MUZZLEKISSED #9
Sunday 8 July, 2024
Something I noticed is that as I’ve gotten older is that my skill and output have gone completely different ways. When I was younger and absolutely shit at drawing, writing, everything, I made copious amounts of terrible things. And now, while I am less shit at those things, I make hardly anything.
I have tried to work out why - is it a lack of drive? Time? Energy? And yet I know writers who are multi-novelists who work full-time at high powered jobs, have children, and can play the drums. To which I say: ??!?!?!?!?!?!?
The difference perhaps is that I am lazy, and they are not - I find it joyous to stay in bed all day, I love to sleep, I love to watch TV, whereas others may actually “leave the house”. Also, there is no-one accountable for my silly little creative projects. It’s just me, and me wants to play Nintendo. As Anthony Bourdain once said: “I understand there's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.”
I have yet to outwit, outplay, or outlast my guy. In my eternal attempts to do so, I have tried every method you can find - Pomodoro, Kanban, Alistair, Ivy Lee, lists, chains, bullet journalling, time blocking, eating the frog - none of them have worked. And so, I have had to come up with my own strategems, most of which are dumb, some which are expensive, and all that still don’t really help that much:
1. Child ADHD timer
This is a timer called TimeTimer, intended for children with ADHD, which is actually a very apt description of my self discipline. The idea is that it helps children visualise time in a solid block of colour that gets smaller as time passes. The way I use this is when I do manage to sit down at my desk, I will put it on for a 30 or 60 minute interval, and I can be like ‘okay I’ll try and finish X before times up”, and I can see as I sit there, very clearly that chunk of time get smaller. Not the point but it’s also got an alarm and is a great cooking timer!
2. Metal spike and receipt holder/ roleplaying as a restaurant
This was a bit of an insane attempt at a system where I’d put To-do items up on the pass like in a kitchen, and then I’d be rewarded when the order was ‘fulfilled’ and I could then stab it onto the stick, and then maybe at the end of the month I’d have a huge satisfying stack of completed “orders”. Yes, I was losing it a bit, and no, it did not work.
3. Really expensive tiny writing machine
This is the most expensive of my attempts so far. I bought a Pomera DM250 from Japan, for $toomuch$. A popular device recommended on r/writerdeck, a forum dedicated to distraction-free writing, it’s super portable and does very little other than text input. I got it because it’s much lighter than a laptop and I had idealised dreams of squeezing in an hour of writing here and there at this cafe and that between things, and I have even optimistically brought it on trips with me, should I be struck by inspiration overseas. Hahaha.
4. Electric Typewriter
Okay, this one, I am not giving up hope on. Have you typed on an electric typewriter before? Not a manual one, but an ELECTRIC one, that HUMS? It is quite magical, and the satisfaction of typing on this thing is extremely high. I originally searched for one with the model number SL-5000 (my initials), as I liked the idea of going into “Sharon Lam-5000 mode”…
5. YouTube live
This is another one for when you have successfully sat down at your desk. At any time of day, if you search ‘study with me live’ on YouTube, you will find all these people around the world live-streaming themselves at their own desks. I usually have them in a smaller window beside my active one which I have found actually very motivating to stay on task, especially seeing other people “watching now” and doing the same thing at the same time 🥺
6. Ambient music
Often the silly little task I am trying to work on involves writing and reading, and so songs with lyrics are too distracting. My fav ambient albums (which I will play on YouTube, instead of Spotify, again because I can see how much time has passed) include stuff like Wet Land by Hiroshi Yoshimura and The Pavilion of Dreams by Brian Eno & Harold Budd.
7. Listening to Jack Johnson and pretending to be coeliac
Okay so this one is hyper-specific, but basically I once had a flatmate who was coeliac and listened to Jack Johnson a lot and she was soooo on to it and soooo disciplined and I swear I never even saw her lie down ever. Always upright. So sometimes especially late at night if I play Jack Johnson and think gluten free thoughts I can tap into a bit of her energy. So this trick is about finding who the Jack Johnson coeliac figure in your life is and then just pretending to be them for a bit!!
-That’s all I can think of for now…but I am sure I have tried more…if you have any of your own weird hacks…please share, as you can see, with this email being TWO YEARS after the last one, I need all the help I can get.
Until next time,
Sharon
PS. Still working on how to sign these off
Hi Sharon
Interesting essay
I have been thinking recently about what a counsellor said to me years ago, that a big issue for me was Dealing with perfectionism. At the time I took this to mean the perfectionist in myself and this was something I could confront and solve.
But now I'm thinking Perfectionism is an idea, a quality that is all around us, in everything we do, like a shining light. And if you are lucky you will experience it for a moment, a glimpse.
Because it is also a trap. Most people are mediocre and the world is mediocre. We are flawed people in a flawed system. And if you can foreground that mediocrity, that give in the system, most of us will be a lot happier.
This is hard to do in writing, by its very nature because there are so many examples of what we thought of as perfect writing. But I guarantee that if you ask these writers we admire they would say they could have done better and would instantly want to change what they had written.
So I reckon we all just need to keep plugging away. Don't overwork it, but don't underplay. Keep going and you will find something you're happy with
Just a few thoughts
Daniel