Thread by @AlexandraErin

The thing about the capitalist society mindset of "productivity = value = self-worth" mindset is that it is instilled into us to make us feel like our purpose is accomplishing someone else's goals.

But it's not a negative to be invested in your own goals.

https://twitter.com/dynamicsymmetry/status/1466749284443992070

And as I think about this... I think this is the actual truth behind those "Make the thing you love your job you'll never work a day in your life." sayings that get meme'd by creatives and small business owners because when you make the thing you love your job it becomes a JOB.

I have been wrestling with the fact that while my life is immeasurably better on ADHD meds, while things are easier, while I'm writing more often and more easily... it hasn't translated to any degree of greater professional success or financial security.

I had a conversation with myself in my journal about this the other day that went something like, "What does it mean if I'm taking the drugs and I'm still a loser?"

(My gleeful nihilist half responded: "Easy question: you're a loser who has drugs and that's still a step up.")

But the thing is... without the ADHD meds, I could not, reliably, grind. Long-term projects, the kinds that have the potential to bring ongoing income and/or big windfall infusions, were not something I could reliably invest my time and attention in.

I could hustle, though.

I could do short-term bursts of activity to make amounts of money that were big in short-term terms but fairly trivial in long-term terms, which meant I had to do it often, and change up what I was doing frequently as I burned out on one thing.

And that whole time I *wanted* to do bigger, more long-term projects. I plotted novels. I started novels. My twenties and thirties are a graveyard of novel-length story ideas I tried to do as serials, with varying degrees of success, because I needed the rush of the hustle.

But you do the same hustle long enough and it becomes a grind, and my brain wasn't built for grinding, and so the longer any of these projects went on, the worse it got, both in terms of quality/coherence and the fulfillment I got from it.

Because when the momentum and rush were gone, then the only goal was to keep doing the thing in order to keep the audience and make the (frequently trivial) amounts of money, to keep my head above water.

Now I've got the pills and I've got focus and it's like my brain has reversed polarity: I find it a lot harder to do the short-term hustle and a lot easier to do the long-term grind.

So I am writing more, but it's split between personal/professional development stuff (practicing my craft, figuring out how the stuff I've been doing actually even works so I can do it when I want to) and long-term projects with no immediate financial upside.

Since my business model has been "write a lot of words on Twitter and/or Patreon and/or a newsletter/blog site and then let people tip me for it"... well, this isn't doing wonders for my income.

So I need to figure out a balance where I can hustle enough (ideally in a more organized fashion) to live my life and support myself and my family while I work on the long-term projects that might bring more security.

And while I would love to live in a society where I could just enjoy a comfortable life while I make art for art's sake... that's not the world I live in. And so I need to figure out how to support myself in order to do the things I love, if I can't support myself doing them.

To bring it back to the original point: I reject statements like "It's okay if the only thing you accomplished this year was to survive" because it's not okay. It's also not *not* okay. That's the wrong lens. Our weaknesses and failings aren't okay, they are... well, they are.

If you had a terrible and unproductive year... that's true. It happened. Plus or minus the subjectivity of human memory and perception, it's the truth. You cannot check a box to accept your performance for the year if it measures up to a standard or reject it and get another one.

So it's not okay in the sense of being acceptable. It's only not unacceptable in the sense of also being not acceptable; it's not unacceptable in the sense of an unscientific statement being non-falsifiable.

As "true or false" is the wrong lens for many unscientific things, "acceptable or unacceptable" is the wrong lens for evaluating what happened when you tried something and got nowhere, when you made no progress, when you failed, etc. We don't have the option of rejecting it.

See, the thing is, though, that I'm a person who has goals that I want for myself. Getting off the capitalist worker drone treadmill is a step forward, but it's one step. What I'm talking about here is what if I keep walking, in a direction of my choosing.

https://twitter.com/Atheopaganism/status/1466790875690717190

I am also skeptical of the "inherent value" notion. To me, a thing has inherent value if it's useful. An apple has more inherent value than gold; gold has industrial and scientific uses but few that were notable for most of human history. Traditionally, gold's value was extrinsic

But when we tell people they have inherent value, we're moving the framing away from "How could you be useful to someone?" To me... and this might sound a bit cold and clinical... but it's another lensing problem. I neither have value nor lack it. I simply AM, valuable or not.

If we make the argument that all human beings have the same rights and are entitled to dignity because all human beings have inherent value, we have agreed that there is a necessary precondition for rights and dignity and now we're haggling with capitalists over the price.

