500 words at a time.

Two days in a row! Woo-hoo! Seriously, you take your celebrations where you can find them.

The book comes along, slowly, but that's a function of the routine I've given myself. I've taken a page from Graham Greene's playbook, and I write 500 words a day. More if I've got them, but I have to hit at least 500 words. That way, I still want to write when I'm done. It's a function, oddly enough, of doing yoga.

"What," I hear you say, "does yoga have to do with writing?" Well, back in March, on Ash Wednesday, I decided that I would do yoga everyday for Lent. Rather than get rid of something, deny myself something, I figured it would be better to add a discipline. It went pretty well. I had a great program to help me do it which allowed me to keep track of how much time I spent per day, how much time per week, it allowed me to set up specific amounts of time to do certain poses, and it allowed me to see how many consecutive days I'd done what I said I was going to do.

This measuring, demanding a certain amount from oneself, allows for an amazing freedom. Aside from feeling slightly virtuous when you've completed your allotted time (no matter what other, less wholesome activities you might have engaged in before or after) you could also have an objective measure. There was no weaseling out of it - either you'd done it or not.

The sense of order that this allowed me let me structure my day. It let me set boundaries with people around me - there was something I had to complete everyday, and everything else had to take a back seat. And as the days piled up, I realized that I was changing. My attitude was changing and my sense of self. And I realized that I was actually quite strong and capable, if I allowed myself to be. I'm just past day 200 of doing yoga everyday, and I plan to keep going past a year, God willing.

So that concept of gradual accretion seems to be working for me in the writing department, too. This is what I want to do, and so I do it, everyday, and after I'm done, I can go through my day, knowing that I've done something important towards completing a piece of work that means a lot to me. I don't have to write it all today, and it doesn't get away from me with my usual procrastination. I chip away at it. 500 words at a time.

In direct contradiction to the title of this blog

Taking a cue from this guy I've decided to write here more. In the post, he's talking about writer's block, which I don't exactly suffer from. Logorrhea might be more the issue, most days, though there are occasions when the muse is a bit balky. Seth basically says we should write like we talk, and I've been noticing the more I write the more I get to write the way I sound in my head, which, let me tell you kids, is WAY wittier and more awesome than you can even imagine.

So writing today was like fighting through a fog. I'm coming to the point where I know that I'm going to have to come up with a structure for this book I'm writing, or else it's going to meander and wander away from me.

It's a book about gentrification, the energy and movement of urban spaces, race relations, and wizards. Really, it's just about wizards. The rest of it is sort of incidental, primarily because, as a young-ish (feeling) white man, I don't feel I can do the issues real justice. By putting it into a fantasy context, it feels like I can talk around it, address it without having to tackle it head on. Maybe that's cowardly, but there are precedents - George Romero talking about race with his zombies... well, that's the only really good one I can think of right now. Oh! A Canticle for Liebowitz! That's two! I'm practically in the pantheon already!

So, I've finished watching Game of Thrones' first season, and I'm terribly disappointed that there isn't more right now. Right NOW! I want it. I dream about these characters. I'm enjoying the hell out of this weird little sword and soap opera. I seem to remember reading somewhere that GRRM wanted to write a little ditty about the War of the Roses, and I love how adding zombies and dragons tips the dynamics all over the place. It's exactly the kind of thing I've always wanted to make myself.

I promise to write more tomorrow. It's blathering, but I'm going to make it mean something, I just know it.

so the question remains - why do we do anything? Is life just one damn thing after the other, in a vain attempt to find something to do before inevitable death swallows us? Because that is the distinct impression I keep getting.

My boss is pretty intense. She gets up at 3:15 in the morning to study for her Nutrition Master's degree before coming to work and working way harder than I ever do. She described to me her day, and I got exhausted just thinking about it. Like, she REALLY wants this, but will it make her life better? I sometimes think that the reason I don't have as interesting and impressive a life is that I'm not particularly interested in working that hard. I'm lazy to my own detriment.

Most religions tell us to slow down, stop worrying, stop fretting and making ourselves miserable. Just enjoy life and take it easy. Work at whatever is in front of you. But really, I don't care anymore. I've never wanted to DO anything. I've always been interested in STOPPING doing.

So, what? Is this so-called blog going to be just an extended suicide note? That seems dumb. But really, why do I do ANYTHING? I don't know, anymore. I love my wife, insanely, but I think I may have thought that she was going to save my life by giving me direction - that her intensity would give my life direction, coupled with the fact that I totally love her, all smashed into a singularity of awesomeness that would from then on be my life.

I said to Katie, "You need to think of reasons to do things." I need to think of reasons to do things. My four a day blog languishes, because I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason to write it. Who reads it? Who cares? My wife? Anybody else? I write the most insane confessional stuff here, and there is literally nobody who reads it. It's impressive, if you think about it. I'm not even upset about it, it just sort of knocks the wind out of you. Like, why say anything if no one is listening. And if they are listening, why say anything anyway. What are they gonna do about it? "You're alone in the universe? Yeah, join the club, buddy."

I write this because it passes the time at work. Which may be why I've ever done anything, exactly like what I said. I don't just want to pass the time. I want meaning, and I don't know where it lives.

Getting your mojo back

"The way I see it, part of the problem is you just aren't having fun."

She paused and thought about this for a moment. I was right.

I was sorta right about me, too. *I* really wasn't having much fun anymore, either. Why was that?

