My mind takes off.
I'm going to try really hard to not let this go to vague and broad.
When I think about something, two things happen simultaneously. One vein pumps full of anxiety, doubts, and questions. The other looks for contradictions, be they in ideas or in autonomic body responses. Let's illustrate by example.
If I text you, perhaps a friend I haven't spoken to in a while, or very long while, and you don't respond, I think that's the easiest thing to empathize with. We all have pending conversations or open questions we'd love resolved, and fuck those who can't see how desperate and longing we remain looking at our screens. Fuck them double if we saw them typing and they still don't come out with it. My other half says, “They're not very good texters, historically” or “Fuck em, you've been looking for an excuse to stop stoking that pitiful flame.” A cold rationalization or apology for their impoliteness or aloofness or clearly all-encompassing drama they're dealing with that trumps you soundly.
When the idea I'm contemplating isn't a dramatic one, the anxiety, doubts, and questions become launching points. I don't know a thing? Have I googled it? Have I googled it ten times and made 200 phone calls? No? Well, there's your answer. Can I pull this off? Did you do analogous extraordinary things already? Yes? Well, not just yes, but mother fucking of course you can do this, you already have, idiot. The anxiety becomes a dare and provocation of a hopeful spirit. It's a challenge to those listening to get in line or get fucked. Does the other half pick out the million ways in which it can fail? Duh. And then you start to see the decisions in my life manifesting as making sense in order to account for the answers I came to through that process.
I was going on about what I want to do on the land today. I was talking to adults who are comfortable. I was talking to the only people who have consistently come out bowling or drinking and who think of different things we should do together. I mentioned wanting to brew beer, and one of them perked up. I explained the philosophy of having several concurrent reasonably priced experiments running from which to poke your head into different entrepreneurial worlds. My mind took off, as it does, and now I'm here, trying to temper my enthusiasm because I've been here before.
The usual response I get when I speak about things is a kind of polite listening. You can't talk about a cloud of ideas. You need to be passionate about something specific. You need to be describing the trim you'd have on your storefront's bathroom windows. You need something people can conceptualize, and if you have a spreadsheet, they'll plotz over your initiative. I've pulled back. I've built trees before, but I want a forest. Society is something of a forest, and it's on fire. To me, if your focus is so...selfish...say the mere enrichment of yourself that some gadget or idea may get you enough, you'll be repeating the larger mistake we've made as a species to “get mine, get comfortable.”
I want the ethos and method to shine. Am I going to sell all of these books? Highly unlikely. But, what if I did some creative marketing thing that highlighted what makes them worthwhile? What if I started a countdown clock with the next book that would get burned if it wasn't sold and started a viral sensation about the ethics and importance of preserving knowledge and stories well-independent of our personal taste? Is that a thought you have when you look at a book you don't care about and decide it means nothing? I got the books for free. I can list them for free. I can store them for free. I can thumb through them at my leisure, and maybe open myself up into a new world I never would have otherwise. I can contemplate a dozen ways to get them sold, or how to draw attention to myself and store. I can have a large enough inventory that I overlap other industries I want to be involved with. That is a complicated intricate web of relationships and thoughts because I suspect the deep potential of having two thousand books for sale.
Two things came to mind on my drive home today. One was a teenage card magician I saw on Penn & Teller Fool Us. She watched cardistry videos and said, “I can do that,” and in, I think it was less than 2 years, she was performing in Vegas. Kids are simple like that. “That's cool, I think I can do that.” That's all I want to keep believing about myself. I want to believe I can get the formula right, keep the plants alive, master the technique, or create my mind's eye of what something should look like. I want the fun of experimentation, the hard truths of failure, and the spillage of lessons and learning to influence everything else I touch. I want people to feel their own motivation and perspective as it bleeds into what we're each trying to create. I want “my” enthusiasm to be what used to be the spirit of bothering to be alive striving for things in the first place. I forgot the other thing.
I never get more excited than when I see that I've made someone think about what they could pull off. I already know I'm going to get everything I want. That's been the story of my whole life. There's no surprise that I'm the kind of person I am with certain inevitable conclusions. You? Hoards, masses. You otherwise forlorn and forgotten who've gotten fat off the land and put away childish things? What can you do? Because, in my experience, it's next to nothing but fluff your proverbial pillow. You don't believe, you haven't helped, and your next modest, affordable, mature goal will be quite enough, thank you. Just okay is just okay.
I'm going to try really hard to not let this go to vague and broad.
When I think about something, two things happen simultaneously. One vein pumps full of anxiety, doubts, and questions. The other looks for contradictions, be they in ideas or in autonomic body responses. Let's illustrate by example.
If I text you, perhaps a friend I haven't spoken to in a while, or very long while, and you don't respond, I think that's the easiest thing to empathize with. We all have pending conversations or open questions we'd love resolved, and fuck those who can't see how desperate and longing we remain looking at our screens. Fuck them double if we saw them typing and they still don't come out with it. My other half says, “They're not very good texters, historically” or “Fuck em, you've been looking for an excuse to stop stoking that pitiful flame.” A cold rationalization or apology for their impoliteness or aloofness or clearly all-encompassing drama they're dealing with that trumps you soundly.
When the idea I'm contemplating isn't a dramatic one, the anxiety, doubts, and questions become launching points. I don't know a thing? Have I googled it? Have I googled it ten times and made 200 phone calls? No? Well, there's your answer. Can I pull this off? Did you do analogous extraordinary things already? Yes? Well, not just yes, but mother fucking of course you can do this, you already have, idiot. The anxiety becomes a dare and provocation of a hopeful spirit. It's a challenge to those listening to get in line or get fucked. Does the other half pick out the million ways in which it can fail? Duh. And then you start to see the decisions in my life manifesting as making sense in order to account for the answers I came to through that process.
