Audio-Spice, Visual Success: When Laughter Provides Inspiration
While I don't happen to be a sofa anymore, I think I've found a general cure for my rash of blockheadedness. First, I had to check off all the things that weren't providing the problem. For example, this is hands-down, 100% the most stress-free job I've ever — I repeat, ever — had. From the people I work with to the job itself, the most stress I feel is when I'm starting to creep up on my budgeted hours. So, no, stress isn't it. What else? Well, I could say that sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day could do it. Who in their right mind would like to go home and do it some more?
…
Um. Excuse me while I raise my hand. I more or less live on the computer, so that's not my excuse.
I could, if I really wanted to, pin it on the fact that my home monitor is dying a little every day — having three cats on top of it at any given time may or may not be helping this situation — and has since decided to color all things with a subtle shade of gray. My colors are muted, and I didn't realize until I looked at it on my work computer and nearly had my eyes seared out by vivid neon-pastels. Don't ask.
Well, all right, that's not really an excuse either. So, no cause found. What about a cure?
I tried powering through it. I tried looking at old portfolio work, giggling madly, and then re-affirming my vow to never do that again. I tried ignoring it the way a parent ignores a screaming four year old whose great tragedy of the day is a lack of chocolate and princess-wear. (Note to self: the day my creative processes start screaming, look into psychiatric help.) All of these things failed, and once more, I became as unto a sofa. Or some such.
So what on earth helped me break out of my slowly moldering spiral of failed creation?
…Don't laugh. Or better yet, do: It was a romance book.
I am a patron of audible.com, a site dedicated to an innumerable amount of audio books and such things. I picked up most of my Terry Pratchett books there, the famed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy collection (they have both the unabridged volumes and the BBC collection). I've cleaned them out of everything I wanted to listen to, and so picked up a random romance-suspense-thriller book. It's read by a man — awwwwwkward — and while the story has me in giggle-fits periodically, the thing is five hours long of complete and utter brain-freeze.
Voila! Maybe it was the fact that I had something engaging (in a weird sort of way) and fun to laugh at while I was working. Maybe it was while I was just letting my mind absorb what isn't, very likely, going to be the next prize-winning bit of fluff anytime soon. (Could you imagine what future civilizations– or as is more likely, future alien anthropologists– will say when they dig into the strata of buried-over bookstores? "Why, Grgleblag, look at this! We have uncovered some lost texts of this planet's 21st century!" … "Goodness gracious, Jorkaborka, this is clearly a textbook of a great king and queen of the people!… And, um. And… the things they…did. Oh, dear.")
Well, it worked. Who am I to complain? Mid-giggle, I got hit with an idea, and I've been running with it since.
Fortunately, it wasn't inspired by that book. That would just be weird.
The thing I figure is this. It's not like TV, where the only thing you can really do — if you're really into mind-rotting, that is — is watch it. TV takes up so much time, it's ridiculous. As long as I'm glued to the set, I get nothing done. I get no thinking done. While I'm pretty good at figuring out who did what and how in all my favorite shows, that doesn't really count as thinking. And yet… If I can get my storybook entertainment while I'm doing other things, the multi-tasking opens the door to other multi-tasking! I can think about this or that while listening to some fictional heroine work things out for herself (or con others into doing it for her, come on, let's not be too high up on that horse), and the beauty of it is… I get work done while doing it. I laugh while doing it.
Laughter really is the best medicine. Now, if I can just figure out how to bottle that and sell it, I'll be rich.
Oh, wait. I know. Publish an audiobook!