LangTime Chat, Episode 28: Art and Anxiety

Other people may understand and share with me and so today's episode, the title explains it all here are in anxiety clinging through imposter syndrome, so that is the topic of the day. So kind of thinking is one of my happy places I mean I love to to create whether i'm crafting with my hands baking treats in the kitchen drawing little animals on my iPad. we're putting words together on the page I love creating and having outlets for creative expression I also love linguistics.

Languages fascinate me and my analytic brain has so much fun diving into patterns that are definitely there, but also in constant fluctuation so it always feels like there's some sort of diversity going on. So of course I love colleen where creativity and linguistics meet in the most amazing kind of art. And yet the fun of it all the beauty of it all can sometimes get lost in the details when i'm actually calling in three of my biggest hurdles are imposter syndrome.

overthinking and not having someone else in charge of the process. So in today's episode i'm going to talk, first through those hurdles and then i'm going to shift gears and talk about the personal counseling project that i'm working on right now. So the reason i'm exploring this topic is because I know i'm not alone, and I really hope that by talking more openly about my own struggles, it might help someone else who is feeling some or all of what i'm feeling.

So first up imposter syndrome so struggling with imposter syndrome means that I have difficulty seeing myself the same way that other people see me and my work looking in on my life people probably say that i've done all the things I needed to do to be in the place, I am today. You know, I have a PhD in linguistics which means other people have it professionals have validated that i've done the things I need to do to be qualified to talk about language and linguistics.

i've you know earned the the full Professor title at a university, which means colleagues and administrators have validated my work as they promoted in tenured me twice. Other people people I trust to say i'm doing good things great things even, which is why i've won awards, and why i'm in a position where people are willing to pay me to do something I love.

So from the outside, it looks like I have everything together and i'm a powerhouse and I know because people have literally said that to me. But imposter syndrome creates a false sense of inadequacy that no amount of external accomplishments or validation can cure. So all those things that I just mentioned, none of them are needed to be a con linger.

And having them doesn't magically provide confidence for a person struggling with imposter syndrome, which is why I can have all the qualifications but still feel like it's not enough. And that's because me inside I feel small I feel like people must not be able to see the real me if they think that i'm doing great. I feel like they must not be able to see how much better all these other people are doing the things that I do.

And I feel like at any moment at all could burst and come crashing down when they realize I don't actually belong so it's like I have the course of radiohead song creep playing on. repeat in my mind, and if you don't know that here it is but i'm a creep i'm a weirdo what the hell, am I doing here I don't belong here. That is the chorus of that song and like it's hard for me to read the lines without singing but also my singing voice leaves a lot to be desired.

But that it every time I hear that i'm like I get it, I get it it isn't that I think i'm a creep creep it's more like i'm a creeper who has snuck into something better than I, deserve. So not feeling like I belong not feeling like i'm good enough to be where I am and doing you know what I do leads or feeds rather into the second hurdle, which is anxiety and overthinking.

I overthink everything I question everything every little decision, and then I judge everything I do very harshly, more so than anyone else does, I think. And i'm talking about everything from work and professional things to you know personal life situations it's why i've never mastered social media and probably never will I stress out so much about what I say and how I should say it that I end up stalling and usually not doing anything.

Most people never see this struggle, because I am very good at wearing my public mask I may be wrong about this, but I have a feeling that a lot of impacts and introverts. are adept at putting on a public face to make it through social interactions without being too awkward or aloof and i'm definitely both. I don't want other people to see that i'm almost constantly running circles around myself in my head as I try to make sure I see.

All the flaws of what i'm doing and saying before other people do so it's like a classic duck on water situation when i'm in public, where you know other people see a much more composed side of me while my mind, is in a total whirlwind. So my constant overthinking creates a great deal of anxiety and a difficult working situation, but what makes it even worse is that third hurdle that I don't have anyone else to answer to.

When I am creating for myself, so if someone else gives me a deadline, I need it. and make sure of it, it gives me an end date to a project that guarantees that I have to you know stop questioning all my decisions by a particular time, the work has to be done so, it will get done not having a deadline means I just keep going and the mental warfare on myself.

