fragile soft machines

re suffering/learning i wonder whether part of my resistance toward getting stuff done novel-wise is because i seem to enjoy myself only when i’m playing within a specific structure that i’ve premade—“just writing” and “seeing what happens” do not work. obv the novel is itself a structure but it’s one that’s so big that it’s hard to feel out from the inside. i need to get more specific about making rules for what can happen in each chapter and how chapters relate… i also need to play some sort of game, or more than one, with language or imagery… this is working well rn for a short story (divided up into regular chunks of time/ultimately the whole thing is circular) and just-for-me enrichment fic (divided up by points of physical location)

why am i seeing those two guys in every unrelated tag i browse. i’m not going to specify which guys because if you’re going through this same experience then you’ll know

my health anxiety is so much better except for the part where when i am actually ill i continue to obsess over how if i just didn’t go anywhere or do anything i probably could’ve avoided it. and actually the better the rest gets the worse this is because acting normal means i have more “evidence” to beat myself over the head with. obviously i am an idiot and a fool for not sitting in a box eating toast all day in order to evade food poisoning