I haven’t published a new word vomit since September 25 2017. I don’t feel terrible about it, but I do think it’s definitely time to get back on the wagon. It does feel like staying off the wagon too long has a deleterious effect on me. So it’s time to start writing again.
What’s on my mind?
I was thinking about “no assholes” as a rule.
I was also thinking about the idea of an inner newsfeed as a metaphor for thinking about private thoughts, an inner life. I want to have a rich inner life. But in practice, I have a habit of latching on to my newsfeeds – twitter and Facebook – looking for something interesting. This is a trap. I know that my own mind is capable of giving me, on average, much more interesting thoughts than whatever is on my feed at any given time.
I woke up this morning at 10am. But I sat in a chair and browsed Twitter until basically 1am. That’s about 3 full hours of twittering. What did I get out of it? What did I learn? How did I grow? Nothing! I would’ve been much better off simply meditating for 30 minutes, or writing a word vomit. These are superior patterns of behavior that I have been neglecting. Why? I guess because Twitter is easier. I don’t want to be too harsh on myself. I’m here now. This is good.
I want to make a habit of prioritising my inner newsfeed. And I want to make a habit of facing my fears.
I was thinking recently – again, for the hundredth time or more, probably – that the things that are most important in my life are daily reviews and effective scheduling. I have been stressing the importance of both, in vomits like this, since I was a teenager. Why haven’t I adopted them yet? If they’re so important, what am I waiting for? I get annoyed with society for being slow to change, but what about me? Why don’t I change more quickly?
It occurred to me that fear is the variable that I had not previously considered. If I considered it, it was as a sort of loose, temporary consideration. I was reading other people talking about it, and I would nod my head, but also think “that’s not really me, is it, I’m not so bad.” But what if fear and anxiety is the heart of everything that’s stopping me from doing what I want to do, becoming who I want to become? And what if I’m in denial about that? I think that’s definitely true. Why haven’t I seen a therapist yet? I tell myself that I don’t trust the average therapist to do a decent job, that I don’t want to spend a lot of money.
Okay, fine, maybe that’s acceptable and true, or even if it isn’t, it’s something I can roll with. The point is that I want to be better. What does better mean? I want to stop spending 3 hours on twitter when I wake up in the morning. Why do I do that? I have some sort of craving or urge. Yes it could be described as an addiction, but what is the root cause? What is the addiction trying to cope with? It’s a specific type of behavior – displacement behavior.
I was telling myself back in May 2017 that the heart of it is a story. I have inherited all sorts of stories. What’s the story I have in my head about sleep? About work? About stress? About taking care of myself? I need to be honest with myself here.
My wife is still asleep as I write this. I find myself thinking, “good, this is time that I have to myself to do whatever I like – I should spend it writing word vomits”. What is up with that thought? Surely I can still write word vomits when she’s awake? But I guess there’s a part of me that needs privacy for this sort of thing. It sounds a bit silly… but I believe there have been writers in the past who had this sort of issue? Like they just needed to be in a very private space to be able to think and write their private thoughts.
Beyond that. I have some work I need to do that’s overdue. But yet I’m not doing that, I’m doing this instead. Intellectually I know that I should do my work first. But I subconsciously feel like… what if I spend the whole day doing work, and end up having no time for myself? That’s upsetting, it would be like being imprisoned somehow. By myself. By my own failure or incompetence or something. That’s not good. I need to make time for myself.
What was I getting at… stories. Stories about sleep, about work, about stress, about self-care. I was reading a bit of Moldbug recently – and a review of Albion’s Seed a while before that – and what I think is interesting is discovering how much of the world today is shaped by Puritanical ideas, because it shaped America, and America shaped the world. Influenced, whatever. And I’m also thinking about just how everything is so… determined. Predetermined.
I want to determine myself. I want to be free. I want to be calm. Zen. Take deep breaths. Dare to take up more space. Dare to be calm, bold, quiet.
It took me a long time to realize that I’m a rattled person. Not the most rattled, probably in the less rattled half of most people. We are a rattled species. I want to be unrattled. I want to be chill, like buddha. To do this, I need to stop running away and hiding from my mind. These are funny words to say, because I don’t feel like I’m a person who runs and hides. But that’s part of the running and hiding.
Anyway, my mind was all over the place in this one, and it feels like its going to take a few vomits for me to get back into a smooth flow. For now, it’s good just to be back.