After I’m writing, one of the crucial essential parts of that course of is my downtime. And I’m speaking down downtime, not identical to, oh I’m gonna fuck off and do one thing else for some time — I imply the occasions the place I’ve nothing actually to do, nothing to consider, and that’s when the bizarre hermit crab that’s my mind emerges from its shell and begins to wander round its skull-shaped terrarium, lastly snug. I’m speaking about after I’m within the bathe. Or mowing the garden. Or simply taking a stroll. I get to carry out a comparatively inconsiderate motion, which permits my precise ideas to deal with no matter story I’m writing throughout that interval.

So, if I’m engaged on a novel, I am going for a stroll, and through that stroll, my mind emerges, and makes use of its varied claws and pseudopods and probing tendrils to show my present story over and over and over. It pokes, it prods, it pulls it aside and smashes it again collectively once more. I take into consideration characters. I think about eventualities. I play limitless what if what if what if video games. I discover plotholes and check out to determine learn how to spackle them shut. It’s very helpful time.

It’s, in reality, important time.

And the present information period has stolen this from me.

The CURRENT NEWS is like poisonous groundwater — it fills all of the low locations. The second my mind stops shifting for a second, in seeps all of the septic shit occurring right here within the nation and world wide. I’m often good at turning this off, at constructing seawalls, or on the very least discovering a method to take in that stuff — and my emotions about all of it — into the work.

Nevertheless it ain’t working.

The seawalls have failed.

So, as a substitute of attending to chew on my story issues, I’m as a substitute huffing information fumes and gargling disaster juice.

Technically, this can be a me downside — however I do assume it’s designed considerably from the highest down. That means, it’s intentional. I believe flood the zone with bullshit as a method isn’t purely nearly juking the media or one’s political opposition — I believe it’s a method to synaptically overwhelm the citizenry. I believe this technique is flawed for various causes (“I need to eat the bee’s honey, subsequently I’ll throw rocks on the hive” would possibly work however, uhhh, there are higher methods), nevertheless it does overwhelm. It’s the place you get the narrative of, “Don’t fall for this distraction! Wait, this factor is distracting us from that different distraction! Every part is a distraction apart from that one factor, which because it seems, can also be a distraction from a factor we haven’t even seen but.” None of it’s a distraction. It’s a full slate of horrors each malicious and silly, all of them shifting ahead concurrently. It’s a multi-pronged assault on our consideration spans, our informational constancy, and our skill simply to cope with all of it. We are able to juggle as much as three balls, and they also throw three balls, 4 chainsaws, an offended octopus, and a bitey mountain goat at us.

For me, simply from a sensible, artistic perspective, this fucking sucks. It’s very laborious to flee the gravity properly of Limitless Hypervigilance and simply sit down for some time and attempt to think about what the fake individuals in my head are going to do in regards to the fake issues I’ve given them. (Storytellers are such dicks.) It’s a small downside within the grand scheme however massive within the private, artistic sense — to have a thoughts allowed to be freed from troubles is much too massive an ask, however to have a thoughts freed from relentless, limitless, unmitigated troubles feels prefer it needs to be a good request from time to time.

I don’t know what to do about it, exactly. I’ve tried simply tuning out the information — which, for the file, means tuning out social media virtually in its entirety — and that does work, with the exception that dwelling within the whole darkish brings with it its personal sense of wariness. Studying the information looks like monitoring the trail of a twister, whereas wanting away looks like admitting, “There’s a twister on the market, however no concept the place it’s or when it’s gonna decide me up and take me to Oz.” Plus, I like social media. I like being related to different writers and readers and all of the silly shitposting that goes on. After which there’s the issue that while you do return to social media and to the information, it’s simply ingesting from a burst sewer pipe. Not less than it from time to time offers you the obscure sense that you simply’re taking small doses of iocaine powder in an effort to develop into proof against it.

(Spoiler: you’re by no means immune. You’re simply disassociating.)

For the file, I’m managing — the best success I’ve in fixing this downside is a form of vigorous diligence to fight the hypervigilance. That means, I’ve to be actively conscious of my mind’s downtime and work very laborious to attempt to hold it offline, so to talk, in an effort to let it defrag the artistic laborious drive. Simpler stated than executed, and considerably betrays the purpose of merely having downtime in any respect — downtime being a factor that’s purported to be passively computerized, not me stalking the fence with a rifle searching for no matter beast lurks there at the hours of darkness to tear by the chain-link and use its many antlers to fuck up the peace backyard I’ve grown.

So, I dunno. Once more, I’m managing.

However I figured I’d ask —

Anybody else have this downside?

And the way are you dealing with it, offered you’re capable of in any respect?

(I notice right here in conclusion that there are wayyyyy worse issues occurring than what I describe on this submit. It is a woe is me boo-hoo form of submit, when there are individuals who have misplaced much more — there are individuals who have misplaced individuals. Individuals stolen. Individuals taken. Individuals thrown into vans or just churned underneath the propaganda machine. However please forgive me the necessity to discuss this small and very important factor that’s been taken, thanks.)

Anyway, purchase my books or I’m vanquished. Bye!