So this is interesting. It’s 12 noon now. I was able to chug from 5am till about 730am, then I got tired and started reading nonsense. Next thing I knew it was 9am. Did a bit more writing… then it was 1030am. My wife woke up, we hung out for a while, I did some reading (TechGnosis). Then I just sort of wandered around the house for a while. I should probably eat and take a nap. I’ll do one more vomit and then go down for brunch. I should’ve eaten earlier, I guess. But so far doing quite alright for a Saturday morning, I feel.
After writing a vomit about boredom and cluttered minds, I went to glance at my bookshelves and I realized that… there isn’t really a lot of stuff I want to read. At least, that was the thought I had. And the corrective thought that followed was– well, I need to figure out what my reading priorities are. What do I want to read? What are my purposes? There are several threads to follow. One is the whole pagan wisdom thing– Gabrielle Roth’s Connections, Jay Griffiths’ Sideways Look At Time, and now TechGnosis. I’d like a bit more of that, but I’m a bit tired of that right now. What else? I’d like to revisit the Edge books (where they ask smart people a single question, and then collect all the answers). I feel like I’d like to re-read Carl Sagan’s biography, and User Illusion, but do I really…? Hah, I shouldn’t overthink my feelings. I should just do what I want. And I suppose right now I don’t actually feel like reading. I have a couple of history books on my Kindle that I’m reading. I’d still like to develop a better understanding of nutrition, ATP, sleep, low blood sugar, etc… and that might be something better done online? I’ll extract what I can from the books I have– the Energy Of Life is one such book that I have. Okay, so I’m overthinking my reading. I have 4-5 books in line, and I can make notes. Cool.
What else is up? I’ve been wanting to clean out my Workflowy, which has gotten rather cluttered. As I scan through it, I see a lot of stuff that “might be useful”, but it’s really just taking up space. What should I do with it? I can save the file and upload it to the cloud and then not look at it. There’s a part of me that just wants everything to be tidy, but is that a sort of compulsive busyness activity? Let’s pop over to the Workflowy again.
Ah yeah, I’d like to read some old wisdom. Seneca, Montaigne. And I’d like to re-read Paul Graham’s essays, maybe. And once I’ve bounded my word vomits that I’ve printed out, I’d like to re-read those. I think re-reading old vomits is probably the best reading choice out of all my options, because I feel like there’s some unresolved stuff from the older vomits that I ought to readdress ASAP.
I’ve made a bit more progress on my Workflowy. I realized I had a bullet for “Projects” and another bullet for “Brain Dump”, but a lot of the brain dump things were actually projects– so I’ve merged the two. I’ll eliminate the shittier projects altogether, and I’ll just dump anything that’s “brain dumpy” at the top or bottom of my workflowy and triage them into wherever they got to go. That feels better.
I also had another tab for “priorities”, I’m merging that into “projects” as well. Wow, that feels much better. Way too many folders.
Now I started looking into my “Work” tab, and hoo boy, there’s tonnes of mess there. All of this mess must be contributing to my general stress levels. I know I have all my stuff in places, but it’s not ordered neatly, it’s not easily accessible, there’s a lot of repetition and mess. Once I finish this vomit and go down for lunch, I should come back up and sort the crap out of my Workflowy so that I’m clearheaded again. No wonder I’m dazed and confused.
I suppose this vomit was just all about me trying to clarify what I want to do. At the end of the whole project, there are going to be quite a few vomits that were like this. And I think that’s a good thing. I was reading a post about managing your own psychology and it talked about how you ought to have “Start”, “Keep Doing”, “Stop” and so on. And you have to figure out what the best, worst and probable outcomes are, and assign probabilities…
Phew. Getting shit done is a lot of work. I suppose that’s why you should always go back to the source and remind yourself what you’re trying to achieve, who you want to be, what you’re trying to embody, what you’re doing all of this for. I’m writing these vomits to build discipline, to gain mastery of language, and to become a better thinker. I’m writing with the intent of influencing my actions and my behaviors, and I think so far it’s helping quite alright.
It’s nice to know that the present muddiness of my mind is a function of context and environment and state. Early this morning my brain was swimming in thoughts, and I put out 8,000 words of them down. And of course, they’re not going to do justice to the thoughts, but they never are. The point is to just keep putting them down and keep going. I’ll go have lunch with my wife, and it’ll feel good because I did get quite a big chunk of stuff done in a single morning. And then I’ll meditate and rest and see what my brain surprises me with next, as it inevitably will.
I realize– whenever I have a few words left, I used to write a bunch of gibberish to try and fill up my quota. Instead, I think I should write a note to my future self. Dear future Visa: I really want us to do well. I believe we can do it. I’m sorry I didn’t do better earlier, but I’m trying.