Neil de Grasse Tyson and the Dangers of Philosophy

The NdGT controversy I think comes down to the question of thinking versus acting. Of determining some form of balance

Neil de Grasse Tyson recently made some comments that have been interpreted as saying 'philosophy is useless' -- as a man of want to be action, usually navel gazing, I didn't look too deeply at them, but rushed instead to form an opinion.

I did in fact read part of a transcript from the nerdist here (I think) and thought NdGT's comments were not out of line.



They come down to the existential dilemma we face every day. Acting without thinking versus thinking without acting -- and how we must each find a liveable balance between the two.

For years I made the joke about how hard it is to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning because we're all going to die.

Which is an extreme form of 'where do I turn my spade?' - which was the phrase used in some philosophy course I took. When do I stop questioning and just do something?

Where we fall on the gradient between active and introspective is likely the usual combination of genetic and cultural influences. Look at some identical twins separated at birth raised in different cultures and see how they score.

I believe NdgT's point was that you don't want to spend your entire life 'just thinking'. Or just introspecting. He seems to have been saying that scientists look at the world 'out there' and see endless questions that they may be able to find answers to.

I know that I'm prone to doing ALOT of introspection, but over the years I've had help identifying some of the times when you need to get your head out of your ass and look around. Negative introspection, when you keep telling yourself bad things about yourself. Throw up a flag, and consciously change what you're thinking/doing. Endlessly pondering a decision - at some point you have to weigh the cost of delaying a decision against the cost of making a wrong decision. And sometimes the decision is between two good things so there's little downside to EITHER! So you have to ask yourself - in these cases the SOONER I choose, the better. Procrastination - all the instances of challenges, like doing the dishes, where the amount of work won't change, but the amount of enjoyment of that work depends on when you do it. Doesn't mean you can do EVERYTHING right away, but it's a mental tool to remind yourself - hey, if I do that NOW, then I won't have to do it later.

Anyway - now I have to stop ruminating and work. But I think MAYBE NdGT's comments have been blown out of proportion, by peoples overthinking.

Farming 2.0

I'm taking an online course on Permaculture with Geoff Lawton and the Permaculture research institute out of Australia. I've been trying to come up with an easy way to explain it. Here's a few that I've seen and a few I've tried to come up with.


Permaculture - an easy definition

Ecology, applied
Ecological Architecture
Life support systems
Abundance by design
The Design of Abundant Ecosystems for Humans

---------------

For 8000 years we've tried to extract the maximum food from our environment through pushing natural systems up to and beyond their breaking points. Using energy intensive chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms and pest controls, and relentlessly specialized crop and animal breeding programmes, we have created farming methods that are highly productive but environmentally unsustainable and dangerously unresilient.

Built on cheap energy and an ever expanding agricultural land base, we are now faced with fossil fuel driven climate change and a degraded stock of fertile territory. Business as usual will drive us off a cliff.

It's time for a reboot.

The aim of permaculture is to create abundance through ecosystem management and design. To feed and care for people through the intelligent optimization of natural systems via ever increasing soil fertility and biological interactions.

It's like harnessing "the power of compound interest" for your farm or garden.

Living systems remain the most powerful energy harvesters known.

Through the application of careful design principles, food systems have been developed that can radically increase the productivity of almost any area. By maximizing energy and resource usage and beneficial interactions within the system and reinvesting surplus biological materials and energy into the system future fertility and productivity is increased.

Resilient and robust, these systems favour complex self-reinforcing biological, energetic and chemical interactions, whereby every element fulfils multiple functions and supplies multiple products for use within the system and for the humans relying upon it.

As the web of interactions is dense, the system is dynamically responsive to outside perturbations such as extreme weather or pests, all the while building increasing fertility and productivity through the constant "reinvestment" of materials into the system.

By working to reinforce natural systems instead of attempting to exploit them for short term, unsustainable gain, more people can be fed with less land while drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere.

And by fostering dispersed, redundant, self-sufficient ways of feeding ourselves, we increase food security and empower citizens to make positive changes both for themselves and for the planet.

Working on the Jazz Amnesty Sound System Jazz Mass Movie

The week it was...

