photo credit: Auntie P

Two articles were

recently brought to my attention via the Twitterz: Amber Sparks’ ‘The Influence of Anxiety‘, and Kirsty Logan’s response at the Pank Blog, ‘This Modern Writer: Youth Is All’. You should all go and have a read, but if you’re of the busy-busy persuasion let me sum it up for you. Both articles* explore the anxiety and distress that can be caused by the relatively new world of social networking, as applied to emerging writers. Everywhere on social networks (herein known as the so-netz), people are boasting about their word counts for the day, how many chapters they’ve edited of their fifth novel, who they just met at the festival they were invited to attend. It’s enough to give an early-career writer a serious bout of self-doubt. And it does. Like every single person in the comments on Amber’s article, I too suffer from this constant self-evaluation, and the subsequent lacking I observe in my achievements. And the so-netz that I am a part of are veritable land-mines of success. Twitter is constantly feeding me the proclamations of milestones met by established authors and emerging/emerged writers alike. To be clear, I don’t begrudge them that. Just like Amber and Kirsty, I enjoy the interaction. But see, for example, my ‘about’ page and the publication credits therein. A handful of flash fictions, a couple of short stories. Compare that to the lists of the two amazing writers who wrote those articles. And they’re anxious about not having achieved enough? Fuck me, I should be practically catatonic with insecurity.

The whole discussion reminded me of the excellent article that Tracy Lucas wrote back in July, entitled ‘How to make 100% sure you never get your big break as a writer’. It’s uncanny how closely my thinking has followed Tracy’s. My quest for validation had much humbler origins: I set goals of favourites and comments on the art/social website deviantART as my first step towards being considered a ‘real writer’. From there it was publication in an e-zine, and then publication in a ‘real’** paper magazine, and then publication in a real magazine that had also featured one of my favourite writers (I haven’t met that one yet), and so on and so forth. Each validation didn’t seem like it meant anything. They still don’t, if I’m honest with myself***.

But the thing that struck a chord and motivated this post was that, for me, all this self-doubt and need for validation isn’t even limited to my creative writing. It is also evident in my thoughts about my education and skill set. I have always felt as though I am constantly behind the bell curve. I’ve tried justifying this feeling in myriad ways: I was never in the top of the class because there were real geniuses in my cohort, my Ph.D. project is a failure because it’s fundamentally intractable, I’ve been unlucky with circumstances beyond my control. But all these justifications feel like excuses for the fact that I am just not as good at this as other people. And, like the writers in the articles, my comparative youth is no longer an advantage. Honours students are getting published in A-star journals. Undergraduates understand the theory I use better than I ever have. Where are my advantages now? How can I compete with the next generation of smart, motivated, better qualified graduates?

This is my daily thought routine. An exercise in self-examination and, let’s be frank here, self-pity that I know I should be able to snap out of and get on with it. Tracy Lucas suggests checking yourself against the goals you set, making yourself accountable for your successes as well as your failures. That’s good advice, and I’m going to try it out. But there’s a flip side to it, in that I am fearful of what my reaction might be if I don’t reach the goals I set. Will I just collapse? Or worse, not care and just continue on not meeting my goals.What in the hell are my goals, anyway? Am I trying to be a successful researcher? Should I? Or should I step away and try and focus on getting a job that makes use of my writing skills? Will that close off any future interest in getting back into research? How do people make these decisions, if they make them at all? Or does everyone just take the next logical step without giving due consideration? Lots of questions. It could be the case that I’m reading way too much into this, but then, that’s me. That’s my way of doing things, just ask Louise. The number of times I’ve nearly screwed our relationship up by thinking too hard about it, well, it’s more than I can count on two hands.

I’ll be the first to admit that there are external factors contributing to all this. I’ve had to deal with a lot of emotional stress in the past couple of months, and that will always spill over into other areas. But this is something I’ve been feeling for years now, and so I tend to think that it’s a real thing that has been brought to the surface by the catalyst of pressure. Just like alcohol brings out truths, only less fun. Of course, there’s a possibility that this is all a product of me being a twenty-something, and all the uncertainty that comes with it. And I’m well aware that finishing my thesis will bring a lot of clarity to these questions–it’s hard to see when there’s a big chunk of blank paper waiting to be filled blocking your vision. I guess I just needed to get this out there. Writing is, after all, my catharsis. But if there’s any ring of truth in any of this, I’d love to hear your experiences and views on it.

—

*Yes, I’m calling them articles rather than blog posts. Get over it.

