{"id":14351,"date":"2024-09-12T10:59:40","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T10:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=14351"},"modified":"2024-09-16T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:00:11","slug":"instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2024\/09\/12\/instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s 11:05pm. I\u2019m freshly showered and I just got in bed. My 11mo son is fast asleep in his cot nearby. I have a decision to make: I could either go to sleep, or I could try to write something. If I sleep, that\u2019s a win, I\u2019ll wake up fresh tomorrow. If I try to write something, and succeed (hit publish), that\u2019s a bigger win, I\u2019ll go to sleep even more fitfully and wake up feeling satisfied. But if I try to write something and fail, that feels like a loss. The more hours I spend writing something without publishing anything, the bigger of a loss that feels like. Which doesn\u2019t feel right to me. Because I do know, intellectually at least, that writing is a process, and it\u2019s good for me to have written, even if I don\u2019t necessarily hit publish. But I do think I ought to cap the \u2018damage\u2019 in terms of hours spent. So\u2026 let\u2019s say that I\u2019ll end my writing session at 12:45am, and be satisfied with whatever happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately I\u2019ve been trying to figure out how to get more out of my time when my son is napping on me. I enjoy those moments and I wouldn\u2019t want to be rid of them before he does, so I\u2019m willing to endure some hours-spent-not-working. Sometimes I spend that time playing video games\u2013 most recently I\u2019ve been replaying Dragon Age: Inquisition (meh), completed my first playthrough of Disco Elysium (pretty great), and playing through the DLC of The Witcher 3 (very good). Sometimes I spend it watching TV, typically YouTube, though lately I\u2019ve also been watching Invincible on Amazon Prime Video. Some of that stuff feels like it might percolate into my writing. I\u2019ve also started to try to do some writing on my phone. Yesterday or the day before, I decided to take a glance at my Instagram account. I\u2019m not much of an Instagram user, I mainly log in to look at my friends\u2019 Stories. I\u2019m not sure when precisely I signed up for an IG account, but my oldest post on it that isn\u2019t archived is from December 2013. It\u2019s a picture of my cat looking out the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting to scroll through a decade of photos to get a sense of who I was in those years. I think I\u2019ll devote most of the rest of this substack post to just live-react to those old photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I could remember which youtube video it was I watched\u2013 something about screenplays, I think\u2013 which quoted someone as saying, a good scene always has at least 2 things going on simultaneously. Or it always achieves at least 2 goals. It might tell you something about a character, or a relationship between two characters, and it\u2019ll also simultaneously move the plot forward. It might tell you something about the setting, and also set up something for later on. That sort of thing. When I glance through my photos, I notice that my favorite posts often accomplish that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n