Still sick. Thought I was getting better, but I’m sicker again.
Three good things.
1. Resting in sunshine
2. Playing games on portable devices
3. Flight (little imaginative comics)
Writing: wrestling with a character I don’t really know is impacting my sanity. I just don’t know how to write her. I don’t know how to write professional, logical people. I am sad at my own lack of ability, and realize that the lack of professional behavior and logic on my part has held me back at work and in life.
I don’t know what to do. But I figure one can learn professional behavior and logic, so I will persist.
I’m such a failure.
Spontaneous ∂erivation 
You know all those things you SHOULD do, the ones you tell yourself NEED to be done? Maybe your logical character is the one who WOULD do those things. Maybe that character is where you dump all those parts of yourself where your expectations of the right thing could get explored more.
My way of writing characters who are significantly different from me is to find those parts of myself which make me understand how, if things had gone the way I set them up for the character’s backstory, I might have turned out. If I had been reared rich, or male, or beautiful – how would I have turned out, what would I have considered myself entitled to, what would I have expected of myself and the world.
There is part of you in every character you write, even psycopaths and spaceship captains and kings. Because some part of you can imagine the justification it would take to be a king, how you would do things if you ever had that power, how it would feel to know from childhood that you were destined to rule… and the story is off and running in your head.
I think that’s the most fun part of writing fiction – because I’m never going to get to be king!
Sorry you’re still under the weather – take the time to get better.
Thanks for the writing advice. That makes sense.
But you do all that stuff at work! You behave professionally in professional contexts. You must be good at logic or you wouldn’t be able to do IT-type work. It doesn’t have to be natural, or go all the way through.
One of the comics I used to read had a character with an Imaginary Floating Wiser Me, who would sometimes float along next to the character in question and give her annoyingly sensible advice. I found it helpful, when facing difficult problems, to imagine a wiser, more professional, less anxiety-ridden version of me and see how she would handle it.
Maybe Imaginary Wiser You, or any real person you see as a role model in your professional life, could be the template for this character?
I have a hard time imagining a Me that is wiser, because like I said—I don’t know wise until I burn my fingers.