Word Vomit 15 minutes 1000 words unedited
Well let’s get one over and done with without thinking too much about it. I think this is the first word vomit I’m doing where I didn’t even have the slightest inkling of what I was going to write about before I started writing. I don’t plan out my vomits, of course, but I typically have an idea, motif or theme that occupies my mind before I get started. This time I don’t have one, so I suppose the natural trick is to begin by observing my present state, and then ruminate about it.
What’s interesting is how the internet numbs you. You spend some time on it and it numbs you, you stop thinking in a certain way. You take in information, yes, but there’s a certain process loop that takes priority- and what happens is that you forget about what you want to do, you forget about what you want to create. It’s quite scary, actually.
Sometimes I watch my girlfriend or my mother use the computer and I get a little disturbed by how intent they are on what they’re doing. Same for watching little children with iPads or iPhones. But then I realize: I’m no different. In fact, if I could watch myself, I’d be shocked, because I’m much worse than any of these other people. I have a debilitating internet addiction and I often don’t even acknowledge it. When I do acknowledge it, I don’t do much about it.
So how do you deal with something like that? Cold turkey is one way, I suppose, but that seems a bit excessive. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater again. There is much good to be had online as long as you remain in control, and you’re the one who decides what you do, how much time you spend, what you pursue, so on and so forth.
I have all these nagging little commitments that I haven’t done enough about because they seem to have such high “activation energies”- but really, all you need to do is to get started. I’m such an irresponsible person.
I was reading Taleb’s Antifragile (someone emailed me and subtly pointed out that I talk a lot about Taleb, and it’s kind of annoying. I acknowledge this. I need to start reading other things) and he made a dichotomy that made me think, even though I’m not entirely comfortable with it- he describes how there are talkers and doers, and people who are really good at talking tend to be really bad at doing, and vice versa. At face level, I find that distinction a little insulting- of course there are people who are good at both, and learning how to communicate your effectiveness makes you more effective, surely?
I think about how the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. At the same time, there are all these stories of these incredible geniuses who simply couldn’t communicate with anybody else because their internal language was so unique, unorthodox, sometimes even flawed- these negative things would (while being destructive, inconsistent, etc) create things of positive value. Sometimes your mental illness or colour-blindness or some other sort of disorder might be terrible for you, but great for your art. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should seek out suffering just to better your art. You should just seek to better your art.
But it made me grapple with an uncomfortable question, which is- if thinking (and/or talking) and doing are largely separate, isn’t it clear that I’m largely better at former, and pretty damn bad at the latter? I mean hey, I suck at getting out of bed, I do. I wish I didn’t. What is this a problem of? Willpower? Design? A raw “fuck it just do it” sort of thing?
I’ve gotten good at taking cold showers every morning, doing my pushups and squats. I guess I just need to take the next step and do something else productive immediately afterwards. Read, meditate, write. It’s the going online without a directed purpose that fucks me up. Nobody should go on the internet just to pass time without knowing what they’re doing. Nobody should just randomly pop on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora etc “just because”, until they’ve accomplished whatever they set out to accomplish each day, because those are massive time-sinks that will just swallow you up whole, unless you have a sort of discipline and willpower that I certainly don’t have. Could they be cultivated? I certainly intend to find out.
I was hoping for 2012 to be particularly special and insightful and I do think I’ve learnt quite a lot, and I’ve experienced quite a bit, and I’ve become a better person for myself and for the people around me, but there’s still so much to learn, still so much to do- and it’s not like I have a lot of things to learn- there ARE a lot of things out there to learn, but if I could, I’d just focus my learning on a few points. I need to learn how to focus, I need to learn how to say no, I need to learn how to recover from falling off wagons, and I need to design checks and balances into my routines… I keep thinking “I can’t wait for next year where everything’s going to be awesome”, but that’s not a healthy way of thinking- I should focus on the here and the now, and I should go and shower and then maybe have a smoke and then I should do more writing and finish up my resume and tidy up my blog and declutter my room and it’s really funny how a large number of activities can become chronically paralyzing.
It’s funny how I started out without any idea of what I was going to write about but I’m finishing this word vomit with 2.5 entire minutes to go. It’s funny to think about how, if this is the 12th word vomit, then I have spent 12 x 15 minutes, or 3 hours engaged in INTENSE WRITING- every second spent writing, no time to stop, no time to alternate-tab and surf the internet, writing writing writing WRITING. I’m guessing that’s the sort of hours that you have to put into the 10,000. So while we’re at 12/1000 for word vomits, we’re realistically at 3/10,000 for hourly expertise. That discounts all the hours I’ve spent before I started this… but you know what, I don’t actually feel daunted by it, I’m not intimidated, scared or helpless- when I look at these numbers, I go fuck yeah, bring it on.
Now this is how you start your day, motherfucker, not by surfing reddit or cracked. Showertime.
EDIT: I just popped by my Google Reader and I found an article by zenhabits’ Leo Babuta: The Do Plan, or Why We Know But Don’t Do. That was almost creepy in its relevance.
Haha I know you don’t suppose for your readers to feel this way, but I don’t know why, I think I really enjoy reading your word vomit posts more so. Maybe it’s the stream of consciousness that is going on and I find it genuinely interesting how uninhibited the whole entry and words feels.
And on the topic of your entry, gah I am a victim to the pointless surfing. I realized how much time I waste surfing the net and now I am trying to go cold turkey for the whole day; and to only allow myself to use the computer at night.
I hope you share more of your word vomits!
I’m planning to do 1,000 of them! 😀