Sabbatical Update 3

Another month down, another set of challenges endured.

October's theme turns out to be "secondary trauma". The last several weeks have been an onslaught of terrible things happening to the people closest to me. There have been job losses. There have been evictions. There have been mental breakdowns. There have even been deaths.

While these things aren't all happening to me directly, they are happening to people I care about. It's difficult to focus on my own pursuits when the people around me are struggling this much. Some of that is because I'm diverting time and attention to direct support, but a lot of it comes down to empathy fatigue:

“Empathy fatigue is the emotional and physical exhaustion that happens from caring for people day, after day, after day,” explains Dr. Albers. “Over time, we start to see people experiencing a sense of numbness and distancing or difficulty continuing to care.”

This is in no way the fault of the people affected. Nevertheless, the constant onslaught of major disruptions and anxiety bombs is exhausting for all of us to weather.

And then, because that wasn't enough, there was the shitshow we call Election Day.

Actually, you know what? Let's talk about that one first.

Election Day

First, there is the despair; then comes the rage; and finally, the resolve.

In 2016, I was worried that Trump was doing as well as he was, but I was also pretty confident Clinton would ultimately win. I'll never forget what it felt like to sit at home alone, watching the live election coverage, and hitting that moment when it became so brutally apparent that this was going to end badly. I remember feeling so angry at all the people who voted for Trump, after all his crimes, after "grab 'em by the pussy", after all the invective at his rallies. I lost a lot of faith in other people that night.

Over the past four years, I've watched the same conservative politicians, the same conservative media, and the same conservative voters decide they were up and tired of covid, so they simply declared the pandemic over, threw away their masks, forced a bunch of people back to the office (even though work-from-home was going just fine), started passing a bunch of ridiculous anti-mask mandates, and told the rest of us who cared about our and our loved ones' health to just, basically, stuff our feelings. I lost the rest of my faith in other people, and my faith in pretty much all our institutions, after watching how poorly this culture handled the pandemic.

So here's the despair: This year, watching the election fall into Trump's lap again, I have no more faith left to lose.

Here's the rage: I also don't have any grace left to give. If you voted for Trump, knowing what he did the first time around, then you are now a threat to me and my community. I was alone in 2016, but this time I'm surrounded by people I love, and who love me, and now we have to protect ourselves from people like you.

And finally, the resolve: Within our own communities, we can and will still perform mutual care. You can't stop us from helping each other. You can't stop us from defending each other. And you will never stop us from caring about each other.

Our love will always be more durable than your fear.

And with that, let's move on to sabbatical progress.

Writing

Shortly after I started the speculative fiction writing workshop at Hugo House, I signed up to have some of my work critiqued in class. The submission deadline for that work was October 30.

I've been working on my short story, working title The Deep, for some time now, but with all the chaos of October, I struggled to get enough of a draft together in time for that submission. With just under a week left to go, I realized I wasn't going to make it: there had just been too many disruptions to my time and energy.

So I made like a game developer, and pivoted.

I've had an idea for a flash fiction piece for a while, that would build on some of my feelings of frustration and missed potential around a house I used to live in (all too briefly) some years ago. I treated this like a game jam, pounding out a draft in a couple hours, working to a clear theme and severe constraints, including a pretty strict -- and highly experimental -- commitment to environmental storytelling in lieu of an explicit POV. (For those following along from the game dev world: from a scope control perspective, this meant I didn't have to figure out how to develop an entire POV character.)

I meant to shoot for 1,000 words, but accidentally drafted twice that. On first revision, it grew again, settling in around 2,800 words for final submission of The Incident at Briarcliff. It goes in front of the class on November 13, and I'm looking forward to seeing whether the environmental storytelling approach worked or flopped.

Now that I've got a submission in (even if it wasn't the story I was originally planning on), I'm turning my attention back to The Deep. I had been struggling a bit with that story's narrative voice, but after writing The Incident at Briarcliff, I realized part of that problem was tense: I tend to outline in the present tense, but was trying to draft in past, and I think that was causing some weird friction in my brain. I wrote Briarcliff in present tense and it flowed much more readily; now I'm rethinking The Deep in present tense as well, and it's already easier to work with.

(Why? Who knows. I used to think I would never write a story in present tense, but it turns out change is the only constant, and there's a lot of change going around right now.)

P.S. In last month's update, I speculated about maybe preparing to do NaNoWriMo this year. After the way October went, and looking at our absurdly busy travel calendar for November, I'm going to have to pass on that for yet another year. Sigh.

Music

The aforementioned October chaos also significantly impacted my musical exploration.

🎵Staff Meeting🎵 has been hit the hardest, as the friends we did this with the most frequently were among the hardest hit by the month's shitty circumstances. I think it's a sign of how effective that ritual has been for us that I find myself actively missing it right now.

I've also struggled to keep up with daily guitar practice because of all the disruptions; I've probably averaged closer to every third day, at best. I'm getting marginally more confident with a fundamental set of chords, but I'm struggling a lot with fret buzz, and I have to keep reminding myself to work on my posture and make sure I'm actually holding the guitar correctly and not forming lazy, stupid habits.

One thing that's become apparent is that I think my first guitar is too big. I started on a Fender CD-60S, which seemed like a well-recommended starting point that wasn't too expensive, but also wasn't a disposable toy. Now that I've played with it for a few weeks, I feel like I'm trying to wrestle a bear every time I pick it up. The guitar is decent on its own merits, but I feel like I'd personally be more comfortable with something a little smaller.

So right as the month turned over, I picked up a Little Martin, and oh, what a world of difference it's made. The neck is arguably a few inches shorter than might be optimal for me, but otherwise, this 3/4-size guitar fits me like a glove, and I'm already enjoying playing so much more.

Boundaries

Life is hard, and some days I feel like this whole sabbatical is cursed, as every time I feel like I've made some good progress in my personal development, that progress gets quickly erased by an increased need for support to flow out into my community.

(The election did not help with this.)

My therapist talks about setting boundaries, and that's fine so far as it goes, but it's really hard to set a boundary that says, "You're someone I care about a lot, and you have a clear critical need at this time, and I have the capacity to help you meet that need, but I personally want to do this other thing, which doesn't help you at all, so I'm going to go do the thing I want, and uh, good luck with your need, I guess? Let me know when you've got that all fixed up." That just doesn't feel like something people who care about each other do. It feels callous and selfish.

The million-dollar question here is: are we talking about codependency, or are we talking about community?

There is a notion, set forth in the excellent essay We're All Preppers Now, that in order to build strong communities, we should pursue neither dependence nor independence, but interdependence:

Even if a lot of us (myself included) are introverts and curmudgeons at heart, the human animal is still a social animal. We’ve evolved to take care of one another and be taken care of. We weather crisis better when we do it together.

Interdependence does actually require an exchange of energy, and I feel like setting hard boundaries about "that's not my problem" is a antithetical to that idea.

None of us invited these conflicts, but opting out is not an option, and the power of community comes when we shoulder our collective burdens collectively.

Takeaways

I'm trying to hold focus on The Deep, and I'm trying to improve the consistency and quality of my guitar practice, but I'm also trying to set realistic (low) expectations for the next month, because our November schedule is already extremely packed.

I'm trying not to fall into a well of anxiety about how slowly all of this is going, and how much money it's costing, and how fragile it all feels if/when I have to go back to a day job.

I'm trying not to let the unconscionable election results completely derail everything.

And for right now, I'm mostly just trying to hold myself together.