**I know, I know. E-zines are just as real as paper magazines. We all know this, don’t get in a huff, it was just my way of thinking back then.

***This is absolutely not meant to be insulting to those fine folks that have published my work. It’s just the way my brain works, please don’t take offense.

No related posts.

photo credit: Wonderlane

Warning: Rambling self exploration ahead.

Also, falling boulders.

Living in today’s

world is, I think you’ll admit, pretty great. Technologies enable us to communicate with our ‘friends‘ and family, even complete strangers with the ease of a mouse-click. Of course, there’s a lot of arguments being made about the increased availability that this produces; when was the last time you got through a day without accessing your phone, email, twitter, or social networking site at least once? I don’t know about the habits of people that read this blog, but I do a tour of my usual suspects (gmail, blog, google reader) about every half an hour, and have a continuous twitter update going on in the background thanks to TwitterFox. And this is during work hours! It’s small wonder then that I find myself hard pressed to concentrate on things at the moment. I’ve tried various solutions to remedy this, from Internet timers to hardcore blockers to physically unplugging the ethernet cord when I needed to knuckle down. But I always returned to my distracted ways after a while. It’s an unquestionable fact that in my profession (research) the Internet is a necessary evil. We need access to journal articles, very specific knowledge and definitions, access to supercomputers, the whole box and dice. And that stuff just isn’t available anywhere else, and if it is, it’s tedious to get to it when the same lookup could be done with a few keywords and a Google search. So I’m willing to face up to the fact that I need to be connected. But my general attitude has always been one of participation, while knowing that I should really be trying not to rely so much on the Internet and its myriad wiles. Unfortunately I’ve done very little to back up this attitude, and in not doing so, I’ve become a shell of a student. I’m not saying I don’t do my work, I do! But I’d do it a heck of a lot faster if it weren’t for my complete lack of willpower.

And therein lies the rub. All of my problems can be overcome with a bit of willpower. If every time I went to hit Ctrl+T to open a bunch of new tabs that get filled with content I stopped to think about whether I really needed to see that content, the obvious answer would probably stop me from doing so. For a frightening example, consider this: I’ve opened and re-opened the same three tabs four times since starting this article, just to check if they’ve updated. It’s insane! Of course they haven’t changed! But I suffer from the fear of missing out on something big. I want to know things the minute they happen so that I can offer my opinion to whoever asks. I like knowing things, and I like talking to people about them, not necessarily because I like the sound of my own voice (although I have been told that it’s fantastic) but because I like that shared experience of discovery. I like surprising people with ideas they may not have encountered before. This is also a slice of the Why-I-Write pie, but that’s for another day.

But enough about how great talking is, and back to what I think was the topic of this post when I started. Which is willpower. And here’s the cold truth of the post: I have none. None whatsoever when it comes to staying connected. In the loop. And while examining myself for the reason behind this, I discovered I have very little willpower when it comes to anything else:

• I eat food I know for certain isn’t good for me too often;
• I will put off things I need to do at university because I can’t be bothered getting off my chair;
• I ignore revising poems and short stories, or even finishing them in the first place, because I know it’s going to involve hours of work;
• I don’t do enough for my girlfriend;
• I rarely visit old friends, even though I know they’re always up for anything.

In short, and according to my own high personal standards, I’m a terribly lazy person. But the even weirder thing is that when I do anything that contravenes the above list of laziness, I feel fantastic! When I get things done I feel great, ready to take on the world. But soon that feeling is forgotten and the guilty malaise returns. How the heck? I keep feeling like I need some sort of routine to help me, but would that really work? Or do I just need to train myself to think more than the half a second that it takes to dismiss something. To remember how great that feeling of accomplishment is versus the empty dragging feeling that always sinks in after an hour of no productivity.Hmm.

Well anyway, I think the best course of action here is to go away and think on it. Maybe even find some books that address the psychology of getting things done (perhaps ‘Getting things Done’ by David Allen? Anyone got suggestions?). I guess the silver lining to come out of this is that at least I’m not becoming complacent about it. That nagging, guilty feeling is still there, so I still feel like I need to change things. As soon as I miss that feeling, I know I can start to get really worried.

