Tag: coping

I Write

Having not had opportunities to write to my satisfaction for a few weeks, I thought about writing and why I write. I realize that besides fiction and thinking, there’s more to it. Being the pedantic beast I am — and trying to understand it all for myself — here it is.

I write to understand. I’ve not fully understood that until recently. I often go inside myself to think, delving into deep thinking. Deep thought is used about relationships, analysis of events, and, critically, fiction writing. It’s about the pursuit of ideas, directions and outcomes. It’s often a chase.

I can go so far into deep thought before turning to drawing, or more frequently, writing. Writing forces me to crystallize structure and organization. That exercise results in clarity.

Beyond that simplistic structure, there’s also my writing about my dreams. I dream a great deal when I sleep. The dreams intrigue me more than they aggravate me. I always wonder if I’m trying to tell myself something, or something — someone — is informing me, or warning me. I write to remember and hunt for meanings. Of course, I believe my memories of my dreams are faulty. I suspect I embellish them to fill the vacuum.

I’m also trying to understand myself, to strip away emotions and preconceptions and question my motivation and reactions, hopefully resulting in growth. My writing, too, is about recognizing how I was, what has changed, and what didn’t change. Writing is about struggling with my flaws, conceits, self-confidence and insecurities.

I write to entertain myself. When I was a child and teenager, I often drew. Besides still life settings and contour drawings, abstracts and portraits in pencils, charcoal, water colors, oils and acrylics, I designed star ships, cities, forts, cars, aircraft, whatever volunteered to take root in my mind. I had sheaves of results. Eventually, stories became associated with each drawing. I didn’t start writing any of them until years later. It never occurred to me that I could write fiction. Some will claim, I still can’t.

But I’ve envisioned settings, characters, plot and situations. I enjoy the deep thinking necessary to mine and understand these stories. I can do that in my mind’s confines, but to fully enjoy and realize them, I must write. That allows me to refine the stories and their elements, which makes them more satisfying, because now I can enjoy them as a reader.

Sometimes I write a poem because the words come to me. Those are usually inspired by another’s blog post. I write to inform others of my goofiness, too, like my catfinitions.

I write to remember. My memories remain powerful. Their veracity is likely questionable. That’s the beauty of emails and blog posts. Keep enough of them and organize them, and it’s stunning how flawed my memory can be. Still, I enjoy peering into memories’ corridors to see what the light finds. For myself, I find looking back helps me find balance and look forward.

I also write to affirm knowledge. Part of how I learn is to attempt to express what I think I’ve learned into my words. That forces that clarification of thinking I earlier mentioned.

I write to rant, whine and complain. I do a great of this, I know. I really am a whiny, petulant person. Politics aggravate me. Poor customer service infuriates me. Abuse of other people and animals anger me. Lies, falsehood and fake news sickens me. The lack of critical thinking or applied intelligence appalls me. Mindless acceptance and worship horrifies me. War and violence shock me. Greed and selfishness wearies me.

So I write to relieve myself of these feelings. Once released, I can go on. I post them; others can read them, if they’re inclined, but by writing them instead of verbally complaining, I believe I’m doing a kindness of sparing others from hearing my ranting, whining and complaining.

I write to thank others and support them. Reading of the tragedies that pockmark our global existence and history, I’m frequently reminded how fortunate I am so far as the sperm lottery goes. Others have endured horrors that I can read of and imagine, but life and the fates have always steered me around them. I try to support those who have endured and are attempting to move on. I try to help the exhausted, sick and injured, but my own tanks are not very deep. They empty fast and seem to take time to refill.

I write to find my tribe. By writing and posting, I discover others like me, and they discover me. We can usually get along with others, but they’re not driven to explore and understand themselves and existence but writing about it. Others often don’t understand that passion. So when I write and post, I’m putting up a light, “Hey, writer, here I am.”

I’m thankful to those who read and press the like button. I know I’m not alone. I’m thankful for the comments that pop up, and the shared experiences.

All in all, writing is about coping with who I am, who I think I am, how I appear to others, and who I want to be. Once again, I’m handicapped by my limited intelligence and education from expressing myself more deeply, intelligently and accurately. But again, writing is an effort to expand and stay in motion.

Most of all, tritely, writing is about my flawed existence.

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Dream-Peat

I dreamed three dreams last night. There were repeats of dreams I’ve dreamed before. Like watching a movie more often, more details have developed, or are noticed and retained.

The dreams involve me to different degrees. I’m heavily involved in the first dream, less involved in the second one, and I’m almost phased out wholly by the third. The third dream is mostly about black women getting on an aircraft. The aircraft is a C-5 Galaxy. They’re happy and excited about a journey they’re about to take. I’m happy and excited for them, too, but most of my involvement is listening to them and seeing close-up shots of all those happy people going on a journey.

The first one, that so involved me, was mostly adventure. About me and a group escaping, and then exploring, the dream begins after the escape. I don’t know what we’re escaping. The group is small. We find a cold, icy place to stay until we’re rescued. Once we’re in that place, we discover there are items left behind, and that we’re in what was once a military post. Then we learn the post isn’t entirely abandoned. Little by little, we slip in and integrate, making use of things we see the military using. The military isn’t malicious or anything; they’re simply there, going about their business as it’s been on so many military bases I visited.

No family was in the dream. So it goes. I never feel threatened or frightened in the dream. I’m a little wary initially but that changes quickly as I relax and gain confidence. By the end, when I’m using the military’s stuff, part of them but not one of them, I’m a confident leader.

