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This is slightly dramatic phrasing but itās true: I have often (always?) felt like a āman out of timeā - I donāt seem to process and perceive time the way most other people do. I think reading a bunch of history as a young kid mightāve 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 āasynchronousā to begin with, and needed a way to contextualize my days and years within a grander scheme of things?) š¤
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. Iām 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 donāt 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 doesnāt sound quite right, Iām messing something up here. Maybe there are (at least) two ways of living in the now, letās 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 Iām very un-predisposed to it. Iām 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 āat living according to mainstream schedules / programmingā - 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 Iām 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 whoād talk about atomic habits and spaced repetition and ādonāt miss a dayā - & 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 Iām happy to take decades to achieve my goal if necessary, Iām actually going to finish it, probably sometime early next year. The kid who couldnāt 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 youāve noticed from my threads. I donāt try too hard to discipline or rein in my mind (Iāll never be as good as others) - I just keep notes of what itās 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 thereās actually not much point either over-celebrating or envying anybodyās success, because it might all blow up tomorrow. Same is true for todayās failure. You donāt have context! You donāt know! So take the long view
Iāve lived long enough to see that yesterdayās dream wedding can be todayās failing marriage. Which isnāt to judge or hate on anyone. The point is that we canāt see everything, we canāt know everything, & we shouldnāt 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 āhackedā or hijacked for our benefit. I was convinced that theyāre 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 -> āconquerā heart and minds, not bodies Gluttony -> consume quality, not quantity - be mindful of diminishing returns
The 2 identity illusions: Vanity/pride: everything āyouā 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, thereās no āyouā at all, so thereās nothing to be prideful about
Envy: same deal. You canāt be envious of other people because other people donāt exactly exist anyway. Envy is a projection of the mind. We donāt know what we donāt 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 donāt know. Time is just too weird. Iām trying to figure it out. Knowing the Universeās sense of humour, Iāll probably spend my whole life trying to figure it out and go āaha!ā right as I die š
But I think I left myself some clues over time. (Meta alert!! This is what itās 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 āweāll seeā dynamic to apparent slothfulness that isnāt 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 āwhereās the takeawayā folks, I think I was circling around this idea that thereās 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 āfear of uncertaintyā, which is funny, because Iāve always felt that to NOT behave as Iām 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 donāt know anything š. Just leaving myself clues for later. Hereās a closing thought re: uncertainty https://t.co/0BDu3JY5Ne
I was there and I was paying attention https://t.co/mmKXPJGXhB