Today as a list: a calming exercise.

Posted on by Dawnrigger

It’s been a long day. I’m tired, I know I did things because I’m tired, yet I’m filled with the uneasy belief I’ve done nothing significant with all that time.

This is a familiar problem. I have a little trick: write down everything that feels significant so I can see that in fact Things Did Happen. Not in chronological order. Just as the thoughts come to me.

(Hey, I didn’t say it was a brilliant or original trick.)

Today’s high & lowlights:

  • Assembled couch bits that will live in my office
  • Wrote new words in Sharp Edge of Yesterday. Not many.
  • Avoided & procrastinated all the correspondence or reviews I planned to do.
  • Wrote a long rant about herbicide shaming which I will not post anywhere.
    (You’re welcome.)
  • read too many news stories & did WAY TOO MUCH research journal surfing.
  • Took two accidental naps
  • Took two lovely walks with Spouseman in a Work From Home win.
  • Ordered a crapton of garden supplies for quick pickup tomorrow.
  • Lost multiple tea mugs multiple times.
  • Received new, tight-fitting cloth masks made by a wonderful seamstress friend.
  • Made more lists of plants to order tomorrow.
  • lost track of time puttering around with garden stuff & missed both an open mic Zoom event AND almost all of a live online reading by a friend.

Now it’s past time for supper, and I’m feeling unhelpful & frustrated. And aggravated with myself for both feelings.)

ANYway.  It’s an even more mixy mixed bag than usual. I was flaky & achy & kept forgetting what I was doing in the middle of doing it. Which is not a rare thing.

It’s what happens when my brain is working so hard to ignore stressors that there’s no processing power left for Regular Things.

So I’m gonna give myself a break I’ve done nothing to earn, lock down the news media & the social media for 12 hours minimum & go watch TV.

Because that’s a valid choice. Even if I do feel all self-defensive and prickly about doing it. 

Until later!

 

A bit of daily This & That

Posted on by Dawnrigger

Mid-February is made of Gray & Cloudy

My brain is on rebound from extraverting all weekend. My Third Capricon was a BLAST, but experience will get its own post a bit later, after I’ve had time to sift through impressions and let them settle. Right now all I have to offer are a couple of Thinky Thoughts.

One observation gleaned from cleaning out my Facebook post closet: I use online media to micro-blog. That is, I post personal updates as a life archive rather than to build a public scrapbook. My review of past performance confirms Facebook used to be excellent for mini-blogging but has grown progressively suckier in that role on a curve sorta like this:

Screenshot 2020-02-12 10.38.38

I would be fine with my posts disappearing fast from public view if they were easy to retrieve and curate. I would be fine with posts being hard to curate and retrieve if they had enough visibility to compensate for the hassle.

Facebook wants me to pay for visibility AND makes older posts nigh-impossible to review and remove or search?

NAH.

I’ve been doing more here and shifting the more random short musings or angsty outbursts to Twitter. Pictures of neat things I see or food I want to share? Those post to both FB and Twitter via Instagram.

And book stuff? That I do everywhere. Revisions to Sharp Edge are moving along at a good clip now, so…keep fingers crossed for release or at least pre-orders by late summer.

Gen Con. I want books or at least something to put in people’s hands by Gen Con. I know someone investigating the idea of reading chapters aloud to post  YouTube. There’s something strangely appealing about this idea.

But that’s enough for now. Happy reading, and enjoy this springy picture.

willow-catkin-1184812_1280
fluffy willow catkins against a black background.

Until later!

 

Some personal word definitions. Because that’s all I have today.

Posted on by Dawnrigger

After reading a dialogue-heavy book over breakfast (as one does) I pondered how much of every conversations consists of fillers, reflective phrases and “message received” acknowledgements, and that led to more pondering on perpetual nature of communication issues like:

“Are you even listening?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“Then why are you doing it all wrong?/ “Then why don’t you understand?”

Oh, and by fillers, etc, I mean things like,

“Uh-huh. I hear that.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Okay, I think I got it. Is this what you meant?”
“Got it. I can do that.”

All this pondering led nowhere useful of course, but it did make me realize that I look at the word pairs hear/listen, understand/comprehend as conversational dance steps. Think foxtrot. Or tango.

  1. Hear: physically register vocal input.
  2. Listen: attempt to comprehend that input.
  3. Understand: receive & recognize the meaning of the input.
  4. Comprehend: input processed and absorbed, ready to put into action

A good conversation can go through that progression many times. (Pretend the words are inside pictures of feet with arrows, maybe? I dunno. I’m not feeling graphicky today.)

I think most people learn that hearing is not listening, but maybe it’s equally important to grasp that not all listening is successful listening.

I’ve seen a lot of discussions dissolve into frustration and hostility when one participant mistakes passive hearing for listening but I’ve seen many more crash and burn when someone’s certain they’ve comprehended a new idea merely because they listened to someone talk about it.

That’s all.  Just thoughts for now. Until later!

Oh, PS/PSA for all any worriers in my circle, no this has NOT been inspired by any real conversation I’ve had with anyone. Srsly.  You’re awesomes, alla youses.

Okay, I also have this picture of a flower from a couple of days ago. View on Instagram http://bit.ly/2HNd4Vk