I did not intend to spend most of the last week processing complicated feelings in my journal and dealing with personal crises. It happened. Is that okay? It wouldn't matter if it's not. It still happened.

I had planned on spending the week building hype for #NoNoBilMa so that more than like three people would know it's a thing when the soft launch happens next week. I had planned on sending out newsletters and posting to my Patreon. I had planned on being present on here.

Those things did not happen. And I have obsessively picked apart what went into what feels like a wasted week (do not @ me with "encouraging" or "inspirational" arguments/corrections; I feel how I feel and it's not a problem for you to solve)... some outside events, some choices.

Oh, hey, I apparently now finally actually have the "Change Who Can Reply" option, which I'm using because I'm not finding the replies to this thread helpful.

Anyway. I did not have the week that I had planned on having, the week that I had meant to have, or the week that I needed to have, in the short term.

I accept that in the sense that I acknowledge that it happened and that it cannot unhappen.

There's a saying that I have read and heard many people quoting (most memorably poet Buddy Wakefield), possibly first formulated psychiatrist Jerry Jampolsky:
"Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past."

And I think that's true of self-forgiveness. It has not, as the old TV show theme song would put it, been my day, my week, my month, or even my year. I didn't have the day, week, month, or year I needed to.

Accepting that this happened and that it cannot unhappen, that I can't reject it and try again or spin the wheel and hope for a better past... that is a necessary but not sufficient step for having a better next day, week, month, or year.

It's necessary because time spent looking backwards and energy spent solving yesterday's problems does not help me accomplish my goals (or help me do what capitalism demands of me for my survival, in order to be able to keep living, mush less accomplishing my goals).

But it's not sufficient because while it clears some obstacles part of the way off the road forward, it doesn't move my forward. And I still have farther to go than I would have, if I'd done that yesterday or a month ago. And I still have to lay all the groundwork I haven't yet.

There was a tweet that I had thought I had bookmarked but which I can't find now that linked to a blog post that was about interpreting/handling emotions with autism.

I don't do well with emotions, my own or other people's. My instinctive response to emotions is to shout at them (the emotions) "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?", which is not helpful.

What I took away from this post is that emotions are messages being sent by the body (the brain being an organ of the body) to the mind, and what they want from the mind is acknowledgment: "message received, I'll [get on that/look into it]"

And I think that applies here to the *feelings* related to perceived failures, shortcomings, wasted months or years. The key to dealing with the feelings about things that have happened is to acknowledge the feelings and figure out the message that they're sending you.

But three things here.

One, that's not always a simple solution. If you're feeling like a failure, many possible "obvious messages" may occur to you, none of which will be helpful. (Like me thinking that if I take the meds and my life is still a mess, the problem is just me.)

Two, solving the problem of the feelings doesn't actually fix what went wrong? As I said above, it's a necessary step but not a sufficient step; it lies on the route to success (whatever success is for you) but it doesn't get you there on its own.

And three, people who chime in with encouragement and platitudes and inspirational posters that are mostly just variations on "You tried your best and that's good enough."... whether they're helpful or not, their help only extends as far as the feelings.

And they may be talking to someone who is actually trying to solve the problem of, say, they need to get a bunch of stuff people ordered from their online store boxed and shipped in time for Christmas, and they should have started two weeks ago but things were A Lot.

That's a hypothetical random example that I picked for being readily understandable, by the way. It's not an example of a problem that I have. Just a practical problem that somebody might have, due to having A Bad Time, that isn't changed by accepting one's value as enough.

Anyway, I am weirdly finding tweeting about this to the void with most of the void's replies locked out way more helpful in terms of actually convincing myself of my own arguments than when I spent hours journaling about it.

Mostly I think that's because when I'm talking to myself, I find that I have so much to say that it's hard for me to get a word in edgewise.

Whereas on Twitter, I have to break things up into parcels, and I'm theoretically talking to an audience.

Possibly this is why so many people personify their diary, in the "Dear Diary, you'll never believe what happened today..." way, because it's easier to write purposefully when one is writing to an audience.

Anyway. The point within my points here is that I do have goals, and it's not a capitalist distortion to find satisfaction in accomplishing them, nor to crave that sense of satisfaction and find motivation in it.

The distortion is substituting the goals of capital for your own.

And as I do have goals, I'm going to hop off this thread and work on accomplishing them. If you found something helpful in this thread and/or would like to help me accomplish my goals, please feel free to tip.

paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr…

And QTing/replying to that to make it more visible in the algorithm despite the external link.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1466808620365103107