Reality Laughs

My desire is to have less stuff. But I have more. Clutter everywhere. My desire is to be less harried. But I add more tasks to my to-do list.

Tiny steps forward. Incremental actions over time, focused like a stonemason’s chisel.

Trivial one: home. I am sitting around waiting for things to clean themselves up, throw themselves in the trash.

I don’t know the context of the admonition, but it is time to take Jordan Peterson’s admonition to heart. “Clean up your room.”

More profound: work. Too many things to do, impossible to do them in any reasonable time. Who is saying “yes” to new tasks when there is old stuff to finish? (Looks around, sheepishly, and sees only the dog).

How will I do this? How will I take actions consistent with my desires?

Answer: smaller and smaller objectives set for myself until the task I give myself actually gets done. Then I know that I have enough strength to deadlift that barbell. If a barbell isn’t budging, take weight off of it until you can pull it off the ground.

In other words, set a task. Observe. Does it get done? If yes, then good. If no, then set a smaller sub-task. Does it get done? If yes, then good. If no, then break down the smaller sub-task even more. Ad infinitum.

At home: I have intentions but do not follow through. The pallet that needs to be broken down for firewood. What happened? Why is it still there, two months later?

Reason: the toolbox was borrowed. Retrieve the toolbox. You know where it is: at the store. And just throw the wood in the trash, because you haven’t lit a fire for the last two winters.

Breaking it down, the only thing to do today is drive by the store on the way back from the gym.

Get the toolbox today.

How am I going to do that? By going to the gym, first. Today is gym day.

Second, on the way home, by telling them I am coming. Then when I am near the store, by calling and asking them to bring it to the back door. That way I don’t even have to get out of the car.

It is sufficient today to get the toolbox, which contains the hammer. Wielding the hammer can be done on another day.

I could even just say to them “bring the toolbox home” if that fails. But I can detour home from the gym to the store.

Yes, sometimes I have to rehearse my plans to that level in order to get things done. Sue me.

Edit: they need to repair some things at the store. I can’t get the toolbox. Time to set another tiny incremental objective.

Incremental action: the light bulbs are blown out here and there in the house. We have zillions of different shapes and types of light bulbs. Zillions, I say!

Order a six pack of generic 100 watt bulbs. That’s a start.

Do it on Amazon (even though you hate Amazon, just to get fucking shit done, and mind the fact that it’s your opinion about Amazon and it’s founder that’s the problem here—it has a negative impact of the quality of your life by making the living room darker at night).

I can’t buy incandescent bulbs. It’s fucking illegal. I want incandescent bulbs because of the predictable color of the light they throw off.

Order the fucking newfangled fucking non-incandescent fucking bulbs that seem to be too harsh and blue no matter what you buy. (This angry opinion hurt me too, and was solved by a bit of research to discover that incandescent lights throw off a 2700k color temperature, so that’s what I ordered, and if I’m wrong I will throw them away and buy something else until I get it right).

And ignore your opinion of legislators who are nanny-stating us into oblivion. Who feels the effects of those attitudes? Me. That’s who.

Order placed.

Unintended beneficent by-product of a single Amazon order: I am brought face-to-face with my own attitudes, and given the opportunity to see them. Really see them. And see how they damage my life.

I still can switch away from Amazon, and have started to do that, in fact. My experience is that Walmart is a viable competitor: equivalent or better prices, with better shipping service. I don’t have to corrode my soul in the process of moving my purchases to a different vendor.

I can see how the politicians are dim bulbs (hehe, get it?) without getting butthurt and damaging my own life around the house with AngryMan huffing and puffing. Deal with politics calmly, and vote with your feet as soon as you can get that sorted out. Or STFU and live a good life where you are.

Maybe this is what Jordan Peterson is talking about when he says “Clean up your room.”

Take a chisel. Place it with care. Start striking the chisel, deliberately and with intention. See what happens.

Why would you think that the boat that carries you across the river will take you across the land on the other side?

