aftermath

[mrissa]

I had a large, good lunch with timprov and a small, good supper with markgritter, followed by ice cream with a few usual suspects. I was pleased: you can't do things at the last minute and expect everyone in your social universe to show up, but it was nice to have something to celebrate on the day I finished the book.

Every time I finish a book, I have a brief, hard emotional low; today was no exception. I mention this not because I'm seeking sympathy but because if it happens to you or someone you love, it's not just you/them, and it's not necessarily due to anything someone should have done differently. I think I'm through it and ready to enjoy my day off tomorrow. I hope so.

I am very good at putting my head down and working. I am not so good at doing things for fun and to reward myself and just to have a break. I default to practicalities, when I'm dealing with myself. This is not a good thing. It is a trait I need to fight. I need to fight it, however, not as A Project, because that defeats the purpose.

So tomorrow I'm not working on the book, but if something occurs to me, I will put it on a notecard and walk away from it. I will think about what I want to do rather than what I need to do or what I want to avoid doing. I think this sounds remarkably like a plan; we'll see if it survives contact with reality.

Comments

[ellarien]

I just ate a dish of ice cream in honour of your book-finishing.

And I recognize the post-book emotional low; I think of it as a kind of mini-bereavement, letting go of these people who've been part of your life for months.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's that.

Sometimes it's the recognition that no matter how good or bad this book turns out to be, it's not going to be the magic fix for everything in my life. Or, in fact, for anything in my life except for this book being unfinished.

Which is a large enough thing for it to fix, so I should be reasonably pleased.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yah. That.

As I said above to ellarien, I think a large part of it is that finished novels only fix the problem of having unfinished novels. They don't even fix any problems in one's career: it's sending them out and publishing them that does that (ideally).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The nice thing about this is that when it gets to that point, I can enjoy reading the silly thing. Because it has gone click, so it is no longer my problem.

belonging to someone else

[aet.livejournal.com]

Actually, for me, this "belongs to someone else" applies to personal letters I write also. Up to the point I feel like I am stealing when retelling same story to different persons - after all, my story already belongs to the person to whom I told it first.

I has gotten worse lately, though. Now, if (and that happens often) I am misunderstood, I tend to feel I was wrong initially and the other person does have the true version of what I meant to say (not too bad with opinions, but when, for example, people tend to assume from my words that Russian is my first language, then agreeing with their opinion as the true version changes my actual past into a lie ...)

Re: belonging to someone else

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What if you tell a story to two people simultaneously, and they vary in their understanding?

Re: belonging to someone else

[aet.livejournal.com]

That is why one should not tell same story to more than one person.

Actually, it would be great if understanding varies, as then one can say: "I am not a cheater, there ARE obviously 3 different stories (mine, the way person one understood and the way person 2 understood)."

Actually, I am lost, not sure what I was attempting to tell. And hating myself for an attempt to tell something that turned out to be gibberish and another sign that I am just a moron and should not talk, ever.

Re: belonging to someone else

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you see that that is an extremely disproportionate response to a question attempting to clarify meaning in an ordinary sense?

I think understanding does vary, but I think that hating yourself is not necessary to getting to variable understanding.

Re: sorry

[aet.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do see (why else the frustration at failure ?).

It is, for me, the drop of water wearing out a stone or the last haystalk on the camel's back effect – certain percentage of misunderstandings is natural, but when majority of attempts to convey something end up with people telling me: “I have no idea what you mean” or “I do not understand what you are attempting to say!”, then there is reason to find ways to mend the situation.

As every medical professional I have visited has told me there is nothing wrong (changes in mind due to aging and wacky hormones are nothning abnormal, just a reality people need to deal with), so I should just stop the attempts to interact that end up being frustrating both for me and for the persons whom I have attempted to contact.

I am absent minded, though, and when lonely I forget that things are not as they used to be. And then I end up with another failure to communicate at hand – not a big thing by itself, but extremely painful reminder of why solitude is the only answer for me.

Re: sorry

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aet, last you talked to me about the medical personnel you had seen, you said that you had given them incomplete and/or inaccurate information. Trusting their opinions based on that incomplete and/or inaccurate information doesn't seem like it's necessarily in your best interest, though of course I hope the situation has changed by now.