Monday, July 31, 2017 4:15 PM
In Post (2017Jul31)
Post-project depression—it’s an old friend—the deeper I dive into making something, the more invested I get, the sharper the jolt of being dumped back on the sidewalk, project-less. Sure, I’m really just between the end of one endeavor and the beginning of the next. But at that moment of cathartic, exhaustive completion, the distance from where I am—to some future point where I will again have the mental effervescence and strength of will to start a new thing—seems like an impossible distance.
It’s a low point in my process—hence the depression, I suppose. But in general I really appreciate that cyclical aspect of things. I love the way it seems as if I can hardly move, hardly open my eyes—almost dying—every night—and then wake up every morning just full of energy. It’s so cool—it’s like magic. I mean—I get the eating food for fuel and getting energy from that. But to be recharged overnight by Sleeping—that’s just very cool and mysterious.
The track coach used to chide me about stopping once I reached the anaerobic burn phase—they call it a ‘second wind’. (It’s a great sensation—all of a sudden, the muscles stop the burning ache and you feel turbocharged—but it really means that your muscles have stopped burning oxygen normally—they’ve switched to a faster, but more toxic, anaerobic process. This floods the muscles with poisons, so, if you keep running on a ‘second wind’, you can seriously hurt, or even kill, yourself.)
But it was hard to give it up—once I was in that moment, after many hard laps, suddenly granted a ‘power-up’ that made me feel superhuman—I always struggled with myself to let it go. I even enjoyed waking up all stiff the next day and having to move around for a while before I could loosen up. I’m not sure I remember it properly, but I think we spent most of our childhood with aching muscles from the non-stop moving and doing.
Wednesday, August 02, 2017 1:27 AM
No Time Off For Rachel (2017Aug02)
One good thing about post-project depression—it passes quickly. I feel normal today, no great high or low, just steady. I was saved, in a way, from starting something right away (it’s always best to take a metaphorical breath before you start something completely new) by my camera dying. It’s recharged now—but the world will never know how I played this morning—it sounded okay, some of it—but I always think that, so I’ll never know without a recording.
But I’m not the only one with problems. A few Republicans are starting to say things that oddly resemble things I wrote in my blog-posts, last summer—about how Trump makes a terrible president, so bad a president that we’d be safer if he spent four years without leaving the golf course. I felt bad when he won the Electoral College—so they can suck it up and feel even worse, knowing that they’re on his team and they’re just now realizing what a mistake that was.
For educated people, there are values to America that have nothing to do with business or profit. Even if they spend all day in finance or commerce, they realize that all this free enterprise depends on a respect for the whole system—if civility collapses, the value of money is the first casualty. But Trump is an ignorant bully who believes that all of that is hogwash. Trump admires Putin for being ‘strong’ enough to have his political opponents murdered. That’s the kind of stupid we’re stuck with.
So, I’d say we all have some worries. My granddaughter has a slight fever—she’s been given a little grape-flavored Tylenol or something, and she’s being a very brave baby. Jessy says she has the same cold—poor Seneca has two sick girls on his hands. I hope his health holds out.
There were three obit-notices on Facebook today—it is simply not a good day. And I understand that this clown-car administration has journalists running themselves ragged—but why would they call it the Rachel Maddow Show and then let her take a vacation—and in the middle of summer—it’s just crazy, right?
(Joy-Ann Reid–I love you too–I’m just joking.)