We all have a certain amount of capacity. A human can only take so much of any given stimulus or activity or substance before it all becomes a blurry sheet of noise. You reach the limits of your capacity and, to quote Corporal Hicks from Aliens, you’re just grinding metal. You blow your transaxle. You gotta ease down.
That was an Aliens reference
That particular moment takes place after the disastrous expedition within the lost colony that has been taken over by a bunch of hostile alien creatures. The brawny Marines, the heroes in any other story, are arrogant and unprepared and that any of them make it out alive is because of the actions of our working class hero, Ellen Ripley. She reaches her capacity and goes along anyway.
That ability to exceed capacities is a trait shared by many heroes. I would also point you to Captain America’s “I could do this all day.” He goes beyond his capacities in a hopeless fight against an enemy that’s defeated everybody, even the Hulk, tightens the strap of his broken shield, and stands his ground. It’s a beautiful moment from a movie that feels like it’s from a different time, maybe the Last Blockbuster. I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, it’s one of my favorite catch phrases.
Bring it Back
I was gone for a while because I reached my capacity for self-reflection. The feeling was like chewing old gum that had lost its flavor so long ago that it was just an inert knot of gristle. I was chewing it because I was stuck in a spiral, a tightening gyre of self obsession and selfish reflection.
I’m not good at my own feelings. I’m not much better with other peoples feelings. I watch people all the time, and have been doing so my whole life, and that fascination is probably what gives me any insight I might have into how people work. But it doesn’t help in many other circumstances.
Narcissism But Make it Negative
This is not a new affliction. The myth of Narcissus is based on this tendency, a man cursed by his arrogance to fall in love with his own reflection. While the textual message of that myth might be a cautionary tale about pride, I think there were plenty of Greeks who found some deeper meaning in his story.
I found myself staring at my own reflection, though it wasn’t out of admiration but obsession, as if the answers to some unspoken question were within me. It’s also paired with a kind of revulsion at what I saw. I go through long periods of not liking myself.
“Depression doesn’t take away your talents—it just makes them harder to find.” — Lady Gaga
I talk a lot about anxiety, because that’s the visitor I’ve come to know best, but Depression and I are more than casual acquaintances. Anxiety likes to hide under the furniture and under the steps and jump out and scare me and run away to hide again. I’ve lately managed to keep it away for most of the time, and I know how to deal with it when it comes back. Okay, have your fun, Anxiety. I’ll grit my teeth and go about my business.
Depression announces itself and stretches out on the couch and calls me over to join it. It’s a warm blanket on a cold day, and a sad song when I’m feeling sad already, and every worst feeling about myself come true. When I see myself depressed, I see a grotesque facsimile. I know it’s not real, but it sure looks that way when I look in the mirror with the cloak of depression on my shoulders.
But I also know it’s temporary.
Feelings are just visiting.
I have come to think of my feelings in such terms, because that’s more accurate to the reality of my life than the unfortunate tendency to see one’s feelings as permanent. When we start to see the temporary as permanent, we invite all kinds of negative, invasive thoughts in.
“Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important before.” - Doctor Who
The last two years of my life have been eventful. I won’t even list the things that happened (AGAIN) because that is in excess of my already expended capacity for self-reflection. To summarize the last two years: I have had enough, thank you. I need things to stop happening, just for a few months. I’m not even including The Pandemic, which has been its own set of challenges.
I predict that people will emerge from this pandemic as some new version of themselves. It won’t be a better or worse version, but it will be different. They will have gained something but probably lost something else. They will have discovered something of themselves, and possibly forgotten something, too.
However you emerge from the pandemic, please emerge. Do so quietly, or loudly, I don’t care — just please do it. I want you to be here when we can hug again. Yes, you.
Me? I already have a plan:
“What if this storm ends?
And I don't see you
As you are now
Ever again” - Snow Patrol, The Lightning Strike
How We React to Pressure
When our capacities are exceeded, lots of things can happen. It’s sometimes hard to predict what, exactly, we will do when we just can’t anymore. I am prone to unfurling my insecurities and holding them up to my friends on the internet to see. It’s always embarrassing. It’s always a bad decision. It serves no purpose except to let me vent. Venting is for journals and phone calls with your friends, not public consumption. It makes for bad feelings and it’s something we outgrow, or should outgrow, once we’re of a certain age.
This is supposed to be an explanation
I was trying to explain why this space has been relatively quiet lately and I only succeeded in continuing the spiral. I reached my capacity for self reflection and screamed over the limit and, like a rubber band pulled taut, snapped back and overcompensated in the other direction.
The slow pivot back to doing good work
It’s happened in fits and starts, but once I find a rhythm, it starts to operate on its own. Once I generate momentum, it spins up and keeps going. Creativity is a muscle, as I keep saying. Expect more writing here, but less about me, because I’m sick of myself. And other creative outlets, like the League of Lensgrinders, and my day job, will bloom and flower and my autumn will hopefully be better than my summer. I measure years in time between summers, though I’m not sure why or how that started.
I will get to my own stream in a second, but one of the unexpected fun dimensions of the League that has emerged is the idea of a community. I’m still finding the shape of it, but Rob, Evelyn and I will be occasionally streaming on the League of Lensgrinders Twitch stream, which we’ll also use to host readings, like good old-fashioned fiction and nonfiction and poetry readings where people used to gather in coffee shops and bars and listen to each other read their stuff in front of an audience. I saw Rob host a little reading in celebration of the release of his book, Weird Pig, with some great writers with interesting stuff to share, and it inspired me.
I mentioned a stream
I have, within the last few years, discovered Twitch. More precisely, I started watching a specific group of people stream themselves playing games with each other, and I found it extremely entertaining. You might, too. I have met at least one other person in the wild, as they say, who knows about the Go Off Kings, which is enough of an endorsement to mention my enjoyment here.
The pandemic has robbed me of a vital social experience that I found unreliable even without a deadly virus stalking us, that of the “hang.” I have not reliably experienced such a thing on such a regular basis since college, when my friends and I would all get a case of beer and play Mario Kart until we got too drunk to play anymore and banged our heads to AC/DC.
I don’t get drunk much anymore, but that feeling of having a hang with your pals is still there, even if it’s someone else’s friends, and the games they’re playing.
It’s actually three of the funniest people on Twitter playing games and, more importantly, talking and joking around and just hanging out. There’s a lovely community around them, too, full of jokesters and silly people.
It inspired me to do the same thing, even though I’m lucky if I ever get a viewer who isn’t related to me, I still enjoy it. It’s fun to play stupid games and talk about them. Who knew? Not me.
https://www.twitch.tv/alteredbeef
That’s where you can find me, though I’m on Facebook and YouTube also. You know how to use the internet. I’m not going to walk you through it.
Take, take, take your time