This will be a status update-y sort of word vomit. And then I think after that I’m going to start trawling through old vomits to see what I can build on, what I can update, what connections and threads I can make. So. It’s October 2nd. (Hey, tomorrow is Mean Girls day!) Yesterday was October 1st, the beginning of the final quarter of the year. It’s time for me to start getting serious. I have a bunch of meetups planned with people in the coming weeks. I want to start getting serious. I want to start getting industrial. I hit the squat rack yesterday. And I’m going to do something else today, maybe some pushups. It’s time to hydrate. It’s time to write. It’s time to plan dates with the wife. It’s time to do some home improvement.
I was feeling quite lackadaisical and sloppy the past few weeks. But getting into the groove of writing cleans that up for me. It makes me feel sharp. I can feel it in my sentences, they become shorter and quicker. I was feeling morose about the sheer volume of work I have ahead of me, and the vagueness of the fog, the uncertainty. But now I’m a little more clear-headed. It’s a little more obvious what I should do. A little bit every day goes a long, long way. If I publish 3 word vomits a day, I can complete this project by the end of the year. But as I’ve expressed several times before – even one a day goes a longer way than my usual habit of sitting around waiting for the perfect time. So let’s start a chain and not break it. And jump back on the wagon the moment I slip.
What else would go into a status update vomit? I think it wasn’t too long ago that I scanned through my old vomits looking for things to do next. I feel compelled to pause now and look around a little bit. And here I have to options – do I look around from scratch? Or do I look for the notes from the last time I looked around? I think I should practice doing the latter. I know I have notes on my blog. I probably also have notes in my Evernote. I should… gather all my notes together. Let’s do that now for a few minutes.
I just scanned through most of my evernote notes. What did I learn? Not much. Now I’m looking through the “Pages” on the /1000/ blog. What am I learning? Okay, I’ve done an overview of this site before. And a lot of it seems to be self-directed – instructions and advice for myself on how to function better, how to make better sense of the world, how to navigate more effectively. Okay. That’s cool. But so what? Then what? What’s next? What do I want? What is all of this for? Yes, it feels good to be able to function better. But to what end? What am I trying to achieve? “I want to be a writer”. What do I want to write about? I can’t spend the rest of my life writing advice for myself. It’s time for me to turn my inquiry outwards, to start making hypotheses and sharing my findings. To start participating in the world again. What does that look like? What do I want to achieve in the world? What do I think badly needs writing? What do I wish someone else would write?
What do I wish someone would write for me?
There’s too much mess everywhere.
I’ve been thinking about the idea represented in “EVALUATE”. The idea that we should define our utility functions, define what we want. If we don’t know what we want, it’s improbable that we’ll be able to get it. There’s a sort of meta discussion to be had about the nature of wants, and maybe that’s another essay in itself, but I think a sort of ground-level discussion is something worth doing. Maybe I’ll devote a word vomit to that. I also want to make progress on my “Indian diaspora” thoughts and ideas. What does that mean? What is that about? What does it mean to be someone from the diaspora? What are the challenges? What are some problems that need solving? How are they to be solved? What are some concrete actions that need to take place?
I also have some writing goals for purely arbitrary reasons – wanting to get published, wanting to “make a name for myself”. I think “get on a bestseller’s list” is a little too prestige-oriented. What’s a more fundamental, respectable goal to have? “Respectable” in a personal, private sense. All I want to do is make myself proud. All I want to do is earn my own respect.
I want to finish the novel that I started. I want to finish my book of essays. I want to write my memoirs. I want to finish my card game. I want to update my bookmarks page so that it’s more useful to people. I want to translate my best twitter threads into blogposts so that it’s easier to share things with people. I want to have my work be used as currency by real people in real circumstances, for practical purposes. I want to be a better husband. I want to meet more people and make new friends. I want to be fitter, happier, healthier, more productive. I want to be a shining example for younger versions of myself. I want to prioritize, because I know that without prioritizing, I’m going to end up spending time on things that are less-than-most-important. And it’s important to know what is most important. I want to write a book about prioritization (I’ve started a folder in my notes to start writing the drafts.)
Alright, I spent like 30 minutes brainstorming a book, and I think I could actually write it in a few days and publish it as an ebook and sell it!! I have good feeling about this. This is a good place to start.