Misa/ffection

This man when he smiles.

The classic photo of Leonard Nimoy in Spock costume leaning on the 64 Buick Riviera he bought with his Star Trek earnings will be immortalized in dinkycar, thanks to the good offices of the Hot Wheels Corporation.

The limited-edition car-and-figurine combo will cost $20 and go on sale atMatty Collector when San Diego Comic-Con starts.

My partner loves Stargate. I’ve never watched an episode in my life. So I decided to just watch a random episode completely out of context and document my very important honest reactions as a person going into it for the very first time with no prior knowledge as to what it’s about, who these people are, or what’s going on.

Watch it in video

Okay, I’ve thought about this question for most of a day, because the obvious answer is “….why would I?”, but it’s clearly not obvious to you.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. They’re a doctor. They’re a professional you’ve gone to for help. And pain and fatigue are, like, medical things, right? Going to a doctor about medical stuff and then saying “LOL NOPE” to what the doctor says is like hiring a plumber and then arguing about how to fix your sink, right? If you’re so smart, why’d you call the plumber over?

Okay.

But now imagine your basement is flooding and you call the plumber. While on the phone, the plumber asks you what the problem is and you say that there’s a pipe in your basement that’s burst and it’s now flooded.

And the plumber—still on the phone—says “LOL NOPE.”

And you say, “Excuse me?”

The plumber says, “Look, a flooded basement is a really severe problem, okay? Usually, these calls, they’re a clogged toilet or a leaky u-bend under the sink. Trust me, this is better. Those are a lot cheaper to fix.”

And you say, “I’m sure they are, but I’m telling you, my basement is flooded. I’m looking down the stairs and I can see the water.”

“I’m just saying, there are other things it could be. It won’t hurt anything to eliminate them first,” the plumber says.

And you say, “But I need my basement fixed! Look, I can’t go down in my basement and do laundry right now, and I have important keepsakes down there in boxes… some of them are already ruined, but maybe I can salvage some if we can just fix the problem.”

“Well, then it will be in your interest for me to check your toilets and your u-bends,” the plumber says.

“The problem is not in my toilets or my sinks,” you say. “I am looking at the problem. I called you because my basement is flooded, and I need you to help me fix that.”

And then… now, I’m not assuming you’re female, but I just want to emphasize that this is a starkly though not exclusively gendered phenomenon, so if you’re not female then imagine you are.

“MA’AM,” the plumber says, in a way you recognize. It’s the voice of putting you in your place, the voice of unearned authority, and with this voice, this word, ma’am, is not a title of respect, it’s a reminder and a command. “MA’AM, if you’ll just calm down. I’m sure what you’re experiencing seems terrible to you, but the truth is, it’s probably not as bad as it looks from where you’re standing. And that’s a good thing! Trust me, have been a plumber for 27 years. Now, when can I come over to check your u-bends?”

“It’s not my u-bends!” you say.

“Ma’am, if you don’t want to be helped, I’ll start to think you’re calling for attention.”

You see?

(Now for bonus points, imagine the plumber refuses to help you until you lose a statistically improbable amount of weight just to rule out that this might be flooding your basement, or is acting on the subconscious but deeply entrenched idea that people with your skin color are less susceptible to flooding and in less need of help, or believes that as a feeeemale you’re more likely to be suffering from emotional distress than a physical problem and suggests the preferable course of action would be for you to take a nap every time the supposed flooding in your basement bothers you.)

As I said in that post, pain and fatigue — like dysphoria — are qualitative experiences. This means they happen in your head and they cannot be directly observed or measured by anyone else (which would make them quantitative phenomena). 

The doctor talking to you about dysphoria —or pain or fatigue — is not a plumber in your house, they are a plumber on the phone. The only input they receive about the problem is your account of it. 

… except what’s actually happened is that you have a secret aquifer off to one side of your basement, and the wall has exploded inward, and so a thing that no one is even looking at is causing the problem. Or maybe your sump pump failed and your cellar door is leaking water, so it’s a dead sump pump. 

But since you’re talking to a plumber, they’re like ‘WELP, I RAN ALL THE TESTS, THE PIPES ARE ALL FINE’ but your basement is still full of water and you’re like ???? But it’s not fine???? and they’re like I hope you don’t want any help with how uncomfortable it is having a basement full of water! Because you are clearly just doing this so that I will give you assistance with the symptoms here. 

Like turning up to the ER with chest pains and being sent home with sleeping pills, only to be told two days later by another doctor “shit you’re asthmatic…how did they not see this?!”

Except 107 degrees is fatal.