Not only is there no endpoint for a personal project, but there are also no external goals that other people have set for me to meet other than to make myself happy with my work. And that means I get stuck in a loop of making decisions, followed by questioning them, followed by changing the initial decisions, followed by more questioning. it's a struggle and it's also why so many creative projects i've started that mean a lot to me never get finished because it's just stuck in that loop.

But like I said at the beginning coddling is one of my happy places even as I question what i'm doing and doubting that my work is good enough, I still love creating and language and linguistics and I still love the art of what i'm doing. So I had these brave moments, where I come up with an idea for a calling that solid enough for me to actually pursue it and my personal coddling project that i'm working on right now was born.

Out of such a moment, so I actually know the precise moment, I decided, I wanted to start a new calling for myself, because I journaled about it and so i'm able to see it was August 4. And I was really struggling at the time, and you know for some good reasons, and so you know, looking at the world around me trump was President. And for me his presidency felt like a four year term of warfare on everything decent and hopeful and good, not to say that it's.

Over and better now that he's not President, but it really shook things up in a way that that made it all really not great at that time. It felt like so many people were just like absolutely filled with rage and hate and they came out into the open and showed, you know just how ugly humanity can be. And on that day, in particular, there had been another mass shooting and that just kind of.

drove the spike in so looking at the larger world outside my home sat me of hope for a better tomorrow inside my house it wasn't going much better, I had survived. One of the worst academic years of my life that was filled with administrative gaslighting and resulted in major upheaval in my department. and actually landed me in a totally different department in early August I was getting ready to start a new year but didn't feel hopeful about it.

And then my marriage, which had been crumbling for at least three years by that point was in shambles and creating a toxic space for me so that day. It all felt so pointless everything felt awful and, as I sat there feeling upset and down and hopeless a song floated into my head. that's john lennon's imagine, I actually wrote the lyrics down on my journal page and i'm going to give them here to in case you don't know that particular song.

Imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try no hell below us above us only sky imagine all the people live in for today. Imagine there's no countries it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion to imagine all the people live in life in peace. You may say i'm a dreamer but i'm not the only one, I hope, someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.

Imagine nope possessions, I wonder if you can no need for greater hunger, a brotherhood of man, imagine all the people sharing all the world. That song sparked a tiny bit of hope for me in a moment that had otherwise been filled with despair and it also sparked an idea. What if I imagined a community of humans that did just that, a community of humans that lived as one that cared for the whole this whole beauty in their world.

And so I sent an attention to create a language of beauty, a language who's very words make me find joy in the little things around me language, full of Wednesday and delight, a language just for me. A language to help me recapture my joie de vere, and that is of course for the name also comes from God.

By August 2019 I had finished working with David on mini shave for motherland for Salem and working with David had introduced me to new ways of thinking and thinking about the process of con linking that I was excited to explore it on my own. I was specifically. I was explicit specifically inspired to evolve a language from proto forums, which was something I hadn't attempted.

On my own before and to incorporate noun classes into the language, so I said to work I got out a special notebook just for the project. I made notes on its grid pages with my new black winged pencil I made outlines for some evolutionary stages of the language and had ideas for root words that I jotted down and then.

My brain took over I started seeing the cracks in my outlines and plans and erase some notes and favor for others, but then wondered if the original plan hadn't been better after all. Life also took over, it was August I was starting a new semester, I had worked I needed to finish, which included meal prepping for classes and also putting together a huge binder for my bid for full Professor.

So I closed my notebook and returned it to its shelf in my office and didn't look at it again for nearly two years. During those two years life appealed to me, I mean it up peeved all of us with coven but on top of living in a pandemic world. I went through major changes in my personal life that included divorce personal grief three cross crunching moves the start of a new relationship in a changing careers.

I needed to find my ground again as everything around me was in motion and unsettled so I reached for that God notebook and very, very slowly started writing down more solid ideas for the language. And so, this is a brief introduction to what I have so far. So, first and foremost, they are human speakers so God speakers are humans who live in a place that is essentially southern Missouri a place, I chose specifically because it's where I grew up.

Is what I think of first when I hear the word home, and so they live on earth, but in an alternate reality, where humans are better and kinder. They live in dense forested areas with a lot of rivers and creeks and caves and they experience for defined seasons with hot summers beautiful falls knowing winters and stormy springs.