Right. Time to head into uni to make sure I’m all set for the Sydney trip. Wish me luck and nice neutrons. (:

No related posts.

photo credit: Michael Heilemann

This just in from Tim’s blog; apparently Fallout 3 has been banned in Australia. What this means in legal terms is that it was refused a classification by the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification), which in turn means that it was deemed to have more mature content than a MA15+ badge could handle. That’s right, there still isn’t an R18+ rating on games here in Australia. There are way too many reasons why this is plainly ridiculous, I’m sure you’ve already thought of a couple, e.g. the gaming market now has a large demographic in their 20s, movies have had this classification for decades now (books too), there’s a whole lot of stuff that appears in games regularly that can’t be handled by a piddly little MA15+ rating, the list goes on. I’ll leave that issue where it stands for the moment, because it’s one that’s been questioned many times before and it doesn’t look like it’ll get past the stuffy types at the OFLC until some new folk who have, in their time, ‘pwned some shit’, breeze through. What I’d like to look at is the reasoning why the game got banned in the first place. Take a look at an extract from this article at Kotaku:

“The game contains the option to take a variety of “chems” using a device which is connected to the character’s arm. Upon selection of the device a menu selection screen is displayed. Upon this screen is a list of “chems” that the player can take, by means of selection. These “chems” have positive effects and some negitave effects (lowering of intelligence, or the character may become addicted to the “chem”). The positive effects include increase in strength, stamina, resistance to damage, agility and hit points. Corresponding with the list of various “chems” are small visual representation of the drugs, these include syringes, tablets, pill bottles, a crack-type pipe and blister packs. In the Board’s view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the “science-fiction” drugs in line with “real-world” drugs.”

Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I can name off the bat more than a few games that use drugs as a mechanism for attribute boosting. The one that comes most directly to mind is the critically acclaimed Bioshock. Anyone that has played that game knows that there are multiple scenes of the player grabbing a needle, jabbing it into his arm, and becoming more poweful as a result. Just because the liquid inside the needle is blue doesn’t make the perceived action/reaction any different. Any game that has the much-used ‘stimpacks’ device is merely holding a thin sheath of technology over drug use.

I think that the developers should be congratulated on their attempt to make the game as accurate as possible. In the real world, it’s a fact that some drugs give a sense of heightened agility, or an increase in perceived ‘stamina’ (i.e. staying awake all night dancing). But eventually you get the come down, or addiction settles in. I’m hoping that the addiction penalty in-game is as harsh as it is in real life. I’d love to see a permanent modifier applied to a statistic as a result of a prior addiction. Hell, I’d love to see death occur. Obviously I can’t say for certain what the mechanic of the chems’ interaction with the rest of the elements of the game will be like, because I haven’t played it. But I’d predict that the core of the game will be the usual gradual building up of strength, training, being rewarded for doing good (or commiting to evil). The chems sound like flavour, not a core gameplay aspect. And a risky flavouring at that (much like the chilli sachet on instant Mi-Goreng, hot damn).

Of course what will probably happen now is in order to get an official release here, the publisher will be forced to go back, skin a few models, change a few words here and there and re-release it a few months later. But every parent knows that the easiest way to get a child to do something is to tell them they’re not allowed to do it. Kids aren’t stupid. They know places like thepiratebay.org, and isohunt.com. They’ve known them from the first week they stepped onto the wide world of the interwebs, they were shown them by the modern-day version of Johnny with the porno mag. They are tech-savvy enough to navigate something as antiquated as a ban on information stored digitally within a few minutes. By the time it’s re-released, the kids that really wanted to play it in the first place will have downloaded it, cracked it, finished it, and told their friends about it. So when their friends play it, they’ll know that there are drugs in this game, and when they use the ‘medicostim’ or whatever crack gets renamed to, they’re really shooting up.

I’m focussing on the futility of banning PC games, but that’s because I’m a PC gamer. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that have PS3s, or XB360s, that will be forced to wait to play a dumbed-down game. Surely there’s got to be some way of letting people mature enough to play an adult game buy that game and play it without needing skinned models. Oh, that’s right, an R18+ rating. Oh, but kids might just get their parents to buy the game and then play it! Well shit, then it’s the parents fault, not the developers. And hell, parents might actually want to use the game as an educational tool. Slightly far-fetched given Australia’s conservative parent population, but it’s entirely possible that exposure to such a game with the presence of an adult explaining the effects of drugs could help equip the young adult deal better with the presence of drugs in his/her life. Eh, I’m out of things to say on the topic. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs, and I really hope that the OFLC get their act together and realise that adults play games too.

No related posts.

photo credit: redhuntingcap

Warning: Rant ahead. No insightful thoughts contained within.

