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This is slightly dramatic phrasing but itâs true: I have often (always?) felt like a âman out of timeâ - I donât seem to process and perceive time the way most other people do. I think reading a bunch of history as a young kid mightâve been a big influence on that one
(But causality is always suspicious. Could it be that I was drawn to reading about history because I always felt âasynchronousâ to begin with, and needed a way to contextualize my days and years within a grander scheme of things?) đ¤
The thought that got me out of bed was that there are all these bands from ~2007 that had such a large impact on my life at the time, and yet most of the world will never know of them. Iâm sitting on the draft of a novel I wrote about this, so hopefully that can help a little...
But regardless I find myself thinking that so many people expend so much effort doing things: making music and writing blogposts and they donât really have any long-term plans to do anything significant with them over the course of decades. Most people live in the now, I guess?
That doesnât sound quite right, Iâm messing something up here. Maybe there are (at least) two ways of living in the now, letâs call one mindful and one mechanical. People live in the mechanical now while their minds are busy with worry and stress and anxiety
I have always been pretty bad at living in the mechanical now - I would say Iâm very un-predisposed to it. Iâm pretty decent (but not great) at living in the mindful now. Either way I am pacing about my house in the dark at 237am to tweet this, which is not very typical behavior
Part of how I solve for being bad at living in the mechanical now - and this is really another way of saying âat living according to mainstream schedules / programmingâ - is by trying to expand my concept of clocktime to try to fit the way my mind works
Let me give you a practical example: @1000wordvomits. At some point I decided that I wanted to be a writer, and that Iâm willing to spend a lifetime on it. I decided that for starters, it would be fun and interesting to write a million words, arbitrarily, for no particular reward
I started typing there in December 2012 & I have been *extremely* inconsistent in how I go about it. There are all these high-functioning GTD types whoâd talk about atomic habits and spaced repetition and âdonât miss a dayâ - & I agree about the utility of all of those things...
But that is really not how my mind works. So far, at least. I am the trying-to-be-proud owner of a feral machine-gun of a brain that sometimes goes months without writing, sometimes writes 15,000 words in a day, and sometimes demands that I tweet at 250am
The cool thing is, by having decided that Iâm happy to take decades to achieve my goal if necessary, Iâm actually going to finish it, probably sometime early next year. The kid who couldnât get his damn homework done is about 74.4% done with writing a million words
An interesting thing @guanyinmiao pointed out to me recently is that reporters who stick to a beat over time develop a deep understanding of history and context, and so they can pull out all these interesting and insightful bits that even smarter writers will not be able to https://t.co/SAa8LbCpma
This is kind of my strategy, if youâve noticed from my threads. I donât try too hard to discipline or rein in my mind (Iâll never be as good as others) - I just keep notes of what itâs up to. The difference between useful science and dicking around is reporting your findings
Another cool thing about expanding your concept of mechanical time is that it relieves a lot of anxiety. Pride and envy are both just bugs of the mind caused by short-sightedness, mistaking the snapshot maps for the territory. Take a longer view
I spent about 5 years in tech and I saw for myself that thereâs actually not much point either over-celebrating or envying anybodyâs success, because it might all blow up tomorrow. Same is true for todayâs failure. You donât have context! You donât know! So take the long view
Iâve lived long enough to see that yesterdayâs dream wedding can be todayâs failing marriage. Which isnât to judge or hate on anyone. The point is that we canât see everything, we canât know everything, & we shouldnât presume to. Everything is provisional, everything is piecemeal
When I was about 20 I was obsessed with the idea of the 7 sins. I was convinced that they could be âhackedâ or hijacked for our benefit. I was convinced that theyâre merely human impulses, neither good nor bad, maligned for the purpose of social control via guilt & shame
The 4 appetites: Wrath -> direct towards injustice and ignorance, not people Greed -> acquire knowledge, insight, relationships, not material wealth Lust -> âconquerâ heart and minds, not bodies Gluttony -> consume quality, not quantity - be mindful of diminishing returns
The 2 identity illusions: Vanity/pride: everything âyouâ have accomplished is built off of the work of others (eg using language). You are simply a conduit for the universe at a particular point in space and time, thereâs no âyouâ at all, so thereâs nothing to be prideful about
Envy: same deal. You canât be envious of other people because other people donât exactly exist anyway. Envy is a projection of the mind. We donât know what we donât know. We envy what we *think* we know, but what we think we know is trash, so... envy is a bug of the mind
SLOTH THE ILLUSION OF TIME This is the one that has me fucked up still. I still donât know. Time is just too weird. Iâm trying to figure it out. Knowing the Universeâs sense of humour, Iâll probably spend my whole life trying to figure it out and go âaha!â right as I die đ
But I think I left myself some clues over time. (Meta alert!! This is what itâs all about! Leaving yourself clues) Sloth is the sin of failing to adhere to mechanical clocktime. & I do sincerely believe that there is a time beyond clocktime where deep and nourishing work is done
There can be a âweâll seeâ dynamic to apparent slothfulness that isnât obvious until much later on. There is a wisdom to waiting. (This itself is a view that can be transmogrified to justify inaction so you have to be careful with it...)
for the âwhereâs the takeawayâ folks, I think I was circling around this idea that thereâs a lot of richness that we overlook in day-to-day life, always waiting for us to take notice and to make use of it if we care to. Our daily thoughts & observations are worth more if threaded
Since the worth of most things is only properly discernible on hindsight, the acts of looking back, looking around, and looking ahead, are all things that create real value. All by reordering things in your mind!! https://t.co/YIxNq9Z7p6
How do we so often choose, willingly, to restrain ourselves via the shackles of everyday clocktime, when the infinite is beckoning through every crack, around every corner...? Fear, imo. Fear and a battered imagination.
I also find myself thinking âfear of uncertaintyâ, which is funny, because Iâve always felt that to NOT behave as Iâm suggesting is to subject yourself to the brutal inevitability of the unpredictable. Taleb goes pretty hard on this in Black Swan and Antifragile
Anyway, what do I know. I donât know anything đ. Just leaving myself clues for later. Hereâs a closing thought re: uncertainty https://t.co/0BDu3JY5Ne
I was there and I was paying attention https://t.co/mmKXPJGXhB
hypothesis: if you do barely anything with your life but take little notes every day, journal, diary, whatever â snapshots of your opinions, impressions, perspectives, predictions â and then you thread these notes over time, say, 10 years...