{"id":13517,"date":"2023-02-17T19:19:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T19:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=13517"},"modified":"2023-02-17T19:19:41","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T19:19:41","slug":"internal-conflicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2023\/02\/17\/internal-conflicts\/","title":{"rendered":"internal conflicts?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What is the animating spirit of this post? I think this post is about navigating internal conflicts, dynamic tensions. Feels a bit on the nose to make it about ayy lmao, but that\u2019s the leading obvious choice. maybe it\u2019ll be the conclusion<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Sometimes I get visions of clarity<\/strong> \u2013 a sense of how everything in my life might just come together and \u201cjust work\u201d. But these visions don\u2019t persist, the emotional quality withers away and I am left thrashing around blindly trying to recreate what had seemed so obvious and natural sometimes just hours earlier<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Struggling with things that used to be easy:<\/strong> I used to write in starbucks when I was 20, and maybe I\u2019m looking back with rose-tinted glasses but I don\u2019t particularly recall being conflicted about what I was writing. I just wrote down whatever was on my mind. Well, what\u2019s on my mind now, and why don\u2019t I just write it? Part of it is that I\u2019m worried about outcomes. Maybe I know too much about the world now, and that can be a bad thing, because it can be kinda paralyzing. I anticipate bad outcomes. \u201cPeople are confused and don\u2019t really get it\u201d is something I subconsciously marked as a bad outcome. But as I think out loud about it, is it really bad? Isn\u2019t it worse if I\u2019m paralyzed into inaction? I remember struggling with some version of this while working on my book, and I wonder how much of that struggle was necessary. I think about Miyazaki\u2019s pained process. Is pain necessary in the process? Some amount of it seems unavoidable, but I would be wary about romanticizing suffering.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>novelty vs depth:<\/strong> I\u2019m torn between trying to write something fresh and new off the top of my head, and digging deep into my past material to look for depth, resonance. A part of me feels some survivor\u2019s guilt for having made it this far as a creative \u2013 I know there are others who don\u2019t, and a part of me feels like \u201cI have to make it count.\u201d But here too once I write it down I find myself thinking, how would I feel if I was one of those who didn\u2019t make it, and I could speak with someone who did? I would not want them to suffer on my behalf. I can do that by myself. I would in fact want them to be happy, joyous, delighted on my behalf. And I feel an actual, palpable relief at this realization. So you see in real time how writing has a positive impact on me.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>order vs chaos:<\/strong> I\u2019m torn between drafting and freestyling. Order and chaos. Structure and madness. When I write it down, again, the nuance reveals itself to me. The point is the dynamism. It\u2019s like saying \u201cI\u2019m torn between inhaling and exhaling\u201d. You gotta do both, silly! So, alright, where am I in the process right now? I am freestyling in this document. When I start to feel tired of freestyling, I can switch and start sorting through my drafts. And I can keep going with that until I get tired of that, and then I can switch back to freestyling. Or I can step away from my computer and take a nap, or a walk, whatever feels right in the moment. I know from experience that there is a wisdom in my body, my felt sense, that is more sensitive than my thinky-talky conscious mind. Part of what I love about writing when I do it well is that if I go fast enough, I can outrun the thinky-talky conscious mind. And I know from experience that this can actually be a gift that I give to other people, and with enough practice and auxillary skills, I can even do it for a living, get paid for it. (elaboration re: introspect? journalling?) I suppose here I wanna say, well then once I get there, I\u2019m torn between doing what feels natural in my self-interest, and thinking about other people. Man is a social creature, others-interest is in my self-interest\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Letting go of being overpremptive?<\/strong> I also want to think out loud about how\u2026 annoying\u2026 I am\u2026 to myself? Am I really annoying to myself, or am I being overpremptive about how I know the way that I am is annoying to others? A topic to cry about. I often find myself wanting to do a little bit of everything. I know that if you want to please the bulk of readers, the way to do it is to make things accessible for them, signpost things with clarity, promise them something reassuring, easy to parse, direct shots of meaning. I used to spend a lot of time in that headspace, as a marketer. And then I sought to spend as much time as I could <em>away<\/em> from that headspace, to nourish the more complex, conflicted, rich, forested parts of me. And I think I\u2019ve done a decent job of that. And now it\u2019s time for me to synthesize. It\u2019s time for me to ayy.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I want to talk about so many things\u2026 the tricky thing is figuring out what is relevant, what I want to include, how to give structure and meaning to a piece, without throwing in so many random things that aren\u2019t relevant. What is relevance? What is a detail that adds to a story rather than detracts from it? That\u2019s a matter of aesthetic resonance, which feels like a topic of a separate essay. It\u2019s hard to know where things begin and where things end, which joints to cleave at. It takes practice, I guess. You try a few different things and feel it out, feel what resonates. When I reflect on how I\u2019ve been feeling a bit stuck lately, I think a bunch of it is that I descend into a bit of a scarcity mindset. Like I already have 20 drafts,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[727],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3w1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13518,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13517\/revisions\/13518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}