Hello all! Welcome back to this blog… Let’s talk about writing and downtime from writing.
The holidays are here, or they are almost here. Christmas is right around the corner, and many of us decide to align the things we have to do on the holiday’s front (shopping, family and travel), with some sort of pause of our daily tasks.
But having other things to do, or needing a break, doesn’t mean that I am at ease with it.
I have some questions for you (if you would like to share):
- Are you taking a break?
- Are you using some sort of downtime from a full-time job to write?
- Are you planning on write or work on your writing in the last two weeks of this year?
- Or you are really going full out on vacations and give yourself a break from writing?
Is it normal that I never know what to do? Does it happen to you? Even knowing that I’ll eventually will have to change routines and have other things to do in these days?
I know, I’m on family-duty and full-time on taking care of my child. I do not know much more than that. Events are fluid, specially with a in and out of a cold child.
I know I have a Zero Draft to finish and a New Year to continue Planning. I know I’m trying to think ahead, and do my blog posts in advance, so the holiday’s do not make me feel seriously lacking in the blog posting department.
I know making content for social media has been shoved to the side for weeks now. I’m not on a sharing mood.
Not that I can see any returns in the free marketing strategy. And I’m not on board with supporting the big (unjust, morally degraded, greedy) companies by paying them for an exposure that they’ve built against intentionally. Hello, algorithm!
See I’m a member from the Cheap Generation… In my country my generation was named Cheap, due to some intended public offense towards teens, at the time. We were the cheap generation (original: geração rasca). What they didn’t tell us was that we would always by scraping by… which seems fitted. I was born in the tail of the seventies, so I’m on the Generation X transitioning to the Millennial, and this means I have lived the birth of all this social media. So do not talk to me about algorithms as if it was unavoidable downside. The objective is to make money from users, and so they figured a way for regular people to pay for ads (to which we have no control of and therefore can’t attest that we are getting what we paid for).
Except if they get paid to flip some political agendas… Or to sell people’s data. In these cases, there are no boundaries to the do it all of the algorithm…
“Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Dr. Ian Malcom on Jurassic Park movie (1993).
Just because you can (make the content, develop the platform, sell data, endorse conflict, influence and power play…), it doesn’t mean that you should.
Well, it should mean that you wouldn’t do it, no matter what. Like that other quote that says:
“With great power comes great responsibility” — Uncle Ben in Spider-Man
Boundaries and lessons learned from the past and all… No.
Which reminded me of another great story, movie format called The Devil’s Advocate, 1997, with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. Not just about vanity, lust or temptation. Power and access to wealth, in detriment of love, health and family, are also big themes.
And I’m still to watch Oppenheimer, the latest take on the creation of the atomic bomb.
Maybe I’ll just stick to the Christmas shenanigans, and movies (No. I don’t think I can do Christmas movies anymore) and replenish my creative well. Maybe I’ll just go with Studios Ghibli marathon. I still have a lot to catch on.
Whatever I’ll do, I just know there will be stories to tell later. I just know it.
And it is as it should be.
∞
What have you been writing? Tell me everything in the comments section below!