Did you, it is a language is full of the sounds that I most enjoy hearing and producing as anyone who watches line time studio knows I struggle with pronouncing a lot of sounds accurately and consistently and I wanted this language to be one I could pronounce. Instead of walking through what i've outlined so far in the sound features, though, I want to focus on what i'm. Currently, most proud of, which is how i'm organizing and documenting features of the language and stages of its development.

So, first I organized the sound changes into different stages of language development. Aligning sound shifts with grammatical shifts and so, for instance, the first stage of development is when now in class prefixes and number suffixes work or medicalized as inflections and also some early compounds were form. And then the second stage is when case marketing became for medicalized and early derivation started appearing.

And so, like right now i'm at four stages of development again aligning, these are the the sound shifts that happened during this period, but also what happens during this period, are these grammar things. So specifically demarcating the sound changes into this into those stages, has made it, so I know how to best combined forms at their boundaries to match how the language would have sounded you know at that time and how it was shifting at the same time.

When it came to compiling the dictionary, I came up with some ideas I rather like as you see here i'm quite proud of my dictionary. I have broken down the basic routes that I am creating for the language and to semantic categories to better track what routes, I have. And how I want them organized into a for pro vocabulary system, and so I have a table in my dictionary document to show how many routes i've created for each category here's what I have so far.

So this is a screenshot from a page in the dictionary and well if you're if you're watching the video you'll see it, or if you're looking at the slideshow you'll see it. If not i'm gonna tell you, I have a table where i've got these semantic categories like appearance body terms. category, by the way of like how to categorize things and put them into lumps communication Community construction emotion fauna, flora insects interaction meals motion structure.

terrain time tool and weather and so those are my categories that I have so far it's, not to say that will be all the categories, I have, by the end but that's what I have so far. And then, alongside each semantic Category I list, how many routes, there are already developed so right now, I have the most in body terms I have 27 of those.

Everything else is much lower and for any that are set of zero What that means is that I have lists of words that I want to make us roots I just haven't created the forms for them yet. After the table on my document each of these categories is then broken down into alpha ties list of roots with their basic semantic meaning so, for instance. Here is the the start of the body terms list that whether it has 27.

This started that i've got you know just categorized under body terms and then again in alphabetical order you know so, which is the inside of the mouth. mouth, but specifically the inside part off was the proto form of breath I use for body, and so on and so like I said just. Keeping keeping track like that these lists helped me keep track of what i've created and what the proto forms look like within each category.

which, in turn, you know helps me make sure I don't accidentally have all the roots within a single semantic category, starting with the same sound like oh my gosh oh my body parts start with an m, how did that happen. And then within the dictionary itself, I follow the method that David introduced me to so where the body entries are organized into proto route forms.

To show how the roots are expanded into noun classes, so the entries themselves follow the basic structure that David uses and now that we both use, you know in meantime studio languages, but then I added in some extra features so, for example. What i'm showing right now in the slideshow is the the entry for the proto form oce.

That is the proto form so inside that entry, there are going to be some really standard things that you know watching lean time studio you've probably come to know and expect. So you know, like listening the modern form, and so you see that the proto route at top becomes the ocean in the modern form it's guy you know IPA it's got lexical categories within this one entry, there are four different swati words ocean, the most you push and push.

All of them are nouns after each now and i've indicated what you know what noun class it belongs to, and so here ocean means wind and as a sky noun. demotion means breeze and as a night now you push is freezing winter biting wind like when capable of causing frostbite, and that is an ice noun and then xhosa is. It means smoke in it as a fire now so those are the four labels there and then I also use david's handy you know register politeness indicator.

For each portion of the entry and so all of them have zeros and curly brackets, which means their standard words that could appear across any register, you know, can be used in any company kind of thing. But if you're looking at the screen, then you may have noticed, I have a couple of extra features that I added, including a proto at this stage form, and so in Stage one and it's your most beginning roots in its proto form the root is oce a you, and then the edge.

But by stage two so again I demarcated those those stages, at the beginning of stage to the Forum has shifted to ocean. And so that I will define became oh during the first set of sound changes. as of right now that stage to form matches the modern form of the word, so I don't provide any other forms it's you know they're all going to be ocean from there on out.

But again, that helps me know that you know, for instance, if this is coming together with a prefix in Stage one I need to remember that it's form is actually oce which. You know, having that value, there could shift how it interacts with a prefix. However, by the time we get to stage two any prefixes that get added are being added in front of an old, not a dip song, not an A it's that form has gone by now, and so that you know again helps me keep track of that.