I probably *should* be looking for work. But instead, I'm working. Working on a project I've been calling my TOHOE in my SOHO - triumph of hope over experience in my small office/home office. It's a movie about a 'Jazz Mass' put on by Jazz Amnesty Sound System. My friends Andy Williams and Lew Braden, two DJs, who hosted 'the jazz illuminati' of Montreal to come and jam in St John the Evangelist's church while they 'conducted' from their turn tables.



You can watch the teaser here…

The genesis of the project was Lew asking me to help them film a demo of the event. I asked Bruno Goulard to help me with it and he encouraged me to shoot a little higher. So he brought together a professional crew and we shot a multi-camera live event, with multi track audio. So, you know, we got something.

Now we 'just' need to turn it into a movie. Editing, more interviews, etc. It's going to require some resources.

And it won't happen overnight.

So I AM looking for work - if you know of anything in the writing/directing/editing vein please get in touch (hepworks@gmail.com).

If you know anything about financing also GET IN TOUCH!

And stay tuned...

Related Posts:

Jazz Mass Questions
Jazz Mass Backstory
What is Art?

Producing and Marketing Esoteric Felt Puppetry

I've been making @beavercanuck puppet videos for awhile - attacking the #cpc and @pmharper over being asshats. Yeah, they're a little partisan - and VERY esoteric.

So having put another bunch of hours into another video



that is only understandable to #cdnpoli geeks…and even then at a stretch assuming the 'humour' works at all - I have to ask myself am I willfully making videos so obscure that they cannot possibly reach a wide audience?

and I think the truth of it is is that I'm somewhat obsessive over Canadian politics on twitter, so I've got real blinkers on what even the average Canadian knows about…and I've got a hate on for Stephen Harper and feel the need to do something to mock him.

As a 'business' strategy it's not really working - but it is keeping me motivated enough to keep producing. Which is probably as important as whether anyone watches.

Having spent years kind of producing my own 'stuff' very sporadically, we're kind of at a sweet point technologically where it's easier than ever to produce material, and personally I'm both sufficiently desperate to put out 'something' and proficient enough with the software to churn stuff out relatively quickly.

Now - I know some of the corners I'm cutting - the worst being the writing. In my rush to 'do something' I either don't script or only lightly script my videos, and then put much more time into producing and editing them - the result being that the jokes aren't exactly screamers, and they still take a long time to get out there. In the past I've gotten discouraged by the lack of audience feedback and stopped.

But I'm also of the opinion that I need to embarrass my way forward - I'm experimenting, and the costs of each video, in time, likely needs to be incurred no matter what my approach.

I don't just want to write and rewrite jokes - I want to put stuff out in front of an audience, no matter how small.

I'm trying different approaches - My Thomas Mulcair runs a stop sign



was basically improv'ed straight into my (new) microphone - and was a lot more spontaneous and 'fun' than other stuff I've written and then 'performed'…

the sweet spot I'm really looking for is a balance between fast and cheap and worthwhile - I'd written a five page script for what became Elizabeth May Pants John Baird and Stephen Harper dodges questions - which I may append to the end of this…and wanted the video to be much faster with more elements - a whole section mocking Pauline Marois for her Quebec soccer federation turban ban position 'I am Sikh of this…' 'Quoi?' 'Le hasch est muet…' 'Hash?' - anyhow - hilarious TO ME…

Now pretty much any book on startups, and this likely applies to anyone building a brand or band or whatever, is that you need to spend twice the time marketing, and figuring out how to get paid, for your product or ideas as you do working on your ideas…

so I go as far as tweeting links, and have started posting to reddit (thanks @aimeedavison)…a pinterest, etc…

But this falls into the dilemma so many people have that people don't 'want' to promote themselves - they want to be 'creative' etc…which, at 42, reeks of bullshit. NO ONE DESERVES TO GET RICH SCREWING AROUND WITH FELT PUPPETS! - or playing indie emo drivel, or whatever your 'thing' is…if people are going to give you money - which is essentially give you some of their life force, because money is generally earned with time, which is all we have and not much of it, then you better be worth it.

For the moment my level of creative anxiety is manageable - I'm supposed to be starting a job so 'have some time' and am enjoying the process. Each time I hit a beat - like getting Elizabeth May's biplane to shoot with the propeller spinning, or putting Stephen Harper in a crown…it's pretty amusing…and if 'This Hour has 22 Minutes' or 'Rick Mercer' or whoever happens to fall upon this stuff - well, I'd love to take your money for it.

