Then why don’t I do it?
Seven minutes after 8 o’clock in the evening, I start my compte a rebours on my Garmin that’s good for tearing up the skin around my wrist. Most of my devices are programmed to display in French. This portable computer on which I’m typing is not; I don’t know why it keeps underlining my words and auto-correcting to nothing I’m trying to type.
Look, my stomachique… she, ahhhhhh! SEE, it did it again. What Language is even « stomachique » ?! Stomach is « estomac » en français.
This is annoying af, almost as annoying as my stomach being a hot air balloon at this very moment. SWOLLEN, do you hear me?! GAS GALORE, okay?! I’m disgusted. Girl, wtf is going on right now?!
I’m trying to think, where should I have stopped today, before the peanut butter and dark chocolaté covered almonds? No, I ate those out of force, some sort of acids or something in my stomach organ sent signals to my brain to munch on something to help calm it, to give the beast something it wants so it could stop yelling at me. It didm’t… girl, that’s not a word in any language... AHHHHH! I keep having to backspace every few words to correct something this stupide fricking machine has changed.
Let me Connect to my hot spot and open a Squarespace blog kraft; [rolls eyes] DRAFT!!!! Hopefully it won’t miss me… grrrrrrrr… *PISS* ME OFF!
Let’s try this again
Ain’t Nothing to It but to Do It: Fighting Limbic Friction, Gas, and Everyday Chaos
(Above title created by ChatGPT when I pasted text from today’s writing session.)
See, YouTube decided to auto-play an epidode of Huberman Lab essentials while I was touching up my hair and it talked about limbic friction, a term the Standford professor says that he pretty much made up himself. How much bullshit, or any sort of resistance, is going to get in a person’s way when a person is trying to do a task she says she wants to do, is what that friction is referring to.
And this muhfuggin’ bullshit with me trying to write tonight sholl is a whole lot of friction!
AHH! I want to scream.
It’s very possible that my gut being disturbed, all this funky gas filled in my body cavity, is what’s upsetting me… or a great contribution to my upset, or the base of it.
I’m annoyed, okay?! Because why didn’t I do this earlier today?! I say I want to write every day. I set a goal with a productivity coach to write for 90 minutes each day. Simple enough, right? Yeah, so I thought.
“Easy! I plan to have a good report when I return to you for our next session.”
That was a week ago from today, on the evening of Indigenous Peoples’ Day and I haven’t even set the next appointment with her. Now, I bet if I’d continued writing for 90 minutes each day, I’d’ve set that appointment. I’d written for 90 minutes Thursday, the morning of our call, my first session with this lady, then I got up the next morning and did another bout of deep work at the library Friday morning, before heading back to my place to get ready for a gig later that afternoon.
Saturday came and ou wee, I was scheduled to work 9am to 9pm at the 200-dollar toothbrush pop-up store in Glendale Galleria, then had confirmed with THREE of my girlfriends that I’d be meeting them DTLA for an art exhibition that I had invited them to attend.
When was I supposed to fit in 90 minutes of writing when I’m already cutting it close on sleep due to going to bed late and waking up early because I needed two hours after the gig to get home on L.A. public transit Friday night then two hours to get back to the gig on public transit Saturday morning.
Everything about that gig pissed me off. Darn it, including the paperwork to get paid that I still haven’t done. Who requires an agreement to get legally notarized for a little one-off independent contractor gig?! [lips turn up in disgust] [eyes roll] You know how long I’ve been doing gig work around L.A.?! Since I’ve been living here, 2017!! It’s 2025 and I ain’t nevaaaaaa had an employer require that I go somewhere and pay to have a document notarized to be able to do “onboarding” and get paid. I’m working to earn money, not spend it!! You’re already spending my money (time) having me fill out all these dumb ass documents on my own time! Y’all know that’s the biggest legal scam with which companies abuse low-level workers, right? The application process and onboarding!
I freaking hate capitalism as it currently exists. Ugh.
Okay, my bedtime alert went off on my phone, I don’t know, whenever that was when my phone lit up a moment ago… alarm set for 05:25! Pilates class at 6 o’clock in the morning.
I’m wearing the same thing tomorrow that I wore today, which is the same thing that I wore yesterday. Bih, I ain’t got tha time.
See, I set the pilates class for 6am because I knew there was a possibility that I’d get booked on a background extra gig and filming tends to start as early in the day as production can make it. My thought process was the earlier I snag a seat in my fitness studio class, the better the chances that I wouldn’t have to cancel and lose my credits. (The girls that know, know. Nothing ticks a fitness class going girlie off more than being penalized for a late cancelation or a no-show. Whoever came up with that particularity in the boutique fitness studio business model deserves a nod, a job well done. That shit works! We are the same girls — and by we, I mean me — that will be late for work, if we work at all, that are FLYING in to a fitness class before the front desk cuts off check-in.)
I figured, if I’m walking out of the pilates studio by 7am, surely I can make it to an 8am call time on set in the local L.A. area. And who’s really going to have the call time for background extras be earlier than 8am?! Other than The Pitt, I worked on that show for a couple of weeks, where we regularly had to be on the Warner Bros. lot by 6am.
After awaking from a midday nap, I saw an email from Central Casting with the call details for “Golden Dome” (never heard of it, could very well be a code name for filming).
Project: Golden Dome (SV)
Date: Friday, December 5th
Call time: 1pm
Mother-fuh…
Got diggity dawg, I didn’t have to snag that last spot in the 6am Pilates class with Christina. Christina gives bourgeoisie Black girl that picked up being a pilates instructor because she had the extra ten-thousand bucks laying around and wanted something to do with her time. I’m a fan. I could’ve caught Christina in another slot though! Shoot.
Why don’t you just reschedu… late cancelation! [side eye] Now I’m stuck getting my gassy gut up at 5 o’clock in the morning. Hopefully, I won’t still be gassy by then. Or, at the least, if there’s still air trapped in between my internal organs that has to be released, hopefully I’ll have released the solid waste that it would’ve had to pass by… then, it’ll just be air, not stinky air. And when my air coming out of a clogged colon stinks, IT STINKS! Ew. Would hate to have to subject the other girls in pilates class to such torchery, but you know what I’d hate more? Yep, I be damned I cancel.
Ou, 21 minutes after 9pm and my Garmin says 16 minutes and some change left on the countdown.
Let me just copy/paste this into ChatGPT to see what it says I’ve written about in this hassle of a writing session. Actually, I feel great now. [holds back grin] I’m slightly smiling, almost laughing at myself for being so frustracted with the Notes application on this dumb ass MacBook, then the lagging service of my hotspot sharing when I first opened Google Chrome and navigated to Squarespace.
Wow, this isn’t half bad at all. There really is nothing to it but to do it. Why I missed yesterday… [pauses to count]. Okay, I set (reset, I’ve had this goal before…), I set this goal into motion on Thanksgiving, Thursday, and today is Thursday, that’s 7 days. I wrote for 90 minutes the day I started (and met with the career coach), the next day, then today. Shit, that’s terrible. [giggles under breath]
Mmmm… I set a goal to write for 90 minutes each day and the first week, I hit the mark 3 out of 7 days. Merp. I’m not mad.
I actually feel so much better now. Oh, shit, let me do these people’s paperwork fa I ca get paid. I ain’t got no notary for ‘em, they go’on have’ta be aight.
Good night.