If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)."
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If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)." The long answer is more complicated.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)." The long answer is more complicated.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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The first complication to understand is that I have lifelong, degenerating chronic pain that makes me hurt from the base of my skull to the soles of my feet - my whole posterior chain. On a good day, it hurts. On a bad day, it hurts so bad that it's all I can think about.
Unless...I work. If I can find my way into a creative project, the rest of the world just kind of fades back, including my physical body.
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The first complication to understand is that I have lifelong, degenerating chronic pain that makes me hurt from the base of my skull to the soles of my feet - my whole posterior chain. On a good day, it hurts. On a bad day, it hurts so bad that it's all I can think about.
Unless...I work. If I can find my way into a creative project, the rest of the world just kind of fades back, including my physical body.
2/
Sometimes I can get there through entertainment too - a really good book or movie, say, but more often I find myself squirming and needing to get up and stretch or use a theragun after a couple hours in a movie theater seat, even the kind that reclines. A good conversation can do it, too, and is better than a movie or a book. The challenge and engagement of an intense conversation - preferably one with a chewy, productive and interesting disagreement - can take me out of things.
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Sometimes I can get there through entertainment too - a really good book or movie, say, but more often I find myself squirming and needing to get up and stretch or use a theragun after a couple hours in a movie theater seat, even the kind that reclines. A good conversation can do it, too, and is better than a movie or a book. The challenge and engagement of an intense conversation - preferably one with a chewy, productive and interesting disagreement - can take me out of things.
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There's a degree to which ignoring my body is the right thing to do. I've come to understand a lot of my pain as being a phantom, a pathological failure of my nervous system to terminate a pain signal after it fires. Instead of fading away, my pain messages bounce back and forth, getting amplified rather than attenuated, until all my nerves are screaming at me.
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There's a degree to which ignoring my body is the right thing to do. I've come to understand a lot of my pain as being a phantom, a pathological failure of my nervous system to terminate a pain signal after it fires. Instead of fading away, my pain messages bounce back and forth, getting amplified rather than attenuated, until all my nerves are screaming at me.
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Where pain has no physiological correlate - in other words, where the ache is just an ache, without a strain or a tear or a bruise - it makes sense to ignore it. It's actually *healthy* to ignore it, because paying attention to pain is one of the things that can amplify it (though not always).
But this only gets me so far, because *some* of my pain *does* have a physiological correlate.
5/
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Where pain has no physiological correlate - in other words, where the ache is just an ache, without a strain or a tear or a bruise - it makes sense to ignore it. It's actually *healthy* to ignore it, because paying attention to pain is one of the things that can amplify it (though not always).
But this only gets me so far, because *some* of my pain *does* have a physiological correlate.
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My biomechanics suck, thanks to congenital hip defects that screwed up the way I walked and sat and lay and moved for most of my life, until eventually my wonky hips wore out and I swapped 'em for a titanium set. By that point, it was too late, because I'd made a mess of my posterior chain, all the way from my skull to my feet, and years of diligent physio, swimming, yoga, occupational therapy and physiotherapy have barely made a dent.
6/
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My biomechanics suck, thanks to congenital hip defects that screwed up the way I walked and sat and lay and moved for most of my life, until eventually my wonky hips wore out and I swapped 'em for a titanium set. By that point, it was too late, because I'd made a mess of my posterior chain, all the way from my skull to my feet, and years of diligent physio, swimming, yoga, occupational therapy and physiotherapy have barely made a dent.
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So when I sit or stand or lie down, I'm always straining *something*, and I really *do* need to get up and move around and stretch and whatnot, or sure as hell I will pay the price later. So if I get *too* distracted, then I start ignoring the pain I need to be paying attention to, and that's at least as bad as paying attention to the pain I should be ignoring.
Which brings me to anxiety. These are anxious times. I don't know *anyone* who feels good right now.