Have I reached out to them? Not yet. I want to get better first…could you, dear reader, help by sharing and favoritting and subscribing? Yes - that is exactly WHAT I WANT FROM YOU.

It's google juice - how things get momentum. But I have to earn it. And keep asking.

So please SUBSCRIBE.




--

Seize the mother french sealing day

Driving kids down to garderie, post decent weekend despite Saturday conflict with 8 yo and then 8 yo puking everywhere during the night, I tasted victory.

It's a funny thing - the almost tangible feeling of confidence, to deconstruct, and possibly burst the balloon, equal parts recent exercise, domestic harmony, not drinking, effort, etc…

The recipe doesn't entirely matter - it does, to try and maintain or replicate it, but I'm also moving to something else here…

The thing with confidence and optimism is that it changes both how you perceive the world and how you act in it - as I walked back to the minivan having forced the kids to listen to The Immigrant Song (BBC studio version) but then turning on top 40 afterwards to quiet their rebellion, I thought to myself 'I'm just getting started - I haven't even brought my A game yet' - I'm parathinking, but it was something similarly sports themed…a real sense of how my efforts to date can be surpassed by my efforts in the future.

And it was due in part to having posted a video about my yellow teeth. I've always had teeth of colour - and don't exactly live a coffee and other staining substances free lifestyle.



Once each new hygienist stops vomiting down her sleeve and suggests there's something I could do about it, I tell them that eventually my narcissism will overcome my miserliness - but not yet.

The point is that I'm finally being directly bullied by advertising and Crest can go french seal themselves. Knowing rationally the harm our hyper sexualized and violence fetishizing culture does everyday to women (and men), it's cliche but true that it's only when you or yours are directly attacked that it becomes personal.

Which is also why I like living in Quebec - one of the most pleasant places for a 6'2" white guy to enjoy the slightest sense of being victimized and discriminated against within driving distance of the grandparents.

So my buddy said "Not even hiding behind the Beaver proxy, you must be really angry" -- which was cool because I was annoyed enough by the ads to act - though it was more about wanting to see if the gods of You Tube virality would react, than for justice for people with teeth of colour. (note: so far You Tube does NOT give a shit) - but it was more interesting to me because I've been hiding behind my puppet, while knowing that I'm trying to back myself into making real efforts.

Now the 'feeling' of optimism needs to be channeled into action.

Too often I've celebrated feeling good by drinking myself into its opposite. It's kind of like the science that says "Don't tell people about your plans" - when we tell people about our plans, we get a little hit of neurochemical pleasure, that as often as not discourages us from actually attempting our plans, because of all the less pleasant work required to advance them.

I suppose, if I'm honest, this stream of consciousness bloviating and my puppet videos fall into the same category. Some "effort" but really kind of bullshit measured against say, Tolstoy or Jim Henson.

(Which gets us to the snob's dilemma, one of the long list of empty dharmas that stand in the way of our productivity, but that's for another day.) {and which has been dealt with poetically by Ira Glass ...Ed. March, 2014}

THE GAP by Ira Glass from frohlocke on Vimeo.

So the thing is it's Monday and there are things to do - I recognize there are changes that need to be made - clean up or move out of the basement dungeon office, set longer term goals than twenty minute blog posts and 30 second phone videos - seek worthwhile professional challenges, but practice gratitude and reinforce those practices that have let me enjoy an amuse bouche of the taste of victory.

Because the good of each moment can undo the evil of a thousand years. Or so the Buddha told me.

Moving on up, to the good times.

Depression and anxiety - good doctor M taught me - comes from feeling a loss of control - I could feel it mounting yesterday as the wants and needs of my family were in conflict - how pleasing one, displeased at least another - how the multivariate equation was unresolvable. Pouring all my energies into finding the highest stable state, I was burning myself out.



I wanted to play with my puppet, write thinly veiled autobiography, or otherwise 'do my own thing'…playing god knows what in the play room I tried to remember the last time I'd done anything creative - I was eating myself up with guilt over a post I'd written about depression - having had 'a point' but knowing that I'd not expressed it clearly and that, in the unlikely event certain people read it, it would be misunderstood. Would do more harm than good.

