scrubjayspeaks

This got slightly far afield for a Done This Week post, so I popped it out into its own.

I’m going through one of my phases where I want to rewrite my internet usage and free time habits. (I suspect this happens every fall, though I can’t say for sure. I know I want to clean every November at this point, so it seems like this would track as well.) I feel like I’m missing out on things I like that are more nourishing (and less doom scroll-ish):

Various writers who blog regularly. The assorted Patreons I support but never actually look at the patron-exclusive content for. Books of various stripes. Fanfic longer than a few thousand words that I burn through while getting ready for work in the morning and in the car before I walk in, trying to fortify myself with something sweet. Shows, old or new, because I’m at the point where I can’t even bring myself to rewatch safe favorites.

Those are also things that require a little more brain power from me, though. Or will engage my emotions (other than existential dread) in ways that feel big and threatening. The sort of thing that I tell myself I need to be “in the mood” for. Or that feel like I need to consume them “properly,” rather than in bits and pieces, catch as catch can, and somehow the proper moment never materializes.

If I were avoiding all those things because I was deeply embedded in a project of my own, that would be fine. Can’t read on my work breaks because I’m trying to get something written for the day’s Whumptober prompt? Phenomenal! This ain’t that. I’m just...picking the low-hanging media fruit. Whatever anodyne thing distracts my brain in the quiet in-between moments. Just noise.

Why is the default always to choose numbness? It’s not even indulging in comfort--current event podcasts are not comforting--but the security of only listening to the bad news I already know. Is it any surprise, then, that each night I need to (re)read the most indulgent fic I can to unwind? Which is no bad thing, as far as I’m concerned, in its own right. But maybe I should find a way of living that doesn’t involve the psychological equivalent of shocking myself into a stupor with tasers and then whimpering in a corner until I can bear to do it again. That doesn’t seem...beneficial. To me.

Sometimes, I get kind of panicky about the latest cycle of death knells about tumblr. It is, after all, my main social media, my main fandom platform, and my main access point to queer community. But then I also sometimes think--am I having a good time right now? Or am I mostly watching intracommunity drama play out and calling it connection, interspersed with cat photos, out-of-context quotes, and artwork of staggering beauty? What impulse am I actually satisfying right now?

Sometimes, I want to disappear back into lurkerdom and not engage with anything, just silently consume. Sometimes, I want to run off into the wilds and never touch the internet again. Sometimes, I want to get so involved that all my free time is spent responding to messages and writing to prompts.

There’s probably some healthy set of habits that actually lets me enjoy the benefits of all those options, albeit in sequence, rather than simultaneously. I guess I’m still just chasing after whatever that looks like.

I mentioned to someone the other day that I've made a realization regarding my ability to read or lack thereof. I've really been struggling to ever sit down and read a book, even though I have tons I really want to get to. Previously, I've attributed this to stress and an inability to cope with new stories or even the emotional intensity of old favorites. But that seemed manifestly inaccurate, considering the rate at which I burn through podcasts and, to a lesser extent, audiobooks.

Admittedly, I'm getting through a lot more nonfiction podcasts than I am fiction of any length, which could lend credence to the "too stressed to deal with narrative" theory. Realistically, though, I know that I tend to choose podcasts over audiobooks because of timeliness. The audiobook will always be there, but the podcast might be related to current events or at least the current events of the hosts' lives, so I feel like I need to keep up. In any case, I'm getting through many hours of audio input.

This doesn't even touch on my minor Youtube addiction, and we'll leave it at that.

And I realized as I was going on about this whole situation that there was a critical difference: all that listening was happening at work where I have stuff to do with my body. (When I'm on Youtube, I'm often not watching the screen but listening while, say, playing video games or cooking, so the theory holds at home as well.) My work is methodical, repetitive, physical without necessarily being strenuous, and not particularly engaging for most of my brain when things are running well. When things aren't running well, I often switch back to music, in fact, so I can concentrate on troubleshooting.

Point is, I'm doing lots of fiddly stuff with my body while my brain goes to the theater of the mind.

Yet when I think about reading, I'm thinking about having to sit down somewhere and focus on either a page or a screen held in my hands. I'm not doing anything else. I'm just reading. And I'm starting to think that my resistance to the idea of reading, even when I have all the time in the world for it, is my brain and body going, uh, where's the rest of the activity? Yeah, fine, storytime, but what are we going to be doing?

FYI, I probably have ADHD, it's a whole long story and I'm still holding a bit of a grudge against my fourth-grade teacher over it, anyway. Between that and the autism, I'm very fidgety and need both ALL the input and also carefully managed input. Which is probably why my day job + podcasts is such a dream combination for me.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to recreate that sensory situation at home when reading print/ebooks. (Yes, I realize I can listen to podcasts/audiobooks at home while doing, say, crafts. I already do that. I just also have visual books I want to be able to read too.) I can't do my usual activities of gardening, cleaning, cooking, playing video games, or crafting because...uh...I sorta need to look at the page instead.

This is just me working through the start of this idea in preparation for brainstorming. I need activities I can do while reading printed words. I mean, I'm probably going to end up wandering around the field and hoping I don't break my ankle falling in a squirrel hole because I wasn't looking where I was going. I miiiiight be able to get away with crocheting without looking, but that doesn't leave me with any hands free for holding a book. Might be able to prop up the tablet for ebooks, though. Not ideal, but.