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Post by Stacy on Dec 28, 2010 22:03:17 GMT -5
Feel better soon, Stacy. Take all the time you need to heal. *hug* *hugs back* Thanks! I do feel better already - off back to the chair.
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Post by Stacy on Dec 28, 2010 23:45:45 GMT -5
So actual music means more focus and less falling asleep, and OMG you guys! Maslow and Dewey totally agree about aesthetic perception! ALSO! Nothing cures existential angst like my ultraviolence playlist. www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=13DFDC97810CC03D
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Post by Stacy on Dec 31, 2010 3:25:34 GMT -5
So I was working on my epic post about stuff when my monitor died. Tried to reboot. Heard loud fan noise and didn't get a display. Oh, and it would turn on as long as it had power. Disconnect the power supply, wait, plug in the power supply, get light and fan noise. No pushing the power button needed. A couple of hours of testing later, and it turns out my video card was the problem. Running on onboard graphics now, getting a new video card tomorrow. But basically - I've realized I am never going to get what I want, and I don't want things I can't have. So I am beginning to not want it. "It" being external validation, connection with other humans, the feeling that I am understood, that my work is valued for itself and only for itself, that another human being sees what I am trying to do here and gets it. Gets me. There is no external valuation. There is no good or bad, right or wrong, popular or ignored, read or not read, valued or not valued. There is only me and my story. Only - Nine Inch Nails Less concerned about fitting into the world Your world that is Cause it doesn't really matter anymore (no it doesn't really matter anymore) No it doesn't really matter anymore None of this really matters anymore
Yes I am alone but then again I always was As far back as I can tell I think maybe it's because Because you were never really real to begin with I just made you up to hurt myself and it worked yes it did!
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Post by thelunarfox on Dec 31, 2010 10:59:20 GMT -5
Sorry to hear about the graphics card.
I think this is a good thing to strive for. When I was younger, I was pretty much a loner. I was that weird kid in school. At first it bugged me, and then I just accepted it. I am different. I know we all are, but, I mean, I didn't even feel a need to try and fit in. There was just me and the way I am. People will either like it or they won't, and the people I've connected to, while few and far between, have all been the most amazing people I've met in my life. They're good close friends who see and know the real person.
It'll be that same way with your art, Stacy. There are people out there who will honestly connect with it because you are so unique and different in voice and vision from anyone else out there.
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Post by Stacy on Dec 31, 2010 18:45:51 GMT -5
I was talking about this with John last night. He said "I'm probably the closest to you and I only get what you're talking about half the time." And I tried to explain what I meant by objective aesthetic perception to him, and I could feel his anger and frustration, could tell he wasn't saying anything because he didn't want to express that he was upset and start a scene and make me upset. No wonder I get hate secrets, if even my own husband gets mad when I just try to say what I think about perception and objectivity and perceiving the thing itself (LOL) as opposed to perceiving it as subject to your will. Which Laura - I feel like I'm moving in on all your stuff today and I hate that, but well - like I was telling him about everything and asked why everyone was saying that it was a problem that Leila and Matt were young when they got married. John and I met when we were 18 and got married when we were 21. We still like each other lots and lots. At some point I said "There's also the thing where we're not exactly normal people." He laughed extremely a lot and said "Yeah, especially you." And we also often have conversations about...well, about objective aesthetic perception, lol. Maybe I should explain it to him that way. I tried the whole angle of including him in the example of the cats, of how we see them as people and not as furry furniture, but that didn't get it across. But we've talked about the marriage thing enough before. He might get that - like how we got married in regular clothes in my car in a drive-thru chapel in Pigeon Forge. No rings, btw. And we do look at people who go into the whole social ritual of it and wonder - is it really about the person for them? Essentially - are you in love with your partner or in love with the idea of monogamy and a soulmate and a big white wedding dress that you've unthinkingly internalized from movies? Do you see my story or do you see the username, the secrets, the number of comments relative to your number of comments, my position on some social ranking system that you imagine exists, the platform I choose to publish it on, the lack of monetary recompense, your idea of "legitimacy" coming from money and corporations and editors and all that shit (Bex - this was my main problem with the webfic community), your expectations, or anything other than, well - the thing itself? I should go and see if someone stole that LJ name, since I let that one lapse. OH! Wrist doing much much better. Gonna try some 10.08 later tonight. And yeah - basically I'm getting at ideas that are all in Maslow, Rogers, Dewey, Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Taoism, Eastern philosophy in general, etc. What I want is the self burned pure. Free from ego. Ego-less, will-less perceiving. Detached and universal. But as John tells me when I don't get replies to my LJ posts or threads on art and Dabrowski and say "My friends hate me" - the immersion and intensity that I want is not generally possible.
