I’ve been dealing with some physical issues that left me limping badly enough I stayed off the treadmill for a couple months, just as the pool shut down for major maintenance and closed off the more joint-friendly option for aerobic exercise. They got better, so now I’m limping a little worse as I’m working walking back into my routine.
But slowly, getting better.
Meanwhile, work had a crunch period. I’m stressed enough the writing stopped, but with getting the walking back in – and the pool’s finally reopened – I hope to soon get that under control, and back to writing.
We’ll see. I recently realized I’d only finished 47 books on kindle this year, and almost all of the fiction was… the kind of reading I classify as cotton candy for the brain. It was so insubstantial that I can’t even remember what most of it was about.
Which, to be fair, is a really great explanation on why that stuff sells so well; it’s for people who are too stressed to engage, and want an escape where everything’s spelled out on the surface level, doesn’t demand any thought, and everything ends well.
I can’t write that kind of book, but I’ve appreciated being able to read it everywhere from hospital waiting rooms to lunch breaks when I don’t want to interact with any other human beings… to my own house when I have run out of energy and executive function after a long week.
Because sometimes, the right answer is to accept I’m not going to get the lawn mowed today, load up on water, electrolytes, painkillers, and curl up with a light frothy, fluffy story while two cats find somewhere on or next to me to settle down and purr.
What stories do you prefer when you’re too stressed, exhausted or in pain to read your usual?
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “Brain Break”
When really stressed, I may turn to old favorites (my best comfort foods). But what I don’t want in new stuff is memory stress or irritation:
* A million characters (standalone or series) whose names/history/relationships/crimes I can’t keep track of, in the author’s hands. As a simulation of deep history, it’s fine. As people overflowing your in-head living room… not so much.
* Expert puzzle/implementation/mystery expertise setups that only a gamer could love. A little of that goes a long way.
* Things that sneak past my acquisition radar: psychopathy, porn, wokerei, rewarding bad behavior.
* Really bad copyediting. I’m wading thru a long series which is quite entertaining, but it desperately needs a copy editor, since there are dozens and dozens of copyedit errors in each entry that apparently didn’t catch the author’s eye, so one reads thru a constant fog of exasperation that wreaks havoc on any possibility of a reader’s trance.
* Fling-book-at-wall plot/logic/”that’s not how any of that works” errors. Ereaders cost money. 🙂
I got my wife a set of mysteries with lots of fluff. I started to read the first one of the series, but they got walled out of my Kindle when the name of the Big Bad changed halfway through the book. No reason, nothing plausible.
There’s some new books in that series but ($SPOUSE doesn’t do online anything) I’m not going to buy unless she tells me to look for more. OTOH, a favorite author did a double-doorstop not-quite-real-crime novel that will take a while for either of us to go through. The author admitted that his daughter & chief editor told him to keep the wordlength down for the next time–two big volumes for one novel is one too many.
And when I’m stressed, I go back to a favorite series and reread. TXRed has a few (Familiars, Merchants, Shikhari, etc) as does OldNFO (Grey Man, & makes note to put Rimworld on the list.) And, I won’t forget some tactical romances by one D. Grant. 🙂
And old favorite, or a recent one. Something I enjoyed, and know well enough that I can skip parts I’m not interested in right now and go on to the part i want right now.
I revert to known quantities; mostly Georgette Heyer or Dean Koontz depending on the mood, and choosing them based on what I remembered of the plot and how long it had been since last reading. (For Koontz, with the weirdly generic titles forced on him by his publishers, I often have to google what I remember of the plot to find the title that goes with it.) John C. Wright filled this slot as well to some extent when he was still publishing regularly.
Or I revert to nonfiction on the web; I find true crime interesting as long as the victims aren’t children. When I’m genuinely too ill/tired to brain, nothing gets read, and nothing gets written.
Books that I have already read, and generally children’s books. 13 Clocks is really good.
If I’m stressed, I don’t read, Ms. Dorothy. I prefer to enjoy stories I can just shut my eyes and listen to, like you would an old radio show. I prefer 1930s/1940s comedy movies or the WB cartoons.
First level of stress and I start reading archaeology (both academic and experimental archaeology stuff.) Second level of stress and I read cookbooks, the kind that have cultural information or family stories along with recipes. More than that and I just listen to classical music and let my brain slide into absolute neutral.
I don’t know your feet personally, but you might want to try comfier shoes. If you can go to a shoe store and get your feet measured, that will give you a baseline as to whether your feet have changed size. Mine have grown and changed a lot in my middle age.
Those Brooks Ghost Max shoes I got, in Extra Wide, made a huge difference. (Extra Wide isn’t that wide in Women’s sizes, but it’s wider than the other toe boxes I was able to get. I have a skinny foot and heel and a broad set of toes. I have to get Extra Wide online.)
I also had to go through a process of getting comfier insoles to replace the Ghost Max insoles, and those were pretty comfy to start out with. Right now I’m wearing Dr. Scholl’s Plantar Fasciitis insoles (which have some support features as well as cushiony bits), and they really made a difference.
Finally, it turned out that I’ve been tieing my shoes too tightly, right at the ankle, to the point that it was pulling on the rest of my foot. I couldn’t find that out until I got rid of all the other pain sources. Since my shoes now fit, I don’t have to warp them so much.
And now I have to work on my glutes and hips and core, because I’ve been babying them while my feet hurt so much.
Aye. When I was 50, I wore size 13D shoes. As of age 72, 14D is too small, and the comfortable boots are a size 15EE.
I have a couple sets of orthotics, one made in the early ’90s and another around 2010. They help when the shoe is right.
OTOH, on Pnatar fasciitis: There are stretches the second podiatrist taught me that will loosen the tendon. Took about 6 weeks, 3X per day for the heel pain to go away. The orthotics are now optional.
This site includes the stretches I found helpful: https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/plantar-fasciitis-best-exercises-pain-relief
Inserts help. And exercises. And compression foot sleeves.
The exercises might do the trick if I remembered to do them frequently enough
Honestly, I read your novels, Dorothy – especially Climbing the Rim. Those and almost anything written by Nathan Lowell, especially The Wizard’s Butler.
What stories do you prefer when you’re too stressed, exhausted or in pain to read your usual?
That face when you realize you’ve been reading the “too stressed to read your usual stuff” for so long that it’s become your usual.
… but for some reason reading indifferently-translated, fluffy-romance Chinese webnovels doesn’t usually trigger the “You can’t sit down and read a book there’s too much work to be done” impulse (and I don’t have any idea where I picked that up) the way sitting down and reading a book… feels like it would if I could physically reach any of them over the stuff I need to clear away from the front of the the shelves.
>_>;
… yyyyeaaahhh…….