Another thing that I have done is that I for the the most basic meaning of that proto form so for the the roots basic meaning, I give the semantic category in the myths. And so, our key miss I don't really know it's a French word but it's the fancy quotation marks with the little little double angle brackets. For some reason I always thought they looked really cool so I love using them and formatting when i'm able.

i've used them here to give in small caps the semantic category and so which, which is the you know modern form of that basic root. Meaning wind is the basic one and it belongs to the weather semantic category and, of course, the way that i've done this semantic categories is just for my own brain.

Just the way I want this particular language to be organized it could potentially belong to a completely different semantic category, you know, in a different kind of system or a different way to think about the words. So oh I forgot, as I slide through the presentation now. I forgot that I put circles around each features that way I can show what i'm talking about and so i'm catching up now in my presentation to where I am talking wise.

But for any proto form that shifts phonological shape in one stage of the language but not another I only list the forms that differ in that head word entry and so, for example, another route his face. In stage two that proto form has shifted and now looks like faiza. And then in Stage two and three, there are no additional changes that occur to this route, so the sound changes that happened, you know, during that time just don't apply to this particular route.

However, then when we hit as it goes into stage, for it is now faiza instead of faiza it's become faiza and that's its modern form and So yes, I right now have killed the central Bausch well, I think, David is rubbing off on me. But yeah that that's why we came in off at the end. And so, those are some things that again helping me keep track of where it is unlike double and triple marketing some of this information. This particular entry is of a verb, and so this verb.

is included in the interaction and so, for me, what I mean by interaction semantic category is the way that the speakers interact with items and objects and, potentially, even with other people. But it indicates a sort of interaction in this particular verb means to put or to place something.

And so that is faiza another form that came out of this route came out of the same one is is a, which is a post physician meaning at around or near and then it's cross you know cross reference to another entry. And i'll. mention that again in a moment on the English side of the dictionary I indicate.

The basic route associated with each entry, so I know where to find its full information, so you know, for instance here's the opening of my current a list where my a words in English, that I have so far arm hill around and. So those are four words you know for English words that I have in my language right now.

And then you know, then followed by I say you know Armenian hiller both nouns and in English around an hour or both prepositions indrawati they will be post physicians but then after each one where I give the body words so like arm is Jay. I then also follow that in parentheses, with the route that you would need to go to the entry, that you would need to go to to actually find arm.

To actually find the listing jr and this one, you would have to go to the air, and so you have to go to the DS to find the entry. Which is a this how this is helpful so it's super helpful for me to know which route is associated with which modern form.

Even more helpful, I could have guessed that Jay came from di just knowing you know, the way that my language works, but then some other ones it's incredibly even more helpful to see those entries the the proto forms because, for instance ant hill is mabel in the modern form. But if you want to look at its full entry, you have to go to the the promo root file so FA ul became.

me of all because it's got a class prefix so that may is a prefix marker and it's not actually part of the brute and then because it's got that prefix it it actually shifted that F two of the. Because of its environment and so again super helpful for me because I want to know where to find it and it makes it easier to cross reference information, you know as i'm trying to figure out where the full entry is. So the routes.

That they have every route, I have categorized as belonging to a natural noun class and i've had a lot of fun working with these now classes, by the way. I had never really done a noun class language until many Shay and I loved it so much, I was like I need to do this again and so. Every nominal roots belongs to a natural noun class and is unmarked when it's used in that meaning and then semantic extensions.

are indicated through the addition of class markers that are marked with a noun class prefix. However, if a noun or sorry a noun can be marked with its natural class prefix to shift the meaning from its basic group, and so, for example. Your new is a nominal route and it means bone and it belongs to the stone class it just naturally belongs to the stone class it doesn't carry the class stone class marker that prefix.

You don't see it there, and the word, however, if you do use keira that stone class marker with keanu you get crayon new. Which is a word in the language, but it means fossil is still belongs to stone class but being explicitly marked by that prefix actually gives it a different meaning. And so i've got some examples like this already built in and i'm looking forward to figuring out ways to incorporate more like up.

