Leo X. Robertson's Blog, page 5

Am I doing the right thing? (5/7)

In my previous post, I wrote about the danger of defining yourself purely by your career, and what a shame it is if people don’t recognise that they are so much more than that. The exact same principle applies to defining yourself purely by creative success.

To recap: if you’ve followed the logic of these blog posts so far (if there is one!) it’s that, if you define yourself as something, you’ll feel the need to do that thing and make continuous progress at it. How to measure that is difficult and not all that intuitive, and the temptation to compare yourself to others kicks in. Others are doing the same thing, and in trying to validate themselves, are prone to lying about their productivity/progress. Which escalates indefinitely until everyone feels terrible.

Creating = Self

Who you are is to a large degree determined by how you spend your time. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a writer. But you don’t spend that much time doing it.

It’s not just you. So many great writers—Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Viet Thanh Nguyen to name the first three I remember saying something about it—openly acknowledge that the intensive mental energy required to write can’t really be sustained for more than a few hours a day.

When it comes to writers so prolific that they spend more than those hours a day writing, I imagine they write with their brains switched off. Their prose typically reflects that, and I wouldn’t consider it an accomplishment.

I also don’t believe you can game your biology into greater output.

I used to think that alcohol helped writing. Now I’d guess that it lowers inhibitions rather than assists imagination—it’s really not necessary, and in fact deleterious to the writing process itself. For example, I remember that when I was hungover I’d be filled with creative ideas—but maybe lose motivation for a week or longer, and my mood would be completely shot. Typically I’d be 2/3rds into a short story draft by Friday, plan to finish it that weekend, drink a lot, wake up Saturday and maybe get back to it Tuesday, having almost forgotten what it was about.

What about coffee? Writers are always yammering about that. Well, why not go full-pelt Philip K Dick mode, snort crystal meth and finish your novel by sunrise?

You know that’s not the point. (I don’t know you, but I hope you don’t!) And yet on many smaller levels we abuse ourselves in the hopes of levels of productivity that are not innate and inevitably come with larger penalties that slow us down overall.

So I’d say, sorry: you’ve got three hours a day maximum, you’ll probably only do two or less, and struggle during them. You might be a genius, but you’re a human genius.

Accept it, Leo and others! You can only do so much. And acceptance is your only option to maximise productivity. Anything else maximises it in the short term but minimises it overall. A marathon not a sprint, as they say.

Focus on the greenness of your own grass because your neighbour is either lying about his or using weird chemical colour enhancements that make his grass greener than yours today but dry it out completely by Tuesday.

In the next post, I’ll discuss whether or not we are what we spend our time on.

Am I doing the right thing? (6/7)

In the last post I wrote about the complications of writers defining themselves as “writers”, because they probably don’t spend that much time per day actually writing. Is that what we are, what we mostly spend our time on?

As a 29 year-old, I’m treating this year as a dry run for the kind of adult I want to be in my 30s. One thing I’ve done, then, is reduce my social media time. I thought I was doing this to symbolically relegate social media’s relative importance in my life to the proportion of time I spent on it. But it’s not just symbolic, it’s the reality.

You are what you do. If you spend an hour a day comparing yourself to others on social media, you’re 1/24th a complete waste of time.

If your proportion is wrong, adjust it. Your body will make you keep doing stuff. You’re designed to do stuff! And you’re mostly designed to do stuff you enjoy. So if you minimise time spent on the stuff you thought would bring you joy but have since learned doesn’t, you will force yourself to find more enjoyable things to do.

Similarly, if you release yourself from thinking about things that are bringing you no good, healthier, nicer thoughts will fill your head.

(Letting go of crap friends makes space for good ones too. Though it might take you a while to find them!)

What you think of in your life as “an absence of that thing you have given up” is not an absence at all; the time is still there. You are still here. You will do better stuff.

The better stuff you do, the better you are as a person. Which, if you’re anything like me, is the goal encompassing the full subset of things you do day-to-day that express and manifest that. So it will make you happier, healthier, more fulfilled.

I’m doing my best to be my best and lead the richest life possible in the way that I define and redefine that.

In the last post, I’ll write about some of the nice ways in which we have influence in people’s lives, and why we really, indisputably matter.

