internal inertia

4.4 between today and yesterday. Mostly today-- yesterday I tried a couple different times to write, and wasn't really up to it... so I took a tactical retreat, slept on it, came back raring to go today.
Though I'm glad I gave myself the chance to try yesterday, what I did was definitely more effective than abiding strictly to my two hour minimum.

Far be it for me, the person who talked last year about struggling with alexithymia, to preach about the role of emotional awareness in creative development, but... well... here we are.
implicitly, i have cass to thank for a lot of my operative understanding here. and wouldn't it be cool if someone were having an ongoing discussion about how to better understand and think about emotions? but for my part, i can talk about where they're coming in here.

in the past, circa 2015, my way of working on anything was solely based on what i thought i Should do. that usually meant keeping my head down, working constantly, and suppressing any feelings i had that would distract or take away from Getting Reborn Done.
those of you who have been around for a long time will remember how that story went-- I gave myself psychosomatic pain and ultimately ended up slowing down reborn's development way more than I helped it.

this is because it was in defiance of my emotional state rather than understanding it and working with it.
speaking in a physical sense, for instance... if we consider emotions to be an object capable of having inertia, does it not make sense that one would get more movement by using that inertia for their own purposes? conversely, it explains why acting against your feelings-- trying to stop an object in motion-- is just an exercise in exhausting yourself.

anyway, i am finding it an important skill (which i am very much still learning) to be able to tell when, emotionally, I am done writing. It is not always when I am done with the piece, as I would wish. Sometimes I am just having to be aware that with the way I am feeling-- with the lack of inertia-- I cannot write the thing I want to write or finish, in a way that is meaningful in my current given emotional state.

conversely, that means becoming more aware of the conditions in which i can write a given thing.

in the past, i think i have made myself willingly blind to the way i was feeling in relation to a goal.
i suspect that i am not alone in that.
school is a pretty harrowing teacher here-- you are made, by everyone around you, to believe you have to do your homework regardless of whether or not you feel like it. ergo, the skill that is taught is not better understanding yourself, your condition, and your emotional capabilities-- it is how to shove all of that down and do what you Must.

another personal note: for a lot of my life i've idolized willpower-- the ability to do exactly the above despite feeling otherwise-- as a virtue. sometimes I still catch myself admiring the legends of people who work on something for fourteen hours a day and forget to eat. it was me, once. part of me wants it to be me again. there are some rare forms of that which might be cast out of passion-- but they're as unsustainable as any other-- and most forms of that are probably forged in desperation. either way, it's deeply unhealthy and probably shouldn't be admired. ah, but there i am, arguing against myself about it every third day.

willpower is a survival skill.
emotional understanding is what actually gets things done in a way that has meaning.