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Fantasy Romance

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3 Reasons We Procrastinate – According to Science

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As I’ve been working on this rewrite, I’ve been spending a lot of time doing everything BUT rewriting my latest romance novel.

prorast

I am not a procrastinator by nature. As a matter-of-fact, I regularly complete projects at work early. Here may be why.

 

3 Reasons Science Says is Why I Procrastinate

You can take a look here and here if you’d like, but the gist of the articles is:

 

1. Avoidance Behavior

If you dread the task ahead of you, you may avoid doing it in the short-term. You know, procrastinate. This can cause a vicious cycle, but it does play into #3 below in that it gives a temporary feel-good emotion while you’re doing something other than what you dread.

 

2. Lack of Motivation

People are known to procrastinate when there’s very little motivation to do a hard task.  I need to think more about this. I was loving this book and on a roll with it until early July. Something derailed me.

 

3. Present Emotions vs Future Emotions

There’s a very real emotional punch you get when you accomplish something. And as humans, we tend to prioritize the moment over the future. And watching a funny cat video? Instant laugh.

 

I need to do some thinking on this. Something changed to make the task less desirable, triggering both my avoidance behavior and my lack of motivation.

How about you? Do you procrastinate? What do you procrastinate doing? What’s your fix for it?

5 Reasons I’m Considering a Lab-Grown Sapphire

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Valentine’s Day is coming, and during this time of year, my husband tends to be looking for a gift. He’s lived with me for many years and is very aware that I have a magpie gene. Yes, it’s true, I am drawn to sparkly shiny things. Always have been.

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Not sure I’d wear it, but cool necklace.

Armed with this knowledge, he knows a trip to the jewelry store will almost always result in me loving my present.

 This year, however, I was doing a bit more research so I could help him.

 Five Reasons I’m Considering a Lab-Grown Sapphire

 There is No Chemical Difference – Lab-grown sapphire’s are not like cubic zirconia is to diamonds. A lab grown sapphire has exactly the same chemical composition as a sapphire mined from the earth down to the molecular level. Yeah. Molecular level.

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Carbon. Building blocks of a diamond.

Some new manufacturing processes allow for the stones to be made much larger and eliminate most of impurities in the process of creating the stones. Seriously, it’s like science fiction made real.

And yes, they are real stones. Made in a similar way to the way they made by the Earth, just made faster. Only way to tell if a quality lab-grown stone is lab-grown is for a trained gemologist to inspect it under a special microscope and look for the telltale signs of how the manufactured gem was seeded.

 

Environmental Sustainability – Lab grown gems are much more environmentally sustainable. Not only does it take less energy to create one than to mine one from the ground, but there’s no long term damage to the earth and surroundings communities. Some of the mining techniques used to extract gems are horrendous.

mining
This is actually a very mild form of mining.

Origin – You know exactly where the gem was created. There is no worry about conflict minerals. If you read up on how many of the miners are treated, this alone can be worth it. They aren’t called blood diamonds because of their color.

Price – Lab grown gems are much less expensive than gems mined from the ground.

Colors – You can get a rainbow of colors at the same quality.

 I’m still not completely sure what I think, but I am huge proponent of science. I am trying to wrap my brain around why we wouldn’t manufacture all gems if what my research shows is true.

Perhaps I’m missing something. What do you think? Is there a reason you’d prefer a gem that came from the earth rather than a lab? Why do you think we still mine gems at all?

 

 

 

Technology and Magic

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

 

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Better have a dragon, Joffrey.

Fantasy and science fiction share some elements, particularly the need to build a world for a reader. One thing that’s true for either genre, though, is that you can have so many things be true for the world depending on the level of technology.

Transporters = Teleportation Spell

Faster than light space travel = Cosmic ships following the time flow

Blasters = Wands

Seriously, if you told my great-grandmother about smartphones, netflix, and the internet, she’d have looked at you like you were crazy. Even my grandmother hasn’t gotten past basic television.

I can see how technology can very easily appear magical. As a reader, I am absolutely willing to suspend disbelief when I pick up either genre of books.

I will caveat this with some science fiction gives little lee-way for made-up science. One particular author I read years ago refused to use faster-than-light travel as it didn’t conform to what we know about space travel. Interestingly, however, the same author had cryogenics in the story to compensate for the long flight times to Jupiter where they were going to terraform moons.

