 11 pounds under my starting weight by the end of this year, I'm still 11 pounds better off than I was before.

Stomachs and Crickets

I can't sleep. My stomach feels like it's running circles under my lungs. I take short breaths as I listen to the crickets chirp. If I was tired, the sound would seem distant, filtered by the fog of my drowsiness. But the chirping is loud. I'm not bothered by the noise, however, so much as the fact that I'm alert. I can't relax.

Is it because I have a lot on my mind? Sure. There is a journalism class that I'd rather sleep through, a Shakespeare lecture I haven't read for, and a creative non-fiction class late in the evening. The last one is especially stressful because I have to critique essays I haven't looked at yet. I also have my own essay up for scrutiny, which is horrible.

I had proposed something different. It was supposed to be a fun paper describing the awesomeness of my plain looks. I had good conversations with friends that I wanted to include in the essay, and I had a point that I was excited to convey: you don't have to jazz yourself up to feel important (actual phrase under construction). However, I had a hard time writing about it. I kept getting bored of the prose and I struggled with concrete details. So, I wrote about the difficulty of writing concretely. I ended up submitting a three and a half page whine about how I can't write. At least, that's how I see it, kind of like this blog. Am I not whining right now?

But I digress. What is really bothering me is my fiction writing, which is not happening. It's my sudden obsession with details, or rather the lack of it in my writing that's causing this.

It used to be that if you let me do my thing, I would come back with a story that had mostly abstractions. "He was angry," "it didn't make sense," and "she liked to sing" made good statements but were backed up by sparse or weak concrete details like "he punched the wall," "they raised their eyebrows," or she hummed a lot." And I would have been fine with all that before. But lately it has bothered me. I would look at a phrase like "he punched the wall" and ask, "okay, so what?" or "what about it?" and realize that there are many answers to choose from. The number of options scared me.

It's a classic case of fearing what's new. Trying to write more concretely is forcing me to think in a way I'm not used to. My usual reaction to the unfamiliar is to hide - so I stop writing.

I'm having a hell of a time fighting the urge to run from the fear. It's hard to move forward when the default mindset is to stand still. But my tense stomach (developing ulcer?) and insomnia are pushing me to get out of this slump. I figure if I conquer this fear and get used to it, these physiological problems will go away. It's not the healthiest way to write, but I'll take what I can get.

Updates

Another quarter has ended at UCR. It was rather hectic, in the sense that I made it rather hectic. I tend to assume the metaphorical, and sometimes literal, fetal position every time I have to work on a homework assignment (see: procrastination). Sure, I destroy the opportunity to work comfortably, but I'll still do the job - once I'm sufficiently worried about passing the class.

It's like I want to see how much I can screw myself over before I finally get to work. Some people call it a fear of failure. A really smart professor had called it the fear of success. Either way, I've kept myself so busy from anxiety that I couldn't write here. Yet, I wonder how much I would write, even without the anxiety of school...

At any rate, here is a list of highlights:

• Had a couple of English classes last quarter which practically beat a habit of reading into me. I read every day now. However, I think I'll shorten my leisure reading to twenty-five or fifty pages a day, instead of the one-hundred and fifty pages a night I had to read for class.


• I can safely say that my writing has improved from a summer of reading and practice, along with last quarter's readings and practice, to the point that:
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to have the potential to be published.
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to be publishable as is.
  
  
• Oh yeah, I moved to Riverside. Life has been more tolerable ever since.

A teacher suggested that I send one of my stories to a specific venue. I'm not sure if I should send it there, as I have read some of their stories and I think that my story would be a downer for them. I have doubts. Then again, I always have doubts.

Anxiety of Influence: A Play in One Act

(Note: I am aware that I haven't followed the conventions of scriptwriting. Leave me be.)

ACT I

[SCENE: A dialog in MS Word that precedes some writing.]

Me 1:
What are you afraid of?

Me 2:
I don’t know. I just don’t think that any of my descriptions and details are any good.

Me 1:
Why not?

Me 2:
I don’t know, I think about all the effective writing I’ve read and I’m afraid.

Me 1:
Why?

Me 2:
I don’t know. I seem to be inspired by the words of other people, but when I try to write them myself, I get scared.

Me 1:
Shouldn’t you write anyway? Most of the people that you admire are dead.

Me 2:
I know. I still need to get used to it.

Me 1:
Why don’t you think about it for a minute. Sensory imagery and all that shit. Get into the zone, don’t worry about other people and how they write.

Me 2:
I know, I’ve heard that before, but I can’t help it.

Me 1:
Do it, you should. And you should really avoid continuing this conversation, all you’re doing is distracting yourself.

Me 2:
I know I am, I’m just afraid, that’s all.

Me 1:
I know, don’t worry about it. Just chill out and, again, work out the details in your head, live the scene and your head and report what you see. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to worry about flowering it up. Trust that you will get it eventually.

Me 2:
I don’t know if I can.

Me 1:
Come on, at least try.

Me 2:
Okay… let me try.

THE END

Upon reflection, I realize that this blog entry has also been an exercise in distraction. Back to work!