The Writer vs The Blob
Time for Monday Morning Coffee. Today it’s 80F at 7 am for the third day in a row. Unseasonal heat waves seem to shut down my brain. Where there is normally a reasonably reliable system inside my skull of sequential thought, sentence development, making connections between things, etc., there is instead an amorphous and gooey entity: The Blob.
My Brain in a Heat Wave
When The Blob reigns supreme, I’ll sit down to write a post and three different topics will simultaneously emerge and trip each other up to become a 1,000-word WTF. I’m aware of what is happening, yet helpless to control it: Blob-ness imparts a slippery coating over acts of logic and common sense, making self-editing impossible.
I’m not bent out of shape about it or anything. There have been other Blob periods in my life (lasting for years, according to some), and they’ve all passed or at least morphed into something workable. There was the milky Blob of early motherhood, for instance, and the years of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up (a.k.a. my thirties). But more often The Blob shows up when I burn dinner or forget to pay a bill, and when I can’t remember what it was I came to get in the room I’ve just entered. Or, like now, when I really want to write, and feel I’ve something to say, but can’t quite get it out.
Physical work is my favorite way to deal with The Blob, especially simple, repetitive, non-dangerous, idiot work like weeding the garden or cleaning the garage. It makes a nice break from beating my head against a brick wall and gets SO much more accomplished. I figure if I get the idiot tasks done, that’ll leave me more time to work effectively when my brain resumes its regular programming.
Certain fail-safes need to be in place, though–the work should be familiar and not too fragile. It’s not a good time to attempt a complicated recipe or build a pergola. (Yes, I once attempted to build one while in the throes of Blobdom and wasted a lot of lumber. Even after correcting the mistakes, it always did look a little “off.”) Thus, I have been keeping busy with a lot of gardening projects, cleaning the garage, and turning the room at the back of the garage into a garden studio (no remodeling required, just cleaning and moving some furniture and boxes).
This project is almost done and will provide a nice place to write with a view of the garden. Steve has been toiling away at his brick and pea gravel border project and will wrap it up tomorrow morning at the latest. We are both itching to get back to our regular work, but there is a lot of satisfaction in getting these projects done with so much of summer still ahead of us.
Of course in my case The Blob could be a side effect of the doc’s latest prescription, but with several days of cooler weather coming up, I’ll be able to tell if that is a factor. I suspect not. I do want to thank everyone for their suggestions last week for my sleep troubles. Things are a little bit better. I’m getting into the herb teas and keeping the exercise up. Since this is a problem of several years’ duration, it’s not likely to disappear overnight, yet I am confident things will get better and better.
Are you in the throes of The Blob? And what are you doing about it? Happy (Gelatinous) Monday ;D
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Hello, Meg. How well I know The Blob. We’re great friends. I think that knitting a ‘brain dead pattern’ helps me weather the storms The Blob causes. Also, like you, I find respite in weed pulling. If I am in distress about a decision that needs to be made, I will work in the garden. (Once I turned down a job offer because I found myself in the garden mindlessly pulling weeds after having received the phone call telling me the job was mine. Refusing the job was the absolutely right decision but unfortunately cost many many weeds their lives.) Recently, I read an article somewhere (The Blob knows; I don’t) that the optimum time to be productive mentally is within an hour after exercising. If mental fuzziness is of short duration, regular exercise might help.
Hi Willow–you’re right about the “brain dead pattern” knitting, which is my favorite kind ;D
Your example of pulling weeds after getting the job is really interesting. I think I had a similar experience when I was at a crossroads with my cookery. The orders were coming in fast and furious and I could barely keep up with them, yet all of a sudden one day I found myself deep cleaning my house instead of getting a jump on the next batch of orders. That’s when I realized that I was deeply unhappy about my working situation–it was quite successful but more work than I could handle. It was time to throw in the towel and just commit to writing, which was more to my liking and the net income was comparable. I was sad to fold up my brainchild after all the work that was put into setting it up, but it was the right move.
Does exercise really help? I find it makes me sleepy!!!
Hello Meg.
While I am not a professional writer in any sense of the word, when it comes to my blogging, my past year has been a single large blob. I have started so many posts and written and written and gotten to the wtf-stage. My full time and then some job doing business analysis is exactly the opposite of the work you recommend for getting away from the blob, and it doesn’t help at all.
My plan: going back to basics. Inspired by an article on minimalists, I have started getting rid of stuff in my life I don’t need, making me think of what to throw away and what to keep. Those basic thoughts on possessions and ownership has inspired lots of writing, and by not doing all at once, I get the writing spread out. This has lead to my new blog “a tidier life”. I hope you take a look
I am really glad my minimalist search has lead me to such wonderful blogs as yours, and I am looking forward to following you going forward.
Hi Jon–welcome to the world of Minimalist bloggers! I started this blog as a way of journaling my uncluttering process, and then it morphed into something different as I found my writing voice. I’ve written a few books and quite a few posts over the past couple of years, but The Blob can still call the shots every now and again
The Benign Blob might be my normal state – though if we are talking about heat induced Blobbishness (and we are currently under a heat advisory here), mine probably more closely resembles the homicidal, violent, and carnivorous Blob in the 1958 film The Blob. I just can’t be happy in this weather, damnit. To be serious, though, I think what we eat has a huge impact on mental fuzziness; I also find that when I’m wandering and frustrated in a project, it means I need to give it some space. Brains often solve problems and reconfigure in our sleep – you wake up and find you might know the solution.
Here’s to more bearable weather!
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Hi Terra–oooooooooh thanks for letting us know to Stay Away from you during heat waves! ;D
Yes, sleep does help one’s brain to process problems and resolve issues, and therein lies some of my frustration, because the amount and quality of my sleep has left a lot to be desired. The combo of that and the heat wave has just been too much.
I remember that movie–saw it on a late-night scary movie series called Creature Features when I was a kid.
I hate the blob! I am starting to believe it’s becoming my natural state. I have a few good days, think it’s gone, then — WHAM! — it engulfs me. And all I can do is walk around in a stupor, hoping I am not needed for anything important.
Honestly, me usual way of dealing with it is to wait for it to pass. But if it becomes permanent I’ll be waiting my life away. Ugh.
Stupid blob!
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Hi Miss Robin–isn’t it annoying? When it goes on for a long time like that, I try to break my work or projects or even everyday life down to smaller bits that I can focus on for just a few minutes at a time, then go on to the next thing. For instance, if I’m on good form, I’ll have “clean the bathroom” on my to-do list. But if I’m in Blob Mode, I’ll break that list down to things like “clean the bathroom sink” or even “clean the toothbrush holder.” Otherwise, I’ll just stand there and look at the bathroom and wonder what I should do. Seriously. It’s easier to just sit down with a pen and paper and write the list rather than just going at it. It seems to work with other things, too, even writing projects–not to say it’s easy, but it sorta helps while waiting for The Blob to move on.
The Blob just caused me to waste an entire Sunday morning & afternoon doing a whole lot of NOTHING. Reading this has encouraged me to do some idiot-work for a bit, to shake the Blob loose, & then maybe I will be motivated to get some REAL writing accomplished this evening. Thanks for the advice, & for giving me something else to blame besides my own lack of oomph!!!
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