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Post by Stacy on Dec 31, 2010 19:45:18 GMT -5
Sorry to hear about the graphics card. I think this is a good thing to strive for. When I was younger, I was pretty much a loner. I was that weird kid in school. At first it bugged me, and then I just accepted it. I am different. I know we all are, but, I mean, I didn't even feel a need to try and fit in. There was just me and the way I am. People will either like it or they won't, and the people I've connected to, while few and far between, have all been the most amazing people I've met in my life. They're good close friends who see and know the real person. It'll be that same way with your art, Stacy. There are people out there who will honestly connect with it because you are so unique and different in voice and vision from anyone else out there. *hugs* It's not so much about fitting in, though. It's not - l don't know, I picked up on that idea on Twitter and in Laura's threads too, that people thought I wanted everyone to be the same or something. It's more - god, this is hard to put into words. No, wait - we can use the example of the cats again. They are all unique autonomous beings. They have a lot of differences. I'm sure Midnight doesn't get how Nova can be so fierce and why she hangs out in the living room at night when everyone else is on the bed with us (Oreo sleeps on my pillow a lot, lol) and Nova doesn't get how Midnight can be so nervous and neurotic and scares easy. Luna doesn't understand why the other cats are eating her food (that girl can eat, man), and Oreo wishes Luna would stop chasing her. But...they are all friends. They all give each other baths and sleep curled up together. Everyone is different, but everyone is valued. I still don't think that's at all saying what I mean, much less getting it across. I will try again later, after dinner. Talk to John about it and get my thoughts in order. I know I used to want everyone to connect with my work. I still get really upset about that, I admit. Like the person who said she tried but didn't finish because of the horror stuff - she really was friendly about it and told me "please don't think your stories suck" but...I can't help it, you know? I don't know. Off to dinner. And I really really appreciate the reply. Like, really. Like maybe tonight I won't say "My friends hate me" to John.
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Post by thelunarfox on Dec 31, 2010 20:16:21 GMT -5
See, I still think we're misunderstanding each other. I'm not talking about fitting in. I'm talking about being comfortable enough with yourself to accept that you won't be understood by everyone, and that's okay. It's not a bad thing. It's not because you failed in some way or are not liked. You're dealing with individuals, and sometimes we click right away, sometimes we don't, and sometimes we like to try really hard so that even if we don't see eye to eye we at least have an understanding. I know I used to want everyone to connect with my work. I still get really upset about that, I admit. Like the person who said she tried but didn't finish because of the horror stuff - she really was friendly about it and told me "please don't think your stories suck" but...I can't help it, you know? Well, yeah! I know that. I mean I write whatever the hell I'm writing and toss it out there. Plenty of people look and never come back. Plenty of other people have said they'd read and never have, or started and stopped. But I've already gone down that road, and I'm never going down that one again. I can see when I'm heading down the dark path of questioning my abilities, and I force myself back however I have to do it.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 1, 2011 1:44:39 GMT -5
So, before I read the new replies - results of dinner conversation. ALSO OMG!!! I went back and looked at the Dabrowski thread, and clicked on the 3 Keys link. 3 KeysThis totally describes what I mean by objective and subjective! I was wondering last night if that was part of it - if people thought I meant objective in the sense of like factual and scientific and subjective in the sense of emotional and based on opinion. "At lower levels of development an individual is guided by external social forces and roles and his or her perception is predominantly in the subject state. The individual can rarely see past his or her own needs and desires. As development proceeds, an appreciation of the other as object emerges..." Italics are mine. That is pretty much it, actually. The whole thing. Right there. You know - after seeing the similarity in Maslow's B-perception as opposed to D-perception and Dewey's points in Art as Experience, I did some googling and found that other people had seen that already. And written papers about it. And then the other day at lunch I was googling around and found comparisons between Maslow and Schopenhauer. Picked up a couple of books at the bookstore last night - Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction, and Philosophies of Art & Beauty, which has an excerpt from Schopenhauer. I was reading along and saw a sentence which was pretty much "I become a transparent eyeball" reworded. I imagine that if I google Emerson and Schopenhauer I will find that someone else has already seen that. "Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball - I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me - I am part or particle of God." - Emerson Quote from the intro to Schopenhauer's bit of the Philosophies of Art & Beauty, an introduction to his ideas presumably written by the editors: "Art, by providing us with the apprehension of the Ideas, enables us to enter a state of pure objectivity of perception. In this state the will is eliminated from subjective consciousness and we become a pure will-less subject of knowledge." In other words, a transparent eyeball. And yes, the italics are mine. I never have an original thought. Like the rule of three - googled it and found out it had its own freaking Wikipedia page. And really, what I'm talking about here - it ain't new at all. Buddha saw it 2500 years ago, and I imagine plenty of people saw it before him. Eightfold Path"Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go." Again, italics mine. I don't know.... Maybe.... Maybe the point is that when I see people reacting to my work subjectively, it means I did not achieve my aim. Which is transcendence.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 1, 2011 23:36:48 GMT -5
Reading this, with Plato's cave and chariot and all. It's all the same freaking idea. The same idea, the same images, over and over. From Plato and Buddha and Maslow and Dabrowski and everyone. Over and over. Some differences, some things I disagree with (some things it's not so much disagreement but more like flaming pitchforks - omg, a lot of prejudice and hardcore elitism), but the core of the idea is always the same. I like a lot of what it says about Nietzsche's thoughts, but that little comment about "Jews" and the tone of the rest of that paragraph - not doing so well at being responsible for your own morality there, are you? Reading more about him - dude. So...interesting and repellent at the same time. The elitism thing is a quality he shares with Schopenhauer. It definitely seems to be an old white dude thing. Makes sense I suppose, for their time period and gender and socioeconomic class. Like I said - he doesn't seem to have done a perfect job of overcoming his own unthinkingly internalized social dictums. But it's just....like I'll admit I still haven't read much of Art as Experience. Because I keep wanting to edit. Same thing with all of these guys - they all used way too many words, and the words were too obscure. They have these great ideas, but they dress them up in gaudy shit so most people can't see the idea for all the hoop skirts and ruffles and big gems and huge ass collars and whatever. Reminds me of the time in high school when I edited a friend's homework for him. He took two pages to answer a worksheet question. I got it down to a paragraph. All this goes very well with Loevinger as well. Also - like when I researched the personality profiles of highly creative people and the mental functions and dysfunctions of creativity..... Dude. Oh hell. Maslow also had trouble overcoming his social programming, I see. But if you edit and take out all the useless words and the shadows of ego and prejudice and strip all of this down to its essence... If you see the thing itself.... THAT is what I want. That is what I strive for. A clear, simple flame. Stopping this post now because I know this one is way past the too long didn't read point and I want very much for people to read the next bit, so new post for it.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 1, 2011 23:41:18 GMT -5
This is a copy and paste of something I wrote years ago. It's my answers to some of the sentence stems on Loevinger's ego development test. I italicized the sentence stems from the test.
1. My main problem is understanding the human species.
It's like the world is this beautiful joyful awesome place and then there's this rip in the fabric, an ugly hole where human empathy is supposed to be. There's the warmth of the sun and the beauty of grass and trees and the sky and the love of all the other species and then there's a cold dark place, a place of apathy and greed and selfishness and cruelty and hate.
I think that maybe that's the last thing I have to do - I have to integrate that cold evil into the rest of it. I have to learn to accept it, not recoil from it as tendrils of hate and anger snake out of it and wrap themselves around my feet.
I have to free myself of the abyss and accept it with love for what it is before I can really get to work on it. I may be on my way out of that cave, but I am not yet fully free of it. When I am standing free and liberated in the sun, then I can turn around and face it and go into it and not so much pull people out from it as make it okay for them to walk out under their own power.
And I'm not going to do that by cursing them for choosing to stay inside.
2. Being with other people can be incredibly painful and also blindingly full of joy. Sometimes you smile at a stranger and they smile back and everything is green and golden and good and there's love swirling all around. Other times it's like everyone is sticking a Bendy Straw of Doom in you and sucking your energy out and you can't stand to be around people.
3. The thing I like most about myself is...hmm. I don't think that this is something that I like about myself. It's more one of the experiences of living inside this particular bag of skin that I really enjoy and value.
