Righting Writing

I've been spacey lately. This year has been one hell of a theme park ride, and it's all just a bit much these past few days. I've been taking care of myself, and the people who live with me have been helping, too. I live with good people. But still, I am spacey. I go off into my own world, and I don't see or hear people or things around me unless someone or something snaps me out of it. It's not a thing I typically do on purpose (although it has served me well at the Kingdom Hall or riding public transit). When my mind is occupied, it happens all by itself. I guess this is what all those teachers meant by "daydreamer" on my report cards.

This year has given all of us stuff to be preoccupied about. We all have our different ways with dealing with stress. Unless I have to do it under pressure, creating is one of the best therapies I have for myself. I do it because I love it, but also because it helps me feel better and collect myself. I also do it because I love to share with you and with other people. It gives me a nice shot of the good brain chemicals.

This past year has been particularly hard on my executive function. All my regular routines crashed and burned early in 2020. Suddenly, I was home all the time, and almost never alone. It began hard to do any of the things I'd always done. Things like cook, clean, exercise, camp, hike, etc. I wanted to do so very many things, but no matter how much I wanted to do them, my body would stay paralyzed on the couch. Or on a chair. Basically, I spent a lot of time on my ass doing not much of anything tangible.

Then I rediscovered MOOCs and online classes and so forth, and I found that if I had a particular time set aside on my calendar where I'd be doing some sort of creation with other people, I was able to get some of my mojo back.

I've been participating in a lot of writing prompt groups online. I love the accountability they provide, the timed free-writing sprints, the prompts, the community, the positivity, and the opportunity to unleash the stories bouncing around inside my head. It's been hugely helpful to my wellbeing. I'm creating things that I'm proud of, and it's low-stress and low-pressure.

Today I joined an event I've never attended before. Although I got some good writing done, I will not be participating with those particular folks again. I joined it with the understanding that it wouldn't be a workshop with critiques, but a basic free-writing session with a meditation component. I was looking forward to escaping the week's anxiety for a while by throwing myself into writing.

The prompt came up, and I entered that liminal zone between meatspace and imagination, that spot where I translate into words the thoughts in my head. My brain doesn't think in images or words. It thinks in a big old storm of ideas and distractions flying everywhere, and I have to catch the best ideas and describe them into scribbles with my pen. I don't remember what someone looks like, but I can figure out how to translate their appearance into finger strokes on my keyboard. I can describe sensation. I know how something feels when it touches my skin. I know what I taste when I hear a certain sound. I know what something looks like when the sun hits at a certain angle, I know what coldness smells like, and while I'm knowing and translating all these things into words, I'm not really seeing or hearing anything around me in the real world because I'm in this whole other dimension right now and wait.... Someone's saying my name.

The moderator was looking at me from the Zoom screen disapprovingly. "I'm sorry," I said. "Can you repeat that?"

She asked me to say a few words about a story which had apparently just been read aloud. Put on the spot, I blinked a few times and said, "I'm really sorry, but my brain is just not cooperating right now. Please skip ahead to the next person."

She then made a group announcement that we should all be paying attention to one another's readings out of respect, an announcement which I'm well aware was directed at me and my foray into dissociation, an attempt to shame me. I wanted to send a private apology to the reader whose story I'd totally blazed on, but there was no time to type one up because it was time for another reader to read. And of course, I wanted to actually listen to what they were saying. I didn't tune out the other reader on purpose. I honestly wasn't even aware she was reading at all.

When the next strictly regimented mandatory comment portions of the session came along, I extolled the virtues of the previous author. I said things like, "I enjoyed your use of metaphor when you talked about the buoy", or "The last two sentences were an excellent way to end your piece," but apparently the moderator expected each person to write down their favourite quotations from the pieces read.

I didn't expect the moderator to use a line from something I'd just read in her own stream of consciousness writing, but power to her. I guess she liked it.

I respect that some people like to have a very particular order to how they create and work with others, but this way is not for me. Throughout the entire session, my mind kept pulling me away into the world I've been describing on paper and on my computer screen. I was drifting away from consciousness without the need of sleep, all the while waiting to be pounced upon for inattentiveness.

So yeah. Anxiety is illogical, but creating can be a good medicine, as long as that creating is done without additional pressure.

Be kind to one another, folks. We're all dealing with some shit.