This last week hasn’t been particularly brilliant for driving. I’m one of those people that actually enjoys getting in their car every morning and driving to work (or in my case, university). This is lucky, because there’s bugger all buses that run from my house to my university (and I crash the journey planner at Transperth if I try and find out some way to do it). The journey from my house to university takes approximately 20 minutes (or, one-and-a-half Opeth songs) on a good day, and on a bad day, such as today or Tuesday, one-and-a-half hours (or one Opeth album). Let me explain.

Curtin University is located on a long road called Manning Road. Just before the south entrance, there is a couple of sets of traffic lights that act as a sort of lock. One goes to let cars into the space between them, then the second set goes to let those through and the cars still waiting at the first set. It’s kind of fucked, but there’s no other way to do it, and it generally gets the job done without letting cars get backed up too far. The topography of the area is such that just before the first traffic light, there is a large hill which you can see exactly bugger-all over. The problem is that every year at the start of semester, you have about 5,000 or so new students driving to Curtin University for the first time in morning traffic. And they don’t really realise that the lights can back up cars over that hill. So on the first day of semester there is always, without fail for the last five years, an accident near the hill where someone hasn’t braked in time after seeing that there was a car just over the crest (and the speed limit is 70 kmph) that they couldn’t see a second before.

One accident such as this can back up traffic for about half of Manning Road, which is crap in itself, but it’s not the worst location that it can happen. That honour belongs to the right hand lane just after the second traffic light. If someone crashes here, that means that not only do people have to merge into one lane through a traffic light–I’m pretty sure that I could prove that merging is the single most jam-causing activity on the roads with a simple snapshot of the Freeway at 5pm–they then have to get back into the right hand lane in order to turn into the entrance to Curtin.

But that’s not all folks.

Upon turning into Curtin, you are faced with a big-arse front loader (we’re having all sorts of construction going on in order to build a new Chemistry building) and a guy with a stick saying ‘STOP’. So people can’t actually get 20 metres into Curtin witout getting stopped. Which blocks up the right hand lane, which blocks the two traffic lights, which blocks Manning Road all the way back up to Leech Highway (around 5 kilometres), which stops people from turning right from Leech Highway onto Manning, which backs up Leech Highway, which backs up Welshpool Road. Which pisses me right the fuck off, and results in me taking four times the usual journey time to get into university, which makes me really shirty for the morning.  Anyway, it could be worse. I could be the guy whose motorcycle got jammed under that ute.

No related posts.

photo credit: Olivander

Disclaimer: this one’s pretty introspective. Look away if you’re not inclined to tolerating self-indulgent rabble.

Over the past few months I’ve been quietly assessing my priorities. Every now and again I sit still and quiet, gather my thoughts, and consider what it is that I am wanting to do with the hours that I have remaining in this life. Because to me, that’s what it comes down to: what, given that I am a finite entity in this entropic universe, would I rather be doing?

It’s not an easy question to isolate. When I try and think about it, other considerations come barging in and I get distracted. Money, location, contacts, basic technical skill, time, money once more; all of these push me off course and into ever more fractal considerations until I’m not even sure where among the ferns the initial question lies.

I guess the purpose of this entry was to try and muddle my way through some choices and see what, if any, I could eliminate. I’ve done something similar in the past with a piece of paper and a pen, but I thought that if it were in a visible place, perhaps my will would be reinforced by imagined tut-tuts and disgusted glares at my ability to worm my way out of self-obligation. So here, I guess, I should start said muddling.

Writing. I have a weird relationship with writing, in that I don’t believe I’m particularly good at it, but I’ve persisted for longer than anything else that I don’t think I’m particularly good at (viola, squash, soccer, guitar (though I have ordered another one) 3D modelling, etc.). I’d go out on a limb and suppose that it’s because I’ve always read so much as a child and as a young adult, that I feel like that culture of worship of words is a part of me, no matter how much it wishes it weren’t. Thing is, the main part of writing that I like is the creation of ideas. I am an incredible ideas man. I come up with at least one question, notion, or thought a day that might turn into a story, but never does. I love thinking about writing these ideas out, how each scene would unfold, how each character would change and find themselves new after nine pages or nine years. I tell the story in my head in its completeness, but when it comes to recording it on paper or in a text box, well, it’s already been told hasn’t it? Stupid, stupid logic, and I need to snap myself out of it.

