Totally. They've got to reroute those little pathways in their brain! It takes practice. Another favorite saying a friend of mine has for the act of getting out of a negative brain space is "Flip Your Mode" You gotta flip your mode!
Oh I do too. But I've also found success with just "deciding" to feel a different way sometimes. Usually about small things. (This gets back to the perfectionist's dilemma.) Like one time after we moved into our house and I had a 4 month old baby, I painfully mounted curtain rods in the old horse hair walls so the neighbors wouldn't see directly into our bedroom. But when I hung up the only curtains I had, they were like 2 inches too short and hung above the windowsill. Instead of having a mental breakdown in that moment I told myself, "I'm deciding to like this" and I pretended I wanted them that way. I was shocked that it actually worked and I felt a lot better. So I try to employ the "deciding to like" things when I can and it's made me feel a lot more positive in general. But I'm definitely guilty of getting in ruts too!
Hahahahahah!!!!!! Sunshine Shenanigans - that's awesome! I don't get the dumping and advertising what I hate either. I have way too much that I'm nerding out about because I'm obsessed with it, I guess. Also. You just clarified something for me about my own fiction. I write a lot of dystopian worlds. Grungy, authoritarian, dangerous, rigidly controlled...it's my way of dealing with my psyche and my history, but something I just realized as you were talking. (And no, I do not mind all over the place because that's how my brain works. I could never do Twitter or short IG stories because of this.) Even though I write in all these seemingly dystopian worlds, and even though all my memoirs have a similar flavor...it really is all about Persephone finding beauty in the Underworld, and figuring out how to bring flowers to a place where nothing grows.
So thanks for just...showing up. That was great! Also. I had both Sunshine and Barbie & Ken. But the majority of their clothes except the ones they came with were sewn and crocheted by my mom. Which, as an adult, is the coolest thing ever. I also had one Dawn Doll, which were my ultimate faves that I got to play with when I had a certain babysitter.
I feel the same way in just about every aspect, but at least half the time I think the "not going to do this" posts are virtue signaling to whatever side those people are on or want to be on, like it's a requirement to get in the club. Not my thing. However, I might go on to say "I tried the new hamburger at BK with the peanut butter sauce and blech" because that might save some people some money and a stomach ache, but otherwise, nah.
Your skirt thing hit me, too. I'm hardly posting these days, but I'm supposed to have a presence, and more and more I'm not that excited about letting people into my life. The other day I made tomato sauce with stuff from my garden and I thought, hey, this would be a nice thing to post about, so I took photos of the pile of tomatoes and herbs we started with, intending to take progress pictures. And then suddenly we were done (well, not suddenly, it took HOURS) and I had no more pictures. I feel kind of bad about that because my readers might think I've fallen off the face of the earth or am lying in bed depressed or deep into writing my next novel (which I , ahem, SHOULD be). But I just...don't care.
***By the way DON'T make your own tomato sauce. Not worth the time and effort AT ALL.
I’ve been thinking about the whole “I’m going to announce i don’t like something thing” too!! I actually wrote an entire newsletter about it a while ago after I attended a dinner with some previous coworkers I had never met in person. We sat around a table and everyone proceeded to talk about all the things they don’t like. And bond over that. I sat there wondering why they were wasting energy on declaring all the stuff they don’t like instead of bonding over the stuff they love (like isn’t that more powerful?!). I asked everyone I knew for their thoughts and my conclusion was that it is very vulnerable to declare you love something. And people feel safer in apathy/declaring dislike. Also for the record, I immediately wanted to see Barbie because Greta Gerwig and I absolutely loved it. ❤️ What did you think?
I hope you find a showing soon! And me too! Honestly that’s one reason I love kidlit people so much. I feel like they are often people who didn’t lose that sense of wonder -- or the ability to declare loves -- or something. Or they rediscovered it.
We went to see the Barbie movie and it was funny--but I was surprised how much I found myself crying! LOL! I mean, not in a bad way! But there were things that struck some raw emotional nerves, for sure, too--which, I did NOT see coming! Anyhow--hugs, creative!
My husband has a name for when people have the need to find the negative in everything and point it out: "crab mentality" 🦀
I do think also that once you have crab mentality, it's hard to stop. People can get in the rut of it.
Totally. They've got to reroute those little pathways in their brain! It takes practice. Another favorite saying a friend of mine has for the act of getting out of a negative brain space is "Flip Your Mode" You gotta flip your mode!
