I read a self-help book back in the 1990’s, “Do It!” by Peter McWilliams. It was a primer for, Realizing Your Dreams. A good book up front, the last half was mostly Buddhist hyperbole. Not that Buddhism is bad but neither an I ready to chop wood and carry water. Anyway: what stuck with me was his premise, Do It! Realizing one’s dream certainly requires some forethought and planning but at some point you have to literally do something, even if you fail, even if it hurts. Rodin’s ‘Thinker’ is an awesome sculpture. Rodin actually struck a first blow to the big rock which led to another, and annother. That’s the idea. ’The Thinker’ has been thinking about it with chin in hand for over a hundred years. That’s why Rodin is a hero and ‘The Thinker’ is just his famous creation.
People mean well. They (we) move along with best intentions. But the smallest distraction can send us off in new directions. Human nature would have us attend fo familiar, simple, low level tasks rather than take on a high priority challenge: go shop for a new toothbrush rather than repair a broken friendship. In college, my mentor made us write a little adage in the margin of every assignment: “Do things in the order of their importance.” Maybe the best advice I ever got still, kicking the can down the road has always been easier than meeting the summons.
The book’s best example, for me anyway, was: if you want to be a writer, you don’t need an agent or a publisher, don’t need a computer, a desk or a file cabinet. You don’t even need a good idea. All you need is pencil and paper. That is where you start, don’t think about it, do something. When you become a writer and want to get better or to sell a story, you raise the ante, set a higher expectation. I had been keeping a journal off and on (mostly off) for 20 years, first longhand, then typed, then it got sidetracked by something more important. O.M.G. - Something more important; that’s another story, too important to kick it down the road. McWilliams did a good job with the ‘Either-Or’ argument. Like the fork in the road, you take either one path or the other and life is full of ‘this or that’ demands. Processing that dilemma requires a presumption that, at the time, the action/inaction employed was more important than the other option.
People mean well. They (we) move along with best intentions. But the smallest distraction can send us off in new directions. Human nature would have us attend fo familiar, simple, low level tasks rather than take on a high priority challenge: go shop for a new toothbrush rather than repair a broken friendship. In college, my mentor made us write a little adage in the margin of every assignment: “Do things in the order of their importance.” Maybe the best advice I ever got still, kicking the can down the road has always been easier than meeting the summons.
The book’s best example, for me anyway, was: if you want to be a writer, you don’t need an agent or a publisher, don’t need a computer, a desk or a file cabinet. You don’t even need a good idea. All you need is pencil and paper. That is where you start, don’t think about it, do something. When you become a writer and want to get better or to sell a story, you raise the ante, set a higher expectation. I had been keeping a journal off and on (mostly off) for 20 years, first longhand, then typed, then it got sidetracked by something more important. O.M.G. - Something more important; that’s another story, too important to kick it down the road. McWilliams did a good job with the ‘Either-Or’ argument. Like the fork in the road, you take either one path or the other and life is full of ‘this or that’ demands. Processing that dilemma requires a presumption that, at the time, the action/inaction employed was more important than the other option.
A simple rule of thumb would facilitate the task. If I sleep late and miss my job interview, then my sleep was more important than the interview. I can be angry with myself but had the interview been more important than my sleep I would have set an alarm or had someone check to be sure I was up in time. Obligations forgotten are simply less important than whatever was on your mind at the time. It is schematic, like math. In this case importance is determined by rank order. The brain can alternate and switch tasks rapidly but it doesn’t do very well, literally, multitasking more than one thing at a time. Whatever you set aside for the moment, something else takes its place. When you get back to it, it depends.
Tying my shoe had become more important than keeping my journal. So I took McWilliams at his word and started writing again, on my computer. I’m still writing. My goal is to be the best writer I can be. I’ve never made $1 profit from my writing but by definition, I am published. Selling your work is more work than the work itself, more than I’m willing to do. I pay someone to print my books so I can give them away. My career has come full circle, adventures in the learning-place rather than the marketplace. Writing has always been an avocation. The upside is that it belongs to me, not me to it. All things considered, it meets my need. If I want to be free and happy (and I do) then carrying deadweight baggage, material or otherwise is out of the question and Happy is like peace, whatever I’m willing to settle for.
Tying my shoe had become more important than keeping my journal. So I took McWilliams at his word and started writing again, on my computer. I’m still writing. My goal is to be the best writer I can be. I’ve never made $1 profit from my writing but by definition, I am published. Selling your work is more work than the work itself, more than I’m willing to do. I pay someone to print my books so I can give them away. My career has come full circle, adventures in the learning-place rather than the marketplace. Writing has always been an avocation. The upside is that it belongs to me, not me to it. All things considered, it meets my need. If I want to be free and happy (and I do) then carrying deadweight baggage, material or otherwise is out of the question and Happy is like peace, whatever I’m willing to settle for.
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