The second dream is a lame sequel to the first, almost like a set-up to the third. There’s abstract discussions about what happened – “We survived, we found this place, now we can help others” – and sort of a montage of things like that being done. Then, it’s on to the third dream.

I write about the dreams to understand them. Frankly, I don’t. They seem hopeful but beyond that, I can sketch any number of meanings to them. All those meetings would have strength, weakness, logic and flaws to my interpretations. I sometimes think I should devote more time to understanding them but I see that as a major investment in time. I like to guard my time and routines.

Which brings me around to my conclusion. Do my dreams need to have significance, meanings, or portends to other matters? Perhaps it’s sufficient to accept, I dreamed. My mind has cleared some clutter from my thinking. Maybe it’s like organizing the attic; “Oh, here we have some leftover stuff. Where should we put it?” “Stick it in a dream.” “Oh, okay.”

It’s odder and a little more intriguing that I have repeat dreams. Do I have some frozen synapses causing the same images, sounds, ideas and stories to circulate through my mind? Such thoughts trigger comparisons to similarities in my writing. I often address time, memory, reality, technology and alienation in my fiction writing, whether it’s the mystery series or the science-fiction novels.

This leads to insights and suspicions. Perhaps I need more outside input and stimulus. I’m in ruts of living and writing, constrained by others’ health issues, concerns and worries, and have been for some time. Perhaps my dreams are a reflection of my ‘real’ situation, and that’s why they’re repeating, and why I’m so little involved. I’m often a spectator within my own life, another rider on the train.

Not too long ago, I read an article about a woman who often fantasizes during the day. Her pattern of thought developed when she was a child but she realized she continued them as an adult, and that they were connected to regular activities. She recognized that when she does certain activities, she likewise engages in fantasies, and they’re often the same or similar fantasies.

Becoming more interested in what she was doing and why, she searched for evidence that others were doing something like this, and found she wasn’t alone in this habit.

Well, I could have told her that; I also do this.

At first, this behavior was helpful in falling asleep. I engage it and knew it as a way to shut off my brain so I could sleep and rest. Later, I extended it and began engaging to turn off my brain from other issues. I’ve always recognized it as a coping practice to de-stress, but they’re also a way to engage my subconscious mind to think, develop solutions and ideas. These fantasies are harmless, about designing survival places, trains or ships, but I can see parallels to my dreams, and to my fiction writing practices.

In a curious way, I begin to view myself as a pie. Then we can slice me up into my various activities and realms – writing, sleeping and dreaming, walking and living, interacting with others. When I begin doing that, I can see how the whole fits together in a larger pattern. I can see my limitations and frustrations, and how they manifest themselves through fiction writing, daytime activity fantasies, and yes, nocturnal dreams. I can see how other dreams were wish-fulfillment that I matter more than I do, that I have a starring role in something, somewhere, that I am not just another blink of consciousness among the trillions of blinks on Earth.

For better or worse, the dreams are part of the whole necessary to complete me. That isn’t a permanent or complete answer, nor even a deep insight. It’s just another glimpse of an entity and a life.

It just happens to be a very personal view.

 

0

Reset

Tsk. I’d forgotten about the reset button.

I knew I had one. Every human has a reset button but I think most of us find using our reset button is like using ice cubes as charcoal briquettes. Speaking for myself, the biggest problem with my reset button is that it’s not clearly marked and easily reached. Be wonderlicious if my reset button was labeled to my navel’s left, “Press here to reset.” I’d even deal with it if I had to reach down on my bottom and thread a straightened paper clip into a tiny hole to find and press a minuscule button. But my reset button isn’t that easy.

Yet (sigh) a reset was indicated. The computers are freezing me out. I’m like a cave man, except I’m hairier, live in a house, don’t hunt, gather food at stores and markets, wear shoes, have electronic fun stuff and the electricity for them, and I don’t drive as well as a cave man. I’m reduced to not writing or writing in notebooks. I decided not to write in notebooks, except for notes, as the muses intended.

But it’s a painful withdrawal, not to sit and back space and click across a keyboard. Scenes bloom like red algae in my head. I tell myself, “Remember this to write later.” But my brain is an express lane. Only five items are permitted. Putting in notes to remember to write later bumps out my name, address and telephone number. Once they’re gone, matters like other people’s names and where I’m going have as much chance as an ice cube on a hot grill.

Took several days to remember the reset button. I owe it to Amazon. Entertaining myself, I watched a show, “All or Nothing,” about the Arizona Cardinals and their efforts to win the NFL championship. Someone made a big boo boo on the field and another player encouraged him, “Hey, that’s done. Reset.”

Yes, reset. Drop those past frustrations, errors and irritations like soiled underwear. Forgive and forget what I would normally be doing (writing) if my computer was here and working (sob). It’ll be back in two weeks, so reset.

Yes, reset. One lesson I once learned a dozen forty times is that vacuums don’t work for us as humans except when we can apply that technology to suck shit up. So I set to mind sucking that shit up and out. The other thing is that it’s not enough to proclaim that I’m resetting, dumping negative energy and going forward with a glowing positive aura. No,the things that provide me that delicious negative energy that I feast on must not only be rejected but needs to be replaced. See, that’s where the vacuum thingy comes in. Dumping the negative stuff creates a vacuum. See? Follow? Create a vision for going forward, I tells myself, as I’ve tolds myself eleven million and eleven times to the power of eleven before. That’ll bring in positive stuff to replace that negative stuff.

So, yarp, here I go again, on another day, hitting the reset button like it’s my existence’s snooze button. Let’s do this.

But first, some coffee.

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