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Things I’m learning about my own body and soul, five years past my last experience of heavy institutionalisation:
(masters degree; startups hardly count) https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1264438510204997637
(masters degree; startups hardly count) https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1264438510204997637
My tolerance for most interactions is 90 mins. If I’m excited that goes to 3-4 hours. If I’m depressed or demotivated, it’s about 20 mins.
If I’m healthy and not in crisis, whether I’m depressed or excited is determined by interaction with the thing itself. Person, work etc
If I’m healthy and not in crisis, whether I’m depressed or excited is determined by interaction with the thing itself. Person, work etc
(If I’m sick, overwhelmed or in emotional crisis for some other reason, whether I’m depressed, excited or neutral is determined by whatever that big player in my life is—romance, heartbreak, injury, obsession with a different project etc. Big rocks vibrating the little rocks)
Scheduling is promising myself to people and concerns
This gives me a sense of how to be humble about scheduling
Zoom call with new person? 60 mins, let it float to 90 if jamming
Call with a dear friend I vibe with? Let it float, knowing it’ll end up being around 3 hours
This gives me a sense of how to be humble about scheduling
Zoom call with new person? 60 mins, let it float to 90 if jamming
Call with a dear friend I vibe with? Let it float, knowing it’ll end up being around 3 hours
Stupid forms I hate, on a day when everything’s awful? Join the ultraworking people, and cut it off in 30 min chunks at a time
Once I’m inside an interaction, stopping it short feels disjointed and disorienting. I WANT to stay in the work I’m in, or the conversation I’m in.
(This eventually taught me that I’m not inherently lazy, something I internalised for a long time—I will fight for the right to keep working on something good I’m already working on!)
My relationship to work looks very similar to my relationship to people—sometimes I’m intimidated by the work or it’s not responding the way I want it to and I have to be patient and listen. When I treat it like an object it wriggles out of my hands.
(Since this thread I’ve settled into a kind of uneasy domesticity with two longer-term projects, and the sense of being followed around by a hideous but intensely loved baby is starting to appear:) https://twitter.com/utotranslucence/status/1256976019489058819
Rather than using a calendar to determine how long something should last, I’m trying to lean into noticing my sense of when something is ‘done’, and it feels really real in a way that calendar time doesn’t.
Feels like conceptual, emotional and interactive experiences have a tempo of digestion in the same way different meals do.
They ask for different vistas of space around them.
They ask for different vistas of space around them.
(I have @CharlieGilkey’s book Start Finishing to thank for giving me a lot of the relevant handles for this—it’s what a book on project management would look like if we acknowledged that 90% of project management is emotional management: https://bookshop.org/a/5941/9781683642633 )
Interacting with others involves getting into sync across tempos; watching the skipping rope hit the ground a few times before you enter: https://twitter.com/utotranslucence/status/1258828951016730624
(Incidentally, I think this is what warm-ups are often really for, both physical and social ones, as well as opening rituals, opening credits, meal prayers, repetitive routines, coffee breaks—they sync people’s internal tempos up well enough to play together)
As I’m spending more time singing and harmonising with my own voice on recordings, I remember how our choir teacher would have us practice the in-breath before we started singing, because starting that breath together would allow us to continue to sing together.
(Something I wrote a while ago, when I knew less about the phenomenon of attunement than I do now: https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/attunement/)
As the world gets quieter, I’m learning more how to attune with works, works I’m making—in part because more solitude has breathed in this space that allows those new relationship (with non-people!) to flourish.
And it’s a beautiful gift, and something I felt like I didn’t hear enough about work when I was young—it is wonderful to do, in & of itself!
Making something, relating to it, is a joy and a terror of its own accord, and not just because of what the work will do once it’s made.
Making something, relating to it, is a joy and a terror of its own accord, and not just because of what the work will do once it’s made.
I had felt that joy and terror, and had my work break my heart, astoundingly so, but I’d never known that that was what was happening, exactly.
Some of the side effects of shelter-in-place receding the waterline and exposing some different things underneath.
