Well, I never showered. Mike messaged me as I was necking coffee in my boxers to ask whether I wanted to "do something" before he went to work, so I threw on clothes and walked round, and we drank more coffee, chatted about literature and politics and videogames, mostly videogames, and then we went geocaching, as is Mike's wont, and explored city centre backstreets and parks full of unconscious homeless people and cathedral grounds pocked with bird shit, and we ate sandwiches and made jokes about being depressed, and then Mike went to be a twilight file clerk and I went home, and I took photos on the walk back, got in and edited the photos, sat down to write.
And after putting down some thoughts about Zelda on the Switch I forced myself to engage with the story structure notes, and I remembered that I was stuck on the next bit, it wasn't clear in my head how it flowed, and I didn't know how to explain it in my own post.
Even yesterday this was a sign that I was a moron and a failure, but today I just went away and read up on the stuff that confused me, made notes, thought about the plots of films that overtly follow the hero's journey and how they dealt with the areas that I didn't have straight.
And it's weird. When creativity is stuck just go and work anyway. When the well is dry just do what is necessary to fill it back up. I've learnt that lesson so many times before, and forgotten every time.
And yesterday I would have seen that as a sign that I'm a moron and a failure, but from today's perspective it's fine. Every time I forget, the lesson is easier to pick up again the time after. Every time I fall it becomes easier to rise.
Negative thoughts are strengthened pathways in the brain. Neurons that fire together, synapses that have thickened their coaxial cables though use. Except they're not called coaxial cables, because those are the things that connected your TV to your antenna before Netflix, but it's a word like that, and it's late, so let's just go with it. The thickened synapses are like deep grooves worn into the ground. And when the rain of thought falls that water will run down the grooves easier than it will run across open land. So changing your mind, learning new patterns of thought, is about going down again and again and chiselling out new channels. And at first these new channels are very shallow, and the water quickly starts running back into the old riverbeds. But then you go back and dig the new channels out, and it's less effort than the first time, and you dig them a bit deeper. And then the water goes back into the riverbeds. And then you go down again and dig out the new channels...
I'll forget everything I'm saying here, and I'll feel blue again. I'll lose hope. But I'll keep remembering, and it will get easier. And one day I'll look back and find that I can barely make out those old ossified riverbeds, while the roaring rapids of healthy thought will be connected to a hydroelectric dam powering machines that change the world, and I'll dip the coaxial cables into the water and short-circuit my house and the power will go off and then I'll never be able to have a shower.
See how by referencing my mixing of metaphors and the lack of symmetry in the post I get to both show that I'm aware of those problems and provide a sort of solution to them? Writing is great.
...this writing is great!
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