Well when I’m done with this I would have written 44,000 words. I was hoping to be moving at a much faster rate, but I kind of let myself down a little bit or something along the way, who knows. Screw it, let’s do it. Time spent trying to figure out how that works is time spent not working on something more interesting, more beautiful. I don’t look back, darling, it distracts from the now. Of course, that’s an utter, utter lie and I look back all the time and I plan to look back many, many times in the future- but right now, there is only this moment, and so I write what comes to my mind without filter, without hesitation. (Okay, a little hesitation, but this takes time, okay? Let it be. Jeez. Jeez again, I’m arguing with myself now.)
Anyway, life has been alright. I keep making big plans and commitments and screwing them up. I realize I really just ought to commit to doing really little things. I’ve been doing something that I’m really proud of- I’ve been doing pushups and squats every morning and every night, 20 each. (so that’s 20, 20, then 20, 20). I haven’t done them today and yesterday because I’ve been feeling a little ill, but I think I’m going to do them right after I finish this vomit, and then I’m going to bed. The problem with word vomits is the difficulty in starting- this feels like deja vu, did I already talk about it? I repeat myself a lot. But yeah, earlier I was talking about how my main problem is the ability to focus. I think the more I focus on the problem of my inability to focus, the more I realize that it’s part structural- I don’t break down my tasks into things small enough that allow me to focus on them. How do you focus on massive quests? You can’t. The only moment there is is this moment. So you need to focus on this moment. This. This. This.
So the trick is to break down the big quests into the little tasks. That’s how you eat an elephant. A bite at a time. And the only bite is this bite. That’s how you end up becoming a cigarette smoking addict, too. A cigarette at a time. Somehow it’s not so romantic to say “getting fit, one pushup at a time”, or “becoming a writer, one sentence at a time”. No, no, you’re not a writer just because you’ve written one word. You’re not a “runner” just because you went for a five minute jog.
(Oddly enough, this doesn’t apply with cigarettes. Smoke a couple of sticks, or a pack, and instantly, you’re a smoker now. Smoke a cigarette every now and then? You’re still a smoker. But write something every few months or so, and you’re just a person who writes every so often, maybe because you’re narcissistic, self-obsessed, deluded, idealistic, something, I don’t know. There’s something very wrong about the way we frame these things. The joy of exploration is an end in itself. Yes, it’s part of something bigger, but it’s also very much an end in itself. There are chemical hits to be gotten.
Heh, I just stopped to do a little bit of paragraphing because I was writing the entire thing in a single stretch of unreadable prose and I realized that I didn’t close that parenthesis. Screw it, if it’s left open, it’s left open. I’m not going to die. You can complain if you want, I don’t really care. Why should I care anyway, I have the luxury of doing whatever the hell I like with this space. Okay maybe there are repercussions and sub-optimal outcomes but I don’t care, the words are flowing and they need to flow somewhere so I’ll be damned. Let em go where they wanna go.
I just caught Iron Man 3 today and I quite enjoyed it, despite receiving warnings from a couple of my friends that it disappointed them. Well I enjoyed it anyway. I enjoyed the way they handled the villainy, and I also liked what seemed to me to be an effort to combat sexism. (Some might say it’s a little transparent or forced, but screw it man, you have to give them points for trying.)
Decided to sneak a peek at the word count (it was hidden from the screen before). 730. Wow, not bad for a semi-single burst of energy. I’ve still got more in me, I can keep going. Who knew it were in there? I’m going to go to bed feeling even better than I did if I hadn’t written this. See, I need to remember this feeling. I need to shift from thinking of this project as a burden and see it as a way of being, a way of exploration, a way of playing, of having fun. That’s the only real way to win.
I can’t wait to do more at work. I’ve been working on a blogpost that aggregates a list of all the companies in my block. It’s not perfect but I think it’s going to be pretty cool. Though I feel like I might have taken a little too long with it. But screw it, I’m going to get it out. Done is better than perfect. Move fast and break things. Simple principles to live by. I should never sit in front of a computer screen for more than 20, 30, 40 minutes at a go. I should take breaks and clear my mind, refocus. Now is the time. We need to build an army and we need to go to space. It’ll be interesting, it’ll be fun.
Wow, I’m really feeling so much better just from writing even without any clear purpose. And I would be at 44,000 at the end of it. 44,000 out of 1,000,000. And I swear I will get there. I have done that in video games before, I have seen that experience bar go up, and in those cases it was predictable, I knew what would happen, and I kept at it anyway. Well this time it’s going to be a lot more exciting.
I’ve crossed the 1,000 limit but I want to quickly just talk about something me and my boss were talking about, which is the danger of local optimal points. What’s that? It’s when you settle for good instead of great. The good is the enemy of the great. There are all these caches and niches that are easy to fall into if you’re not paying attention and you get all this positive energy and validation and it’s easy to just stagnate there. I think this happens to the best of people, to some pretty fantastic minds.
It’s very important to me that I don’t fall into this trap (although I suspect I have drifted into its grasp many, many times and perhaps you could even say that I spent most of my life there.)
But the goal is commercial space travel and potentially Mars. I cannot rest until we get our collective asses there. That’s a goal worth living for, that would live up to the sort of glory of say, what the founding fathers did. How cool would that be. Oh man. Okay I’m going to do pushups and squats, wash the dishes, take a shower and then maybe read a chapter of Thinking Fast And Slow, and then meditate and then go to bed. 1225 words. Goodnight
but you know, sometimes the enemy of good is better.
better’s better than good!