Apologies for the delay in posting this past weekend’s story on Sunday vice Saturday.  I’ve commented before that writing detailed fight scenes isn’t something I enjoy as much as when I was younger but I felt remiss not to delivery a fight against a Dragon given the setup.  While, I got to the point where I was happy with how the scene played out, it took some time to get there.  In reflection, a little more planning would’ve helped.  In the past I’ve created detailed notes for battles, going as far in a few occasions to play them out like a battle in DnD.  If nothing else, I’m proud that I took something that was frustrating me and pushed through.  No hobby or passion is without is frustrations and to love the whole of the thing enough to be able to still finish the less enjoyable parts actually reminds me why writing stories is so important to me.

Some stories are hard to tell, whether because they require one to push to the limits of their current abilities, because they are emotionally draining to get through, or because they are more of an obstacle than anything else to the parts we want to tell.  

It reminds me of something else I’ve been working on, which is being bored.  I’m notorious amongst my friends and my family for my poor ability to multitask (sacrilege for a millennial I know).  I’m a person of focus and along with my limited social media presence, I thought that had helped to protect me against the attention spans that the attention economy has driven.  Perhaps it did for a while, but I’m still existing in this world and via things like Reddit, Youtube Shorts, and others I eventually noticed the reduction of my attention span.  It wasn’t just short content though, wasn’t just reaching for the phone to fill the bathroom break or minutes between meetings.

I have in the past been convinced that each moment should be spent with some level of value.  That’s a concept that has made me struggle with some of my hobbies, but it’s also lead to the consumption of podcasts at all opportunities, or the stashing away of longform articles to consume in parts when their was a down moment.  While done with good intentions, this also meant that I became less proficient at being bored, that my body found it less bearable.  I’m certainly not saying that listening to podcasts is bad, I still listen to plenty.  What I am saying is that always trying to fill all my time with something made it so I became uncomfortable doing nothing.  I felt like I was wasting time and that led to me losing the ability to be bored.  That in turn also made filling little moments with Reddit or Youtube Shorts so easy and led me down their trap of mindless scrolling.

If you’re working on your own creative endeavors, then I imagine you have read an article or such about how boredom is an important part of creativity.  It’s one of the paths from which ideas can come.  I think I wasn’t giving my brain downtime to do that.  With work, commutes, chores, etc. it’s not like I had a lot of downtime anyways and I wonder if more boredom would’ve helped me with some of my writing difficulties in the recent past.

Regardless, I decided to try and do something about it.  Nearly every morning now, I slow down and just breath in silence for 5-10 minutes.  No music, no video, or such.  I feel the breath, feel my body, take note of what thoughts come and acknowledge them before letting them float back away.  I found that at least for the next few hours of the day I don’t struggle with focus, I reach for my phone less often when things slow down and either enjoy the view out of my window or am simply able to continue with whatever I’m working on.  On my commute home a few days a week I turn off the podcasts or my music and drive in silence for 15-20 minutes.  I won’t lie, that one can be quite tough.

At the same time, I’ve had some interesting experiences.  During one drive home, I had a moment where I felt like I understood how all the cars around me were part of a system, including me in mine.  It was a perspective that let me pull back from just me in my car.  Given that I normally feel confined within the cabin of my car and so to have a perspective shift that expanded that was cool.  If nothing else it was a flash of insight.  Which is ultimately what am doing these boredom exercises  in hopes of obtaining (ideally a flash benefiting a story and not on some car system model but I digress).

I’m not going to say that these are things everyone should try.  Instead, I think what I’m willing to say is that it’s worth taking stock every so often and seeing where we are in living our lives.  There’s more influences on us that we realize, having effects we can’t always predict.  Trying to make myself productive and do things in the name of self-improvement went too far and resulted in me losing the ability to handle moments of boredom which I think had an impact on my art, and really my life.  I’m happy to have realized that, I’d be happy to hear if you had a similar experience.

So this week will be a little story to close out Crossing the Halls of Falden.  My D&D campaign starts this weekend as well, and I no doubt I’ll end up sharing some experiences and thoughts on that.  Beyond that, I hope you all have a good week.  If you’re in the USA like me, have a happy Thanksgiving and I hope you’re able to spend it with those you love, whether family, friends, or just snuggling with pets.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean