Letter to another Un-happy INtrovert

This excerpt is from a letter written by me, several months back. It has been edited slightly to protect the recipient's identity.

"I think, like the skin horse, we just get more real over time. It's inevitable. We probably get finally as real as can be, one second before our lights go out forever. That would be the last joke life has on us: Haha, guess what, all those little things you thought were so important and fought so hard to swim upstream for, they are nada.

So, you're an Unhappy INtrovert. Doesn't surprise me (the Unhappy part) - the world, the social world, the everyday interaction of the human primate troop, is made by EXtroverted people and reflects their sunny ways, so it becomes the measure against which we non-happies automatically fail. Which I guess is good.. what a rained-on parade introverts would make if we were in charge of setting the overall tone of life. So, us introverts or unhappies or whatever we are have to do double duty figuring out what is, what we are, how to relate to a rear-view mirror image of ourselves while we learn to drive ourselves forward. It seems like a lot more work, so it's kind of a good thing there are endless combinations and permutations available for neuroplastic social adaptation. It has taken me two-thirds of a life time to become even remotely even-keel, let alone consider myself capable of making any kind of contribution beyond one-on-one. What a long process.

I do envy social effortlessness as displayed by extroverts/apparent "Happies". They seem to have so many fewer issues. Maybe they are less transparent to themselves or just fake it better or maybe they feel better just being around someone/anyone else to the point where they placebo themselves automatically, a brain mechanism that others of us (like introverts) must construct consciously instead. It isn't like they aren't smart or don't think, because they do. And they have sadnesses, which they mostly hide, which I used to think meant they were superficial. I misjudged their consideration for the feelings of others in the human primate troop, and their apparent jolliness in being connected and chatting and social, as outright behavioural lying. I didn't realize it was brain food for them, that they absolutely depend on it, crave it every day. Since I've aged, I'm a lot more nuanced about how I judge others' social motivations. We are all total liers, because of how troop-y we are as human primates. No one knows which side is up, because of all those built-in perceptual biases that fool us continually. We are all here, doing the best we can to get along and help each other. Stepping away from troop situations which become, or that we finally realize are, uncomfortable or incongruous with our centroversion.

I decided long ago to hitch my wagon to science, learned to aim for mere "contentment" in life. For me "contentment" is practically synonymous with "containment," in every aspect of life but writing, over which I have temporal and environmental control, i.e., feel safe. Safe enough at least. Steam valve writing."

Writing

Mo at Neurophilosophy Twittered a link to a blog called Inside Higher Education: Career Advice, about writing a dissertation, by Peg Boyle Single. It seems she has a book out.

The column is also full of good advice about writing in general. Part 1, A Regular Writing Routine, is a layout of the mechanics. Write whenever you have a chance.

"Motivation in writing comes from prewriting, prewriting, prewriting. Motivation occurs when you have done the necessary planning steps so that when you sit down to write prose, you have had time to subconsciously play around with the ideas and you only have to retrieve and type down the ideas, not to think them up. Motivation occurs when you have a very detailed long outline, filled in with citeable notes, by your desk that guides your writing."

Part 2 is What the Research Says. The first item recommended is to develop "deliberate practice."

"So what is deliberate practice? It is not inherently fun nor is it intrinsically rewarding. It is work. Deliberate practice is effortful practice with full concentration and includes a mechanism by which the results of the practice can be evaluated and improved upon in future sessions. Often a coach or master teacher oversees the deliberate practice, chooses individualized training tasks, and evaluates the results of the training. Experts more often engage in deliberate practice during the morning; research has supported that we have the greatest capacity for sustained, engaged and demanding cognitive activity during the morning. Research has also supported the many anecdotal accounts that four hours is the length of time that deliberate practice can be sustained."

It sounds like training for anything sounds. Start with twenty minutes a day and build up to 4 hours/day. Neuroplasticity will develop the brain. Pattern recognition is enhanced, etc.

"Novice writers tend to focus on the word or the sentence as the unit of creation or as the unit of analysis. Expert writers focus on the whole and on the paragraph as the smallest unit of creation or analysis."

Please, if you want to be a writer, read the entire posts carefully, especially if you have to write something academic. I can attest to how hard it is and how easily one can be chewed and spat out. My first and only (academic) paper so far was a disaster, swiftly rejected by the one and only journal I sent it to. I could not figure out what it was reviewers wanted - if it was a failure merely of style, or if I was simply inept at delivering written content, or if they hated the content itself. I'm still baffled. I could definitely have used this advice a year ago.