It's like driving my Thunderbird and slinging it through curves on a late afternoon when the sun is shining in lovely orange tones on the tops of the trees that are part of me and there is wonderful music on the radio and I roll the windows down and smell the fields and freshly cut grass while the wind lifts up my hair.
So I guess it's my ability to sort of meld with the universe and feel such incredible joy. It's like - when I die, I'll know that I lived life. That I drank in the sun's warmth, that I felt the breeze on my skin, that I noticed the leaf lying so perfectly on the pavement.
Here's a few paragraphs I wrote a year and a half ago that I think expresses it.
I am joy. I am love. I am beautiful. I am universal.
I am child-like. I am as old as space and time.
I am whiny. I am stoic. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I say mean things about strangers, and sometimes I am so overtaken by their pain that I curl up and sob.
I can be selfish. I can erase all appearances of an ego. I am, and I am not. I am real, and then I blink and fade and come back and am real again.
I am joyful noise, and I am eternal silence.
I am emptiness and the absence of form, and I am always changing.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 2, 2011 0:19:03 GMT -5
I'll admit I haven't started 10.08 yet. Had to process all this stuff today and then I tried to see what my right hand could do while eating dinner and overdid it a little. I do think it is up to typing a lot now, though. Obviously. Perhaps tomorrow. I feel like I've exhausted all the philosophy and aesthetics stuff for now. And I do want to go back to my Seth. So much. I think this will perhaps be my main musical inspiration. Hall of the Mountain King - Apocalyptica It's always been one of my favorite bits of classical music, and I love this version. And the video is almost a perfect story - the only wrong bit is the quick cut to the random dude's face. And hey, there is a lesson in that as well as in the perfection of the rest of it.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 2, 2011 13:50:40 GMT -5
Fuck this shit. I'm done.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 2, 2011 15:06:01 GMT -5
So I'm editing the above post in another window and pouring out my soul and the emotions that led to it, but it's not stuff I should share.
I am sorry. And I am getting better at controlling my emotional impulses, really - otherwise I'd hit post on that edit.
I don't know what to say that would be fair, would be rational, would be socially acceptable by normal people's standards.
So I will just say I'm sorry, and I'm okay.
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Post by laura on Jan 2, 2011 16:51:31 GMT -5
My hubby and I had an epic fight last night about external validation - him saying that a person shouldn't need it in making a decision, and me saying that there's nothing wrong with wanting it to feel like you're on the right track. I'm not sure that those two things exclude each other, or who was right, or even if the fight is over. I think it's human and natural to want to feel connected and understood by other human beings, especially when you're making huge life decisions.
I think all writers want to be validated. That the ideas we love so much in our head are loved and admired by others too. Validation comes in all kinds of forms, kind words, comments, reviews, and yes, even money. It's because the work we deal with comes straight from our soul. Other professions not so much. If you're a bad accountant, or a bad taxi driver, or whatever, how much does that affect your soul? Not very much probably. It's a job. While writing, for us, it's our life passion.
Your husband speaks the truth, and my husband would probably agree with him, about only understanding half the time. People don't read minds (or at least most of us don't, anyway.) So even when we try to connect minds through our words, it's closer, but it's not perfect, because words all have their own interpretations and live in the minds of the people who think them, with their experiences and colored views.
And on the marriage thing - I personally don't think there's anything essentially wrong with getting married young. It's just that young people don't make the most well-considered decisions about their lives. When they do think things through properly, a young marriage can work very well. When they don't, it can be a disaster. This is why I'm going to let Dallas and Lucy get married if they still want to. My hubby and I got married pretty young, and we mostly do okay, when we're not fighting about external validation.
And this: "A clear, simple flame." <-- I like that. That's what we have in our head when we're creating. We're lucky if we can get anyone to see that though, from the other side, through all those filters people look through. Most will see fire, if we're lucky, rather than something else, a shoe, a horse, a rainstorm? But to get anyone else to see that same perfect flame is so rare.
I'm sorry if anything I said this morning made you angry. I know I was saying some things that you generally don't agree with (money and such...). Just remember all the filters we have to see though - that perfectly clear flame is really so much more complicated than we would like to think.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 2, 2011 23:12:43 GMT -5
Oh, so hey. Good light fun news! Mela has informed me that I'm doing the Sim Storyteller spotlight this week! I'm already working on the interview. It was pretty boring, I admit. Until I got to the character theme songs question. Laura - just saw your post. I will read it and respond as soon as I'm emotionally capable. If it's you cussing me out, I deserve it.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 3, 2011 17:47:49 GMT -5
So, if you guys were wondering why it can take me a while, if ever, to read replies...
