One of the worst things that social media of the 21st Century has inflicted on us is the influencer. I think we can agree on that. But one of the worst forms of these influencers is the productivity/hustle mongers that tell you that the pathway to your dreams lies in not sleeping.
I have to be honest, it’s an alluring concept. To be able to find systems and processes that help someone like me keep track of what in the fuck I’m doing, and the idea that if I can do it—whatever it is—consistently from 5 pm to insomnia o’clock from now until the heat death of the universe I might get what I want out of my life just before my nervous breakdown and confinement in a rubber room.
The problem with that mindset is that for some of us, there’s no off switch, and circuits that are constantly energized eventually short and burn out. Bad enough when it’s the compressor switch on your refrigerator, that’s a week’s worth of food down the drain. When the switch is your brain, that’s another problem altogether. For me, a person that is simultaneously goal oriented and riddled with ADD, there’s a lot of self-loathing that occurs when I can see the thing, and I want to do the thing, but I’ve already failed at doing the thing in my head because I couldn’t keep up the pace of what I thought the thing requires. Take this podcast as an example, or the stories I’ve started writing, or the myriad of websites I’ve scrapped and started over because I wanted to clean the slate and try again. I think my want to play mad scientist and nuke everything and start over gives me some squirt of the happy brain juice because as near as I can figure, the planning and making of the thing gives me more joy than the maintaining of the thing. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
There’s another layer of suck you can add to this 7-layer shitcake, and that’s the input from people who think adding some shame into the game is going to help. Bitch, you can’t beat me up any more than I beat myself up, so have a Coke and a smile and a fucking seat. I can do that part all by myself, thanks, and I’m so much better at it than you are. I’m not an expert at much, but I can knock myself out. Trust me.
That’s why I went on a quest to find external help in the form of self-help books many years ago. I thought I might find the one thing that unlocks my problem and explains it to me like I’m five so I can figure out THE PLAN ™. Unfortunately, as I’ve said before, self-help is a long con, where many different faces and personalities say the same 6 or 7 things and offer you more help if you’re willing to pay for it in their members-only section. THERE IS NO HELP IN THE CHAMPAGNE ROOM, ONLY A RECURRING CHARGE.
Finally, and this is a new thing I’ve been dealing with, does any consistent endeavor really matter when you look around and see the world around you going straight to hell in a handcart? It’s really hard to be creative—much less funny—under the circumstances we’ve found ourselves in the past few years. I can’t lie, I’m hung down, brung down, beat down, my head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus.
There’s a reason I hit on this subject this week, and it started when I ran into an old friend last weekend who asked me how my Act III was going. Honestly, it isn’t going at all, but the more and more I think about it, it’s because I haven’t been trying. Between me and Act III is some self-invented Final Boss that looms in front of me. It’s a koan that presents me with a real problem, but then that’s what koans are for. The hell with logical thought, this way to enlightenment, you fool!
And in the spirit of forgetting all about logical thought, the answer is simply that my brain is playing a neat trick on the rest of me of thinking I’m burned out and on task all the time. No, I have no idea how that works. No, I have no idea how to stop it. Yes, I have an idea, and again, in the spirit of forgetting about logical thought, I’ve decided that the first thing I need to do is stop caring about it so much. It makes no sense, but somehow I’ve hit upon the idea of trying to get one over on myself. Maybe this gets easier if I don’t beat myself up over it and just do with no expectations and let things happen organically. I don’t know, it just seems like it’s crazy enough to work when you stop to consider the wetware I’m working with.
Or not. We’ll see.