And that made me really angry too - because I did have some kind of point, even if I wasn't able to express it. My point had to do with how interconnected we all are - how the mental states of each of us spill over into the mental states of those around us - and of the almost impossible to disentangle web of our psychologies - how we are constitutively predisposed to certain mental states, and yet possess some free will. How even when depressed, there are best practices - but they are practices, and require some exertion.

My friend called me on the fact that I might be projecting - that I might be more depressed myself than I was admitting, or able to recognize, and so by drawing attention to the mental health of others I was in fact really trying to wrestle with my own.

And he was right - because I have always wrestled with self doubt over whether I am exerting myself sufficiently and appropriately. I over analyze.

Last week, sitting in the dermatologist's office because I have fair skin and start to wig out at fairly regular intervals if I've not been looked over for awhile, I was anxious. And the very simple conclusion I came to is 'stop asking "why" you're feeling x y or z' - because very often it's just natural variation, and when it's not, the same best practices that help even out the highs and lows are basically all you have anyhow.

I was in a french sealing waiting room to see if I had skin cancer. I'd not eaten enough breakfast. Was I supposed to be feeling cocky and relaxed? It was a no brainer.

When I do almost anything self-directed - from publishing off the cuff blog posts, to videos of my hand puppet - I feel like I've accomplished something. It's not a job, as much as I'd like it to be, but it helps me get through the day.

I'd love to spontaneously desire to create stuff that has clear market value, but I am way too wrapped up in myself for that. To get there I suspect will require a lot more of this esoteric, weirdness - this crablike purposefully obtuse random walk. I struggle with making any effort that I am uncertain will be rewarded. So instead, I make stuff that requires little effort, and so in the short term 'costs' me less when it receives scant attention.

But the long term costs are huge.

Now I know many of us are in this exact boat, and so my current way forward is to puke stuff out. The exercise of putting these self-doubts out into the world is to let the sunshine melt their empty dharmas away. Because it's really simple bad psychology.

If you are not willing to take any risks, you will never attempt anything worthwhile. I know, and am repeating myself, that many of you over analyze as I do. And I know, as you do, that we may not all get rich blogging, or posting videos of felt puppets - but it's fun. It's fun to share, and every once in awhile to connect.

This blog was named after what I've long joked will be the title of my autobiography. And that's kind of what it is. And it's useful to me to admit some of this stuff publicly - because most of these 'issues' are so thin - so insubstantial, that the slightest exposure melts them away.

Leaving getting on with things the best and easiest way forward.
Which is way more comfy than inaction.

Repair vs replace

In grade four for some reason I came across the idea of perpetual motion. We had some weird teachers - 'Tante Pauline' once stuck a pin through her hand in front of me, I *think* to teach me something about heartache (my crush had moved on to another boy). Anyhow - perpetual motion machines preoccupied me for quite some time.

I remember we had some kind of gardening project and I wanted to make a self-contained 'jungle' with some dandelions and uprooted maple seedlings I had planted in a tupperware. If I could only cover it with plastic wrap or something wouldn't that be cool?

This was just after Skylab had reentered the atmosphere - a heady time when my greatest hope was for a chunk of the space station to land in my backyard, or somewhere else safe, but accessible.

Anyhow - the self-contained ecosystem didn't pan out, though one of the seedlings now shades my parents house, but there was a lingering impact on my psyche. I suppose something analogous to Platonic ideals - the notion of perfectibility, some crap like that.

So for years 'repair vs replace' has puzzled me.

We inherited my parents 1985 Saab 900 around 2002 or so (fact check needed) - and in my 'forms irrational attachments' psychological framework I dreamt I would restore it and that it would last forever. Eventually, after 1) leaking gas 2) having the forward tilting hood flip up at speed 3) overheating 4) $2000 of swedish brakes 5) the inner lining starting to dangle like in some 50s harem movie 6) screwy electrical system that sometimes meant the car just stopped 7) the front bumper just falling off one day, and a few other things, the nail in the coffin was a one two punch of a) the seatbelt that held the baby’s car seat disintegrating (luckily with no baby in car) and b) a dead battery just as winter was starting with all the fun of constantly having to move the car to dodge snow removal.

I walked the keys to the garage and I believe paid $50 for the scrap guy to haul it away.

Now you savvy business types probably have some kind of fancy formula like "if costs of maintenance > cost of financing new vehicle, replace the vehicle" - but it took me a long time to think that way.

