the other other kind of not writing, mostly

Usually when I'm not writing here it's because I'm depressed. This time it's because I am running myself at the ragged edge of exhaustion again, and "time to write introspective journal entries" has been one of the casualties of that. Along with "much other writing," and "most boardgaming and roleplaying," and "quiet evenings at home." Viola too has dropped off to what I consider an absolute bare minimum, sometimes beyond that.

So, I mean, that's still not a good thing, but at least I'm not crushingly depressed. \o/

The current state is nonsustainable. Yay me for recognising that now, after a month and a half, rather than waiting, o, three years to figure it out. Thing is, I can sustain an unsustainable state indefinitely, I've proved that plenty of times before. I just crash pretty hard once I don't need to sustain it any more.

I've not been sleeping well since we turned the heat on, around 1 October. I genuinely don't know what's going on with that, staying asleep has rarely been a problem in the past. Lot of stuff rattling around in my head that I haven't had a chance to sort through, maybe. Not bad stuff, I don't think, just ... stuff.

In another month (ack) we'll be moved in to the new place, which will relieve a lot of the temporary stress. The scheduling stress is substantially less tractable but perhaps next year will be easier on that. Family will ... either sort itself out or not. The current round of my stupid personal issues are at least identified so that I know which buttons are being hit this time. ("Everything is connected. That's why it shorts out so often." --JMF)

And, you know. I can tell that a lot of the things the inside of my head is telling me are bullshit. Doesn't make them any quieter but I do recognise that they're the product of stress and ongoing sleep-dep, and not reflective of the actual outside world.

Onward.

"Act to avoid constraining the future"

The necromancer Wake, in response to the apprentices' concerns of using their power appropriately:

Being good is not a wise course. I should not care to see you set out to do good, either.

The consequences of defeat are permament; the consequences of victory persist until the next defeat. So with good; what you do that is good persists until the next evil. This is very simple, if you can reliably decide what is good. Good would be a struggle to create a series of victories as little broken as you might arrange.

Each of you may live a long time; each of you is of significant strength. You could do good, if you could judge all the consequences of what you might do. Yet the world is immense; a full understanding of consequence is direly difficult to obtain, even should you live for thousands of years to see how what you have done works on the world, and yet good remains a judgement.

[Commentary by the apprentice Edgar: Same as not building in the flood plain. Simple rule. Figuring out where the flood plain really is, for the flood you don't get every ten years but every thousand, that's hard to do. If you pick everywhere it might be, you don't leave yourself much farmland.]

Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, act to remove constraint from the future. ...

Remember that the least constrained future that anyone has yet managed prefers the rule of law to the whims of wizards.

--Graydon Saunders, A Succession of Bad Days (Commonweal 2)