Am I doing the right thing? (4/7)

In the last post on this topic, I gave some examples of “work theatre”, common things that writers claim that are not as impressive or concrete as they at first sound. In the next posts, I’ll go on to describe some dangerous fallacies that are the result of people defining themselves poorly. The first is:

Career = Self

My day job is as an engineer. When I bump into other engineers, they ask me the following variation on a theme: “What project are you working on? What does your husband do? So you’re away from your home location: are you renting out your flat? How big is it? Where is it?”

I’ve been caught off guard by these questions thus far, which means I fall back on my go-to for such situations: the truth. Not that I’m ashamed of the answer to any of these questions, but were I more awake I might charmingly divert the conversation to something, anything, more interesting.

After I fill in my verbal report, the inquisitive civilian, satisfied that his self-assigned reconnaissance task is completed and evaluated, sighs with relief. His shoulders go down. He smiles at me, and rewards me by talking with me about everything that he considers to be more trivial.

At lunch in the cafeteria, when lost, I find myself asking those same questions. I do so because I know it’ll get the conversation flowing and it’s apparently okay, nay, polite, nay, interesting to ask them. I hope to use them as ice-breakers or jumping-off questions to something else, which works out sometimes but often not.

When this is the only information anyone is willing to share with me, it’s all I have to go on in understanding who they are as a person. If I were to guess, I’d add in a family that loves them (which most of these engineers have) and then, yeah, that’s about it. The hours not spent on overtime at the office or raising kids is spent watching sitcoms, doing house repairs, or skiing.

I’m not disparaging people like this at all. It’s admirable. Making money is quite a tough thing to do. And it’s important—in terms of all the things that having money infers: food, roofs over heads, opportunities, freedom. Someone has to do the jobs these engineer guys do. (“If not for me it would be someone else” is a legitimate excuse only if the thing serves some personal or social good. Otherwise it’s just a kind of empty and unjustified cynicism.)

Only people who have money are afforded the luxury of sitting about and pontificating on its apparent unimportance. So, let’s hear it for breadwinners!

We’ve become so aware of the dark side of safety, monotony and apparent mediocrity that we forget to cheer for people like this. But sure, there is a dark side to it. If you only do or think about one thing, it will become who you are. These people are largely described by the answers to the three or four questions above. As I say, it probably works for them, though it comes with immense sacrifice—whether they notice that or not.

After I’ve answered these typical questions, the idea of me “ending there” fills me with dread. I resent the idea that I do.

In the next post I write about the dangers of defining yourself by your writing/creative success.

Am I doing the right thing? (3/7)

In my last post, I outlined why it’s difficult to understand how well you’re doing at your chosen profession/career/hobby. I use writing as the example, because it’s the most confusing of my own habits, but it applies to most other work.

A big negative effect of social media is a near-complete dissolution of authority. Every opinion is seemingly equated, without the time or info to consider on what authority it is given. The information out there is in fact so inconsistent that I don’t believe anyone anymore.

Here are some typical things writers claim that are textbook examples of “work theatre” for writers:

“I worked on X for Y hours today.”

I don’t know how slow you are and I bet you rounded up.

“I wrote 5,000 words today!”

I got just five words for you, buddy: a a a a a.

“I’ve read X magazine/ Y author for years.”

Your mum bought you one of their books when you were ten and you read it last year.

“I’ve always written.”

What does that even mean?! Is your definition so loose as to include writing emails and birthday cards/ journaling/bad teenage poetry—in which case, everyone is a writer—or so narrow as to demand 3000 words out of yourself every day at penalty of disqualification from the title of “writer”? Unlikely.

“I always thought of myself as a storyteller.”

When I started studying medicine, my mum sent me a picture of me, four years old, playing with a plastic doctor’s kit. She was in awe at this early sign of my career proclivity. But I’m sure she had photos of me displaying early signs of wanting to be a civil engineer (marble run?!) videogame designer (game boy!) a butler (red plastic tea set from which I drank orange juice with raisins in it. It’s pretty good! I might have been onto something.) Romantic people like to carve traditionally compelling narratives out of their lives, and the lives of others, in retrospect. But at best it’s just one way of looking at life and at worst it’s a fantasy. (A year and a half later I quit medicine, tears, drinking etc.)

Maybe you did always know what you wanted to be. That’s wonderful. But I sure didn’t and continue not knowing. I won’t pretend otherwise nor feel like a lesser person for it.

