there was a time i had the idea of ‘not being allowed’ to go online until i’d first written a thousand words of braindump. i was never religious about it, but it actually worked pretty well for me when i followed through. similarly there was a more recent time where i insisted on doing a few reps of kettlebell rows every time i used the bathroom, and it actually worked remarkably well at helping me build some strength and muscle– though that routine fell apart when i had to switch up my workouts to doing cardio for a military fitness test. looking back at my life, a lot of things were like this. for me, good new routines are hard to establish, even if they’re actually beneficial. and they fall apart quickly, and take annoyingly long to re-establish. one of the things that happened in tandem with the kettlebell row habit was, i increased my protein consumption by simply drinking more chocolate milk and soy milk, alternatingly. but when my routine fell apart, i somehow lost the stomach for it and couldn’t bring myself to drink it anymore. these days i notice i don’t really feel like tweeting much. for a few weeks i was making a deliberate effort to post on substack notes. i kept that going for a while, but i think then i got busy, or i fell sick, and then it fell apart. everything falls apart eventually. the interesting question then becomes, what starts back up again? i’m reminded of a quote from motivational speaker Les Brown, which i’ll paraphrase– anybody can be positive, optimistic, have a larger vision, etc when things are going well. the real challenge is when you get knocked down, when things are going bad. how do you stick it through the hard times? this was also the central idea in ben horowitz’s ‘the hard thing about hard things’.
i’m thinking now also of a conversation between seinfeld and bill burr, where they talked about how people in showbiz love having meetings where they discuss all of the things they might do in a project, and how that meeting is the best anybody is ever going to feel, because when you actually go through with the project you have to face disappointments and tradeoffs and frustrations and failures. “that’s not what I envisioned”, etc. but then you set up another meeting and you go to that one. this clearly isn’t just about showbiz; I’m sure you can think of some relevant example in your own industry, and even individual procrastinators do it all the time, even with their hobbies. it’s fun to fantasize about how wonderful things could be. facing reality isn’t quite so fun. there’s a different QUALITY of fun, for sure. there’s satisfaction at making real progress, there’s a sense of accomplishment from getting something actually done, a sense of fulfilment, relief. The two books I’ve written are both huge sources of joy and also like, ‘professional embarrassment’? I’m always conscious of all of their flaws and imperfections, all of the ways in which they fell short of what I had hoped to accomplish. I wonder if I’ve not yet properly thought through the implications of this. This is probably always the case with launching or shipping anything. The imperfections and failures will ripple through it. Can we tolerate it?
In fact, it seems to me that most of the challenge of all of the work I do is really emotional. The technical stuff is just solving puzzles, moving words around. That stuff is second nature to me, I’ve been doing it all my life. And I can do it exceptionally well when I’m in a supportive context, such as in conversation with a friend who’s easy to talk to. And I do it poorly outside of such contexts, such as when I get all swept up by the idea that I should do something Serious and Important. That framing, that context, is just a massive turnoff to the Muse, or the creative spirit, or whatever you wanna call it. Conversely, I’ve noticed so many times, both in myself and others, that people get smarter and more creative when they’re goofing off. A while ago I wrote a substack post titled ‘interestingness on demand’, and I tried to approach it from a place of curiosity. I wonder if another angle to it might be goofiness on demand. Humor is magical. It shifts frames. People laugh because of the vertigo caused by the frame shifts, which happen when we go from expectation to punchline.
Where am I going with this? The central element seems unchanged– i’m pursuing joy, fun, catharsis, aliveness, humor, good cheer, etc in my work. But as I write that out it becomes clearer to me that those things are not fungible, they’re not uniform. Again I return to Miles Davis: “Man, sometimes it takes a really long time to sound like yourself.” How is it that I’ve been having such a challenging time sounding like myself? Surely, myself is the only person I can actually sound like? In a sense yes, but also no. Usually the problem is that I’m going too slow, I’m thinking too much. Ray Bradbury had a sign over his typewriter for 25 years that said “don’t think!” You can look up the quote for the specifics of what he meant by that, but my interpretation was that it’s important to be fully present in the moment to FEEL. It is always always always my feelings that determine the quality of my work. This is somehow true even when thinking about really technical things.
It’s so funny. I’m like in this eternal struggle with my own mind to try and produce anything of substance. Even saying “of substance” might be complicating matters. Am I getting better at the thing that I’m trying to do? I think I am, in a global sense, but there are short-term cycles in which I can go in weird loops into ‘bad’ places. which are really only bad while I’m there, but once I find my way out, then that becomes a kind of ‘lesson’. And having some understanding of the ‘bad’ places contextualizes the good places. Idk. I’m figuring it out. As always.