Yesterday, I said I wanted to talk about my goals, but ended up talking about other things. I never got to my goals for my fifth year of life, so that is what I want to tackle in this post.
I spent the first year of my re-birth adjusting to the fact that I was still alive. It was simultaneously difficult to believe that I was still on this earth and easy to feel like nothing changed.
This is not a complaint, though it will sound like one. After three months or so, it was really fucking with my brain that I was pretty much back to where I had been before, minus a few things. I wasn’t nearly as depressed as I was before (roughly 90% of my depression was gone. Not coincidentally, it happened at the same time my parents went back to Taiwan), nor was I as anxious (about 40% of my previous anxiety). I had a few things wrong with my brain (could not do simple math in my head, and I no longer could remember names as well as I used to. In addition, I would suddenly forget a word now and again). I also had worse depth perception than before; almost no peripheral vision; and my already-terrible reflexes were worse.
All of these are more than acceptable trade-offs for being alive. I can walk with no problem. I can do my Taiji (and now Bagua) with almost no problem*. I can type as well as I used to, and I’m physically fine. My depression has crept back to roughly 70% of what it used to be, and my anxiety is back up to about the same. Still a net positive, but going in the wrong direction.
One thing that I’ve struggled with and that is a big goal for this year: my fiction writing. I have tried to write a novel (which I could do easily before my medical crisis. I have written dozens of murder mysteries over the years), but to no avail. I have had an idea for one ever since I got out of the hospital, but I have not managed to make it work.
I got another idea from a friend of mine a few months ago, but I just cannot make myself write. With the second idea, I have the characters fleshed out in my head, and a vague idea of a plot. This is unlike me. In the past, I would map out the plot in my head and by the time I started writing, I knew who the victim was, who the perp was, and the general path to get from A to B.
I usually ‘write’ the first ten to twenty pages in my head, and I know the general shape of the whole novel before I even touch my keyboard. Well, since this is in the past, I should put things in the past tense. I rarely had writer’s block, and when I did, it was for a day or two. The worst time, I had it for maybe a month.
Now, though, I am having such a hard time with it. I have started and stopped my first novel so many times. Anything I write just looks so flat, and there’s nothing I can do to inject the words with life. I don’t consider the characters to be mine, per se. I feel like I’m the conduit to them, and they do what they want to do. If I try to force them to do anything else, the writing is flat. It just lies on the page and does not shimmer. Yes, shimmer.
None of my writing now is shimmering. I haven’t tried in several months, though, so it’s possible that I have regained it now. I can do simple math in my head again, and I haven’t lost a word in quite some time.
I need to try. That’s the problem. I gave it the old college try several times, but I gave up fairly quickly when I could not make it work. Before my medical crisis, I wrote at least 2,000 words a day every day with very rare exceptions. I did NaNoWriMo not last year but the year before (I think? Maybe last year? No. I don’t think so) and was able to write 2,000 words a day.
It was utter shit, though. I’m not being hyperbolic. It suuuuuucked. I have written shitty things before, but that took the cake.
Now, I want to write the rough draft of a novel in this upcoming year. (September 3rd to September 3rd.) This means that I should get back to writing 2,000 words a day. I’m not sure if I want to work on my first idea or the second–or maybe blend them together. I’m pretty good at chucking disparate ideas together–or at least I was.
I need to just write. I used to be able to do that even when the ideas were terrible. In the past, I had faith that I could write my way out of a spate of horrible writing. I don’t have that now. In the first month or so that I was home after my medical crisis, I said to myself that if I could never write again, that was a trade-off I would happily make for being alive.
I stand by it, but not as happily as I was before. Writing is a huge part of me, and I can’t stand that I can’t do it any longer. So I’m going to give it the old college try by writing 2,000 words a day. We’ll see how that goes.
The other immediate goal right now is to finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I am upp to 39 out of 48 postures, but I had to put it on the backburner because last Friday, I got my second shingels vax, my pneumonia vax, and my bloodwork done all on the same day. I react badly to any shot. When I got my first Covid vax, I had a hot red bump for six weeks–up to and a bit past when I got the second shot.
My first shingles shot was bad, but nothing like this one. This one had me exhausted (still am), and while the bump is mostly gone, it’s still a little bit there and sore. My pneumonia shot is fine. That got better in three days. My bloodwork jab (on the back of my hand) was fine the next day. It didn’t even bruise (which it sometimes does).
I have more to say, but I’m done for the day. I’ll write another post on it tomorrow.
*Fighting the urge to go on a thousand-word screed about the Double Fan Form. I will talk about it, but much more briefly.