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The Animal Is Tired

robinhobb.com

421–430 of 439 posts

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happens on /r/books too. They're also obsessed with Stephen King, so I've just assumed Sanderson is also an airport novel writer.

I don't know what 'airport novel writer' means, but Sanderson comes up with some really inventive worlds and the magic in his fantasy setting has a high degree of internal consistency that really resonates with some people. His writing is also approachable in the sense that it isn't full of references to other books that are required reading in order to understand a passage. If you've got a working knowledge of the e…

Yeah "high degree of internal consistency" and "approachable" are things I want in a test suite not a novel.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#422
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe he does in fact owe his readership something. Me? No. I'm not longer part of that group.

What? What does someone who created something you enjoyed and then stopped creating more of that thing owe anyone? An explanation?

Fans have invested in a story. They started a book, got a second book, got a couple short stories and promises of a 3rd book. No 3rd book has arrived to complete the story.

If he had said "sorry, no book 3, it's just done now" years ago, or even now, then that changes expectations. But if he's just going to avoid it all then ya, that's kind of a bad thing to do to your fans.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#423

70? My animal is only 33 and is very tired. Writing this as it lays in bed, 3 in the afternoon, because even a standard chair sounds more exhausting to it. It seems to have no motivation or energy to do much besides lay here. If I force it, it will get stuff done but at a huge cost. It will yearn the entire time to just lay back down. It's interest in things seems to be fading quickly. What desire it used to have to…

Very late to this, but:

You sound like a machine built for a different set of circumstances. Wartime, or famine, or slavery; or most likely, a heavily religious society.

I would guess you’re mostly nonreligious. But you have a lot of mechanisms left over in your personal acculturation from when religion was important for your ancestors. You took out the formal religion, because that’s not needed so much these days, but still have a lot of underlying mechanisms, like a conviction that there is such a thing as an ultimate answer, which made sense when the accepted ultimate answer was God.

I would guess that you enjoy learning and regularly investigate new things, but one of the mechanisms that generates your motivation is actually an old outdated attempt to find God, which you are no longer trying to do. Rationally, you search for the limits of the set of ideas you’re currently investigating, find them, and move on, in accordance with modern liberal arts thinking. But there’s a twinge of disappointment because you were being driven partly by leftover religious mechanisms that were hoping for Ultimate Truth. The repeated disappointment of the old mechanism leads to tiredness, and a feeling that real meaning keeps not being there no matter how much you keep reading interesting things on the Internet. There may also be a buildup of resentment that your trust has been repeatedly betrayed.

Just a thought this morning. I recognize a lot of what you’re saying. My parents were missionaries and it has proven impossible to escape all of those influences.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#424

70? My animal is only 33 and is very tired. Writing this as it lays in bed, 3 in the afternoon, because even a standard chair sounds more exhausting to it. It seems to have no motivation or energy to do much besides lay here. If I force it, it will get stuff done but at a huge cost. It will yearn the entire time to just lay back down. It's interest in things seems to be fading quickly. What desire it used to have to…

Very late to this, but: You sound like a machine built for a different set of circumstances. Wartime, or famine, or slavery; or most likely, a heavily religious society. I would guess you’re mostly nonreligious. But you have a lot of mechanisms left over in your personal acculturation from when religion was important for your ancestors. You took out the formal religion, because that’s not needed so much these days, b…

Friedrich Nietzsche has a similar outlook on society today. A good book I'd recommend: Warspeak: Nietzsche's Victory over Nihilism https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55904256-warspeak

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you might be being downvoted, but this is super valid. Herpes and HPV are extremely common among those who are sexually active. It's virtually impossible to avoid either and have lots of sex with multiple partners. But obviously one can have lots of sex with a single monogamous partner though without any new risk of STDs.

One of the two you mentioned has a vaccine that many get as a teen now and the other is an occasional rash for most carriers. Obviously everyone should consider the risks associated with having sex with lots of partners but those two particular STD's are pretty low on that list of risks.