If I was born to do anything, it was a handful of things and I’m living my best approximation of what those are. I sure as hell know what I was born not to do—that’s when my intuition kicks in. (And now that I have a decent self-esteem, I listen to it more often than not.)

At the heart of the need to offer these clichés are the central questions: what the hell am I, and am I any good at it?!

None of us know to such an extent that we’re comfortable—if we’re really thinking about it. Does that mean we get to stop worrying about it? Maybe “worry less.” I don’t know. I’m all for worrying less :)

In the next post, I’ll describe some dangerous fallacies that are a result of people defining themselves poorly.

New Losing the Plot, with Marshall Riley!

Listen here!

Marshall Riley, Losing the Plot’s queer anti-folk musician in residence, returns to talk about his latest album, “MARS HALL.” It’s a concept album about a boy’s boarding school that mostly takes place in his dreams.

We talk about boys, conspiracy theories and getting your shit together!

Get “MARS HALL” now from Captain Crook Records. It’s available as a digital download and also cassette (artist recommended!)

Marshall’s Soundcloud.

As always, if you’re a reader, writer, creative type, someone with something to say, you can always get in touch with me using losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Am I doing the right thing? (2/7)

In my last post I wrote about the principle of “work theatre.” Most people talk about the many hours they put into various projects, but that it is usually testament to their inefficiency. I used the example of finishing a university project that takes other people way more time.

Adult life is of course way more complicated! Add social media, and the ability to have the kind of work ethic that allows self-reward has almost dissolved entirely.

This is because:

-          There is no common project between us.

-          Our project(s) have no beginning, end or deadline

-          Who are you comparing yourself to as a benchmark for when you’ve done enough?

-          When do you get to stop and when do you get to return?

I’m trying to find the David Foster Wallace quote, but can’t, where he said that in your mid-to-late twenties, the praise of others won’t sustain you anymore. In the short term, that means you lose a joy you used to have, and it’s quite sad. But it doesn’t happen without reason.

You come off the rails. You’re old enough to understand for yourself what is worthwhile and what isn’t—or at the very least, you become your best resource for determining what that is. I reckon you’ll probably end up doing what you were already doing, but with more conviction.

Of course, you might fail to come off the rails and attempt to continue using external praise as your prime motivating factor. I don’t think that ends well. I’d also wager that it’s at the heart of writerly boasting. This typically takes the shape of declaring word count/hours spent writing on social media. Not to say this isn’t interesting at all. It’s a relief to have a bit more information on someone else’s effort vs their productivity (as in my university example in the previous post.) However, since it causes so much stress and blows to self-esteem, it might not be worth the cost.

I reckon that for five minutes, once a week, I might feel like wanting to know how much another writer works. I wouldn’t spend more than that on it, and absolutely would not recommend obsessing over comparisons with my own productivity as the very definition of my existence. Just a thought.

Sounds obvious, or reductively easy, when I put it like that. I mention stuff like this that other writers know intellectually is wrong—but they go ahead and do it anyway. That’s compulsion/addiction territory. There are many ways of writing, and many different paths to success, but those paths are only hampered if not culled by compulsive or addictive behaviour. It’s fundamentally unhelpful.

In my next post, I’ll give some textbook writerly examples of “work theatre.”

Am I doing the right thing? (1/7)

Are you? Often enough? Successfully? Too much?!

In this series of blog posts, I will discuss the complications of defining yourself, measuring your life progress in the age of technology and working out just how much you matter at all—reaching what I hope you’ll see as a number of positive, reassuring conclusions. Please join me over the coming weeks in feeling better about everything!!

(Okay, I don’t know that it ties together as neatly as that, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!)

Since I try to write fiction as often as possible, the blog posts get relegated to the bottom of my priorities. So, if I ever have anything blog-worthy to write, it tends to spill out of me with a sense of urgency. I had no idea, for one, that it would be seven parts?!

Oh well. It’s been clogging my creative pipe (so to speak ahaha), preventing any new fiction from coming out and simply must be expelled from my head before anything new will be made. My subconscious has used my hands to organise my current thoughts on life, and I’m the better for it. Now you’re reading it, and maybe it’ll help you too!

Well, that represents my best self using his abilities to do good in the way he knows how. Which is also why I want the best for you too. Because your best makes the world better!