And now I recognize I handle other existential questions with a similar level of active self-confusion.

Like for twenty years I've wondered if I need to go back to school, switch careers, or otherwise reinvent myself, yet plod along in the so called entertainment business not really making serious money, but with enough open bars and interesting people to keep rolling forward.

It comes down to god knows what - indecisiveness? A belief that it is better to slowly evolve than attempt revolutionary change (curse you BSc, I should have studied poli sci)

But the fact remains that I still want to ’make movies’ or write or otherwise masturbate publicly - and know that my major obstacle is commitment. Some Facebook friends posted a photo of the size of their latest grant application and it just screamed at me ’you’re not actually serious...’

So what? Now that I know that self-involvement is demonstrably neurochemically pleasurable (link) I’ll stick with that for awhile. And who knows? Indulging in something pleasurable that actually sees me produce a thing or two might be as close to a perpetual motion machine as I'm ever likely to get. Just watch out if I ask you to pass the Kleenex...

Friday night lite

Even the mild bourgeois tit frustrations I suffer from can fill you with a powerful thirst. Booze is such a substitute for substance, the simulation of strong emotion, a relaxant, so the stresses you've been holding tight seem to melt away and the absence of pain feels a lot like pleasure.

Don't get me wrong - I love booze. There's plenty of stress we carry in a ridiculous orgy of self-indulgence, as if our lives were really SO dramatic that we run around in a whirl of make busy make believe.
Booze is good for that. Kind of dissolves away some of the pretence. Lets us relax a little. And there's no denying the placebo element - how depending on our culture booze lets us act in different ways (citation ). Some cultures get amorous, some belligerent, stripped of culture it's not actually the booze, more how we've been trained to hold it.

So after a week of petty frustrations. A week where I had to admit to myself, time and time again, that if I wanted a better job or to be self-employed, well I'd likely have to do something about it...I did SOME things. Tried to get you all to buy a Young Poodles shirt - not for the money, see, but for the moral support - worked, parented, spent too much time on FeelBad and Twatter...and then Friday approaches and there's several live music options.

Now avoiding temptation, that's the ticket...because you can feel the almond start to glow...that part of the brain that just wants to cut the tethers and head for the sun...but there's three little kids see, and keeping a smile on Saturday morning with the steady machine gun chudder of requests is hard enough well rested and regular. And there's the lack of sufficient petty worldly accomplishments to excuse any real kind of “celebrating” ...

But it's Friday night.

You pine for the “perfect” party - the booze up that has somehow been sanctioned by all the gods. But you settle for the actual party...or you don’t. Or, like I seem to love to do - you let the empty dharma kick around until every option fills you with disgust.

Not that the options themselves are bad. Just that you're not feeling worthy of facing the consequences of any of them.

And that’s where the marble stops, for awhile - no course of action seeming impeccable. A third way, a better way, would be to do something useful...but what are the odds of that?

Buy a shirt to support the Young Poodles Movie

Several of you have graciously expressed an interest in supporting the Young Poodles movie.




It's taken me awhile, but...


The best way is to buy a shirt. You will look hawt.

That gesture will drive umpteen hours of productivity, and I expect will tickle the poodles. they've been practicing and if we can just get over a few technical hiccups like their signing releases, I'm sure they'd love to show you all.

Thank you.





lovely shirts

The Current Unpleasantness (how sweet it is)

Several years ago I had an idea for a movie. It was to be called “The Coming Unpleasantness” and be a POV documentary as I sought to look at the many challenges facing humanity and how hope could possibly survive.

I'd been watching a lot of depressing documentaries - (though these are a couple years old now... )

Blue Gold -- World Water Wars

Manufactured Landscapes
Or http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

Our Daily Bread (Unser Taeglich Brot)

Crude Impact --

No End In Sight -

And reading about climate change, loss of biodiversity, water shortages, etc...

I went as far as making some outlines and editing this little teaser.



But I'm repeating myself - I've posted some of this before.

You know, ideas are cheap.

And at the same time I follow a lot of people who don't have their heads up their asses and are busy trying to save the world. I love these people, though we've never met, and follow their progress closely.
(Autonomy now ... )

You don't get garbage like UFC when your society is healthy. It is bread and circuses. The Romans knew a thing or two about distracting people. And you know what? The French sealing Colosseum -


almost became a wool factory to rehabilitate prostitutes.

