Mary hk choi age3/1/2024 I’m always going to be really pragmatic about finances because my parents are immigrants, and specifically they’re Korean immigrants of a certain age who literally lived through famine, the Japanese occupation, my mother having a large family and going hungry-these things very, very much inform the way they brought me up. I’m not saying it’s unnatural, and I really admire people who can do it. I’m not good at multitasking, and I’m certainly not good at consuming and ejecting at the same time. I feel like these three things are really, really important, and they work hand-in-hand, but they have to be discreet from one another. I believe in a creative metabolism working in a way where I have ingestion periods. Do you think that prioritizing financial security is always in conflict with doing creative work, or are there advantages? You’ve spoken about being someone who prioritizes financial security in your career. I’m trying to feel more with less, I guess. Then, with addicts it’s like, you just try to apply a thing to those feelings, and that’s where everything goes disastrously pear-shaped. I feel like the relationship with the two is that we are wavy people, so our brains are so random and peripatetic. Those are the tabs that I just want to close. That’s what I mean when I talk about an addict’s brain or a creative’s brain. There’s something about the way social media is set up where for anxious people, it’s like, you just rue everything you’ve said or done or ever did or ever thought. Yeah, like what you were saying about that long tail of thinking about something, where it’s funny, because it’s not an interaction. I feel stingy on social media, which kind of sucks, but I haven’t figured out a way to reconcile that in my work just yet. You know, the horrible thing about being a creative person is that there is that period in which you have to promote what you do, and so sometimes I feel like I’m a bad citizen of social media where I’m like, saying all the things that I’m doing, or “please buy this,” or “please click on this.” While I do read/buy/click other people’s things, I have to be so judicious about it. I also really love discovering new work and getting excited about things that I’ve never seen before, seeing artists or illustrators do something that just tickles this very specific itch within me. I really do love that aspect of it, and I really do like the lowered inhibition when it comes to talking to someone I might otherwise feel so anxious about, and just paying them a compliment that in that moment feels so sincere to me, that doesn’t feel like a form of social consideration where you’re just quid pro quoing. ![]() I swear to god, if there were filters for only seeing my friend’s babies and dogs and cats, I would be really pumped. It’s really unfortunate, because I love social media so much, and I love being able to be in contact with my friends. It’s so seductive, because it disguises itself as self-soothing at times. ![]() In Emergency Contact I even call social media self-harm, basically. It makes every single browser have pinwheel of death.Īs somebody who has a lot of issues with anxiety and social anxiety, being on Instagram-sometimes it’ll set something off in me where I’ll be like, “Why don’t I talk to this person anymore? Did they never really like me?” It can be almost like a form of self-harm that looks innocent from the outside. It makes all the tabs in the browser of my mind open. I don’t question anymore why my brain is that way or why my physiological makeup likes that so much, but the thing about addicts is that you can have that feedback loop with anything, so I have to be mindful of that.Īny time I’m really, really stuck on that recursive thing of instant gratification and instant empty adoration, I have to check myself, because it makes me super sick. I can sit and just look at Instagram stories of food accounts for 13 hours. It started off as bulimia and then metamorphosed into this restriction and food obsession. My preferred addiction is that I have an eating disorder. Right now I can only write when the sun is out, which sucks, especially since the day is shortening.Īlso, I have an addict’s brain. I have to stay off of social media for the most part during the day, during the time where the sun is out and I’m still able to write. It’s such a big thing that you’re chipping away at.Įroding some of my focus with social media is really challenging. But I’m learning that that does not work with novel writing or long-form writing. I lead with mandible and grit and white knuckles in terms of that propulsive force that gets me through anything. It’s funny, I’m trying this new thing of being gentle. Well, you know, when I sit down to write I move forward with this single-minded, monastic purpose. How do you stay focused when there are so many opportunities for distraction online and on smartphones?
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