One Thing at Once

January 9, 2022

Distraction, like addiction, comes in many forms. And just like addiction, the fundamental texture of distraction is wanting.

This, whatever this is, isn’t good enough for my complete attention, so give me something else and surely I’ll feel better. The greater the boredom, the greater the distraction temptation.

Increasingly, though, the temptation seems untethered to anything that can plausibly be called “boredom.” It’s more of a twitch to split my attention just ’cause, and to do so across tiny time horizons. This is not about having music on in the background for an extended study session; this is about craving to turn on the TV – to an absolutely irrelevant sporting event – while I walk to the kitchen to put dishes in the dishwasher. That chore is so minute, so quick, so easy: there can’t be true boredom in it. What it is, rather, is my mind increasingly rejecting doing one thing at once. I must listen to a podcast while changing clothes. I must open a second tab while the first one loads. I must read AND listen to music while I eat.

(more…)

2021: Two Lists of Two Things

January 2, 2022

(more…)

2021: Things

January 2, 2022

Movies

  • Spider-Man: No Way Home
  • James Bond: No Time to Die
  • Inside
  • The Dawn Wall
  • Happiest Season
  • The Sound of Metal
  • Driveways
  • In and of Itself
  • Our Friend

Books

  • Will // Will Smith
  • The Three-Body Problem // Liu Cixin
  • Woke Racism // John McWhorter

New Music

  • Inside // Bo Burnham
  • Saosin // Saosin
  • Chuck // Sum 41
  • Duality // Duke Dumont
  • POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR // Bring Me the Horizon
  • Constellations // August Burns Red
  • Greatest Hits // Waterparks
  • Donda // Kanye West

(more…)

Do you actually hate the thing?

December 30, 2021

Do you actually know it’s wrong, a lie, another bit of misinformation?

Or do you just hate the people associated with the thing?

Making sure the last question isn’t “yes” is an easy way to increase your attachment to what is real.

 

Excel in Uncertainty

October 31, 2021

There you are waiting. Maybe it’s seven years from now. Maybe it’s seventeen. But I see you clearly struggling with the lack of clarity. Your parents will have taught you well, loved you well, supported you well: that won’t be the issue.

No, the procrastination is the natural result of unavoidable uncertainty inherent to the human experience. Path A will look preferable on certain days … only to be supplanted – in your mind – by Path B on different days. Around and around your mind will spin with such relentless force you’ll sometimes wish someone else would just decide for you – a free man pleading for less freedom.

I implore you to pause in moments like this and consider your parents. Just look at this house! Their jobs! Their vast networks of friends! Everything is so idyllic! Sure, absorbing those outcomes may lead to the conclusion that your parents followed a simple blueprint devoid of the endless machinations currently racking your mind. Yet it is the wrong conclusion, for your parents were extended stay tenants in the land of uncertainty. Most people make a decision and are awarded a long period of tranquil certainty; your parents, on the other hand, earned their “extended stay” status because their decisions were so often abruptly followed by ever more uncertainty. Which could turn someone cold, or paralyze him, or make him feel justified to constantly complain, could fill him with rage and jealousy. Not your parents. No way.

(more…)

Having something to check

October 30, 2021

is a great way to avoid the emptiness of truly being in the moment. You say you want the moment, but you really don’t. You want to have something to look forward to. You want to have something to take your mind off the boredom inherent to the moment.

So go ahead and check the weather (even as you are one foot from stepping outside), or the scores (even as it’s still the first quarter and you checked, what, two minutes ago), or your texts (even as your dings are turned on and you haven’t heard any). Just do it. It feels so good. And that goodness never expires – you can just check again in the next moment because it’s always possible that something has changed.

Is This Problem Solveable?