And we only need to look at Stephen Harper and his #cpc asshats to see how much trouble committed zealots can make in a short time (conservative links updated semi regularly )

The War of 1812? Oh leave it for Upper Canada Village (awesome with the kids btw)

So what?

I don't know - but I suppose what I'm getting at is how caught up in the day to day, you lose track of the big picture. And sometimes, looking at the big picture is so scary that you retreat into the day to day. I've been blathering on about losing the plot when immediate “crises” lead you into making bad decisions. (Tactics and strategy )

But what I suppose I'm trying to do is keep moving - not yet the big, choose your own adventure type moves I aspire to - but smaller moves. Like just collecting all these links and trying to summarize in some small way where it's taking me in my thinking. Hell, I'm a windbag - apparently a little starved for feedback and attention...

The world has always been a crazy place. Daily life with friends and family is crazy. So making anything - leaving any kind of tracks whatsoever - is something. Necessary, if far from sufficient.

We all know how squirrelly life can get when the path isn't clear and we’re blessed with little self shitting challenges that occupy a fair bit of physical and psychic energy. We know how between the headlines and our own little heads each day can leave us more than a tad PTSD...

But whatever.

We’re above ground. And some of our loved ones are above ground with us.

And that's pretty sweet.

Commitment

How do we cultivate for ourselves and our personal projects the same level of commitment we can maintain in our relationships - personal and professional, with others?

How can we construct feedback mechanisms - because dollars to timbits the science and anecdotal experience seems to suggest that any behavioural modification succeeds or fails depending on how we tweak our actions in response to the feedback we receive from ourselves and the world - to maximize our chances of success?

And this isn't rocket macrame. Billions of you are better at this than me, and billions worse.

There's a great quote by Fellini in 'I'm a born liar'


where he says something to the effect of "Making movies is hard. The only reason I do it is because someone gives me an advance, I spend it, and I don't want to pay it back."

That's an external motivation. The psychologist Deci breaks down motivation into something like 7 categories from the purely extrinsic - like coercion - to the purely intrinsic - when we act in accordance with our internal values.

I've not read this book:



but some of his scholarly stuff is on the web.


And there's plenty of others like it - it's why life coaches, business coaches and therapists stay in business. You pay someone to hold you accountable. Hopefully, until they teach you how to do it for yourself - but will they? That puts them out of business. Is the moral hazard in private shrinkage the shrinks incentive to keep you coming back? I don't know. Any of you 'graduate' from therapy?

On the other hand name me an Olympian who doesn't have a coach?

So while I like cutting corners, it's unlikely I'm going to be credited with reinventing the wheel.

I had told myself - 'ok, you want numbers? Try putting twice the time into one of these blog posts rather than composing them on the toilet while the kids are screaming in the kitchen' -- well, that's a plan for another day.

But for now I'm just leaving the question out there.

I'm looking for best practices for maintaining commitment to personal goals. Hell, even identifying worst practices would be something.

Bueller?

Always keep building

Started reading “The $100 Startup”
. which tells the stories of many entrepreneurs’ experience starting businesses with next to no money - a lot of ’solopreneurs’ etc...looking for a touch of inspiration, and it's provided some. I like books like this - they tickle the “time to take action” part of your brain - at the very least its a momentary dose of optimism, and at best they change your life. Only a couple chapters in so who knows...

So we’re at red slide park - it's been awhile - it's covered in ice and I've got the boys - we need something to do - we start to build.

Building whatever provides direction - tasks get parcelled out - you fetch ice, I'll build, he’ll be the dump truck ... You're improvising but with a sort of goal - creating a touch of order out of the materials at hand. You run out of materials, you have to go farther afield, “this is why people end up exploring, because they run out of stuff where they are”
You try and keep everyone happy “he's not doing anything. If he doesn't do any work I'm going to come over there and kill you”
Boys, so charming...

You try and make everything an object lesson. “If a wall collapses that's ok, we'll build it again stronger its an experiment”

It keeps you busy. Until it doesn't.

Until its time for the next thing. People get bored, hungry, cranky - it ends, if you're lucky you see it coming and get out in front of it. We hit a wall it turned to shit.

