This Week on the Balcony: Chaos and Art

My regular newsletter thingy, with thoughts about art, panicking crowds, and how to stay creative in a chaotic world

Hey there, everyone!

Hope you are all doing well and surfing this madness we call life without falling too often, or getting too mired in the crazy.

Before I get into my musings this week, a quick follow up from last week: I actually didn’t hear a lot of feedback about whether people wanted emails about the fan fiction or not (just one guy who basically told me to throw away my entire email list for reasons I still can’t really fathom, and a few emails in favor of reminders and a few adamantly opposed).

In the end, just to avoid annoying anyone, I decided to just leave those notifications off for now, and to remind people as part of this weekly newsletter.

So here’s your quick notice / reminder for this week that two new episodes have gone live since the last email: one on Sunday and the other on Wednesday. Unless people ask me to, I’ll continue to provide links on here and not send separate emails for those.

Chaos and Art

This week has been pretty crazy here in the United States, more so than I expected, to be honest. I knew chaos was coming, of course, but it caught me off guard how intense it felt these past few days. I actually had to step back a little yesterday and evaluate how that was affecting me, not only in terms of my mood but also my writing and my creative mind. It hit me that there’s a kind of low-level (or maybe not so low-level?) panic that’s pervading a lot of online spaces, and it’s coming out in all sorts of strange ways.

It actually gave me something akin to 2020 flashbacks. I learned so much about human behavior during the pandemic and the lockdowns, and some of it I’m still processing, I suppose. One of those things was how people truly act when they’re panicking. I don’t mean the kind of panic where someone’s firing into a crowd or a building’s on fire or during an earthquake, although there are parallels, sure. I mean panic that comes on more gradually and over a period of time and impacts our day to day lives for days, weeks, months, even years.

During the pandemic I learned that how people deal with adversity… real adversity… looks absolutely nothing like I imagined it would.

For most people, rather than making them scream and yell and whatever else, panic and fear gradually unmoors them. People start to behave erratically. They start to do odd things and believe odd things. They get disconnected from reality, or actively fight reality, thinking it’s messing with them. They get impulsive, and even a little manic. They go on vacations in the middle of a pandemic and then act confused when no one will let them stay with them. They hoard toilet paper and pick fights with strangers on the streets over masks or physically attack healthcare workers.

I went through a period a few decades ago (the reason why is a much longer story, one I’ll maybe write about another time) where I was obsessed with cults and how people get sucked into cults and believe the crazy things cult leaders tell them. Not all of those people are “stupid” or “crazy,” contrary to popular belief. In some cults, the leaders even specifically seek out educated, intelligent people.

Anyway, I read a ton of books on it, and on studies that had been done about behavior modification, etc. One study that really stuck with me was done by Pavlov, the dog-bell-drool guy, who did a bunch of lesser-known studies that also used dogs and studied trauma and its effects on behavior modification.

Those studies were pretty awful, honestly, which is maybe why they’re not as well known. This was in the 1800s and well before animal rights became a thing, but the results are disturbing even apart from that. To credit Pavlov, too, the trauma study came from an event that wasn’t his fault: his dogs nearly died in a massive flood.¹ Pavlov saw afterwards how that incident completely re-wired their brains, and learned if an animal is stressed enough, you can basically erase their entire “programming” overnight. It can make a sweet dog vicious. It can turn a vicious dog sweet or submissive. A dog that hated one particular person might love that person after the trauma, and vice-versa. Pavlov also noted that different dogs responded to trauma very differently, and had different recovery times as a result.

Similar methods have been used on people, of course, not only in labs but in torture cells all over the world. But I’ve been thinking about this more in terms of what happens when an entire population goes through big stress or trauma as a group.

I know this isn’t a new concept, either.² I’ve read a few essays and articles by historians who speculate a big factor in fascism rising before and during WWII was not only the previous world war and the Great Depression, but the massive death toll of the Spanish Flu.

Pandemics are horrible. They create a very different kind of fear than war, probably because people feel helpless in the face of them. You can’t “fight” a pandemic, not like you can an enemy, which is maybe why people turn on one another in pandemics, or just start doing weird things (like the friend who showed up in Los Angeles and wanted me to take them to Disneyland at the height of the pandemic, then got super confused when I told them everything was closed… or the Ph.D.-educated friend who went from being mildly skeptical about vaccines to a full-blown conspiracy theorist who seemed to talk about absolutely nothing else).

Another problem with large groups of people freaking out for various reasons (and likely not being fully conscious that they are freaking out), is that it’s contagious. People in a tenuous relationship with reality can make you feel confused / off-center yourself, especially if you’re interacting with them a lot. I was starting to feel this a few days ago, a kind of off-balance and unmoored feeling from talking to people who were acting increasingly strangely. Maybe it’s all the emotional volatility, or the feeling of being gaslit, or just the manic energy of it all. I don’t know what causes it exactly, but I definitely got that “herd animal in the early stages of a stampede” feeling this week, and it scared me a little.

I should have expected this, honestly. I even planned for it, if only a little.

One example is that I planned to spend more time outdoors this year, and talking with people face-to-face, as I think I said on here before.

Another is the diary/journal thing: I’ve heard and read from people who’ve lived in countries where lots of disinformation is flying around, where people are panicking and/or confused, and where you start to feel gaslit about what is really going on, including from friends, family, and neighbors, that journaling can be a sanity-saver. A surprising number of people point to the importance of keeping a daily journal during these times to help keep your bearings and your sense of self.

And, coming from a writer, this might be funny, but I’ve always been hugely resistant to keeping a journal. I just don’t really like writing about myself; it bores me, frankly. But it’s advice I’ve heard (and read) over and over again, so I wanted to give it a try. It’s not so much to have a record of what’s happening in the world (although it’s that, too), but more for yourself, to remind yourself of who you are, your values, your identity, and to keep ahold of your sense of what’s real/not real.

