Thinking man’s journey

My thinking is muddled. Developing ideas and arguments in text isn’t one of my strengths. I have noticed that my writing often turns abstract and philosophical. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the intent is not to be philosophical from the outset and as a result the writing often lacks clarity and rigor.

A study of philosophy should help me think better. You only are as good a writer as you are a reader and reading philosophy should help me learn how ideas are developed throughout a text. Perhaps this is another form of procrastination and only writing more would help with the skill. But I think philosophy is a discipline where you play with ideas and that in itself appears to be something with general benefits.

That said, a risk of being too abstract and academic exists. But that’s like worrying about crashing out in a high-speed chase before learning how to drive. I’ll only know if philosophy is useful for me if I get into it.

Learning a new discipline adds stimulus to life. Trying out new things is a well-known cure for boredom. I can be like a very intelligent dog that can turn self-destructive if you don’t challenge it enough.

So it begins, a journey into philosophy. I intend to start with Bertrand Russell’s history of western philosophy and we’ll see where to go from there.

Blow it off

Project Narcissist isn’t going the way it was supposed to. I haven’t been diligent about noting down everything that happens every day. In fact I took notes only once. Holding myself accountable to writing a weekly piece itself is something I was considering blowing off. Most of my time during the week was spent reading.

A new way of reading. I now note down the lead sentence of each paragraph and give it a number. All this effort is to better understand how writers structure their work. I have observed that paragraph leads are informative and make pieces coherent. The sequencing of the paragraphs also inform the mood. I love reading and decoding what makes things tick.

I find myself reading a lot about how to write better. It is just another way of testing the waters. A way to feel better about yourself. Oh I’m not writing but look at me I’m still working on my craft. How much of that theoretical hogwash is actually retained though. Writing is a skill and practicing is the only way to get better at it.

Procrastination has many forms. All this reading about writing is just another way of procrastinating. Fighting procrastination is an act of courage. A way of telling your mind that I’ll go beyond your calculations and make the leap. It’s a willingness to accept imperfection and the effort that it takes to get something done. A commitment to getting things done.

So I need to commit to the project. Nothing starts out as perfect. The idea is to improve with trial and error. Finished is better than perfect. All of these ideas sound nice, but it is such a pain to commit to anything. The mind starts playing tricks on you by drawing up a sophisticated calculus of value which means nothing in the larger context of what you want to do. With all this hedging and prefacing here’s a little sampler for what the week produced.

Real life is different for everyone. No two people do things the exact same way because they don’t come from the exact same circumstances. Two Uber drivers both got the booking for the same distance with exactly the same fare, but only one of them complained. The capitalists at the top are sucking them dry. They don’t have a unified voice. Gig workers don’t have unity precisely because it is gig work and there’s no shared experience among the people employed. Real life is different, for one it is a way of supplementary income, for the other it is the income. For me it is no big deal to give some money on top of the fare. For the receiver it can be everything.

Addendum: Couldn’t post this yesterday because my WiFi flipped out. No wordpress domains were reachable on the network. This is being posted via a mobile hotspot.

Project Narcissist

Project Narcissist is an effort to collect interesting things from my daily life that can then be compiled into a big and coherent piece at the end of the week. It is not a journal. A basic point of difference here is the keen editorial eye that’s supposed to fit material into an interesting structure.

So a day’s entry goes something like this:

Let’s just start with a recap of what all happened today. The day started with a lot of music blaring. NxWorries’ Why Lawd. Struggled to find a bike taxi. Saw a man refusing to move a roadblock even though it was clearly in the wrong place. The man looked young and was ready to fight over that roadblock. He was dedicated to his crusade against traffic. We trudged along more bad traffic burning under a hot sun. Got to the office. Came back. The cook had a black eye. It looked very suspicious but I didn’t want to interfere. Communication with her is bad enough as is. Perhaps I lack moral courage. Seeing her like that wasn’t a pleasant experience regardless. Got some new clothes. They look promising.

At the end of the week there’s six of such notes. That’s a decent bit of material to identify philosophical themes and a structure that might draw interesting things out of the mundane. It’s a way to collect material. A way to establish the habit of collecting material.

The self-centered nature of this project informs its title. Expanding consciousness from the personal to the interpersonal seems about right. Perhaps one day my consciousness expands enough to capture society at large. But for now it’s baby steps. Let’s see how it goes.

Spinning

There’s a lack of boredom in my life. Life outside is too interesting. Distracted. Time is experienced as a blur of visuals and sounds. My brain needs downtime. This constant, nagging sense of distraction is a possible contributor to my writer’s block.

My understanding of the creative process, among other great balancing processes of life, is that it takes its own time and often begins in places of profound boredom. Getting to these states of profound boredom is hard. Curiosity combined with the internet can keep a mind distracted for eternity. Spinning the wheels of the mind, as the information is never truly absorbed. Skimmed, passing through the mind as if it were a gust of wind.