But I've been reading another book - “How to raise your kid without raising your voice” and its the same thing.
A hit of optimism, some takeaway that works...we make it home without a missing persons and throw some calories into the mix.

Later it's a train track. And to make it “epic” I suggest a log cabin that the train will pass through...and they build it. The big one gets it most of the way, but the little one suggests raising it on pads - the solution that makes it function.

It's more than just surviving. We hit black ice, a bunch of times, strong emotions were experienced. But we kept building - with a little Netflix in between, sure.

And it was good. And it's what we're doing - even when I lose sight of the road in the shitstorms.

We're building. Our lives together.

French Sealing the Dog

Yesterday I felt like a can of smashed assholes. Decallage horaire, a weekend of road food, a man cold, and well, the weather was shitey.

All day I could barely work for more than a few minutes at a stretch, so busy was I pleasuring the canine.

(image credit - e-spirations which actually had some good advice right under the dog photo...)

Despair mounted.

It doesn't take much to knock the wind out of you. To feel discouraged. It can lead to a touch of negative introspection - I lack clear goals, I have no discipline, bla mega boring bla.

Now, I do lack clear goals - and this post was going to be, what the internet shills call "A call to action" for the five to six of you non bots who might be reading this. A call to ask 'What the hell in all this mess holds any interest for you?"

I start many projects but get discouraged. I have an almost physical aversion to actually being serious about my goals. The one or two grants I've applied for have been so last minute, so poorly executed it was like I was purposefully sabotaging myself.

Which I probably was.

I've constructed this narrative, which is far from original, in which I will be discovered for my own genius, without slooting myself at all (i.e without any actual real effort), and the world will rain praise and riches upon me. So I start half baked projects like The Beaver, or Self-Help for Losers, The Young Poodles Movie, etc. and while I'm proud of some of it, I get discouraged and try something new. Hey! Blogging…

It is both the rankest, freshest, and oldest bullshit in the world. The insecure creative's wish to be swept to greatness without having had to expose themselves to the world.

So here it is. Having reached my late early early forties I know my approach needs to be tweaked.

I need to set clear achievable goals, find people to help hold me accountable to them, and then execute. Because it's always so satisfying when a real world deadline looms and you go through despair, resistance, reluctant application and onto victory and euphoria. I want to tap into some of that for my own projects.

So if you've got any advice let me know.

If there's any particular direction you think I should apply myself, let me know - just don't say accountancy, cause that's what Dad said for many years and I'd always ask myself if we'd just met.

And it's probably nothing to do with man's best friend, because after yesterday, she thinks we're running off to Vegas…

Dust in a sunbeam

So many times, like now, I’ve wanted to “be productive” without actually acting wilfully. I am an almost wilfully unwilful person - I have this aversion to over planning (Smith might suggest I have an aversion to under or “any” planning) - but instead enjoy a random walk approach to creativity. Start typing and see if it goes anywhere, doodle, screw around in photoshop or whatever new software has gotten my attention.

Often, like now, there's an associated excuse - I’m tired or hungover, or tired and hungover, or burnt from work or whatever - with the passage of years I’ve learned what that part of it is is that impulse control goes down and compulsivity goes up when you’re fatigued - so it's harder to focus than usual.

So I let the typer take me where it may, and if I am lucky - or more accurately, if I’ve been writing with any degree of consistency or discipline, I get “somewhere” faster.

I call it the foothills of competence - the real slightly rolling green fields of actual effort that real workers have passed through years before. You are starting to exert yourself, but so minimally that you hardly notice it.

Any accomplished artist will likely tell you some version of the importance of just showing up. Of maintaining some form of discipline so that you are at least stretching your creative muscles in some consistent form each day. A great recent version of this for writers was how if you force yourself to write no matter what mood you are in, you will write when you are happy and sad, tired and excited, and that exercise - of writing in all those different states, will give you access to different ideas and feelings, mental states, than if you just write, or play music, or sculpt when you “feel like it”.

I’m working on my discipline. I’ve always been working on my discipline, and I want to get passed the foothills and really start exerting myself to climb some kinds of mountains. But I recognize too I’m like a cat on the floor. Stretching my claws out reaching for dust in a sunbeam. Not actually hunting, but still curious - trying to get somewhere, but staying where it's comfy. Knowing the sun will set and I’ll have to move, just not yet. Or at least not very quickly.