Category: 30Hz Bl-g

Ramblings at the frequency of 30Hz

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30Hz Bl-g Life @ 30Hz

There’s Time

This is going to be one of those self-help nonsense posts that sometimes pop up on here. I shouldn’t regret self-help. It’s really self-help for me, reminders and gentle nudges to change the way I look at each day. It’s important to consider each day a limited resource. There are 24 hours in each day. How are you going to use them?

During my depression a few years ago, my therapist told me that I’d stopped doing things for myself. I had work and writing and taking care of my kids as a part-time stay-at-home dad. Sometime along the way, I’d stopped watching movies, listening to music and writing for pleasure. In fact, I’d gone so far down the pit that I couldn’t even bring myself to watch movies because the pains of nostalgia I experienced while watching them had become too great. I couldn’t watch Star Wars, for example, because I couldn’t feel the same thrill of being young and in awe. I’d lost much of what had made me, well… me. I just wasn’t taking care of myself because I’d decided that taking care of everybody else was going to be enough.

It wasn’t.

And it’s easy to get into this habit. Life will consume you if you let it. Kids, relationships, work. There’s no time on Monday. Monday becomes Wednesday. And Wednesday becomes 2017. Take stock of the ways in which you waste small moments of your day. Needlessly checking your email or idly scrolling twitter or reading depressing-as-fuck news on CNN as some kind of masochistic torture porn. My point is, there’s always time. 15. 20. 30 minutes. Make time for yourself. Be selfish and not mindlessly complacent with that time.

You have a movie you’ve been wanting to watch? Put it in, if only for a little while. Give yourself a moment to listen to some music, without distraction. Pick your poison…

 

…there’s always time.

 

I woke up last Wednesday and felt the need to watch Ghostbusters and despite having plenty of opportunities I still haven’t watched Ghostbusters. One thing just led to another… you know how it goes. I’m sharing these thoughts to remind myself to stop wasting that time. Seize that idle, wasted fruitless time. Watch Ghostbusters. Read a book. Play a video game. Whatever it is that you’ve been wanting to do. Do it. Be selfish.

There's Time - Ghostbusters

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30Hz Bl-g On Writing

Commence NaNoWriMo

It’s November. For some it’s #Noirvember (watch as many Film Noirs as possible). For others it’s NaNoWriMo (write 50,000 words or die trying).

I’ve been “participating” on and off in NaNoWriMo for five or six years. The first year I was just out of my MFA program, and gung f’ing ho to write that first m’f’ing goddam novel! YEEAAAAAHHHH.

NaNoWriMo calendar

Year One:

By the time Thanksgiving hit, I was something like 30,000 words in and hating. every. single. sentence.

I wasn’t into the book I was writing and I’d hit a stone cold wall of self doubt. There’s nothing… and I mean nothing that kills a writer’s mojo more than self doubt. 99.9% of all cases of so-called “writer’s block” I’d guess have something to do with self doubt. That’s how much it cripples me. And it doesn’t happen all at once. It starts with 0ne discordant sentence that grows into a paragraph, a page, a chapter… and then, finally, consumes the entire project. With only a week left, I threw in the towel, scrapped the project and never returned.

Continue reading “Commence NaNoWriMo”
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30Hz Bl-g Life @ 30Hz

Watch Harvey

harvey

Credit goes to culture connoisseur @ThatAndyRoss for bringing this video to my attention on Facebook. He probably didn’t know he would end up in a shout out on my bl-g, but so it goes.

The fellow in the video is John Green, author and vlog brother. He also creates videos for MentalFloss.com, one of my favorite daily diversions. If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some of my rampant Mental Floss shares. They’re goddamn interesting, okay! Goddamn.

Point is that I’ve been a fan of John as an Internet personality for quite some time. His delivery contains the requisite amount of sincere sarcasm. If you’ve seen his videos, you probably get what I’m saying with “sincere sarcasm.” If you haven’t, you’re probably trying to interrupt this post with cries of “oxymoron.” Stop being so negative. And ultimately that’s what this video is about.

Stop being negative, John says and “Watch Harvey.” It hits very close to home, having endured… we’ll call it a mental episode of my own. That downward spiral caused me to create this bl-g and write about how rediscovering vinyl helped pull me out of said funk. At that second in my life, my “Harvey” was vinyl and the pop music of my childhood… but if I had to pick a “Harvey” for most of the rest of my seconds, it would also be Harvey.