![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Contentment Paradox
Oct. 8th, 2020 12:00 pm
So, R got a VR headset this year and absolutely loves it. Even though the headset is kind of bulky and it can be awkward maneuvering in a small apartment, it really *is* an immersive experience. It's pretty neat that the technology has caught up visually, and if you haven't played around on VR Chat with it...it's an experience. Especially for size-based furry trash like us.
He recently got an app called a "Brain Massager", which is basically a way to meditate or decompress with pretty visuals, (maybe?) music and "subliminal" messaging. He had me try it out, and I listened to the Creativity program. The exercise is basically inducing a hypnotic state while helping you unblock yourself from thoughts or behaviors holding you back. It was surprisingly effective, though I think a bit of herbal assistance may have helped.
I've never really considered myself susceptible to hypnosis. While I'm definitely empathetic and tend to soak in the ambient emotional energy of my environment, I'm also incredibly easy to distract. ADHD sees to it that my thoughts fly off in different directions with the most random of stimuli. But this...I think focusing on the relaxation aspect through the first half of the exercise really helped to slow me down, so the visualization exercise afterwards was really easy to fall into.
One of the things the program has you do is take all the negative emotions you have around your creativity and put them into bubbles. Once you pop those bubbles, the hold these emotions have on your creative process lessens. I was surprised to realize how much "shame" turned up. I was popping so many shame bubbles, along with the usual "fear" and "regret". Perhaps even more surprisingly, I've been a lot less ashamed of enjoying myself or thinking about the creative projects that really excite me. I like what I like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The weight of expectation has bowed my back an awful lot this year. If you're extremely online through Twitter, there's an expectation of being a fully-formed social justice warrior without any need to wade through problematic beliefs to get with the program. Anything that might be an issue has best be kept hidden, and even talking about something as frivolous as desire or the porn you're working on can feel like an insensitive, oblivious act.
My particular tastes in macro, and even playing around with aspects of dominance and submission, or the power dynamics that come with mismatched size, has felt like something impossible to talk about or explore for a while now. The world is on fire, and so many people are just now recognizing how prevalent and deeply-rooted racial injustice is in American society. It feels WEIRD to pop up in the middle of all this and say "Yeah, but being coerced into sex with a giant is still pretty hot, actually."
I felt like I couldn't really delve into any of that, even with my Patreon serial, because (perhaps undeservedly so) I feel a certain responsibility as a somewhat-known fur of color in our circle. As much as I wish I could be sex-positive about this, writing fiction that's inherently about the abuse of overwhelming power feels particularly tone-deaf. Especially when it's married to settings like, say, macro cops or giant businessfurs.
On one hand, I totally understand how our stories have perpetuated a myth about police and even capitalism that has exacerbated the problem in both sectors. And when viewed through a macro lens, it's easy to read a very tacit acceptance of this abuse: look, we all know this behavior is transgressive but we'll give this character a pass because he makes me pop a boner.
That's...not a great look, but if you look at a lot of the popular macro stories on FA and SoFurry you'll find those themes are still very much alive and well. I think what's given me pause, though, is that the expression of this fetish is so at odds with what I'm fighting for in social justice I can't really reconcile the two.
But the way through that dilemma is not shame. Interacting with it in a way that feels honest to myself and also socially responsible feels a lot better. And slowly, but surely, I find my frozen pen warming up a little bit. Of course I'll produce problematic stuff, but I can also be clear-eyed about what I'm doing and why. And, with editing, maybe I can engage in the paradox directly through the fiction.
One side effect of the Brain Massager section is an open willingness to be content. Somewhere along the way, somehow, I got stuck in this way of thinking that the present moment was this incomplete picture, and I was really meant to be in some future "better place". But over the past week I've caught that impulse and countered it with the mantra "This moment is enough." Astonishingly, I discover that it is, and I feel so much better and ready to engage with what's in front of me. Even as 2020 continues to dismantle our society brick by brick, in some ways I'm more content than I've been in a long time.
He recently got an app called a "Brain Massager", which is basically a way to meditate or decompress with pretty visuals, (maybe?) music and "subliminal" messaging. He had me try it out, and I listened to the Creativity program. The exercise is basically inducing a hypnotic state while helping you unblock yourself from thoughts or behaviors holding you back. It was surprisingly effective, though I think a bit of herbal assistance may have helped.
I've never really considered myself susceptible to hypnosis. While I'm definitely empathetic and tend to soak in the ambient emotional energy of my environment, I'm also incredibly easy to distract. ADHD sees to it that my thoughts fly off in different directions with the most random of stimuli. But this...I think focusing on the relaxation aspect through the first half of the exercise really helped to slow me down, so the visualization exercise afterwards was really easy to fall into.
One of the things the program has you do is take all the negative emotions you have around your creativity and put them into bubbles. Once you pop those bubbles, the hold these emotions have on your creative process lessens. I was surprised to realize how much "shame" turned up. I was popping so many shame bubbles, along with the usual "fear" and "regret". Perhaps even more surprisingly, I've been a lot less ashamed of enjoying myself or thinking about the creative projects that really excite me. I like what I like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The weight of expectation has bowed my back an awful lot this year. If you're extremely online through Twitter, there's an expectation of being a fully-formed social justice warrior without any need to wade through problematic beliefs to get with the program. Anything that might be an issue has best be kept hidden, and even talking about something as frivolous as desire or the porn you're working on can feel like an insensitive, oblivious act.
My particular tastes in macro, and even playing around with aspects of dominance and submission, or the power dynamics that come with mismatched size, has felt like something impossible to talk about or explore for a while now. The world is on fire, and so many people are just now recognizing how prevalent and deeply-rooted racial injustice is in American society. It feels WEIRD to pop up in the middle of all this and say "Yeah, but being coerced into sex with a giant is still pretty hot, actually."
I felt like I couldn't really delve into any of that, even with my Patreon serial, because (perhaps undeservedly so) I feel a certain responsibility as a somewhat-known fur of color in our circle. As much as I wish I could be sex-positive about this, writing fiction that's inherently about the abuse of overwhelming power feels particularly tone-deaf. Especially when it's married to settings like, say, macro cops or giant businessfurs.
On one hand, I totally understand how our stories have perpetuated a myth about police and even capitalism that has exacerbated the problem in both sectors. And when viewed through a macro lens, it's easy to read a very tacit acceptance of this abuse: look, we all know this behavior is transgressive but we'll give this character a pass because he makes me pop a boner.
That's...not a great look, but if you look at a lot of the popular macro stories on FA and SoFurry you'll find those themes are still very much alive and well. I think what's given me pause, though, is that the expression of this fetish is so at odds with what I'm fighting for in social justice I can't really reconcile the two.
But the way through that dilemma is not shame. Interacting with it in a way that feels honest to myself and also socially responsible feels a lot better. And slowly, but surely, I find my frozen pen warming up a little bit. Of course I'll produce problematic stuff, but I can also be clear-eyed about what I'm doing and why. And, with editing, maybe I can engage in the paradox directly through the fiction.
One side effect of the Brain Massager section is an open willingness to be content. Somewhere along the way, somehow, I got stuck in this way of thinking that the present moment was this incomplete picture, and I was really meant to be in some future "better place". But over the past week I've caught that impulse and countered it with the mantra "This moment is enough." Astonishingly, I discover that it is, and I feel so much better and ready to engage with what's in front of me. Even as 2020 continues to dismantle our society brick by brick, in some ways I'm more content than I've been in a long time.
