Back to Life, Back to Reality

Social media is a veritable paradise for the avid people watcher. Because what one does is incredibly public while feeling like it's not quite happening in reality, there's a lot you can tell about someone by looking at not only what they say over social media, but how they say it. You can see exactly how they want to come across to other people, but if you're paying attention, you can also see all the ways their online image isn't quite in line with who they really are underneath.

I'm relatively open with others about how I treat my social media accounts and how I view the people on my contact lists. I've even openly compared scrolling through Facebook in particular to watching a bunch of fish swimming around in a bowl. I don't consider myself to be much of a people person, but I do enjoy people watching. People watching is most interesting when people have more or less forgotten they're being observed and pondered in such a way. The things I've learned have taught me a lot about the way others operate... and about how I fit into that dynamic as well.

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That said, I don't really tend to spend a ton of time on social media once the holidays roll around. Everyone tends to put on one or two of the same acts and that gets tiresome. I barely even bothered to check my feeds over this past Thanksgiving weekend. Over this past year, I've been able to upgrade my client roster a bit so that I'm only dealing with high caliber clients willing to pay for top-notch content. That said, I was easily able to take five days off to celebrate the holiday.

I spent the entire time relaxing with Seth and my cat, basically. I went balls out on Thursday roasting us an amazing turkey and whipping up some delicious but relatively healthy sides. (We didn't want to spoil all the progress we've made with our weight loss.) The rest of the time was spent sitting firmly on my ass and doing whatever the heck I wanted to do though. Origin had Sims 4 on sale for Black Friday, so I downloaded that and spent quite a bit of time playing it. I read. I watched TV. I dicked around on the internet. That was all though and it was exactly what I needed.

I'm not at all happy about being back to work today, as you can imagine. It's cold, and grey, and rainy today. My favorite weather. I'd much rather be designing Sim houses or reading short stories than forcing myself to write about real estate marketing for a client. By a landslide. But bitches got to eat and food doesn't pay for itself.

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As anyone that actually reads this blog or follows my life may have noticed, I decided to throw in the towel as far as NaNoWriMo goes a while back. I doubt that's any more of a surprise to anyone else than it was to me. Even with not having to take on as many assignments to make ends meet, my workload still eventually managed to encroach on my ability to keep up with my daily word counts. The whole thing started to feel like one more chore after a while -- just like my work writing does -- and I'm really doing my best to make sure my personal creative projects don't ever feel that way. That means not forcing things when they're not flowing comfortably. Maybe some writers can come up with decent material when they do that, but I can't.

Before I quit, I managed to churn out a complete short story that actually has potential, as well as a couple of halfway decent free form poems though. I also started a second story, but that one isn't nearly as creative or unique as the first one I did when I was still super excited about the event. Whatever the case may be, that's still something written as far as creative content I can revisit in the future, I suppose. I'm trying to teach the perfectionist in me to loosen up a little bit when it comes to judging my ability to keep up with certain things and recognizing even minor progress for what it is. That attitude that it has to be all or nothing reminds me way too much of people I don't want to be anything like.