October 23, 2021
While the emotional lull may feel quite similar, there is a crucial difference between confidently possessing potential actions that may feasibly solve a problem  (PPA) and having exhausted all conceivable actions (ECA).
I posit that this difference is deeply understood and helps to explain procrastination. There is hope in PPA. When you start to spiral negatively, you can rescue yourself with thoughts of all things left to try: I’ll email Bob on Monday; I’ll call the doctor this week; I’ll read those studies soon. This rescue mission often works well. So well, in fact, that part of you will decide to not take those stated actions, because if they don’t work, you’ll be stranded without the ability to save oneself from darkness.
This logic misses a key point that the list of potential actions is not fixed, that the process of exhausting some of them indeed births new potential actions (e.g., you e-mail Bob and he says, “No, but I think I have a better person for you to contact”).
Unfortunately, the list of potential actions is also not infinite; at some point, the births cease and you truly can run out of ideas to dreadfully arrive in ECA. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure if you are in ECA. Perhaps you are simply looking to excuse yourself from making an effort. Simple test: can a stranger instantly come up with ideas to try? If “yes,” then you ain’t in ECA. (Being laughably far from ECA is why it’s hard for me to be too sympathetic toward people with “health issues” who haven’t perfected exercise, sleep, nutrition, and screens.)
When you are truly in ECA, I don’t really have an answer. This is maybe where acceptance enters, though I don’t really get how non-Jedi’s do that to a considerable enough degree to truly reverse darkness if the ECA state is truly bad. Something like actively fighting against your wants/vision of yourself? xxxxxxxxx told me how whenever someone would ask him to play basketball the desire would emerge to play. Yes, I love basketball. But he, through years of “mourning,” disabused himself of the thought that he’s the type of person who plays basketball (because his injury prevented him from playing). That, while it wasn’t what he would have planned or wanted, it’s what is, and what is is totally fine, glorious even, in a different way. Nothing is so unbearable that you can’t bear it because you are, in fact, bearing it in this moment. And this moment. And this moment.
Ughhhh. I really don’t know.

Dear “Cancel Culture,”

October 23, 2021

There’s a certain type of self-important buffoon clogging up airports from sea to shining sea who needs to be placed squarely in your crosshairs. The boarding process begins with priority, then the disabled, then the parents of small children before turning to a numerical countdown from small to large. Even if you had never before flown, the numerical part is so easy to comprehend that ignorance isn’t a viable defense. 

Yet, there’s the target – proud owner of a group #7 ticket – stalking so close to the line of people with lower boarding numbers you’d think he’s actually in line. Now, if he was deciding to circumvent the boarding order entirely and was truly in line, boarding group be damned, we’d call him unethical and leave it at that. After all, his gross action has minimal consequences. 

What we cannot tolerate, nay what we MUST not tolerate, is the person who thinks he can hold himself in high moral esteem by not actually getting in line, but by being so close to the line that when #7 beams out over the loudspeaker he’ll be the first #7 to board. For this action has ripple effects that materially taint the boarding process: people with lower boarding numbers will accumulate behind him incorrectly believing they are in the real line. With fake disbelief, our target will eventually address the duped fliers incorrectly accumulating behind him by claiming complete innocence and attempting to redirect blame onto us. We are not fooled. You know what you have done. We know what you have done. 

Sic ‘em. Woof, woof, woof!

 

re: sex before marriage

September 6, 2021

You, like so many parents including my own, say you hope your kids wait until marriage for sex. The reasons, I presume, go something like this: Sex is a big deal you should share with someone who truly cares about you. If you wait until marriage, you’ll reduce the probabilities of all sorts of downsides – unwanted pregnancies, emotional distress, abuse, and disease – while making sex maximally special and free from jealousy. I don’t disagree with any of that. I do, however, think it’s worth pointing out that undergirding the advice is the assumption that your children will find love and get married while they are young. Not an unreasonable assumption, especially for an older generation, but still an assumption that will not apply to bachelors/bachelorettes who simply can’t find a good enough match. Worse still, as time elapses, following the no-sex-before-marriage philosophy probably militates against the goal of getting married – the 20-year-old virgin who is “waiting” is viewed more positively than the 30-year-old who is “waiting.”

So, would you still offer the same advice if you 100% knew your kids would be unmarried at, say, age 30?

Everything is political

September 6, 2021
because you made it so. Not politicians, not the media, not any other outside force: you. I walked into your home hoping to catch up about our actual lives and instead find myself defensively crouched as you try to score points against faraway people who have so very little effect on your day-to-day.
It’s undoubtedly true that players with certain financial interests want you to see everything as part of a political fight, but it’s just as true that you possess agency to reject this imposition. You can, of course, stop listening, though this is becoming increasingly difficult as the politics is everywhere message flexes from all corners – avoiding the news offers little reprieve. So the more potent defense is to meet the message squarely and reject it for its incompleteness.

Consider that politics is everywhere is another version of Jesus is everywhere. Now, perhaps you do fervently believe that one of those two concepts is true, that your job, your breakup, and your medical issues are all tied to something far larger than the thing itself. Overarching narratives may be at play, sure. But when everything is so quickly funneled into a grand narrative, the evaluation of the thing itself becomes stupidly shallow. Narratives work to broadly and simply explain patterns, not to actually explain what’s truly going on in a given situation since life never has, never will conform to narratives’ simplicities. And the more you capitulate to narrative-based thinking, the more you will think you have it all figured out when quite the opposite is true.