Real Writers Play With Themselves, Mentally

I didn't get much writing done yesterday, but then I've been on a weird sleep cycle, too. I'm awake for two days, sleep for a few hours, and then I repeat the cycle. Yesterday was day two in a waking cycle. Normally I'm up at night and sleep during the day. It's not laziness, just my normal circadian rhythms - been this way since I was a kid. Night time wakes me up like you wouldn't believe. I don't generally sleep unless I'm drugged. Granted, you could consider  me drugged twenty-four/seven, due to my regular meds, but you mostly get used to them.

I did manage to piss myself off, however. I went looking for an excuse in order to get back on track with my book. I finally found the excuse, stupid and mistaken as it might have been, and used it for the limited time it was available to me. It allowed me to get past the tricky shift of emotion I needed.

In a real sense I wasn't actually angry. I took something someone said to me, forced myself to believe it meant something it didn't, until I no longer needed to be mad, and then just switched my brain back to what it really meant.

You see, I've known for a very long time that we humans can convince ourselves of anything. The longer we live inside our own heads, the easier it is to do. As a young woman I used to get all weird and paranoid about things, especially when relating to relationships with men. I could convince myself, one hundred percent, about pretty much anything, even if it was totally off  the mark. I used to analyze everything to death, but with my own personal slant on it, of course.

These days I don't usually want that kind of drama in my life. Those stupid things we ask ourselves like we did back in high school are ridiculous when it comes to the adult world, but I have to say most people still do it. When a man and woman meet for the first time, and there could possibly be an attraction there, there's always a period of time that's fraught with those insecurities.

Does he like me? Does she think I'm attractive? Did I just say something stupid? Do I have something in my teeth? Why didn't I do something better with my hair this morning? Is the front of my shirt gaping open? (If you're a woman with breasts on the larger size, you'll understand that last one - the dreaded button-gap because your boobs are pulling it apart. I prefer t-shirts for avoiding that particular issue.)

Now, I'm generally a  fairly confident person when it comes to most of the stuff in my life, but I also know that everything is subjective. Just because you're generally considered to be attractive does not mean that everyone thinks so, which means any meeting with anyone of the gender that attracts you can be fraught with insecurity.

Also, what happens if the most attractive thing about you is something you do with your face? An expression, I mean. It's like I've said about pictures. They capture a single instant and it's very difficult to capture the life in someone with a photograph. Have you ever looked at someone's face and they give you a look that makes you weak in the knees? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I've know some men who weren't aesthetically pleasing, perhaps, but that one look turned them into a total stud.

Now, if you're a confident person you can give someone that kind of look even if you're not sure if they like you. Guys are almost always forced into making these kinds of moves, due to gender-assigned roles in mating games. Being a modern woman, however, means I think that's too one-sided. If I like someone, it makes sense that I'm just as capable of making a move as he is. I don't feel I have the handy excuse of letting a guy make all the moves. It's not fair.

This leaves a person like me floundering in situations where you just don't know what's going on. I've always wound up biting the bullet and just saying whatever I can think of to get the ball rolling, unless of course the guy does it first. It's actually pretty rare for me, though. I'm usually the one who says something that amounts to, "Okay, I like you. I hope you like me, and I don't mean in a kid-sister kind of way."

This kind of thing is particularly difficult to figure out when you don't have the added benefit of seeing someone's facial expressions or body language. I can't remember the last time I met someone, where I didn't meet them online. I don't engage strangers in conversation in person, but I have no problem talking to people on the computer. Part of that is because I feel I communicate much better through the written word, partially because I type faster than I speak sometimes. Part of it is simply that I'm not worried about how I appear physically. I can just relax and not concentrate on whether I have something on my nose or in my teeth, or vice versa.

What does all this have to do with pissing me off? It's simple. When you're talking to someone you barely know, which I do fairly frequently, there is an element of insecurity there. You don't know them well enough to properly interpret everything they say to you, which means those things can be manipulated by your brain. On one end of the spectrum you can convince yourself a person is wildly attracted to you (at least mentally if they can't actually see you), and on the other end you can convince yourself that they find you annoying and tiresome in the extreme.

The opposite is true, as well. You can convince yourself that you like a person a whole lot, or you can just as easily convince yourself you can't stand them. It all depends on what aspects you choose to focus on.

Faced with this disparity it's very easy for someone with an imagination to convince themselves of pretty much anything, which includes something anger-producing. These are the head games I play with myself. At least I do if I need to make something work in my writing. When it comes to real life, I prefer to know the cold, hard truth. I don't want to play guessing games, which is why, when faced with the above-described situation, I usually choose to bite the bullet and be blunt about an attraction. It might take me some time to screw up the courage, but it's in there somewhere.

I've actually been having a conversation with someone about writing moods lately, too, just because it's the challenge I'm faced with these days. I feel inadequate in my writing due to the fact that I have to tap into these resources, but I guess I shouldn't. At least I don't have to get drunk to be able to write. Now that would make me feel inadequate.