I can hardly wait for the next two columns in the 4-part series. Thank you Peg. Thank you Mo.

Settling in

Weyburn has been "home" for over a month now, and I've been in my own place for two weeks. Yesterday a desk I ordered finally arrived, a $149.00 special from the Brick, made in China, espresso in color, with a keyboard drawer. This morning I managed to put it together, working entirely from pictures that gave me no clue as to which way the boards should face, the way Ikea does.. but somehow I got it all together, with only once having to take apart the box which holds the drawers, as I had screwed it together entirely wrong first time round. Whatever. At least I have a desk again, one that I do not hate too much; it lacks a hole for cords to slide through/hide in, and the keyboard drawer doesn't slide particularly easily, but getting it together and functional makes me feel like finally I can relax out of moving mode and get busy again.

Slowly I'm getting used to this place that is so leisurely and devoid of stressful excitement that I'm reminded of swimming through molasses. At other (younger) ages, this would have made me scream with boredom and a sense of life passing me by, me not able to participate in it. Now, I feel it's the perfect speed for me to regather my wits and soften up around the edges once again.

Last night was the monthly dinner at the Wheatland Centre, Weyburn's drop-in centre for seniors. At the age of 58, I'm a kid there, but I was invited to join ($20 for a year's membership) so that I can participate in all the exciting events that go one there, like the monthly dinner. If you are not a member it costs $10. If you have a membership, it costs $8. I guess saving $2 each month will pay for the membership before the year is out.

It's a fairly large building, for Weyburn, one story but with several large rooms that can accomodate many people - one hundred twelve people sat at three long tables last night with some room to spare. Nice efficient systems are in place so that lines for food are orderly and swiftly flowing. The food itself is in another room on 3 more long tables, with room for 6 lines of hungry seniors to pile their plates. Last night's menu included roast beef with horse radish, mashed potatoes and gravy, some slightly overcooked vegetables, salad, and saskatoon crisp with a dollop of dream whip. I'm looking forward to the turkey feast at the end of next month. Now that I'm a member I was warned that I may be called upon to help the ladies with various food catering events. Okeydokey. I guess I'll get to know more people that way.

Why I finally joined, really, is because there is an entire room devoted to jigsaw puzzles. A whole room. With a big table and good lighting. And in the corner, stacks and stacks of 1000- piece jigsaw puzzles, hundreds of puzzles I've not yet put together. My aunt and I turn out to both be jigsaw puzzle lovers. She and I snuck away from the table as soon as we dared last night, after the meal, and headed off to the puzzle room to work on the puzzle that happened to be out. We got some pieces together before the meal started, too. The puzzles can be signed out by members, three at once. I can see myself busy writing all morning, then puzzling away in the afternoons while listening to CBC radio.

There are other rooms there - one huge pool room with four large tables. Apparently there are card sharks who attend the Wheatland regularly, and games are scheduled several times a week. Several people have mentioned this to me. Seems it's the "single ladies" who are the most dedicated card players. I'm clearly a "single lady" so I suppose it's out of kindness they are pointing me toward the peer group they most see me fitting into. However, I have never been attracted to card playing.


At least once weekly, a bus picks up seniors either at the Wheatland or else in the mall parking lot, to whisk people off to casinos dotting the prairies. My mother usually goes on these junkets and often wins some money. Mostly she gets her free lunch (included in the excursion) and has fun.

Now that I have a new nest to settle into, I'll be looking out the window lots of evenings and seeing lots of sky scenes, like the one I have added to this post. I confess to having photo-shopped the moon to make it look bigger in the picture, more the size it seems in real life to vision centers in the brain. Otherwise, the color and everything else is the way the camera saw it.

Sold

It's all over. Almost. Will be, once all the subject-to's are gone, by May 29th. Then I will be officially in transition, not just preparing to be in transition.

I'm pretty satisfied with the sale. I got nearly as much as I was asking, and the buyers were people who knew what they liked and moved decisively, didn't burn a lot of fuel dithering around wasting everybody's time and patience. They came/ they saw/they bought, all in the space of a single day.

Hurray.

It looks like I'll be able to go where photons shine all year round, about mid-July. If I'm careful with money, I'll be able to afford a longed-for, self-assembled "sabbatical," during which I can rest one part of my brain (the treating part, which is so automatic it will never forget how) while I work on developing the conceptualizing, writing part. I plan to write furiously while I have the opportunity. Maybe less blogging, more actual book-writing.