The spinning sensation is not my only feeling of motion.

[mrissa]

Oh, noticeable progress. How I've missed you.

The thing about working on short stories for much of the last few vertiginous months is that I write them fast enough that there really isn't a sense of progress on the same project for very long. I start a short story. I finish a short story. There may be a few days when I will say, "I made progress on [story]," and they may be spread out, but there's no building sense of accomplishment: the story doesn't exist, then it does.

There has been progress on the PT front, but it's all been more the kind that we measure with fancy machines rather than the kind that lets me, y'know, feel normal and live life without leaning on somebody at every second. So the lack of progress on either novel revisions or new novel for months on end had been driving me just nutso.

But now! Now this new revision system is so happy and fine! I am officially down to fewer than half the remaining chapters for revision, and yes, some of them are the chapters that need the most done to them, but progress, progress, progress! It's nowhere near submission quality. It is not yet the book I want it to be. It will get a few eyes on it at first, and then a few more. But today, not only did I do some things that needed doing, I was able to make them do double duty or more; it got all layered and neat and did the sorts of things revision is supposed to do. It is a better book than it was this morning when I woke up. And I have missed that so much, the sensation that I have taken action and something I care about has improved in a large enough increment to be noticeable as a result.

I may still be staggering and lurching around. I may still be dreaming of malfunctioning space stations and making myself sick by turning my head. I may still have limited computer time before it makes me sick as well. But I'm able to use that time, and that helps a very great deal.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Progress is da bomb diggety.

(Er, no, I don't know why my brain chose that phrasing.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Um. It's so you.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I know, innit?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Progress is lovely.

How about we have a panel on fixing novels? I bet Doyle and Macdonald know a thing or two about it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'll bet they do! That'd be just fine with me.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

Progress is great! When dealing with computers, I always define progress as getting new and different error messages. (If you keep getting the same errors, you're not making progress.) When dealing with words, any change is progress, even if I've cut half the story. So, YAY progress!

Just to ask, since you've mentioned limited computer time a few times: you've probably heard this before or even tried it already, but, have you tried any of the speech-to-text programs, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking? Richard Powers wrote most of his last novel by reading it out loud to himself and having the computer do the bulk of the screen-time typing. I've used them before - the best part is being able to record yourself with anything you want, wherever is working best for you (in my case, it was alone in the car for hours), then make the recorder play the session back to the computer. (I can be in the kitchen eating while the machines do the work! ;-> )
Anyway, just wondering if you've considered/tried it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are the forty-fourth person to suggest this since I started counting in May. There were more before that.

I can type just fine. It's the visual stuff that's the problem with the vertigo, and it's the visual stuff that I need to work on prose. If this was definitely going to last forever, I might try to rewire my brain completely so that I was an oral storyteller, but I'm not naturally. So the speech-to-text programs are not at all useful to my current circumstance.

I've been trying to phrase this carefully because I don't want to accidentally give the sense that I am mad at you or want you to go away or anything. I'm not, and I don't. But one of the ongoing frustrations of chronic health problems is that people make the same one or two suggestions over and over and over again, because they hope to be kind and helpful, and it's very hard for me to reply, "No, I'm afraid that's not useful to me," in the same kind and level tone after the first fifteen or so.

offense? I don't has it.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

LOL - I'm actually really hard to offend, being as I am a Big Ugly Man Doll. ;-) I understand completely.

I was treated for mild vertigo about 3 years ago; I forget the name of the medication I was on (following MRIs and CAT scans), but it was also used for Meniere's Disease (I think it was Dyazide, but I'm not positive anymore). The meds were worse than the symptoms, so I went off it; the vertigo went away on its own, mostly (I still have episodes, but they're not debilitating). I remember distinctly the visual-screen issue - I can read anything on a single page site, but reading scrolling text on a webpage or a Word doc still makes me grab my desk.

I am, however, oriented more toward the oral side of storytelling; probably because I've come to it primarily through poetry rather than narrative.

I mentioned the software not only because it's worked for me, but because I'm a software developer - when all you have is a stick, everything starts to look like a kneecap. ;-)

All the best, M'ris. Whatever works, whatever it takes, keep telling the stories!

PS - you should have a special award for the 100th person to suggest that. ;-P

Re: offense? I don't has it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. At this point I may give a special award at #50.

My mother told my great-aunt and -uncle that I was having this frustration, and my great-aunt couldn't wait to hear what number she was. Then she told me her advice: eat more lutefisk! Clearly this is a lutefisk deficiency.

She was definitely #1 on that list. As on so many others.

{wondering how many million times you've already heard <i>this</i> one, as well}

[careswen.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to figure this out for myself for a while now, because I haven't wanted to bother you with it, but I'm still stumped by it, so I hope for your patience.

Why is it frustrating for people to be kind and helpful? If the solution offered is repetitive and useless, is not the kindness at least a good thing? Why should it add to the weight of one's problems, rather than lift one up?

Helpfulness is a big part of who I am (as I know it is for you), so I'm distressed at the notion that well-meaningness can backfire so easily and just increase my loved one's burden.

Re: {wondering how many million times you've already heard <i>this</i> one, as well}

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When the kind and helpful not-a-solution is tolerably obvious and the problem has been ongoing, it begins to feel like people are assuming I am either colossally stupid or else not really trying, when they suggest the same limited and obvious number of things over and over again. If you were having knee replacement surgery, and people kept saying, "Oh, your knee hurts? Have you tried taking an aspirin for it?", perhaps you are one of the fortunate people who would be able to smile each time and say, "Aspirin! Why, thank you, what a great idea! But actually that isn't at all useful for this problem at this magnitude." By the time you decide on knee replacement surgery, you're more than a year past the aspirin stage, which most people realize if they think for just a tiny bit.

The longer this goes on, the more frustrating it is, and the less people are offering to do things that might actually be helpful or kind or cheering. You can't think of someone else's chronic health problem constantly for 8+ months. But they have to, more or less; they live with it. So the actual bits of helpfulness or thoughtful good cheer have tapered off considerably. It's a lot easier early on to say, "Oh, my friend is in this new PT situation, I will bring her a meal or offer to come entertain her or send her a nifty thing or chat to her on e-mail or whatever." Those things are the buoying kind of kindness. They're still around some. But they're a lot more scarce than they were. Meanwhile I still can't offer to drive to see people, and I still can't offer to cook for people, so with those two things we have wiped out most of my interpersonal modes.

One of the worst things about a chronic health problem stretching out is that the bad things are doomed to repetition: PT makes me feel just as sick three times a day as it did in February. Every. Single. Day. The things that frustratingly don't work continue to frustratingly not work every single day, and when people bring them up again and again -- "Hey, how about you try this thing that frustratingly doesn't work?" -- it requires a fair amount of effort to repeat to oneself that they are trying to be kind. Because the method they've chosen is not so good. When you're having back problems, someone who came and slapped you on the back might well mean to be kind, but it wouldn't always be easy not to wince.

Meanwhile, the good things are frustratingly non-repetitive, for the most part. I know that friends can't come by for dinner or send me chatty e-mails or etc. etc. etc. all the time. If the same cheering friends did come by every night for dinner, the repetition would rob the act of most if not all of its cheering power. So one's metaphorical balance is very hard to maintain.

I hesitate to use this metaphor, because I have hopes of my situation being temporary, and medical research is not fast enough for my taste regarding his, but: if people kept suggesting to mmerriam that he should get stronger glasses so that he could see better, would you expect him to be cheered by that? Even if they meant it kindly?

[careswen.livejournal.com]

I understand the feeling of, "They must think I'm stupid or not trying." I have had that initial reaction in your position, but I generally counteract that with reminding myself that they probably don't actually feel that way, they're just trying (in their lame way) to help. Though I haven't had to do it as many umpty-million times as you have.

With chronic conditions like mmerriam's blindness or my pain, we wind up doing a lot of educating other people. "No, thanks, that actually wouldn't help, because..." or "We tried that, and it didn't work, so now we're doing X instead."

I am reminded of the time that my dad told me that we should look into getting mmerriam an eye transplant. It didn't matter how much I said that there was no such thing as an eye transplant, yes they have corneal transplants, but that wouldn't help Michael, and no Dad they don't have whole eyeball transplants yet -- he was certain that he had heard somewhere that they did, and wouldn't be convinced otherwise. So I changed the subject.

It is, indeed, sometimes an effort to remember the spirit of the thing.

I can especially understand how the frustration can be enhanced by the fact that actual helpful help is dwindling. People get distracted by their own problems or other folks in need. It's reasonable for you to poke those you need help from, and also for you to get tired of having to poke. As a fellow social organizer, I understand how frustrating it is when other don't pick up the slack if I'm overwhelmed.

I think a lot of it comes down to, even when they do have time, maybe people just don't know what to do. We can't make the vertigo/blindness/knee pain better, though we want to, so we make lame suggestions. People who don't know you well enough to make more of a commitment than that can at least feel like they tried. And for those of us who do know you better, we'd like to bake you cookies, but also what we'd really love is to find the magic spell/pill/technique to make it all better for you. And maybe we assume too much that, because you have so many caring people in your life, whatever else you need is probably covered.

So that helps me understand it better. I don't get "annoyance that people try to help in lame ways" but I do kinda get "annoyance that people try to help in lame ways instead of helping in helpful ways."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And Michael did not sign up to be the Blind Guy Chamber Of Commerce, y'know? You did not sign up to be the Knee Problem Tourist Board. You end up doing a great deal of educating, and you deal with it because that's what there is to deal with, but it certainly doesn't improve things particularly for you when you have a lot to deal with anyway.