I was going on about what I want to do on the land today. I was talking to adults who are comfortable. I was talking to the only people who have consistently come out bowling or drinking and who think of different things we should do together. I mentioned wanting to brew beer, and one of them perked up. I explained the philosophy of having several concurrent reasonably priced experiments running from which to poke your head into different entrepreneurial worlds. My mind took off, as it does, and now I'm here, trying to temper my enthusiasm because I've been here before.
The usual response I get when I speak about things is a kind of polite listening. You can't talk about a cloud of ideas. You need to be passionate about something specific. You need to be describing the trim you'd have on your storefront's bathroom windows. You need something people can conceptualize, and if you have a spreadsheet, they'll plotz over your initiative. I've pulled back. I've built trees before, but I want a forest. Society is something of a forest, and it's on fire. To me, if your focus is so...selfish...say the mere enrichment of yourself that some gadget or idea may get you enough, you'll be repeating the larger mistake we've made as a species to “get mine, get comfortable.”
I want the ethos and method to shine. Am I going to sell all of these books? Highly unlikely. But, what if I did some creative marketing thing that highlighted what makes them worthwhile? What if I started a countdown clock with the next book that would get burned if it wasn't sold and started a viral sensation about the ethics and importance of preserving knowledge and stories well-independent of our personal taste? Is that a thought you have when you look at a book you don't care about and decide it means nothing? I got the books for free. I can list them for free. I can store them for free. I can thumb through them at my leisure, and maybe open myself up into a new world I never would have otherwise. I can contemplate a dozen ways to get them sold, or how to draw attention to myself and store. I can have a large enough inventory that I overlap other industries I want to be involved with. That is a complicated intricate web of relationships and thoughts because I suspect the deep potential of having two thousand books for sale.
Two things came to mind on my drive home today. One was a teenage card magician I saw on Penn & Teller Fool Us. She watched cardistry videos and said, “I can do that,” and in, I think it was less than 2 years, she was performing in Vegas. Kids are simple like that. “That's cool, I think I can do that.” That's all I want to keep believing about myself. I want to believe I can get the formula right, keep the plants alive, master the technique, or create my mind's eye of what something should look like. I want the fun of experimentation, the hard truths of failure, and the spillage of lessons and learning to influence everything else I touch. I want people to feel their own motivation and perspective as it bleeds into what we're each trying to create. I want “my” enthusiasm to be what used to be the spirit of bothering to be alive striving for things in the first place. I forgot the other thing.
I never get more excited than when I see that I've made someone think about what they could pull off. I already know I'm going to get everything I want. That's been the story of my whole life. There's no surprise that I'm the kind of person I am with certain inevitable conclusions. You? Hoards, masses. You otherwise forlorn and forgotten who've gotten fat off the land and put away childish things? What can you do? Because, in my experience, it's next to nothing but fluff your proverbial pillow. You don't believe, you haven't helped, and your next modest, affordable, mature goal will be quite enough, thank you. Just okay is just okay.
We need more. We need something akin to the kind of indomitable faith that the religious zealots peck at. I budget. I don't have faith I can afford a bourbon barrel. I don't have faith I can grow micro greens. I don't have faith I can 3D print a tugboat. I don't have faith I can dig a pool, fix my moving truck, or get a mobile coffee van up and running again. I have the strong indication that working towards and gaining perspective in pursuing those things are going to contribute to the self-affirming message that goals for their own sake, just beyond what you can reach without the appreciable effort, are always worth having and at the base of everything. There is no riding out the storm without degrading before your own eyes. There is no “you” without the new and improved version staring at you from the future.
If getting to know older people has been any indication, it's that you'll always feel it. You'll remember what you were like. You'll know what's still plaguing you as something to do. Why are there a million micro-breweries with 40 and 50-somethings recycling each other's themes and being weirdly smug for someone so unattractive? They're getting to be the go-getter 20-something again. They're getting to translate the years of their lives of sacrifice and savings into the freedom or ownership they didn't pursue earnestly and early. I've written from this exact mental place every year of my 20s. I haven't been able to run from the ethos and example embedded in my head, and at least I can say I'm talking about it from my house in my field a mere 2 months away from having an irresponsible amount of expendable income. Every spider bigger than the last I have to kill will testify to what it's taken mentally, physically, and financially to get here. Every mud hole I've stepped in, excuse I've heard, and feigned enthusiasm I've parlayed into a mocking line of a blog will pave the way as well.
The train's coming. Are you getting on or getting hit? Because we're certainly suffering the concussion of taking considerably less responsibility for ourselves.
If getting to know older people has been any indication, it's that you'll always feel it. You'll remember what you were like. You'll know what's still plaguing you as something to do. Why are there a million micro-breweries with 40 and 50-somethings recycling each other's themes and being weirdly smug for someone so unattractive? They're getting to be the go-getter 20-something again. They're getting to translate the years of their lives of sacrifice and savings into the freedom or ownership they didn't pursue earnestly and early. I've written from this exact mental place every year of my 20s. I haven't been able to run from the ethos and example embedded in my head, and at least I can say I'm talking about it from my house in my field a mere 2 months away from having an irresponsible amount of expendable income. Every spider bigger than the last I have to kill will testify to what it's taken mentally, physically, and financially to get here. Every mud hole I've stepped in, excuse I've heard, and feigned enthusiasm I've parlayed into a mocking line of a blog will pave the way as well.
The train's coming. Are you getting on or getting hit? Because we're certainly suffering the concussion of taking considerably less responsibility for ourselves.
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