Every day I sit in front of twitter for hours. A part of me is slightly embarrassed by this. Another part wants to say, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, twitter is a very lucrative place for me to be. So many of my friends are on here, I encounter so many new ideas, it’s so fresh and lively, me being active there sells my books, refines my thinking. So why embarrassed? well, it’s because a part of me feels like I “ought” to be doing “more important” stuff. And writing that down I know that that’s never a good way to get any good writing done. I don’t write good stuff because I “ought” to. I write good stuff when there’s a little explosion that happens. And an eternal question that has hounded me is, is it possible to induce such explosions on purpose? The soften the ground, gain traction? Is there another part of me that just doesn’t want to write? What do I want?
I want to close all my tabs, I want to feel a sense of progress and forward momentum. I want to stop feeling like I haven’t done anything. And I know there are multiple ways to address that feeling, but really the best way is to literally just do something – which in this case for me means publishing a substack post. Am I putting too much pressure/weight on the idea of publishing a good substack post? I… don’t think so! I mean, the question becomes, how do I take on this pressure in a healthy and constructive way?
I don’t want to keep ranting on my substack about the tedium of my creative process. I did that twice already, and some of it will probably continue to slip into my work nevertheless. I want to let the work stand, shine, speak for itself. And to get to that state I still have to do a bunch of thinking. But I think at some point of “living onstage” I forgot to think about the utility of thinking out loud backstage, for myself. I used to write for myself more, and somewhere along the way I kinda forgot to do that. I keep thinking out loud in public, and the truth is that the public isn’t exactly the most charitable place. But all of that seems like more detail that necessary. The simple truth that I’m trying to circle around and really step into is that it’s good for me to think out loud for myself in writing, and I haven’t done that in a while, and as long as I haven’t done that, my polished-professional writing feels stilted and fake. And maybe that’s why I’m avoiding it! I think that could be the case. Every time I think about starting a substack post it feels like work, in the unpleasant way. And it shouldn’t. I don’t want to publish stuff that doesn’t feel like it came from a place of spiritedness and good cheer. Well, good to clarify that for myself. Now I think I have at least some sort of a plan that makes sense. I’m going to continue writing more wordvomits as I process things. I’m going to read my Roam, read my Notes, read my past wordvomit entries, Google docs, etc, and I’m going to think out loud in writing as I do that. And I trust that things will come together.
What else is to be said within the container of this particular wordvomit? I was talking to a friend earlier about the backstage/frontstage thing. And I think I talked about that on a youtube video recently too, the backstage/frontstage separation.
Alright now for some bullet thoughts
- I have a year’s worth of bookmarks to sort through
- part of me is tempted to start splitting posts between visakanv.substack and 0xsb.substack
- i’m probably too hard on myself but i don’t feel like this is going to change dramatically anytime soon
- i’m going thru a list of my archives… i’m seeing a bunch of stuff about habits and gamification and trying to figure out how to build structure for myself in a very bottom-up way, a lot of trying to gas myself up to be more creative, more
- in a 2012 review I wrote that I use my backlog as a safety net, and this still feels true in a sense, though it also partially seems inevitable? the important thing I think is how does it feel in the moment
- it’s kind of interesting how my thinking was shaped by the context I was in – for example when I was in the military i was kinda swept up a little bit in the idea of becoming an officer
“I have too many notes!!” Alright, let’s think about this. What’s the first thing you do when you have too much of something? I’d say slow down. How do you know you have too much? What do you have? “A lot of stuff everywhere” that’s vague. Can you be more precise? “Notes app, roam, twitter, google docs” – of these things which is currently causing you the most distress? “notes app and google docs” between the two, which? “notes app” what’s wrong with the notes app? “too many folders, too many notes, not sure what some of the nested things are, i cant accept a wanton deletion, so I need to touch every single note again” ok what’s stopping you from touching all the notes in your notes app? how many are there? “right now, 1075” how long would it take you to touch every single note. “uhhh if we do 10secs/note that is… 179.16… 180 minutes… that’s 3 hours.” “do you have 3 hours? maybe split it into a 2, add some breaks? give it… 6 hours? timebox it, pomodoro it, throw up some checkpoints? “that makes sense… thx visa u are very helpful” lol yea ikr
alright that’s the rest of my night sorted. i’m going to try and touch all of my notes in a speedrun