Other prefixes so y'all knew as a route can take other now class prefixes for different meanings such as Meg yano which means marrow and is a dirt class now. So another example. The root crop itself means stone and is of course a stone class noun that route can take other noun class prefixes to shift its meaning and so like Chakra is malleable metal and as a grass class and now. He is stalactite we're still lag might and is an ice class noun and okra is gemstone load or micah is a day class now.

And so altogether God has 11 nouns classes, each of which has a prefix associated with it, serving as its class mark marker, and these are largely based on look and feel so, for example, grass nouns tend to be solids that are bindi and malleable so you can bend them without breaking them. stone class nouns are also solid, but they crack they can break i'm sorry he is the prefix for ice class nouns but ice classes.

Its associated again with solids but specifically you know cold solids or things that come out things like that. And then day class nouns tend to be associated with things that are bright or warm or even hot and so Those are just some of the different associations and not all associations are perfect.

You know, as all noun classes are sometimes it makes more sense than others way a noun belongs to one class over another, and of course over time it's going to lose some of that connection, so that you end up getting. nouns belonging to classes that just kind of make you go hmm, why does it go there and so again, these are all things i'm looking forward to playing with as I continue making more nouns.

It also has five plural suffixes that categorize nouns into classes, based on how they're perceived in the plural. And so the semantic roots of the plural suffixes demonstrate those perceptions, so one suffix comes from a root meaning group in the collective animate sense and so like groups of people, or you know groups of animals things like that that plural usually only goes on animate nouns.

Another plural suffix comes from a root meaning mound or Hill and so you know this is used to refer to nouns that are typically found in piles in the plural. The third one, is my generic one, which also means group or set, but this is in the inanimate generic sense like just things clump together. The fourth one comes from the word or the root meaning well as in like a water well, and this is used for nouns that when they're paralyzed it.

The association is that it expands to fill a space, rather than having individual units that it actually kind of fills the space as more there it's like the whole thing gets larger and then, finally, the fifth one comes from a root meaning IV and that's because it reflects. The metaphor, that they have in the link that I put in the language that time is like a plant or a tree and that it grows vertically over time and so that is used for like a lot of.

abstract nouns a lot of them end up taking that IV suffix. So in other features right is that speakers can potentially choose to make distinctions based on you know the the chosen plural form so, for instance. Any room is cloud belonging to a sky class now it actually breaks down into the sky prefix on, and then the route you meaning down as in like feathery down so it's like feathery down you find in the sky.

The typical plural for this word is unruly and that's the well version of plural and it indicates that clouds are generally perceived as growing and filling a space as they multiply, such as the sky. However, for speaker wants to indicate that there are multiple distinct clouds in the sky like it's not filling the sky it's just who I see three clouds in the sky and they're all separate from each other.

They can actually use the form on your glucose which means clouds and it comes from that you know generic groups up plural or again that indicates that the the multiple clouds are seeing are distinct shapes or units in the sky. As a side note there's actually an older route enjoy it, that means cloud, which in its modern form appears asthma.

Also belonging to the sky class, but that it was reinterpreted to specifically refer to clouds that require taking note, such as a dark cloud or a storm bearing cloud. So the newer word on a loop refers to any any cloud really but you know, more specifically, a non threatening cloud like white fluffy clouds would be referred to as honeymoon. versus ma would be again like those dark clouds because they're in a in a place like Missouri tornado kind of clouds you know thunder storm clouds.

Those clouds where it's like no, you need to you need to be talking about them, for good reason, and so that's what that older route that just make cloud was reinterpreted to me. So well now in class and number affixes are among the oldest forms now in cases or a later development in the language. And so what happened was verbs grammatical lies as post physicians first and then a handful of those further grammatical is this case markers.

So they appear after any plural suffixes on the route because these forms or later they found illogically interact with stems in a different way than the other inflections do. i'm still working on the sound changes and how I want all these cases to really up here in the modern form. But here is what I have right now so it's like a potential preview of where I might be going it may stay this way I may shift some of these forms but okay here and inflection table, if you will.

For the roots meaning person, and so the proto form is. where you have P Schwab I l schwann That was the the order form and so right now it's it's mommy nominative singular form in the modern form is pay that so that's its current form, but then an accusative we have paid them genitive pivotal. Data laxative or possess and instrumental pigeon and then in the plural side, we have a second I gotta make sure I get the stressor pill yeah.

