Rest

Rest gets a bad name in American society. Work culture demands long hours, and there is a push to work more hours without paying attention to the diminishing returns of productivity with overwork. We go places on weekends to shop or be entertained. We go on vacation and come back wishing we had a vacation from our vacations.

Sometimes we just need to rest. According to this article, there are seven types of rest:

Creative rest
Mental rest
Physical rest
Social rest
Emotional rest
Sensory rest
Spiritual rest

Sleeping and doing nothing are not the solutions to most of these needs for rest. For example, creative rest involves resting your drive for creativity by exposure to other people’s creativity and walking in nature, while social rest means restricting your time with people. Spiritual rest doesn’t seem to involve a break from spirituality, so there’s inconsistency in the model.

I am going to find some time to rest this afternoon. Right now I’m listening to classicalelectronica (not joking; that’s the playlist name) and taking a break from the novel (although we’ll see how long that lasts). I’ll spend the day with just Richard and not embroil myself in anything overly emotional; maybe practice mindfulness. But the idea of these types of rest is that we distribute them throughout our day, with brief breaks for each. This will take me a bit of thought.

How can I do that and subvert the time paradigm mentioned above? One way is to take my free time seriously and not let work encroach upon it. Some employers have the nerve to call this “quiet quitting”, when in actuality it’s “not working for free”. I’m lucky; my boss is a professor of recreation and wants me to preserve my free time; others are not so lucky. The second is to look at what types of rest I neglect and plan for those. I have focused a lot on physical rest; I have neglected spiritual rest for a while because of my struggles with spirituality and religion.

I’ve written enough about resting; I think it’s time for me to rest.

Insecurity as part of life

I am close to the end of Prodigies, so close that I can see — the headlights of an oncoming train.

That’s how writing feels like if you’re insecure — the feeling that you’re going to finish the work only to find it a piece of crap. And realizing you’re the least objective person reading your work, but still accepting your own judgment that it’s a piece of crap. That’s what insecurity is — the lurking voice that whispers “you’re not good enough, you’ll never get published, nobody cares about what you write.”

I’m insecure. Isn’t every writer? Isn’t every creative person out there?

What do I do about it?

At this point, it’s hard, because many of my creative friends say, “Hey, I did a thing! Look at this thing I did!” and post it on Instagram or Facebook. I think that’s why I have a blog here, but I get comments very few and very far between, so I don’t have the response of “Hey, what a cool thing you did!” Come to think of it, my friends who say “Hey, I did a thing!” don’t get responses on Facebook or Instagram either, and they have more friends than I do. I should comment more on their things they did. Maybe it’ll come back to me.

My beta readers (two of them; the third hasn’t gotten back to me) have been complimentary of my work even through pointing out some necessary changes. I actually feel less insecure when people point out errors and problems becausef they care enough to read and it’s only in the worst writings that someone can’t make constructive comments.

Insecure people seek out reassurance, and sometimes it has the opposite effect if they ask for too much. “Look at this thing I did!” seems more positive and effective than wailing “I’ll never be published”. I’ve done both.

I can own it, my entree into the world of creatives — I’m insecure.

Cross-training in creativity

I have been quiet lately, as I’ve warned, because I’ve just finished one of the most rewarding events of my year: Missouri Hope, the major Emergency and Disaster Management training where I live. As I’ve said before, I’m the moulage coordinator, which means I supervise a half-dozen people in making our roleplayers look suitably injured. I also moulage, usually the most complex injuries — although this year, my crew did me proud by simulating impalements, open fractures, and eviscerations on their own.

I’ve been thinking about cross-training. Cross-training is the practice of incorporating physical exercise in areas other than one’s primary sport or exercise regimen. It’s incorporating cardio with weightlifting or walking with running. Without cross-training, one set of muscles can overdevelop while another set weakens, destroying stride, balance, and strength.

Do writers need to cross-train? I think so, especially when suffering from writers’ block. There are many creative arts, some soothing, some complex, some simple. I would suggest activities that have a little bit of challenge so as not to be boring, while providing a sense of mastery, because these activities add an important quality to your life — that of flow, a type of active meditation.

I don’t want to put journaling in here, because that exercises the same muscles. But how about knitting or crocheting, fingerpainting, sketching, sidewalk chalking, dancing, karate, crafts, mask-making, improv, or — or moulage? 🙂