I told the nurses.  I hope they shoved something uncomfortable up his backside and then told him that he’d be fine, there was plenty of stretch, they could fit SO MUCH MORE up there and he needed to hold still.

This anecdote is related to OP’s post for the following reason:  DOCTORS CAN BE COMPLETE IMBECILES AND STILL HAVE MEDICAL DEGREES.

Or as the old joke goes: 

“What do you call the most academically successful graduate from medical school? 

Doctor. 

What do you call the person who almost flunked out of medical school but graduated anyway?

This Lady tells us an awful story of how she was embarrassed , while buying groceries in the store by a racist woman, whose prejudice ruined a day in her and her daughter’s life. Unfortunately, this story is no surprise for black people, they face something like this too often, but there is one thing this story can teach us.

White people, with their “privilege” to be taken as the good ones can break the wall of prejudice and racism teaching others about tolerance and equality. 

This is part of why I never just “let it go”.

This kind of nonsense hurts EVERYONE. And the more easily we can walk away, the more important it is that we don’t.

A good friend who is black but very light-skinned has an adopted daughter who is very dark. Gorgeous child. She went to a “princess party” and came home crying because she was “too dark” to be a princess. 

All the dolls were white.

I told my mother, a doll collector about this, asking if I bought a doll would she have an outfit for her… and Mom pulled a doll off her shelf that had natural-looking puffy pigtails, very dark skin, and the face was nearly an exact match to my friend’s daughter. She already had the princess outfit made (because, doll collector…

Later that day that little girl got her “looks like me” princess doll. Her hair was already up in puffy pigtails. The match was absolutely perfect. Because representation and inclusion matter.

Another friend, a white woman who married a black man, says that when her son plays out on the sidewalk, the police drive by slowly. He’s an amazing kid. Never doing anything wrong. This happened less than a mile from my house. I can’t walk away. Not when a child who helped load my groceries is afraid to play outside because the police are openly suspicious of him. 

“There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

It’s usually easier to start creative work than it is to finish it.

As creativity expert Mihaly Csikszentmihaly writes in his stellar book Finding Flow:

“The world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way.”

So why do we occasionally end up stuck when we’ve already begun the work?

There are a number of possible reasons: as we approach the finish line we begin to question what we were doing in the first place, or we start to feel that our perception of the work isn’t aligning with what we’re actually producing. All of the various nicks and cracks of the work begin to make themselves visible.

But what’s more likely is that we’ve simply run out of steam, and understandably so.

Creative work takes a lot of energy and uses multiple mental resources.

The initial excitement of starting something new, of turning an idea into something real and tangible, eventually burns off. The flash of insight or an energizing spark of motivation fades.

Unlike computers, humans don’t have a system monitor where you can check what’s using up space or hogging resources. In-fact: more often than to we don’t have complete control over what our minds are burning energy on.

All we have is the sudden feeling of burning out, of wanting to do something—anything—else.

Energy and attention are limited resources, both which influence our willpower and creativity. If we’re smart and optimize our energy and resources, we can control the burn out. We can maintain our momentum. Dilbert creator and author Scott Adams puts this elegantly for us:

“Make choices that maximize you personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.”

So what can we do to ensure we’re making better choices to help optimize how we use our energy?

Take a nap

I will often use a quick fifteen to twenty minute power nap to restart my mental processes.

At times when I can’t rest (like at the office), I do a quick 15 minute meditation session or just listen to classical music while focusing on my breathing. Each seems to provide just enough space from the actual work and worries of the day to help reset and refocus my energy.

Clear your work space

Another surprisingly effective way of refocusing energies is to take a few minutes to clean up my work space.

“A clean workspace clears our mind, just as a cluttered, disorganized workspace confuses us and slows us down,” Dale Carnegie once wrote.

Our brain seems to unconsciously pay attention to every object in our surroundings. Cleaning up and making sure that our mind is clear enables our ideas to flow more freely.

Free write

Often taking a few minutes to free write (about the work, how I’m feeling, or even capturing notes in my personal journal) helps bring clarity to my mind and rejuvenates my creative energy.

The benefits of free writing whenever feeling stuck are numerous: they break your typical work flow while also allowing you to capture and explore your thoughts in a more tangible flow.

While taking a nap or cleaning your work space are effect ways of re-energizing yourself, they can take away from the actual productive work. Whereas free writing doesn’t have to. If you free write about the work or why you may be feeling stuck, you’re still making progress.

Consider this…

If you consider each of the ways we revitalize our mental states and re-orient ourselves around a creative spark, what you’ll notice is each entails two primary things: time and perspective.

And really a breath of fresh air is what we need when we encounter a fear of the critical finish line or when we begin to second-guess the work we’re doing.