The pleasure I took in writing, gone. The pleasure I took in making music, gone. The pleasure I took in performing, gone. I don't want to sound like I'm depressed or anything, but I remember distinctly having friends, having a purpose. I even remember the day I stopped. I was at a party, I'd finally admitted to myself that I didn't love my wife, and the group of friends that my soon to be ex and I'd been hanging with for the past 3 years were screening a video of the play we'd done that previous summer. We'd gotten rave reviews in the local press, sold out houses, and a real sense that we'd accomplished something. It was going to be a great night.

We watched the play. Everyone laughed at the funny parts, enjoyed the hell out of their own performances, and dug the hell out of each other. It was a mutual admiration society meeting, and everybody was a member in good standing.

Except me.

I watched in horror as the play that I thought had been so good while we were doing it sat there on the screen and stunk like a dead fish. Was *this* what we looked like? Is *that* how we sounded? All the things that we worked so hard on - was *this* the result? People had told us we were great! Were they lying?

I didn't get it. But I couldn't take it anymore. I got up and left the room, manned the bar for the rest of the evening. I was shaken. I could hear people laughing in the next room, enjoying themselves, and I was outside.

I've since learned that my prodigious kratom intake may have had something to do with my subsequent anxiety, anhedonia, and depression. I think I'm still coming back from that.

When I get an idea, a thought for a creative project, a desire to comment on someone's blog post, for God's sake, I'll occasionally start, and then, midway through the first sentence, I'll think, "Eh, what's the point." and move on.

So, obviously there's still a bit of an issue here.

I don't even know what the good creative projects are anymore.

I do know, however, that somehow I have to come out the other side of this. I'm just not sure how to do that. Have I damaged myself too deeply? I don't know yet. I suppose we'll see.

sloth

The past few days have been terrible, and it's surprising how quickly my thoughts turn morbid when I am under the slightest bit of pressure.

My wife hates her job, and I don't know how to help her. Her depression is like all the lights in the house have been dimmed by a quarter: not enough to make it impossible to see, and a lot of the time you don't even notice, but eventually you get a headache and a permanent squint.

I'm tired, even though I'm getting plenty of sleep. I do yoga everyday, and it seems to be helping (body-wise), but damn if I'm not exhausted right now. Nothing's free.

I have stuff I could be doing, but I just want to sleep. I hate it all. It's surprising - I am remarkably self-destructive when it comes to action. People ask what your sin is, and mine is certainly sloth.

Alan Watts and late night theology.

(after the blindingly boring indulgence in self-pity that was my previous post, we now return you to to your regularly scheduled program).

Listening to Alan Watts is often a humbling experience. On the one hand, he is a consummate raconteur, a "spiritual entertainer" as he often styled himself, with big ideas and a compelling delivery. He is one of the people I'd like to emulate in my life, and, aside from the bit about being an alcoholic (which I'd also say I understand in some ways), I'd say he's one of my heroes.

Now the other way that listening to Alan Watts is humbling is what happens when I try to explain what I heard to my wife.

"So he says that since you can't really love God, because you're only doing it because you want something or because you're afraid, you have to eventually get to the point where you realize that you CAN'T love God, and only the part of you that is from God can love God, the part of you that *is* God." I'm sitting on the edge of the tub while she brushes her teeth after a long days work.

"Wait," she say, after spitting. "I don't agree with that at all."

I'm taken aback. Disagree? With my beloved Alan Watts? What could she mean? And so I ask.

"I love God," she says. "I remember people telling me how great He was and how much He loved us and all the great things He did for us, and even though I didn't really know what God was, I knew I loved him. Her. It. Whatever."

That made me stop. Now, of course Alan was going on his Zen/Gurdjieff/Rascally Guru trip, which is totally his thing. He loves the idea of "the fool that persists in his folly becomes wise" and going so far into the idea of separation that you realize that your separation is unworkable and that you are one with all things, etc. And it's a good path. It works very well for the skeptical, the cynical, the intellectual. But Love is a mystic's path too, and while the intellectual may scorn it, there is a case to be made that it is the real path of Christianity, tempered as it is with a certain rigor that the sarcastic, aphorism spouting Jesus brings to the process that keeps it from descending into maudlin sentimentality.

And I think that's the thing that Watts misses. He brings a nice balance to the know-nothing sentiment that unfortunately passes for devotion these days, but he misses something crucial. Yes, for a certain type, it may be impossible to believe outright. But there are many, many others, who actually *do* love God, and through their love and trust in His forgiveness, find their way to a union with Him. Now, as with all paths there are pitfalls, and the love and trust can often devolve into love and trust in a God we created, that reaffirms our prejudices and desires, and there to complacency and forgetfulness. We create God in our image, and then worship it.

The pitfalls of Watts' path seem to me to be: despair, madness, an insufficiently marked out path, a sense that "whatever I do is fine, because it's all God's play." I'm sure there are others. Either way, there is no "foolproof" path, but it was nice to see that there are other ways. The sufis often present more than one path to God, suitable for different personality types. Good to see that Christianity has something going on in that department, too.

2/14/11

I've made a lot of bad decisions in my day. A list might take too long, and yet I'm freakishly good at running them through my head at any given point: missed opportunities, enterprises abandoned before they bear fruit, friends lost, decisions made from a place of fear instead of love. I know every one, every decision, intimately, deeply. I know why I did it, why I *said* I did it, what I could have done differently.

And here I am. 39 years old and with nothing to show in my life that resembles success. Talent I have, but I have no belief. Those guys that say you have to visualize your actions, see yourself succeeding, and then do it? Yeah, I don't know what to tell those guys. I just can't see myself succeeding. I can't believe it's possible for me. I've thought I was a failure since I was a little kid.

I'm tired of feeling this way.