7/
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So when I sit or stand or lie down, I'm always straining *something*, and I really *do* need to get up and move around and stretch and whatnot, or sure as hell I will pay the price later. So if I get *too* distracted, then I start ignoring the pain I need to be paying attention to, and that's at least as bad as paying attention to the pain I should be ignoring.
Which brings me to anxiety. These are anxious times. I don't know *anyone* who feels good right now.
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Particularly this week, as the Strait of Epstein emergency gets progressively worse, and there's this January 2020 sense of the crisis on the horizon, hitting one country after another. Last week, Australia got its last shipment of fossil fuels. This week, restaurants in India are all shuttered because of gas rationing.
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Particularly this week, as the Strait of Epstein emergency gets progressively worse, and there's this January 2020 sense of the crisis on the horizon, hitting one country after another. Last week, Australia got its last shipment of fossil fuels. This week, restaurants in India are all shuttered because of gas rationing.
8/
People who understand these things better than I do tell me that even if Trump strokes out tonight and Hegseth overdoes the autoerotic asphyxiation, it'll be months, possibly years, before things get back to "normal" ("normal!").
Any time I think about this stuff for even a few minutes, I start to feel that covid-a-comin', early-2020 feeling, only it's worse this time around, because I literally couldn't imagine what covid would mean when it got here, and now I know.
9/
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People who understand these things better than I do tell me that even if Trump strokes out tonight and Hegseth overdoes the autoerotic asphyxiation, it'll be months, possibly years, before things get back to "normal" ("normal!").
Any time I think about this stuff for even a few minutes, I start to feel that covid-a-comin', early-2020 feeling, only it's worse this time around, because I literally couldn't imagine what covid would mean when it got here, and now I know.
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When I start to feel those feelings, I can just sit down and start thinking with my fingers, working on a book or a blog-post. Or working on an illustration to go with one of these posts, which is the most delicious distraction, leaving me with just enough capacity to mull over the structure of the argument that will accompany it.
10/
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When I start to feel those feelings, I can just sit down and start thinking with my fingers, working on a book or a blog-post. Or working on an illustration to go with one of these posts, which is the most delicious distraction, leaving me with just enough capacity to mull over the structure of the argument that will accompany it.
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I can't do anything about the impending energy catastrophe, apart from being part of a network of mutual aid and political organizing, so it makes sense not to fixate on it. But there are things that upset me - problems my friends and loved ones are having - where there's such a thing as *too much* compartmentalization.
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I can't do anything about the impending energy catastrophe, apart from being part of a network of mutual aid and political organizing, so it makes sense not to fixate on it. But there are things that upset me - problems my friends and loved ones are having - where there's such a thing as *too much* compartmentalization.
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It's one thing to lose myself in work until the heat of emotion cools so I can think rationally about an issue that's got me seeing red, and another to use work as a way to neglect a loved one who needs attention in the hope that the moment will pass before I have to do any difficult emotional labor.
Compartmentalization, in other words, but not *too much* compartmentalization.
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It's one thing to lose myself in work until the heat of emotion cools so I can think rationally about an issue that's got me seeing red, and another to use work as a way to neglect a loved one who needs attention in the hope that the moment will pass before I have to do any difficult emotional labor.
Compartmentalization, in other words, but not *too much* compartmentalization.
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During the lockdown years, I transformed myself into a machine for turning Talking Heads bootlegs into science fiction novels and technology criticism, and that was better than spending that time boozing or scrolling or fighting - but in retrospect, there's probably more I could have done during those hard months to support the people around me. In my defense - in *all* our defenses - that was an unprecedented situation and we all did the best we could.
13/
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During the lockdown years, I transformed myself into a machine for turning Talking Heads bootlegs into science fiction novels and technology criticism, and that was better than spending that time boozing or scrolling or fighting - but in retrospect, there's probably more I could have done during those hard months to support the people around me. In my defense - in *all* our defenses - that was an unprecedented situation and we all did the best we could.
