Resistance

Mitch Hedberg said this:

“So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that’s funny. Or, if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn’t funny.”

A good take on resistance. But even if you curse the words for ripping you out of a soft bed, you’ll thank them in the morning.

Since I’ll be referencing Steven Pressfield’s notion of “Resistance” often in this blog, it may help to give a quick summary of the concept. In no way is this a substitute for The War of Art, which is required reading. I’m obviously a huge fan of the book–even the title of my blog is a reference–and it would be an honor to someday have this blog considered a worthy supplement to the text. For now, let’s paraphrase.

Resistance is the force that, right now, is telling me to close my word processor and watch reruns of The Simpsons. To clean my apartment. To go to the gym.

Were those last two examples surprising? That’s because Resistance is devious. Of course I’d feel like shit after sitting on my ass watching TV. Guilty. And since guilt is a good catalyst for behavioral change, I might become angry and start retaliating, writing to spite my laziness. Resistance doesn’t want that, and instead takes the long view.

It’s far easier to justify a lack of output if you spent all day “working.” Doing “productive” things like mowing the lawn or working out. These things are important too, which makes rationalization easy. But they’re not most important, deserving of your focus right now. Ask yourself: if they were so urgent, and you exhausted yourself all day with them, why are you still lying in bed awake? Guilt. Only now, Resistance bets you’ll sleep it off.

Remember that this is all relative, and not limited to writing or even art. If running 5 miles or trying to start a business is what makes you most uncomfortable, the campaign will shift to keep you from doing that. Resistance excels at maneuver warfare. But deep down, you always know what really needs to get done. Over the years, that voice may have been soothed from howl to whimper, but it will never shut up.

Background: Part 1 and Part 2.

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses her own enthusiasm against her. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.

–Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

That letter ignited a fire in me, and I was drunk on my rebellion. I loved the idea of being a writer, of pursuing my destiny, my passion.

“Passion,” says Cormac McCarthy, “sounds like a pretty fancy word.” He’s right. And once I sobered up, I still wasn’t doing my work. Sure, I made a few half-assed attempts, wrote a few stories on Blogger…and that was that. The fire had died.

So what went wrong?

Well, I’ve never had problems thinking big. I did, however, act small. I saw the final product, the results, the success–but not the blood or the sweat. I saw the 10 minutes it took to read the story, not the 10 hours of sustained effort, or the 10 days of focused revision. And certainly not the 10 years of life experience that lends perspective and wisdom to a story.

I was an amateur.

As soon as I learned the truth, that “easy reading is damned hard writing,” I was quickly discouraged. A month of getting back on my feet at my parents’ house turned into a year, while I went back to college at a mediocre University. Things were easy again. I had changed the circumstances, but not the habit. I needed to become a laborer.

So I decided to make things hard.

In the recent months, something has changed that’s difficult to put my finger on. I’ve become manic; dissatisfied. Even my subconscious clawed for my attention. It’s as if the fire that died left a few glowing embers that could only be fanned by maturity. I’m on my own again, staring down a blinking cursor in a field of white space.

I’m here to chronicle that struggle.

You can read Part 1 here.

I said earlier that I wasn’t writing at all during this period. That’s not exactly true. I wrote letters.

Letters of validation, desperation, rebellion, and enlightenment. Let’s go in order.

The only thing I had left, I thought at the time, was college. There I could “find myself,” meet other smart people, and become a success. It would be my chance to override my past and the mistakes I made after high school. Unfortunately, my application was written in exactly that tone. I assumed they’d recognize my genius instantly. Instead, they probably assumed I was a mess.

They were right, and I was wait-listed.

At this point I was borderline delusional, refusing to accept that it was my fault. I had asked a high school English teacher for a letter of recommendation; and, grasping at straws, I politely demanded a copy. Here’s an excerpt:

Ian is not encumbered by the material values that captivate so many young men and women; rather, he is more concerned with academic self-mastery. He is a true scholar: driven by a thirst for knowledge, Ian is enamored by ideas and is a critical thinker. He stretches himself by viewing every academic challenge as something to be sought rather than to be endured.