Of course, that isn’t the only reason I don’t end up putting my ideas on paper. I get distracted easily. An unfortunate byproduct of being born near the turn of the 20th century is the multitude of distractions that are on offer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. By the time I finish writing this, I will have loaded up approximately twenty or so other web pages, checking for updates, news, or snippets of entertainment. See? I just now checked my bank account online. Distraction is convenient, and seductive. What are my main distractions? Well, those who join me from the annuls of deviantART will know that I am a long time user there. I would say, conservatively, that dA constitutes around 80% of the distraction I encounter on the internet. The rest of the 20% is made up, order from greatest to smallest, of: stories read on Boing Boing, Poe News, or Slashdot, the daily check of webcomics, maintaining this blog, email, and instant messengers. So dA is a big part of my online distraction. It probably deserves its own paragraph to discuss its influence on my desire to write, so hit ‘Enter’ twice please, maestro.

I’ve already discussed what I believe my deviantART journey has consisted of so far in this entry. Looking back at it, I do still believe that deviantART can be a positive resource for improving basic skills and getting feedback on stories, style, etc. Especially for new writers, attaining confidence to continue to write can be difficult, and dA offers that in spades, even if your writing is terrible, if you get involved in the community, you’ll find someone who likes it enough to give it a ‘:)’. And that tiny, potentially insignificant emote can give you every bit as much confidence to persevere that selling a million-copy best seller might. Anyway, I don’t want to repeat my advice given back then, so I’ll cut that stream short and take it up with my current position in relation to it. The short story is that I let myself get aggravated by events that I shouldn’t've, and that shifted my attitude towards dA from being a place to hone my skills, to being a dark wood full of drama and bullshit. Though this label has been more than adequate to describe it in many situations, it’s not fair to generalise as, like I said, it’s been good to me in the past. Though there were definitely faults in the administration of the site, I maintain this as strongly as ever before, getting involved in that sort of thing was never what I was there for. Unfortunately, the bomb has been dropped, and the place will never have that clean optimistic feel to it again. Of course, I could just start a new username (I have done this, but people keep finding me out/I’m not very good at subterfuge) and enter clean again. What I am leaning towards, however, is a distancing from it. The reasons for this are twofold:

1. The aforementioned ‘tainting’ of my ability to work there without getting caught up in crap.
2. My interaction with the site is cutting into my writing time, and that is both counter-productive and inexcusable.

Like Kelly said:

“Jesusbite (a former user) had the same issue with this site. If it cuts into your actual creative writing time, then you need to cut back on this site. Priorities, son.”

Which seems the best way to summarise all of what I’ve said above. So, moving on, and away a distance from dA.

This brings me to games. Anyone that knows me in real life (and the couple hundred or so that have played any number of online games with my multiple alter-egos*) knows that I love games. Lately, my obsession with them hasn’t been as prevalent as it has been in recent years, which I think is as a result of me cold-turkeying myself on a few of the games that might have turned into life-consumers (and one that managed to get its claws in me, before I woke up one afternoon and straight up uninstalled the motherfucker). At the moment all I’m really playing is Team Fortress 2, which has the attractive characteristics of being the most fun I’ve had for a long time, and also being incredibly easy to ‘put down’ if you feel the desire to re-enter real life. So no problems there, though once Hellgate: London grows up and becomes a full-version game, progressing past its current released beta state, I’ll be putting a few hours into that. And, of course, Smash Bros. Brawl will be making its way onto Wii consoles soon (though there’s a release date issue with EU countries, which includes Australia for some reason). I see SBB as more of a social outing than a gaming session anyway–allegiances rise, fall, and shatter, and the sweetness of the win is akin to a good session of fucking. So gaming is check for now and I’ll continue to enjoy it as a way to relax, without dipping my toes into addiction-infested waters.

University is an obvious ‘distraction’. I’m really enjoying it, and I am actually required to get this whole PhD thing done so that I can get a fancy title and cheaper flights (or so I’m told). The first year has swum by without me really noticing it, and it’s now that I realise that I’m in the deep end. I’m staying afloat, but it’s still a long way to the bottom, and there’s a worrying blot in the shape of a fin that seems to be rising to the surface slowly. Metaphors aside, I am currently under the pump (mine, my supervisors, whoever) to get some work done and get it done properly. I feel that I am now more than ready to do this, and have been slowly progressing to a more productive day spent in my office and around the campus. Positives are to be found there.

Louise could be considered a distraction, but I need her, plain and simple. Nothing more to say on that one.

Okay, so there’s a lot more that’s been said in my head than has been typed out into this field, but I think that’s enough for now. I’ll leave the triangular intricacies for my brain to work on its spare time.Now, time to fucking write.

—

* including, but not limited to: ender, aestivalis, prankster trippin’, gus, flax, and more recently fLx_-

No related posts.