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Creative work takes me away from my pain - physical and emotional - because creative work takes me to a "flow" state. This useful word comes to us from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term in the 1960s while investigating a seeming paradox: how was it that we modern people had mastered so many of the useful arts and sciences, and yet we seemed no happier than the ancients? How could we make so much progress in so many fields, and so little progress in being happy?
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As Derek Thompson says, the word "flow" implies an effortlessness, but really, it's the *effort* - just enough, not too much - that defines flow-states. We aren't happiest in a frictionless world, but rather, in a world of "achievable challenges":
How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture
Or: If you're so smart, why aren't you happier?
(www.derekthompson.org)
Thompson relates this to "the law of familiar surprises," an idea he developed in his book *Hit Makers*, which investigated why some media, ideas and people found fame, while others languished.
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As Derek Thompson says, the word "flow" implies an effortlessness, but really, it's the *effort* - just enough, not too much - that defines flow-states. We aren't happiest in a frictionless world, but rather, in a world of "achievable challenges":
How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture
Or: If you're so smart, why aren't you happier?
(www.derekthompson.org)
Thompson relates this to "the law of familiar surprises," an idea he developed in his book *Hit Makers*, which investigated why some media, ideas and people found fame, while others languished.
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A "familiar surprise" is something that's "familiar but not too familiar."
He thinks Hollywood's mania for sequels and reboots is the result of media execs chasing "familiar surprises." I think there's something to this, but we shouldn't discount the effect of media monopolization: as companies get larger and larger, they end up committing to larger and larger projects, and you just don't take the kinds of risks with a $500m movie that you can take with a $5m one.
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A "familiar surprise" is something that's "familiar but not too familiar."
He thinks Hollywood's mania for sequels and reboots is the result of media execs chasing "familiar surprises." I think there's something to this, but we shouldn't discount the effect of media monopolization: as companies get larger and larger, they end up committing to larger and larger projects, and you just don't take the kinds of risks with a $500m movie that you can take with a $5m one.
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If you're spending $500m, you want to hedge that investment with as many safe bets as you can find - big name stars, successful IP, and familiar narrative structures. If the movie still tanks, at least no one will get fired for taking a big, bold risk.
Today, we're living in a world of extremely familiar, and progressively less surprising culture.
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If you're spending $500m, you want to hedge that investment with as many safe bets as you can find - big name stars, successful IP, and familiar narrative structures. If the movie still tanks, at least no one will get fired for taking a big, bold risk.
Today, we're living in a world of extremely familiar, and progressively less surprising culture.
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AI slop is the epitome of familiarity, since by definition, AI tries to make a future that is similar to the past, because all it can do is extrapolate from previous data. That's a fundamentally conservative, uncreative way to think about the world:
The tracks the Spotify algorithm picks out of the catalog are going to be as similar to the ones you've played in the past as it can make them.
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AI slop is the epitome of familiarity, since by definition, AI tries to make a future that is similar to the past, because all it can do is extrapolate from previous data. That's a fundamentally conservative, uncreative way to think about the world:
The tracks the Spotify algorithm picks out of the catalog are going to be as similar to the ones you've played in the past as it can make them.
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The royalty-free slop tracks that Spotify generates with AI or commissions from no-name artists will be even more insipidly unsurprising:
Thompson cites Shishi Wu's dissertation on "Passive Flow," a term she coined to describe how teens fall into social media scroll-trances:
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The royalty-free slop tracks that Spotify generates with AI or commissions from no-name artists will be even more insipidly unsurprising:
Thompson cites Shishi Wu's dissertation on "Passive Flow," a term she coined to describe how teens fall into social media scroll-trances:
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Wu says it's a mistake to attribute the regretted hours of scrolling to addiction or a failure of self-control. Rather, the user is falling into "passive flow," a condition arising from three factors:
I. Engagement without a clear goal;
II. A loss of self-awareness - of your body and your mental state;
III. Losing track of time.
I instantly recognize II. and III. - they're the hallmarks of the flow states that abstract me away from my own pain when I'm working.
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