And then, in the accusative young genitive caveat though date of lack of pure years and instrumental period, Joe and so those are the forms that I have right now. You can see that, for the most part, for instance, the accusative is just the suffix em, at least in these examples genitive is to date of instrumental our date of locking of rather shows up as either just a Z or an easy in an instrumental shows up as Joe.

The date of unlock it of forums, I told you i'd come back to this note, if you recall that post position is is cross referenced with another route form. And that's because two farms faiza and hazel ended up kind of overlapping in their development, and so the data. comes from a different verb form meaning to give where the locket have comes from a verb form meaning to put or to place but over time, those forms overlapped and so now, the date of unlocking of cases look the same.

i'm still announced, I haven't made it to the wonders of the verb yet, but definitely have some plans, and I am I am excited to see where I go once I hit that. So these are all things that i'm happy with and proud of at least for right now, but my hurdles are definitely still there.

I keep working through them one coddling decision at a time that's, not to say every working down the language is a good one, some days, all I do in 20 is change a single sound of a single route only to change it back again. I have those days and yeah on the good days I can see. You know that I like what i've started, especially when I see entries that i've forgotten about and i'm like ooh fun. And so those moments remind me to try to step out of my own way, as I continue, creating.

So I can link to create moments of joy in between moments of self doubt. In the end, it's beautiful to see it all coming together but lingering self doubt means I struggle with sharing my work with others, it also means that this topic. today's podcast has been really difficult for me to open up about if you're like me and experience some of the same hurdles.

I hope you can also find the joy in between the not so good moments, and I hope you too can continue to create and see the beauty and what you've created the end of the day, the most important thing is that you find happiness in what you're doing and and what you've done.

As I was trying to figure out a good way to wrap this up every called a list of five rules of con linking that I created for a project that I had started working on and sharing them here just really feels like a fitting way to to conclude this this talk this chat. And so, first, like the the opening part for my con linking rules it just says like at the top of the page kundalini rules and then in parentheses below it heck yeah it does.

So you can see the tenor of what i'm about to go into it was written from completely different style, because this was again for a completely different thing. But I think it's good that I keep reviewing what I have said, are the five rules of clinging because I need to remember them myself. Rule number one is have fun language is fun constructing your very own language is fun to the Max.

coddling is challenging, though, and it can be oh so tempting to compare your work to someone else's or your knowledge of linguistics or languages to someone else's. But for the love of all that is grammar please don't do that keep the focus on your growth and your process and enjoy every second of it so that's Rule one. rule to actually had to be broken into two parts to a is be choosy when it comes to the features you incorporate.

There are so many freaking cool features out there that languages have, but not all of them play well together in a single language you might want to keep a running list of cool features, you find but didn't include in your current project to remember for future coddling projects. rule to be is don't worry about making every decision, a creative one some decisions are going to be more fun than others, because you may have had a brilliant idea for a compound or source for an inflection.

But not every descent decision will end up feeling brilliant, and that is not only Okay, but it's actually necessary for making a language that reads and resolves more naturally. There is a reason, after all, that there are commonalities among linguistic features of languages that are totally unrelated to each other and that's because there are just some. Language decisions that kind of feel more natural and that means it's not necessarily creative or new it's just it feels good.

Rule number three is remember that your calling is yours, you get to decide what you want to do with it and how you want it to look and sound. asking people for advice and feedback is a wonderful way to grow as an artist want to highly recommend but remember that at the end of the day, it's your calling and your art. Rule number four is don't be afraid to revise but recognize when a revision will require a major language overhaul and think through that decision very carefully.

Very rarely to con lingers look at any of their languages and say it's perfection, like all artists, we tend to see things we wish, we would have done differently embrace the growth and use newfound knowledge to make future calling decisions even better. And then finally rule number five is to remember that no language is perfect or a complete.

All languages have idiosyncrasies and quirks all languages have irregularities and all living languages continuously grow and change with no end point to the growth, no coddling will ever be complete, but it can reach a stage where you say that's enough for what I needed for this project. Yes, I realize i'm better at giving advice on this topic than I am up following my own advice some days.

But whatever struggles you face in your calling journey, I hope you know you're not alone, and I hope you're able to find your own joy and happiness in calm linking and so until next time stay grammar and have fun with your calling journey.