this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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Spitballing here:
It might be anxiety-related.
A lot of people with chronic anxiety tend to get late-night zoomies because there's less pressure to perform and to do things because the world has gone to sleep and, suddenly, without all of that external pressure weighing down on that anxious mind you feel extremely motivated to do things or to revamp your life etc.
If we assume that this is the case for your experience and we assume that the major cause for your writer's block is anxiety-related (both of which are pretty plausible without actually knowing any specifics) then the logical conclusion is that you feel motivated to write at 3am not because of the positive presence of inspiration but because of the absence of anxiety, or the relief from it.
Obviously this is just wild speculation so take this guess with all due caution. It's easy enough to test whether this is the case in order to rule it in/out though and if you think it might be a fit then the next step would be looking at ways to manage your anxiety levels so that you can enjoy more creative pursuits.
I've heard this be called "Revenge Insomnia" because you're trying to make up late at night all the things your brain wants to do during the day.
This is a fantastic term, thank you for introducing it to me.
Double check me on it. It's a half remembered article I read on
Meh, I'm gonna take it and run with it - I'm not concerned about its provenance. You could have coined the term in the comment above and I'd appreciate it just the same.
I decided to look it up and I wasn't completely wrong. The correct term is "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination" insomnia is a bit less voluntary sounding, while "Bedtime procrastination" sounds more like a choice, which for many I assume it is.
I used to have it really bad, staying up all night to do mainly gaming, because it was a about the only thing to do at 5am in the morning, and didn't live anywhere close to a Konbini Store .
Now I'm older and midnight is like latest stay up time. Probably shocked it out of my systems trying to moderate this website in the early days when I was the only person staying up till like 6am to delete the forbidden phrase.
I'm frankly in awe of anyone who can be a moderator and not get insane insomnia. Just thinking about that responsibility stresses me out
It's part of why I stopped doing it. My mental health was flowing down the drain and it wasn't worth holding on to something that was bringing me pain.
And despite coming out trans like within the year of me leaving, I still occasionally see stuff about what a huge Transphobe I am, because I one time made a typo that accidentally misgendered someone once.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
holy shit this explains so much.
Yes that describes exactly how I feel. I have tabs open for Meloxicam and Gabapentin, are they from you? It would be very cool to just pop pills to fix my anxiety.
Actually no, I haven't looked into meloxicam and gabapentin is one of those drugs that I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending to people because it's one that I feel like deserves proper supervision from a prescribing doctor for; that's not to say that it doesn't work or that it's particularly risky or anything but there are some conditions that you can throw a drug at and you can be reasonably certain that it'll be effective - lithium with bipolar, stimulants with ADHD, that sort of thing - and then there's other drugs that get pretty specific in what they treat or how they treat things so without sitting down and really mapping out what the symptoms are, what the causes are and ruling out what isn't a cause, and getting specific about how a drug is going to treat those symptoms based on a working hypothesis then I usually leave those ones to the experts, such as gabapentin.
I've never tried gabapentin before but I know that some people absolutely swear by it.
I have a doctor who is willing to prescribe me things, so there is that. Also my wife says I tried gabapentin already (for nerve pain) and it sucked lmao.
Anyways how dare you curse me with this knowledge that I could be cool if anxiety was not ruining my life 24/7! The absolute nerve!
Lol, knowledge really is a curse.
I guess if it's any consolation, I don't see it as a matter of "you would be cool if it weren't for the anxiety" but more like "you are cool and you also have anxiety that causes you trouble".
My brain frames it like, "look how fucking cool you are at 3am. You have such ideas and power and freedom. But your dumb ass is flattened every day by being SCARED, why are you SCARED small bean???" which yknow...
So your brain is making you scared of being scared? Mine does that sometimes lol. Whenever I figure out how to diffuse one level of anxiety, just bring it up one level of meta and keep the anxiety flowing.
No I'm furious about it. Brain cool only at night, garbage all other times.
This is coming from someone who spends a lot of time screaming internally at their own experience of anxiety, so it's something that comes with very sincere solidarity and an acute awareness of my own hypocrisy in saying this but...
I wonder if there's might be a different way of relating to your experience of anxiety, and I wonder if you chose to extend some hospitality towards it what this anxiety would might tell you?
(e.g. I know oftentimes I feel anxious because something is important to me and that my anxiety is telling me that it's important, sometimes my anxiety is telling me I need reassurance or validation, sometimes it tells me that I have an unadressed need to feel more secure, and so on...)
absolutely me