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Terraforming in process. Or is that a magic spell…

Neither cryogenics or terraforming are exactly proven science, but it was a still a good story.

For me, that’s what it’s about. A good story. I want to read something and be immersed in it. I want to care about the characters and what they’re doing.

Start bogging me down in too much scientific detail or the minutia of your magic system, and I start skimming. If I can’t find the good bits again pretty quickly, I move on to the next book.

Both genres also have to be careful how they handle gender differences. I have seen too much misogyny masked in, “But that’s how it was.”

In some cases, it could be an accurate portrayal if medieval Europe, though frequently it isn’t. But here’s the thing, this is a fantasy world. The religion. The norms and mores. You can choose a Judaeo-christian society, just as you can choose to create one like the Mosuo.

Still, it’s interesting how certain themes come through both science fiction and fantasy.

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Okay, so maybe some we’d rather not see.

It’s fun to explore the impossible, and both genres do that. I enjoy reading both. Of course, there is that one thing I see in fantasy that science fiction has yet to tackle: dragons!

You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?

How about you? Do you see magic and technology as interchangeable? Perhaps indistinguishable? Why or why not?

Biological Link Between Fatigue and Pain

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Yes, I manged to re-injure an old injury again.

3rrjrh

While I’m not really ready to discuss it, or what we’re going to do on a longer term to “fix” it, I did notice I’ve been exhausted during the ordeal. I mean really, really tired.

So, I started to wonder if there was a connection between pain and fatigue. I know I was in so much pain I was sweating. So, I thought there might be something there.

Turns out, there is.

I did a lot of searching through the internet, and while WebMd and eMedicine agreed with me, I tend to be skeptical of these sites.

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I kept digging, and I learned suffers of arthritis have known this for years. I’m not suffering from anything as severe as arthritis, thank goodness, so more digging. And the internet delivered. I found an article from the University of Washington Medicine: Orthopedics and Sports Medicine that lists pain right below disease as a cause of fatigue.

I know how tired I was when I had a cold, which is nowhere near the level of disease they are discussing, but pain did make the list. So I feel like maybe there is some vindication and science behind what I’m experiencing.

tired

More digging led to me to an article written by the University of Iowa. It goes into why pain causes fatigue, and why men suffer less than women from it due to a protein involved in muscle pain and how it worked in conjunction with testosterone. As men have significantly more testosterone in their system, this reduced the pain they feel.

Of course it does. We get labor, and they get reduced pain. Where is the justice?!?

But I digress.

Sadly, while this all tells me what I’m going through is normal, it doesn’t give any insights in how to manage it.

At this point, I figure the best plan is to listen to my doctor (as my husband drilled into my head) and rest. Really listen to my body. Pain response evolved for a reason, and that reason is usually to tell us to knock off whatever we’re doing because it injured us, and now the body needs us to do a certain thing so it can heal.

pain

This thing is usually rest, and for me, keep that injured area immobile.

Which is so hard when there is always so much to do.

Before I can anything, thought, I have to heal. “I am not going to rush this. Really.” I repeat to myself over and over again.

After I do heal, I need to find someone that can help me build an exercise regime a middle-aged desk jockey who has some underlying medical issues can still do without injury.

And I will. I want to be healthy and live to be there for my kids and husband. I will find a way.

 

Have you ever found yourself really tired if you’re in pain? How did you handle it? If you’re in less than pristine condition and have a workout routine, how did you develop it?

 

Protein Powder – Fact and Wishful Thinking

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I have taken up strength training, and as part of the process, the nutritional information I’ve been fed most of my life kicked in.

Ever since I took a class through my employer twenty years ago, people have been pushing protein powder post workout. Not just any protein powder, but whey protein.

Up until this point, I’d been diligently following what that original instructor told me. The books I’d bought on the subject reiterated everything he’d said.

Protein1
No, not Facebook. Just my blog.

I decided to check with science and see what the actual demonstrable results were.

This was harder than I thought.

I read through the WebMD articles, but there were no links to actual studies. No published results. Just an “expert” giving their opinion. I was surprised, though I probably shouldn’t be.

There is a lot of really good information here  if you are a really serious lifter. If you look past the images, you’ll see that the site is actually quite impressive. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. The articles I read there were all very well written and footnoted.

