At the tail end of last year, I was idly wondering (and this may well have been idle wondering out loud in the direction of Richard) if there might be a way of sustaining the fun of makevember, only with fewer rules and more explicit provisions for having bad days so as to avoid the sort of shitty self-guilt-trip that tends to turn a regular endeavour into Chemistry Homework that is done in a hurry before Last of the Summer Wine comes on at 7:15 after Songs of Praise.
So I scribbled a set of things that might be fun, or that I gave myself explicit permission to be rubbish at, in the front of a chunky notebook I accidentally bought in Paperchase at least a year ago. Because I am not the sort of person to write things in a brightly coloured notebook from Paperchase with brightly coloured pens ditto. No. That is what Keep for Android is for, or the wall of post-its on the unused monitor next to this screen.
It seemed to go quite well. I did a thing, logged what I thought about it and then got on with emitting snot into a variety of handkerchiefs. I could have left it alone, but since creativity seems to beget further creativity, or wild ideas become lonely and want other wild ideas to play with, I scribed down all the classes/concepts on a set of cards. The vague plan being that I'd pick one randomly and go and do it.
Because that was never going to be enough, there followed a few days later a set of modifiers.
I was explaining this to my braincare specialist during the week, and he got it straight away because he is a fan of Tarot. We jabbered for a bit about using almost context-free words/images to bypass one's internal editor (the part of your head that goes 'no that's silly' or 'you should worry about this gas bill') and speak directly to the Id (for want of a better concept).
"You're hacking your brain," he said. "Tricking your internal systems into running code it doesn't seem to want to seems pretty textbook to me."
Which had not occurred to me and was indeed true.
I'm sure I had more to say/write about it, but this is getting increasingly meta.
So I scribbled a set of things that might be fun, or that I gave myself explicit permission to be rubbish at, in the front of a chunky notebook I accidentally bought in Paperchase at least a year ago. Because I am not the sort of person to write things in a brightly coloured notebook from Paperchase with brightly coloured pens ditto. No. That is what Keep for Android is for, or the wall of post-its on the unused monitor next to this screen.
It seemed to go quite well. I did a thing, logged what I thought about it and then got on with emitting snot into a variety of handkerchiefs. I could have left it alone, but since creativity seems to beget further creativity, or wild ideas become lonely and want other wild ideas to play with, I scribed down all the classes/concepts on a set of cards. The vague plan being that I'd pick one randomly and go and do it.
Because that was never going to be enough, there followed a few days later a set of modifiers.
I was explaining this to my braincare specialist during the week, and he got it straight away because he is a fan of Tarot. We jabbered for a bit about using almost context-free words/images to bypass one's internal editor (the part of your head that goes 'no that's silly' or 'you should worry about this gas bill') and speak directly to the Id (for want of a better concept).
"You're hacking your brain," he said. "Tricking your internal systems into running code it doesn't seem to want to seems pretty textbook to me."
Which had not occurred to me and was indeed true.
I'm sure I had more to say/write about it, but this is getting increasingly meta.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-25 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-25 10:03 pm (UTC)Either I have been very lucky, or this whole talking-cure thing is totally a two way street and being a warm and engaging conspirator in the process makes it worthwhile for all concerned.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 02:43 pm (UTC)