So I tried to find ways to make it fun for myself, knowing I’d definitely resist doing it otherwise. I bought a big crazy weird leather-bound journal with parchment-like pages. I got a quill pen and a regular fountain pen and a few pots of ink. I figure I’m MUCH more likely to do this if I’m hunched over a writing desk by candlelight and scribbling madly with ink all over my fingers.

I know, super dramatic, but I’m a fiction writer, what do you want?

That said, I recognize that a lot of the stampeding I’m noticing lately is related to uncertainty right now, rather than reactions to specific things. Not much has changed in our day-to-day lives, at least not yet, but there ARE some specific things that writers, in particular, are panicking about.

One of them is the TikTok ban, which has a lot of creatives scrambling, at least those who depended on their marketing and sales from there. BookTok has been a really strange phenomenon in the book community, (one with good and bad effects, frankly), but even apart from books and writing, a lot of people have gotten really attached to the community on there. Young people, in particular, are loathe to lose that, but it hits especially hard with creatives who are worried about their livelihoods for a lot of reasons. Concerns about free speech and community building and political organizing are a part of that, as well.

Anyway, I don’t have any answers for these things. I do see a lot of people looking for solutions though, and finding new communities in other places. I suspect it will take a while for this to all shake out, but it’s creating some interesting fallout that likely is taking a lot of the people who advocated for the TikTok ban by surprise.

My thoughts around how to surf this stuff for myself are pretty basic right now: write a lot, spend time with my family, try the journaling thing when things get weird, share more of my thoughts on here, frankly, both to be transparent about where I’m at and also to maybe (eventually) generate conversation and learn from others. Other things: go for walks, spend more time with other human beings IRL, change my writing spots occasionally and do some traveling this year.

I’d also like to pick up drawing and painting again, which is part of why I got such an enormous journal with such thick pages. I thought I could make it into a sketch book AND journal, which might also get me to use it more often, as I find drawing and painting pretty relaxing.

The big, bizarre eyeball journal and my candles, quill, fountain pen, and various pots of ink, including a dark black-green that should be fun.

Anyway, that’s probably enough about my heavier-than-usual thoughts for this week. It’s been a strange, introspective one, maybe because it’s the first time in a while that other people and circumstances around me have affected my mental state in a noticable way. I’m feeling very protective of my writing and creative mind, so trying my best to pay attention when outside forces are altering that. I want to make sure I step back when that happens, or at least have some awareness of it.

Also, I might need another rabbit. They are quite comforting little buggers.

In other news, it turns out I am going to Japan in May. An unexpected, windfall of a trip that came purely from me noticing a repositioning cruise on offer that was ridiculously cheap, and actually fell within my budget. It’s going to be super weird, as like 11 days of it are purely at sea, and will involve me rattling around inside an enormous ship with a bunch of other weirdos. I think I’ll get a ton of writing done, though, and it will be an interesting peek into the weirdness that is humanity, so I can’t wait. Also… Tokyo! Should be super cool. :)

For now, however, it’s writing, writing, writing, and maybe writing a little more, and definitely loads of writing over the weekend. I’m making a lot of progress on the book, but still feeling like I’m not moving quite as fast as I would like, given everything else going on. There are still a few too many real life distractions unfortunately, and I’ve had everything from errands to run, to doctor’s appointments, to birthday bashes this week, including a few for my own birthday.

Anyway, the writing is going well, as I said, so I look forward to having something for you relatively soon. I might also share another snippet with everyone next week, depending on how close I am to finishing.

As always, I’ve got a few more things for you below, but have a safe and restful weekend! I hope all is well in your various worlds, and that you’re managing the chaotic times with flair (and managing to surf above them, around them, or through them more often than not!). 🌊🏄🏽‍♀️

Have a fantastic Friday, and happy reading!

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JC ANDRIJESKI’S Latest Release:

Click the image below to go straight to the sales page, or to read for free on Kindle Unlimited. Or you can scroll down on here for the novel and series blurb.

Gods above, not another war. Not again. Not now.

River comes out of her weeks-long memory hole slowly at first, then all at once. She recognizes Valek, but not their marriage. She knows, somehow, that the house in Pacific Palisades isn’t right, not for her, and not for her friend, Malcolm. She knows the story told to her about why she can’t remember isn’t right, either.

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This Week’s Bookfunnel Sale:

Click the image below to check out the books and authors currently on offer!

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FREE BOOK OF THE MONTH!

As a special treat in 2025, I’m going to be featuring a free book every month for the next twelve months, from an author friend. Here is this month’s free book!

Jesi never wanted a power, but now it might be the coven’s best chance to locate the kidnapped children.

With kids from the coven disappearing, Jesi’s power to see anyone’s past with a touch puts her on the front lines and in the path of a man immune to her power. Trusting her gut, she agrees to work with him.

Chuck’s attempts to solve his current case are fruitless until a beautiful woman walks into his precinct. Now he’s knee deep in magic and wondering if he’s lost his mind, but he can’t walk away when the case turns personal.

Will Chuck be able to accept the supernatural? Will Jesi learn to control her magic in time to find the children? Will their attraction to one another distract them from the case?

Thanks so much for reading! I appreciate you all so much! :)

1. Here’s a summary of the flood incident and its connection to cult research and people having their mental “programming” rewired: https://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2021/02/on-cults-seligman-meets-sargant-to.html

2. A few sources for people, if they’re interested in reading more about the connection between the Spanish Flu pandemic and the rise of fascism: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8802602/ and also: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/05/fed-study-1918-pandemic-nazi-party-gains-236530