True. I only mentioned then because they're virtually omnipresent and are transmitted from skin to skin contact where a condom offers only partial protection at best.

Many other STDs need some sort of fluid transmission which is at least easier to avoid.

Also, the vaccine only protects from a few of the hundreds(?) of strains of HPV. It protects from those varieties that are most likely to cause cervical cancer, but generally not those that cause genital warts.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#426
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? What does someone who created something you enjoyed and then stopped creating more of that thing owe anyone? An explanation?

He has been stringing his fans along for over a decade. It is rude and cruel. It would be like teasing a puppy with a treat but never giving it to them. For 10 years. That is what he has done. His editor disagrees with me [1] but makes an equally strong point. [1] https://i.redd.it/4g1jexk7i9e51.jpg

I guess if grown adults are akin to puppies for you in this situation and the writer is cruel and rude for not writing another book then we see things too differently to agree in any meaningful way.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#427

70? My animal is only 33 and is very tired. Writing this as it lays in bed, 3 in the afternoon, because even a standard chair sounds more exhausting to it. It seems to have no motivation or energy to do much besides lay here. If I force it, it will get stuff done but at a huge cost. It will yearn the entire time to just lay back down. It's interest in things seems to be fading quickly. What desire it used to have to…

Very late to this, but: You sound like a machine built for a different set of circumstances. Wartime, or famine, or slavery; or most likely, a heavily religious society. I would guess you’re mostly nonreligious. But you have a lot of mechanisms left over in your personal acculturation from when religion was important for your ancestors. You took out the formal religion, because that’s not needed so much these days, b…

A very interesting perspective, thank you for posting it.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#428
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the numbers growing in absolute terms, or is the reported disasters that are growing? Before satellites, 24-hour news, the internet and social-media + camera phones, a lot of natural disasters went unreported. Now you will find clips of a disaster with two dozen different viewpoints, before, during and after, all in high resolution[1]. So what decades ago would have been a short, nondescript page-3 article about…

Yeah, I’d seen that one. I wouldn’t consider the Beirut explosion a natural disaster though ;) I think that, due to global warming, the actual number is increasing.

Fair point - but that was a neat example of the kind of coverage modern-day disaster get. The Puebla earthquake also had countless videos, but none were curated in one package like the Beirut explosion.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#429
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Covid made life a lot less interesting. Or, put a bit differently, I think that we quit doing a bunch of the things that made life interesting. And I think that is mentally wearing. I don't know if, in your case, that's the whole answer. You might find it worth while to seek medical advice...

Related, I was just talking about why middle/high school years seem to last longer than now. The variety of the time spent was probably a factor (Playing in the band one day, focusing on decathlon another). Life is monotonous these days.

Yes, I have a theory that the perception of time is very closely matched with your perception of novelty. New things, extend the perception of time. Seeing new lands, new people, new experiences, all place landmarks in your memory that make time real. When the days just blurr into each other your brain has a very hard time perceiving the time that went by. All of a sudden, a year is gone. You think about that year, and it seems like it just flew by because well, you have no mental landmarks to remember.

This is why time moves so much slower as a kid. Everything is new then.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That, or it's some terrible undiagnosed medical condition. Sounds like ADHD to me too. At least it's eerily similar to my experience and I'm in the process of getting diagnosed. https://youtu.be/WFkpICWE9DM - might help.

So, probably, yes. I have struggled my entire life with these issues. The post you see here isn't something that's new. Whatever is causing this is inherent to my being. I've seen doctors, and had both depression and adhd diagnosed. The ADHD meds were amazing. They "solved" this problem. I feel better, I feel happy, I feel more motivated, I feel more natural interest and ability to hold my focus. I feel less foggy an…

You might want to just try a lower dose. While it may be different because I don’t take stimulants for ADHD, I don’t feel like myself if the dose is too high.

Also, different medications work for different people. Vyvanse works the best for me, but I’m just after stimulation (for idiopathic hypersomnia).

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