Resistance

Chaos is creativity’s alpha and omega. Ten pages of trash for one line of treasure. Some artists do better, and most never even find the one. Maybe they quit on page 9, maybe they don’t even try again.

Sometimes I wish I could just sit down and have the words just flow out of me. Some writers can do that. One fired synapse from thought to keystroke.

Me? It took me two fucking hours to write the above. That’s not typical, but it occurs when I’m not in my element. Probably why I’ve been having trouble blogging lately. Everything about my situation is the direct result of me purposefully taking myself OUT of my element.

Before I left Kansas City, I joked with my friends, “I can’t talk right now, I’m busy forgetting where I came from.” But that’s not too far off. I wasn’t where or who I wanted to be, so I decided to change. And despite the influx of experience, writing lately is a total grind, because I’m less certain of my words.

Now I realize: That knife’s edge is exactly where I want to be.

So a grind it is.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.

–Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

I once had a job doing CAD, and to say I was overqualified would be an understatement. I won the state industrial technology contest in high school. My teacher had me teach his classes the hard stuff. The expertise needed for the job was menial by comparison, so I finished tasks quickly, and got bored just as fast.

And speaking of menial, one of the tasks I was given involved making the most efficient use of raw material available–basically cutting a number of different pieces out of larger ones with the least amount of waste. I’ll simplify it a bit:

Let’s say you have access to 10 x 10 sheets of metal. If someone asked you for two 5 x 10 sheets, you would simply cut one stock piece in half, with no waste.

Now imagine you need six 5 x 5, and five 2 x 5 sheets. This requires a bit more thought, but can be pretty easily figured out like a puzzle. You can do it with two stock pieces, and no waste.

You’re probably seeing how fast the difficulty scales, so I’ll get to the punchline. What if your task were to cut 500 pieces, of all shapes and sizes? Or 10,000? Not only that, but what if you had many different sizes of stock to choose from?

I quickly realized what a pain in the ass this would be to do manually, by simply putting them together in the best way I could come up with. And even then, how did I know it was the most efficient pattern? All I was doing was trial and error, and the uncertainty got worse as the number of possible arrangements went up. It was mathematically ugly. I wanted beauty, I wanted the formula: X pieces cut from Y pieces with Z efficiency. So I tried to come up with one.

My bosses weren’t happy about how I was spending my time, so I placated them by explaining the potential of enormously reduced material cost and man-hours. And I still did my other work, but I could finish a typical workday in 1-2 hours, so I had plenty of spare time. I just wasn’t using it to surf the internet.

After a week or so of wracking my brain, I was dumbfounded and frustrated at my lack of progress. My roommate happened to be a computer science PhD student, so I asked him for help. Why is this so hard? And if you have any sort of math/comp sci background, you can probably guess his response:

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha”

Apparently, while playing around with some rectangles, I had stumbled upon one of the great problems of mathematics. It’s funny how quickly menial becomes profound, if you give it legs.

Being an artist or philosopher or scientist used to be a lot easier to dismiss as unrealistic. Not too long ago, your dreams were “shelter” or “food” or “water that doesn’t kill you.” Nowadays, there are still plenty of people that think this way, but as the economy reveals it to be more and more an excuse, there is a new one taking its place: “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know” might be the most important and productive expression since man first put word to meaning–when it’s punctuated with an ellipses, not a period.

“…but I’m going to find out” is the other half, of course.

Did I want to buckle down and revolutionize complexity theory? Hell no. But at least now I know that. There are many forms of laziness, but only one truly matters: Being too lazy to find out.

* * *

Further reading: Opportunities

I have about 20 passages tabbed in The War of Art, and 1 actually bookmarked, peeking out the top as a constant reminder:

There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

I think one of the most dangerous and masturbatory aspects of blogging is trying to fit yourself into a narrative. Don’t let blogging become Resistance 2.0, play to its strengths: an extension of your voice, not a replacement. Living with others, not for them.

It’s important to see this coming. I was reading On Writing Well, and after the first few chapters, skipped ahead to 21: Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence. I was just trolling for blog material, rather than reading to internalize, to understand and better myself. But the latter is precisely what you need to do, if you really want material in the long run–content that is just as valuable to those reading it as it is to you writing it. The moment it hit me? In the chapter itself, there was a passage aimed right at me, as if the author wanted to brain the motherfucker:

Living is the trick. Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. That’s almost the whole point of becoming a writer.

So I added a new tab. But then I closed the book, and started over. Recently, the number of people reading my blog has nearly doubled. Why would I do you or myself such a disservice? No zero-sum content.

One thing I know is that I know nothing.

–Socrates

Socrates was talking about what it means to be wise. He said the only thing that made him wiser than his peers was, simply, knowing what he didn’t know. He didn’t pretend otherwise. He didn’t talk out of his ass.

Refreshing, isn’t it? How often do you have conversations in which a person’s knowledge of a subject isn’t even passable, yet they officiate as if they were an expert?

But this “knowing” isn’t always a blessing, and when I discovered it it almost ruined me. Ignorance might be bliss, but awareness of your own can be torture.

The problem was one of magnitude. I thought that, even if I read thousands of books, I was still an idiot, relatively speaking. I was overwhelmed by futility and froze like a deer in headlights. I had no idea where to start. So I didn’t. No reading. Lots of partying though.

I am pretty smart by most measures. You know what that got me? Read above, and you’ll have your answer:

Fancier ways of being lazy.

What does it take to stop worrying about everything you don’t know and can’t do? I don’t know the answer, but I bet if I read three books a week, starting right now, I’ll have a pretty good idea. Fuck moderation, if I’m going to become an idiot, I’ll do it faster than the next guy.

Apart from the obvious benefits, I go to the gym to escape chaotic thought; to meditate. For the most part, it works. But there are 2 moments when the chaos returns, without fail:

1. Whenever I’m getting ready to do overhead presses. Old-school, standing with a barbell.

I damn near tore my arm out of its socket doing these a couple years back. I went too far and payed the price. Every time I stare at the bar, getting ready to clean it, even the music blaring in my headphones isn’t enough to prevent the image of me falling backwards with 200 pounds of iron suspended over my head. Or replaying the visceral fear in my eyes with theatrical quality.

2. Running. There are all sorts of great excuses for me not to run. And my mind presents them convincingly and with increasing urgency as I approach my limit.

Rationalization. I go to the gym to get away from that shit. My solution?

I rationalize back. I add another set. I run another mile. You’ve seen this behavior if you’ve ever seen a coach or drill sergeant in your life. The moment an athlete or soldier opens their mouth to whine is the moment they are choosing to fuck themselves.

Resistance is open to negotiation; it’ll backpedal the moment you use force. That’s all I do. I coach myself.