Today at work I got an oil change. Then at the end of the day, I get an email from my boss with oil change in the subject line.
I thought "Why don't I just kill myself?"
Because I knew it was a problem and that I had done something wrong, and when I chose perfectionist as a trait for my simself I was really not kidding around.
So I tried to breathe and told myself it'd be okay and that I was pretty sure I'd saved the emails where I'd been asking the guy who does my schedule to put an oil change on there but he hadn't, so I'd finally had to do it myself today.
Got back to the office. Read the email really quick, like pulling off a bandaid. Can't exactly avoid emails like that like you can replies on the internet.
It was my boss saying that an oil change for my work car had come up on his calendar. I wrote back and said I'd had it done just this morning and he laughed and there was no problem and everything was okay.
Which, generally, it does come out okay when I get my anxiety up. You can try and tell whatever chemicals and reactions in my brain that do this that it'll be okay, but they don't listen. Every time another box pops up they whisper "The cat is dead" and I go insane.
Because I love the cat. Because I am responsible for the cat. Because I cannot let the cat down.
So it's really hard for me to look into the box and collapse that probability wave when everything in my head is screaming at me that I really do not want to go down that leg of the trousers of time.
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Post by bex on Jan 3, 2011 18:49:21 GMT -5
Stacy, I am the very same way. I did something I know was a mistake or something that I will end up having to answer for, and I just can't face the replies or emails or even voice mails regarding it. Most of the time, it's just anxiety and everything's fine, but the interesting thing is...I fucked something up and when I got home, I found 2 emails from my husband. I presumed these would be about said fuck up and I opened another tab and looked at this board so I would not have to read them straight away. I found this ironic.
BTW, the emails weren't even addressing my fuck-up so either he doesn't know about it, or he doesn't view it a big enough deal to email me about. I still feel awful, though - and I know just how you feel.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 3, 2011 19:46:32 GMT -5
Stacy, I am the very same way. I did something I know was a mistake or something that I will end up having to answer for, and I just can't face the replies or emails or even voice mails regarding it. Most of the time, it's just anxiety and everything's fine, but the interesting thing is...I fucked something up and when I got home, I found 2 emails from my husband. I presumed these would be about said fuck up and I opened another tab and looked at this board so I would not have to read them straight away. I found this ironic. BTW, the emails weren't even addressing my fuck-up so either he doesn't know about it, or he doesn't view it a big enough deal to email me about. I still feel awful, though - and I know just how you feel. I managed to read this one!!! And yay you don't want to kick me! And omg yes, that is totally what I do, with the opening things in another tab and everything. I feel like I should link Train's Soul Sister song now.
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Post by bex on Jan 3, 2011 19:50:09 GMT -5
I used to be incredibly defiant when I was younger. I don't know what made me go completely in the opposite direction, but somewhere along the way, I did. I just cringe at the idea of fucking things up. I have a wicked perfectionist streak in me. It even goes into the writing. If I feel something can be improved upon, I will improve upon it, even if I sit up all night to do it. I force myself to be perfect all the time, and when I make mistakes, I kick myself way harder than anyone else ever could. Yeah, I think Soul Sister would be appropriate here.
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Post by Stacy on Jan 4, 2011 7:34:10 GMT -5
I'm having so much fun with the Sim Storytellers interview, omg. Definitely worth the year and a half wait since MadameUgly nominated me, lol. Here's the post if you guys have questions to add - Interview PostI'm treating it like an update - saving the post and refreshing it and rereading it constantly and fixing typos and rewording sentences. I've got through the first 15 official questions - so glad I've got until Monday to finish because it might take that long. Especially with the questions Beth and Christi asked. Which by the way - thank you so much you guys, for the wonderful compliments. Finally just had to force myself to stop typing on the character theme songs question. Oh man - I scrolled ahead though (I'm copying and pasting the questions from Ning's interview) and there's some doozies coming up. What do I think makes a good Sim story? Advice to other Sims writers? Whoa. By the way, the theme song for the advice to other writers question is Welcome to the Jungle, by Guns n Roses.
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