HOW, though?? How do I flip my mode? (I'm not Crab Mentality but I can get stuck in my own pathways for sure)
Oh I do too. But I've also found success with just "deciding" to feel a different way sometimes. Usually about small things. (This gets back to the perfectionist's dilemma.) Like one time after we moved into our house and I had a 4 month old baby, I painfully mounted curtain rods in the old horse hair walls so the neighbors wouldn't see directly into our bedroom. But when I hung up the only curtains I had, they were like 2 inches too short and hung above the windowsill. Instead of having a mental breakdown in that moment I told myself, "I'm deciding to like this" and I pretended I wanted them that way. I was shocked that it actually worked and I felt a lot better. So I try to employ the "deciding to like" things when I can and it's made me feel a lot more positive in general. But I'm definitely guilty of getting in ruts too!
Oooo, "deciding to like" -- I'm going to think on that. It breaks my brain a little to contemplate, but also sounds so freeing.
Hahahahahah!!!!!! Sunshine Shenanigans - that's awesome! I don't get the dumping and advertising what I hate either. I have way too much that I'm nerding out about because I'm obsessed with it, I guess. Also. You just clarified something for me about my own fiction. I write a lot of dystopian worlds. Grungy, authoritarian, dangerous, rigidly controlled...it's my way of dealing with my psyche and my history, but something I just realized as you were talking. (And no, I do not mind all over the place because that's how my brain works. I could never do Twitter or short IG stories because of this.) Even though I write in all these seemingly dystopian worlds, and even though all my memoirs have a similar flavor...it really is all about Persephone finding beauty in the Underworld, and figuring out how to bring flowers to a place where nothing grows.
So thanks for just...showing up. That was great! Also. I had both Sunshine and Barbie & Ken. But the majority of their clothes except the ones they came with were sewn and crocheted by my mom. Which, as an adult, is the coolest thing ever. I also had one Dawn Doll, which were my ultimate faves that I got to play with when I had a certain babysitter.
I feel the same way in just about every aspect, but at least half the time I think the "not going to do this" posts are virtue signaling to whatever side those people are on or want to be on, like it's a requirement to get in the club. Not my thing. However, I might go on to say "I tried the new hamburger at BK with the peanut butter sauce and blech" because that might save some people some money and a stomach ache, but otherwise, nah.
Your skirt thing hit me, too. I'm hardly posting these days, but I'm supposed to have a presence, and more and more I'm not that excited about letting people into my life. The other day I made tomato sauce with stuff from my garden and I thought, hey, this would be a nice thing to post about, so I took photos of the pile of tomatoes and herbs we started with, intending to take progress pictures. And then suddenly we were done (well, not suddenly, it took HOURS) and I had no more pictures. I feel kind of bad about that because my readers might think I've fallen off the face of the earth or am lying in bed depressed or deep into writing my next novel (which I , ahem, SHOULD be). But I just...don't care.
***By the way DON'T make your own tomato sauce. Not worth the time and effort AT ALL.
I’ve been thinking about the whole “I’m going to announce i don’t like something thing” too!! I actually wrote an entire newsletter about it a while ago after I attended a dinner with some previous coworkers I had never met in person. We sat around a table and everyone proceeded to talk about all the things they don’t like. And bond over that. I sat there wondering why they were wasting energy on declaring all the stuff they don’t like instead of bonding over the stuff they love (like isn’t that more powerful?!). I asked everyone I knew for their thoughts and my conclusion was that it is very vulnerable to declare you love something. And people feel safer in apathy/declaring dislike. Also for the record, I immediately wanted to see Barbie because Greta Gerwig and I absolutely loved it. ❤️ What did you think?
I haven't seen Barbie yet! We were going to go, but then it was sold out. Alas. I'm doing everything I can to avoid spoilers!
The thing about it being more vulnerable to share things you love is so interesting to think about. I want us all to be able to declare our loves!
I hope you find a showing soon! And me too! Honestly that’s one reason I love kidlit people so much. I feel like they are often people who didn’t lose that sense of wonder -- or the ability to declare loves -- or something. Or they rediscovered it.
We went to see the Barbie movie and it was funny--but I was surprised how much I found myself crying! LOL! I mean, not in a bad way! But there were things that struck some raw emotional nerves, for sure, too--which, I did NOT see coming! Anyhow--hugs, creative!