Yeah, the authors quote real studies. They think about those studies and what they mean for their target readers. Seriously good site. I wish I could find something similar for middle-aged desk-jockeys trying to dodge osteoporosis. Interestingly, this site assumes you are drinking a shake after workout and goes into which protein powders are best. But, these guys are hardcore lifters.

I am not. Middle-aged desk-jockey, remember?

So, WebMD’s site offered a different opinion than the “expert” that my company had paid to come talk to all of the employees, and a different opinion than that of devoted lifters. WebMD’s opinion had no scientific studies behind it, so I dug a little deeper.

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Opinions masquerading as facts permeate the web. Have to check your sources carefully.

 

I found this: Protein timing and its effects on muscular hypertrophy and strength in individuals engaged in weight-training

It’s from the US National Library of Medicine. Yeah, that’s a respectable data source.  I tried to read this article, but I’ll confess, I ended up skipping down to the conclusion. That conclusion states that certain proteins, consumed pre or post workout, do, indeed, have an impact. Not only that, but for building muscle, whey protein really did have the best results.

Sometimes experience, as in the case of those weight lifters over at T-Nation, has taught us a thing or two.

Next question for me, however, is does what I do really constitute the level of exertion they are describing in the study.

Probably not. I’m a desk-jockey by day and romance writer by night. Yes, I’m strength training, but I’m not really “weight lifting”. Especially not like the guys a T-Nation. As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m in awe. Especially after enduring my version of strength training. That’s serious dedication and pain over there that I’ll never have.

That’s okay. My goals are different. I’ll never be ripped, but I am looking to be able to stay mobile as I age and fend off osteoporosis which is a big deal in my family, especially for desk-jockeys.

As of right now, I am still using the powder after each workout.

Protein3
Although, first I have to get the scoop out. Why doesn’t it attach to the lid?!?

Not because I think it’ll help me build more muscle, but because of a less talked about side effect.

Faster recovery.

I’d love to link to a quality study on this, but for all of the websites that talk about faster recovery, none of them actually link to any studies that prove it. *sigh*

What I do have is my own experience. Maybe it’s placebo (the brain is powerful that way), or maybe it’s real, but lots of people who do much harder workouts than mine swear it helps get rid of jelly legs faster. Lemme tell ya, I’ll do a lot to get rid of jelly legs and drinking something that tastes like chocolate milk is not a hardship.

So, for the moment, I’m willing to let my quest for the truth rest and drink my protein shake after working out. Maybe it helps, maybe it’s all in my head, but for the moment, I don’t see any reason not to indulge a placebo. And, they whey protein I found on Amazon tastes like chocolate milk.

 

How about you? Do you strength train, and if so, do you drink a protein shake afterwards? Why or why not? Any other post-workout tips to reduce jelly legs or just the general aches and pains?

Brain Went on Summer Vacation

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A week before vacation, my brain and body decided they were already there. I struggled to motivate myself on my WIP, and my exercising regime became sporadic.

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I enjoyed the week I was off of work, but it’s now a full week after returning from vacation, and I’m still not back in my groove.

Perhaps it’s the summer doldrums. Our months-with-snow are usually longer than our months-without-snow. My daytime gig as a desk jockey is usually quieter in the summer months before we gear up for budgeting. Right after budgeting, we face a new fiscal year, and things get even more hectic.

So, yeah, summer is a good time to relax, take a deep breath, and get ready to face the challenges.

So, after three weeks, why am I not facing those challenges?

Maybe I’ve hit a snag with my current WIP.

The piece I’ve been working on for over a year is at the point that I actually have to send my baby out into the world and face the cruel rejections coming. I truly dread this.

Maybe I’ve been pushing hard for a while and I need a break. A longer break. Burn out is very real.

Maybe I don’t really know what motivates me, so I struggle to stay motivated.

I’ve adjusted my word count requirements to reasonable levels, but there’s more to it. I just don’t know what that more is.

As far as exercising goes, I suppose this is the epic uphill battle you face when you hate exercising. When it’s always a chore rather than something you look forward to doing. Not sure how to fix that, either.

Time to do some thinking. To analyze what’s going through my brain and why my motivation has evaporated into procrastination. Science may help with this, or it may just be I have to figure things out for myself.

Maybe inspiration will come and get me.

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What do you do to rekindle motivation, especially if it’s something you know you need to do rather than want to do? Any tips or tricks you use to escape the procrastination beast?