Oct
25
I've been waiting for weeks for the right combination of feeling and time to write this intro post. A few minutes ago my brain exploded and I decided to just do it.Here's what you need to know about me to follow what I'm going to talk about in this blog.
I go to brain school. It's teaching me how to brain in a certain way. Sometimes I think it's a useful way and it's how I want to brain in order to do some things I'd like to do. Other times I think they all brain in a language that I'll never speak fluently - not entirely - because it's missing too many words that I always want to use.
I'm in my last year of brain school, and starting next year I'll be braining for a living. I've got a job locked down, but it's only for one year, and then I'll have to make some decisions... but one thing at a time.
So I want to become good at braining the way school is teaching me to, because I want to be good at my work, because I'm a person who likes to be good at what she does and there's not much more to say about that. But it's complicated. Like I said, I often think this way of braining is wrong, and this particular way gives a person a lot of power to make things bad, and god damnit I hate when things are bad. I want no part in that.
Three true things about me:
I hate when things are bad.
I love being good at what I do.
My politics are very.
And sometimes that makes things complicated for me.
In brain school, I have somehow been extremely successful while doing an absurdly small amount of work. I'm not proud of this. It has lessened my respect for the discipline and for myself.
The problem is essentially that my brain is a stunt pilot. A cocky stunt pilot. It picks its teeth and rolls its eyes while the Major is giving orders. One time it gave itself a stick and poke tattoo during a mission briefing. All because it knows that at the last minute, when the mission faces certain doom, my brain will come up with a maneuver that nobody's ever seen before to get itself out of danger and save the day. (Yes, my brain might be a viper jockey on the Battlestar Galactica.)
In this respect, my brain is a total asshole. It doesn't care that when it finally gets its plane (yes, it flies a viper) back to base, the wings are falling off and the navigation system's fried and it's got the wrong kind of fuel in it. It doesn't care that the other pilots have to change their maneuvers with no warning to compensate for my brain ditching the mission plan for its own loopy, hotshot bullshit. It doesn't care that it puts other pilots in danger.
So I'm at the point where, I don't care that my brain gets its target pretty much every time. I don't care how great of a pilot it is, I'm tired of its shit. I used to be proud of its bizarro daredevil crap, but that's long gone. Because my brain doesn't know how to fly in a god damn straight line, and it doesn't know how to follow a mission plan through to the end, and it's not even learning how to read the maps, and it doesn't know how to take care of me.
And that's a problem.
So I'm in this weird position.
I have this whole, final year of brain school where there's not much pressure for me to agonize over my grades (not that I ever have), because I have a job secured. It's like, we're still going on missions, but they're not missions where other planes are shooting at me or where worlds I might have visited will be destroyed if I fail. What I really want this year is to do learning, raw learning, in a way that I haven't yet. I want my brain to learn to really read the maps, the plans, even to listen to the Major every once in a while, and to use those hotshot pilot skills as part of the plan, in every part of the plan, and to really learn.
This year my missions are missions of peace. And my only goal is to help my brain learn how to fly level. And for us to become better friends to each other in the process.
So this blog will be about all of these things.
It will be about wrangling my inner stunt pilot. It will be about drafting better plans, ones that use my pilot skills to their fullest but don't wreck the plane. It will be about learning to read the maps.
It will be about my efforts to brain in the way I'm training for without being limited by it. It will be about braining better, for myself. And with more control from moment to moment.
It will be about fighting burnout and fighting bullshit and staying live to the things that move me. It will be about being as good to yourself as you are to all the other people you love. It will be about commitment, and presence, and patience.
This is how I'm saying to myself: I'm with you, and I'm staying with you for as long as it takes to get this right.
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