sometimes i have several experiences within a narrow-ish timeframe that give me an interesting gestalt. i’m thinking now of the rat in rattatouille experimenting with food and flavors, and i’m thinking of that because i read a post by an iranian guy who wrote about how the movie saved his life. the experiences i’ve had are… i did a consult for a client who told me about someone i’m mutuals with who gave a talk at a conference. (1) i watched some of that talk and i found myself inspired by that mutual’s irreverence and compelling storytelling, worldbuilding. next, i complimented an artist on instagram and (2) they responded that they read my book and loved my work. next, again, i saw someone reply to a tweet (not mine) that was strikingly stupid from a place of motivated reasoning. i (3) noticed my mind automatically formulating a response, before i paused and reconsidered (3) in light of (1) and (2). and i realize i continue to play too small. i haven’t done a good update in a while.
what do i mean by good update? i find myself thinking of video games. think of a game where you’re sort of coasting along. i’m thinking of some action-adventure role-playing game, something with inventory and stats, maybe something like the witcher, or diablo, or maybe a shooter like borderlands 2, or maybe a final fantasy game. so you play the game, you chug along, you gain experience and levels, and you have a bunch of equipment and spells and such, and you face enemies that you have to defeat. so there’s some combat, where you deal and receive damage, and you have to do some healing, all that stuff. (as i write this, it occurs to me that so much of that is stuff that is picked up over time via osmosis– and i’m reminded of an excellent video that describes what it’s like for someone totally new to video games to be confused and intimidated even by reasonably well-designed games. and from here i’m reminded of some things i’ve read about visual language (as in road signs, and comic books and so on), and other things like genre tropes in books and media. all of these things require immersion in order for us to understand and appreciate them.)
back to before the brackets. so you’re going about your game, and you maybe don’t need to think too much about what you’re doing, because what you’re doing is working. you’re fighting the monsters and winning. but eventually they start to get harder, and you come to realize that your existing approach isn’t working so well anymore. what do you do? you tinker with your setup. you check to see that all your stats and attributes and skill points etc are well-distributed. you evaluate the strategy you’re using and consider alternative approaches. maybe some problems require particular solutions. eg your usual approach of attacking enemies head on might not work for a particular kind of enemy that’s able to parry and counter-attack, so you might switch to attacking from a distance with a ranged weapon. moderately skilled gamers are making this sort of decision all the time, and it’s often second-nature to them and they might not even be very conscious of the fact that they’re doing it. adapt. improvise. experiment. if something isn’t working you try something else. there are several kinds of possible updates here, and now for some reason i’m reminded of a james clear tweet about ‘hats, haircuts and tattoos’– basically changes that are temporary, moderately lasting, and permanent or near-permanent. switching weapons or armors etc tends to be straightforward. use a different spell. swap out your most-used spell for one that the enemy is extra-susceptible to. but some changes are more substantial, you might have to spend some gold/xp/resources to reset your points and redistribute them differently. you might have to use a different playing style entirely that you’re not familiar with.
well, enough about video games. i’m thinking about my life. (and now i’m reminded that my quora/twitter friend oliver emberton wrote a whole guide about life as a video game). i’m more capable than i admit to myself, than i fully acknowledge. i still largely play on autopilot. i keep putting off doing a proper update of my skills, goals, plans, strategies. because i feel like… i don’t have time for that? but writing it out now, it’s obvious that I don’t have time NOT to do that. i haven’t been making much progress, which suggests to me that there’s something mistaken about my approach. i’m doing too many random acts of work, rather than looking for strong asymmetrical advantages that I can lean heavily on. I find myself reflecting again on ‘consider the speedrunners’. what is the goal? to publish excellent writing. and to make money to support my family, and to further accelerate/improve my process of publishing excellent writing. i haven’t sufficiently investigated and described my process, ie “visakanv’s process for publishing excellent writing”. i sort of vaguely hope that if i keep sitting around with the intention of writing, and write some words from time to time, that excellent writing will just happen. that might be a maybe dismissive oversimplification, but it’s some kind of a starting point thati. candig deeper into. maybe that’ll be my next wordvomit. what is visakanv’s process for publishing excellent writing? talk to people on twitter? that helps somewhat in getting me occasionally frustrated in a productive way. but is that the best way of doing things? what if i wanted to get really good at it? what would I update? i realized today that i can post quotes from my drafts on my substack, which feels like a game-changer. i could do that on twitter too but i don’t feel like doing that. what is my idealized role for twitter in my process for publishing excellent writing? what is the role of my notes? what is the role of my books? how often should i be having conversations? with who?
reached the end of this, but more to think about tomorrow. what is the process? describe the process!