Love in Dark Settings

"There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

--G. K. Chesterton.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, accumulating possessions, support networks for simplicity, my Muse's effect on my schedule, mania's effect of my schedule, simplicity readings.

*** 23 March 2008

My eyes are cranky today after last night's Internet jag ("Nine hours straight on the Web?" they scream), but my resolution overnight to return to my goal of a life of simplicity has done me good; I'm not having a post-Internet depression. Fleeting thoughts of burning my laptop, yes.

I'm trying not to be too discouraged about the fact that I've been online for sixteen days this month. Last December was my first try at making radical steps to simplify my life, including staying off the Internet most of the time. It makes sense that I would be unaware at that point of how deep my dependence was on the Internet, and that it would take me time to cut down on the amount of time I spend there. In certain respects, I've made progress; I no longer spend hours surfing MySpace, and I've made only sporadic visits to forums and to those Almighty Drugs for Internet Addicts in Fandom, metafandom and meta_roundup. Too many sporadic visits, but at least they're no longer daily visits.

But I'm still spending too much time online. I was about to write a long passage exalting how I've been accumulating fewer bookmarks . . . and then I remembered all the bookmarks I acquired this winter while doing research for "Triad" in my Life Prison series. Ouch.

So I'm going back to my attempt to hold to a strict daily schedule. God knows that I should know how to do it. I've been handing out daily advice to my apprentice all winter on how to keep to his schedule.

*** 25 March 2008

I walked into my study this morning and found that Doug had taken my laptop out of the drawer that I stuffed it into after my Internet jag. "My computer isn't working," he said blithely.

Guess what I spent the rest of the day doing?

I did at least take one step forward in my quest for simplicity: I cut my Friends list down to the bare bones. All I have left on my Friends list is blogs by a dozen friends (small F) and fellow writers, and four blogs that I need to follow for professional reasons.

No more fictions comms with endless links to click on and download. I have enough online fiction on my hard drive to last me several years, and if I really get an urge to read a particular genre, then I can darned well read the stories online, one by one, rather than go clicking round the Net, grabbing stories to read later (and never doing so). I really, really, really want to rein in this never-satisfied acquisitive appetite of mine.

I've been reading Richard J. Foster's Freedom of Simplicity. He assumes that the biggest temptation that his readers will face is the temptation to buy. Not at all. I was a mild spendthrift in my twenties, when I had a goodly amount of spare cash on hand, but I got over that temptation easily in later years, because my family was very, very careful where money was concerned when I was a child. My record player (a children's record player, given to me in my pre-school years) stopped working when I was fourteen. When I was eighteen, I was finally given a replacement. I couldn't have easily earned the replacement myself, because my allowance was a dollar a week. My family just didn't have cash to spare for big luxuries.

Books can be cheap - they were very, very cheap at the places where I bought them as a child - so that's why I now own 4200 books and 1200 magazines. But my family didn't go book-buying more than once a month, so I could easily have recovered from that habit.

What did its insidious damage was the public library.

Don't get me wrong. The public library - the same public library - is the main reason I still live in this town. It's one of my greatest blessings and is a large part of the reason why I'm a writer today.

What was dangerous wasn't my access to the library: it was that I had the power to take out as many books as I wanted each time I went to the library . . . which I did almost daily. This was very different from my situation in England, where I was only allowed to take out five books at a time. It meant that I spent hours in libraries, and came home with large stacks of books that (for the most part) I quickly skimmed through because, before long, the act of reading books was less enjoyable than the act of acquiring them.

And so it continued, and nobody paid my harmless hobby any mind until the day came when I discovered a public library that never shuts down at night: the Internet.

So, for me, acquiring a life of simplicity means (among other things) cutting back severely on my acquisitive habit, which takes a form that most people wouldn't consider at all dangerous: acquiring texts. I know that my desire to acquire more and more and more texts (or videos or music or artwork - I've broadened my scope) before I've barely consumed any of the ones I've already acquired is the major reason why I'm addicted to the Internet.

"Now, my son, you can see how wealth,
committed to Fortune, and for which
the human race struggles, mocks us.

All the gold that is under the moon
or ever was, could not give rest
to one of these weary souls."

--Virgil, speaking to Dante about the hoarders and the spendthrifts in hell.

*** 26 March 2008

Browsing through the forum at Hermitary recently, I decided that one reason I'm finding it so hard to simplify is that I don't know anyone who is following the same path.

I really need a support system. There are areas in my life where I don't feel the need for support - my partial sightedness, for example. Now that I'm over the initial hump, I can get along fine without support in that area (though, in actual fact, one of my oldest friends is legally blind). Partial sightedness just isn't an area of struggle for me, except insofar as it overlaps with my Internet addiction.

But keeping to a disciplined schedule as a writer is hard for me, which is why finding the fan fiction community, and later the genre romance community, was a godsend for me - it allowed me to be around other writers who also have to deal with the problems of remaining disciplined. I read their posts, and I'm reminded each week that others are going through what I'm going through. It keeps me from flagging in my determination.

Likewise, I have the very good fortune to have a partner in pain where my broader schedule is concerned: My apprentice is trying keep to an ordered schedule, and offering him advice has made me more mindful of my own schedule (not to mention that I'm trying to serve as a role model).

But nobody that I know personally or professionally deals, in any big way, with the type of radical simplification I'm trying to undertake in my life. So that's why I was at Hermitary's forum, even though I would ordinarily give online forums a wide birth (they being a hot spot for my Internet addiction). I think my struggle to simplify would be a lot easier if I could talk with folks who are striving for a slimmed-down lifestyle that's similar to the one I'm striving for.

