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I had a dream, seeing my father as a young man—before I was born. He was standing, smiling. I went to him, hugged him, weeping, knowing it was a dream as it happened.

Spend an unreasonable amount of effort and time focused entirely on a niche question.

Don’t worry. Over time your competence will not be niche.—it will broaden impressively.

But if you are lost and feeling useless, start with a tiny question and dominate it thoroughly.

Questions and derision from others tell you everything you need to know about them. Shun them. You know why you are there.

I am doing this right now. My brain is telling me that I picked the wrong topic to get Deep Into. Fuck you, brain. We are doubling down and getting even more granular.

Display it.

If I do this for 100 days in a row am I better off or worse off?

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. A quick visit to Google News, and . . . nausea.

Don’t use that pussy word, “misinformation.” Lies. These are lies.

Propaganda is perhaps a more precise description, but flawed. “Propaganda” is a loaded word and evokes Goebbels and Triumph of the Will. Better to avoid the baggage of that word and use a word that everyone, worldwide, since toddlerhood, has understood intimately and viscerally.

Liar. Lies.

I suppose you can infer some reality from the lies: listen not to what is said, as such, but note who is saying these words and the action or attitude they wish to encourage. Look especially for what they are not talking about.

Above all: know that these are lies. And the people writing these stories or blathering away on TV are all liars. And they know it, yet persist.

Chief among the liars? Google. Google News is a deliberately curated and organized firehose of lies.

The truth shall set you free? Equally, lies will enslave you. Refuse to be enslaved. Actively resist the liars.

Pause when agitated or doubtful. (Sad is a variant of this).

“Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Go down the mental checklist. H.A.L.T.? am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

For me, the H and the T are common. I push myself.

A and L are more subtle, and I have to watch for them and I’m not sure how to cope with them.

Especially being L in a crowd. Being around people is not an automatic antidote to L. It is too easy to feel alone amongst people—even people who know me well and love me.

The A. Too often directed at myself. Recriminations mostly. Self-flogging for some perceived insufficiency.

Today is not a good brain day. I believe it’s the T. Mental fatigue to be precise.

But here is a thought:

Ask yourself, “what good thing could happen if more people read my writing?”

After the Pentathlon and after the LRS, the “five minutes a day” abruptly stopped. There is a lesson in this: gentle, voluntary guardrails are useful to keep momentum.

However, the professional writing has continued. More interesting is the evolution of the professional publishing backend. That has started to move.

In any event, let’s get back to these little posts: pre-dawn (usually) coffee companions, with a contented, well-fed dog at my feet.

Posting something now. The trip to Atlanta threw me off schedule.

“Yes, yes, never mind that,” he said, waving me away. “But have you ever considered, what’s the assumption that someone makes if they say they have no talent?”

I kept quiet.

“It means that they think their problem is technical.They believe they do not have the skills.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And so I thought that your problem was technical! I trained you as if your problem was technical. But it wasn’t! No matter what I taught you, you didn’t seem to improve. Your problem is a matter of will, not a matter of skill. I taught you everything you needed to know in the first two months, but you just didn’t seem to apply it! You were not willing to apply it.”

https://commoncog.com/mental-strength-judo-life/

Memo to self. “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not good enough” masks an underlying assumption and uncovering that assumption—“I’m not willing to will my way forward”—is essential to progress.

I wonder if the inverse also is true. The self-talk of “I’m a fart in a windstorm” masking some deeper truth?

Also true: “I’m not talented enough”. But that’s a realization you get after you have applied extreme will and still have not reached your goal.