Chris Williamson in podcast 318, which is about meditation.

Do what you say you will do.

Your brain will see this and take note.

Self-esteem comes from self-discipline.

Hint: tiny commitments.

Also: don’t call them promises. Call them commitments.

Think of all the shitty, insubstantial, and downright poisonous books that have been published by the big publishing houses.

Think of all the dim bulbs and propaganda artists who are given a platform and vast wealth on TV or the movies. Think of how they spew shit, unselfconsciously or even deliberately.

Think of all of the people on the internet, pounding out content, with millions of followers or just a few.

Think of yourself. Fearful to the extreme of being judged and having your work judged.

Measured against these people and what they have done?

Please.

Yes Baby, I been drinkin’
And I shouldn’t come by, I know
But I found myself in trouble
And I had no place else to go

Got some whiskey from the barman
Got some cocaine from a friend
I just had to keep on movin’
‘Til I was back in your arms again

I’m guilty
Baby, I’m guilty
And I’ll be guilty for the rest of my life

How come I never do
What I’m supposed to do
How come nothing that I try to do
Ever turns out right

You know–You know how it is with me, Baby
You know I just can’t stand myself
It takes a whole lotta medicine
For me to pretend that I’m somebody else

Those are the lyrics from Randy Newman’s “Guilty”. The Bonnie Raitt version from the early 1970s album is the one I like best.

The words rang painfully true when I was younger. And they still hit the mark today, though thankfully without the medicine.

I suppose my entire life’s quest has been to be at peace with myself and all around me.

And I’m still looking for it, sometimes getting nearer, only to sense it slipping away, giggling, drawing me onward.

Single-minded focus is difficult for me.

Memory tells me I could once focus for hours on a single task. Perhaps memory is telling the truth. Perhaps not. I don’t necessarily trust memory, because it is just a story I tell myself, a story subject to change.

But still.

“Focus harder!” is a useless admonition. Yet, that’s my solution.

Tools and productivity techniques are beside the point. They merely polish the turd. They treat the symptoms, not the disease.

Don’t reject tools out-of-hand. Work Cycles, for instance, is a tool that has revealed self to self for me: how I consistently overestimate my ability to get a task done in a given amount of time. Freedom, for instance, helps me break the nervous tic of checking to see if there is something new on the internet that I must read.

What do I do with these observations? How do I stop asking The Overestimater for his opinion? How do I let The Magnet Mind go search for iron filing by himself, leaving me to my simple tasks?

Every effect has a cause. Seek the cause.

No pointless actions.

If it’s in your control, why do you do it? If it’s in someone else’s, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way.

Blame no one. Set people straight, if you can. If not, just repair the damage. And suppose you can’t do that either. Then where does blaming people get you?

No pointless actions.

Meditations 8.17

Before dawn. A cup of coffee, the dog is fed, and I’m reading Marcus Aurelius.

I burned a few minutes of my morning fuming about politics and a dystopia I imagine to be inevitable.

Pointless.

Remember this picture next time you’re busy having a conversation with yourself in your head about how smart you are and how you’re going to tell them exactly why they are wrong.

I did a 45 minute walk this evening and I swear 40 of those minutes were consumed with self talking to self, rehearsing exactly how I would tell Them exactly what’s what. They are benighted fools and I am a humble yet wise man, etc. etc. They need to be corrected and I’m just the man to do it.

The other five minutes were consumed with “are we home yet?” and “I need to pee.” I would have been better off sticking with these topics.

David Goggins tell you how to succeed when The Path looks rocky and impossible to traverse.

Win the morning.

And just as important is what he says later in the video: in the middle of the suck, “remember your resumé”.

Remember that you have accomplished great things before and lived through the suck before. Maybe not this specific suck, maybe not as big a suck as you have right now, but you did it.

You can do it again.

I think everyone is looking at me and judging me.

Maybe, but who cares. I don’t have to lift big today.

I have a 20 year training goal. Tiny steps.