*** 29 March 2008

All of my struggles to keep to a schedule dissipate the moment that my Muse arrives in town (as he has done this week). Without effort, I fall into the following pattern:

* Write fiction and edit what I've just written.
* Read fiction while eating.
* Talk to family or friends.
* Dance to stimulate my endorphins, which my Muse thrives on.
* Write fiction and edit what I've just written.
* Read fiction while eating.
* Record daily schedule (if it's the end of the day).
* Write blog entry.
* Sleep.
* Repeat this cycle.

All I can say is, thank goodness my Muse isn't always around. If he was, I'd never get anything done in my life except waiting hand and foot on him.

*** 2 April 2008

The basic problem I've always had in compiling schedules is the "Can't count higher than four" problem of early civilizations. If I have more than four activities on my schedule, I get confused. So the trick is to convince myself that I only have four activities scheduled, and that the rest of the activities are side dishes.

While my Muse was here, my mind was focussed on exactly four activities, which I'll call my staples of life, since they're the minimum that I need in order to keep functioning: writing/editing fiction, reading fiction, exercising, and communicating with family/friends. (The latter activity, when my Muse is around, means calling my apprentice and holding passing conversations with Doug.)

Everything else on that list I treated as extras and tried really, really hard not to notice that those activities were on the schedule, because if I did, my mind would get confused, because I can't count higher than four, you know?

So if you should happen to notice that my daily schedule contains more side dishes than staples of life, please don't tell me. I'd like to live with my delusions.

*** 4 April 2008

I've been weening myself from my latest Internet session - planned, but longer than I would have liked. As I do so, I'm realizing that, rather than put my hands over my ears and mutter "I can't hear you" when my mind tells me certain facts about itself, I need to be realistic.

The reality is this: I become highly manic when I'm online - even if I'm only online for an hour, believe it or not - and stay mildly manic for a period following Internet usage. I'm not using the term manic lightly; I'm a former manic-depressive, and the mania part hasn't gone away. I can't just ignore this and pretend it doesn't happen. Likewise I can't ignore the fact that, when my Muse is around, he doesn't like me doing lots of activities that need to get done at some point or another.

So I'm going to have to clump particular types of activities into particular periods. Much as I'd like it to be otherwise, when I'm just coming off the Internet, there's no way in heck that I'm going to be writing fiction, and when I'm settled down firmly with my Muse, there's no way in heck that I'm going to be doing layout.

After thinking about it for a couple of days, here's the schedule I've worked out for myself:

* * *

#1: JUST-COMING-OFFLINE STAGE

This is when in such a frenzied state that I can't think straight. Only the lightest and funnest of activities will keep my attention.

Activities: Communicate with family/friends (especially through correspondence), do leisure activities, and read news articles on simplicity.

#2: BUSINESS STAGE

I'm still trying to regain my concentration at this stage, so I'm best suited for "busy work," the sort that I hate to do when my Muse is around. Fortunately, most of this busy work consists of tasks that I need to get done in my professional and personal lives.

Activities: Write fiction (a bit), edit fiction, read fiction (starting off with light fiction), research/publish fiction, do household tasks, exercise, communicate with family/friends, do leisure activities, and read simplicity writings.

#3: MUSE STAGE

My Muse gradually starts to show himself as my mania wears off in the business stage. When I reach the point where I'm totally focussed on writing stories, that's when I drop every activity that might interfere with my writing.

Activities: Write fiction and edit what I've written, read fiction that my Muse will like, talk to Doug and my apprentice, and dance.

* * *

This is the reality of what I've been doing, but because I'd gotten it into my head that the way to do things was to create a schedule that I followed every day, I've been trying to fight these three stages. (Well, except for the last stage; I lost that battle with my Muse a while back.) Now I'm realizing that setting aside particular periods for particular types of tasks is simply a realistic acknowledgment of how my mind works.

However, I'm going to continue to try to figure out ways to make my mood balanced in the business stage. (I'd gladly drop the just-coming-offline stage, but I don't know how to do that.) I've learned how vitally important it to keep balanced in my Muse stage, because, if I simply let my Muse take over entirely, I don't exercise (I need exercise to keep awake), I don't eat (bad for my physical health), I don't interact with my loved ones (bad for my psychological health), and I don't get any fiction-reading done (my Muse needs me to read other people's fiction, or he won't produce). In other words, if I focus myself entirely on my Muse, at a certain point, the inevitable will happen: I'll spend so much time thinking about the stories my Muse is sending me rather than doing the activities needed for me to keep me writing the stories down that my circuits will overload and I'll get nothing written.

It's been the most perfect example I've ever seen of how, if you worship a lower god rather the Power that embraces everything, the lower god becomes demonic. If I don't balance my Muse time with activities that aid my Muse, I end up being unable to serve my Muse.

So when my Muse was around this week and last week, I deliberately stuck to my "Muse stage" schedule. The result? I didn't overload. My Muse kept sending me stories.

I'd like to be able to achieve this sort of balance with my business stage as well, but I've been spending time with my Muse since I was eight, while the business stage is a more recent development. So it's going to take me longer to figure out how to handle that.

Incidentally, you'll notice that my simplicity readings disappear in the third stage. I'd been worrying for a while now whether that was a bad sign, but after my latest visit from my Muse, I've decided that reading simplicity writings is like training for a race, whereas the fiction-writing stage is the race itself. In the first two stages, I need to engage in simplicity exercises by reading simplicity writings and forcing myself, in an artificial manner, to keep to a schedule. But when my Muse comes along, I'm living simplicity, so I can drop the exercises.