In my fourth year of process engineering at university, we had a group project to design a plant that would extract the sugar from sugar beets—so, uh, you don’t have to.

We worked as a team of five or so folk, dividing up the tasks at the beginning.

I got done two weeks early. So I stayed home and played videogames.

This kind of behaviour seems sacrilege in today’s social media-facilitated global hyperproductive world. Yet, evidently I haven’t yet been found dead in a ditch. Did I do something terribly wrong?!

During my two weeks of Half Life 2, Trackmania and F.E.A.R. (the least—too scary!), many other people pulled all-nighters and worked up until the last minute of the deadline. They showered in the university gym, drank close-to-lethal quantities of Red Bull and passed out under their computers when the sun came up again. Maybe they had to, in which case, fair play to them and congrats for getting through it—but the more likely cause/epidemic was “work theatre.”

Many people—most, I’d argue—only seem to put loads of hours into something, while accomplishing very little. I know because they’d say to me, “I’ve been here since five a.m. this morning!” while I was nominated the person that they wanted to distract them from doing anything, then fifteen minutes later they’d rotate onto someone else, and it’s all they’d been doing since five a.m.

This is worse for all involved. The pretenders pointlessly steal themselves from friends, family and fun while making less lazy people feel lazier than them by lying about how much work they’re doing. Sending harder workers into a burnout cycle.

I’m grateful that I got to see this example. It was one of the few moments in life when this principle was transparent enough that I could make sense out of it, and learn from it. The lesson is one that I seem to forget when I take up new skills or enter different environments, but I’d bet it’s the same everywhere. Timeless, even.

Most people don’t have their shit together. They’re not doing half as much as they pretend to, and if they have any sense, they’re sure as hell not having fun pretending to do it. So shove that in your highly competitive industries!

Next time I’ll talk about what happens when you take this “work theatre” principle from my example and apply it to the real world.

Preview: it gets way more complicated!

New Losing the Plot, with Erin Al-Mehairi!

Listen here!

Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi is a writer, a journalist, a publicist, and an editor among many other things. She has an excellent collection of dark poetry and fiction out with Unnerving called “Breathe.Breathe”, and does marketing and publicity for Sinister Grin Press.

Amongst other things we talk about trauma, diversity and the fear of catching feels.

“Breathe.Breathe.” is here.

We both have stories in Unnerving’s excellent “Hardened Hearts” anthology!

Erin’s website.

Find her on Twitter.

On Goodreads.

On Amazon.

As always, if you’re a reader, writer, creative type, someone with something to say, you can always get in touch with me using losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Marshall, who provided Losing the Plot’s intro music, has a new album out! Check out “MARS HALL” at Captain Crook Records!

New Losing the Plot, with David W Barbee!

Listen here!

David W Barbee writes bizarro fables full of dark monsters and strange maniacs, influenced by a deranged childhood diet of cartoons, comic books, and cult movies. He is the author of “Jimbo Yojimbo”, “Bacon Fried Bastard”, “The Night’s Neon Fangs”, “Thunderpussy” and the Wonderland award-nominated “A Town Called Suckhole.” His book “Tater Skinheads” is forthcoming from Bizarro Pulp Press.

We talk about redneck bizarro, world building, meeting your heroes and potato monsters!

“Jimbo Yojimbo” is here. Find him on Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon.

As always, if you’re a reader, writer, creative type, someone with something to say, you can always get in touch with me using losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Marshall, who provided Losing the Plot’s intro music, has a new album out! Check out “MARS HALL” at Captain Crook Records!

New Losing the Plot, with Tracy Reilly!

Listen here!

Tracy Reilly is someone I’ve been online friends with for a long time, and this is the first time we spoke!

Tracy is an English teacher, avid reader, sometime writer, singer in a band and an enthusiast of outsider artists, indie authors, home renovation, Chinese swearwords… I could hardly keep up! We chat about all this as well as bleeding body parts, Shakespeare and bootleg Russian rock LPs.

Find her music on Soundcloud.

Includes the song she wrote about a dream I had where I took a shower in the middle of Oslo.

Find her on Goodreads.

Find Scottish Twitter here.

As always, if you’re a reader, writer, creative type, someone with something to say, you can always get in touch with me using losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you!

And by the way, Marshall, who provided Losing the Plot’s intro music, has a new album out! Check out “MARS HALL” at Captain Crook Records!