 

Ian does not rely on native intelligence but makes uncommon use of his gifts; he personifies persistence. As a student in my International Baccalaureate English class during high school, Ian would rework an essay, a story, or a poem until he was satisfied with its quality—in spite of the fact that his first draft would have earned him an A. Ian has a love and an appreciation of language that is rare in anyone, but especially in one so young.

Well, no problems there. It fact it was the opposite: the solution was right there, I just didn’t see it. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have read that and forced myself to answer a single question:

“What happened to that guy?”

In a moment of desperation, I reached out to a personal hero. In a way, I guess I have the internet to thank. I’m not sure it would have been so easy 20 years ago.

The reason he was such a hero to me was pretty simple: He had everything I wanted, and just plain worked harder than everyone else to get it. He knew himself, had unshakable confidence in that person and his abilities, and chose to do his life’s work on those terms. I’d always had trouble with those things, and at the time, slogging through depression, they seemed impossible. But I had already lost everything. What’s the worst that could happen? He wouldn’t respond?

But he did. I was the convenience store clerk, and Tucker Max held a gun to my head:

Here is the problem with your approach: You are placing too much emphasis on external indications of success and not enough emphasis on determining what you actually want to do.

…So many people think that if they go to the “right” school and take the “right” major they will get the “right” job and this in turn will lead to the “right” life. But you know what those people realize a few years later when they are sitting in their cubicles doing pointless bullshit? That’s not the way it works. Success in life does not come from getting into the “right” schools or getting the “right” job or from doing the thing you think you are “supposed” to do. Success in life comes from figuring out who you are and what you want from life, and then going out and getting it.

…Stop putting your sense of achievement into the hands of others or onto ephemeral and meaningless goals that society has told you are the “right” ones, and grab onto your life and go do with it what you were meant to do. I don’t know what the answer for you is, you have to find that out yourself.

I was electrified. And soon after his response, I did a few things:

I wrote a letter of resignation:

…It’s the corporate bullshit, the repetitive office work, and the feeling that I am doing nothing of real value that is so stifling, and I can’t spend another day in that kind of environment, let alone the four hours I’m in public transit making it happen. I’m just not cut from that cloth, I need to pursue what makes me happy. Effective immediately, I resign.

I let my friends and family know what was going on:

I am a writer. That is my passion, that is who I am, and though it’s taken some time to shed my hesitation, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.

And I moved back home to pursue the life I wanted.

I wish the story ended there. It would be more inspirational for you, and less humiliating for me. But if it did, there wouldn’t be a Part 3, and you’d be reading this in June 2006.

Maximus…The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it.

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

This could be considered a response to Fight Club Moments by Ryan Holiday.

When have you hit bottom? My last entry explains why you’re seeing this now rather than later, but before I move forward in this blog, you should understand the reason you’re seeing this at all.

Two years ago, I moved away to be with the woman I thought I loved. I moved to work the job I thought I was suited for, and when that didn’t work out, I stayed for the education I thought I deserved.

Except I didn’t really think any of those things. So predictably, I lost all of them. And since I invested all my time into the things I was “supposed to,” I neglected what I actually cared about. I hadn’t made friends, read books, or written pages. Most of my possessions were still in boxes, never unpacked. Because I worked in the suburbs and didn’t have a car, I spent 4 hours a day in public transit. Two hours in a hard-plastic seat to get to the job I hated, and two hours back. And I wasn’t even making ends meet. If you asked me why I got up in the morning, I couldn’t have given you an answer.

Because of this, I didn’t have the energy to start from scratch, or to even have fun–I’d go to bars, feel pathetic for drinking alone, and leave. Think about that–I was too depressed to become an alcoholic.

I learned something about that little voice inside, the one you silence with rationalization or bury with office paperwork. He finds other ways to be subversive. He doesn’t like being kept on the path. That voice is as obstinate as a child, but he’s telling you how to behave like a man.

Someone else told me how to behave like a man too, and that’s what I’m going to write about next.