It's been a few months since I last wrote, and in fact, not writing - or rather not [fill in the blank with your own thing that you wish you did more of but can never seem to find the time to do] writing - is my very subject. It might be something you can identify with.
Let's see....a few months ago, I realized I had not been writing as much as I wanted. Not just here, for all you lovely people (all seven of you, hi Dad and Danny!) but just writing in general. No wait, that's not true: it was not writing in aggregate, not writing per se that I'd stopped, because I was doing plenty of writing for work. And I mean that in two ways - one, in a semi-snarky way that alludes to the fact that my email is, as I have typo'd, emauling me and I spend too much time sitting in a dark, quiet office sending out silent missives; and two, in a semi-serious "who'd have even thought I'd actually be using my communication degree to communicate?" way that alludes to the fact that writing copy is sometimes my job (not ad copy, but more like - oh, newsletter recaps and manuals and yes, occasionally, something a bit creative); I am paid to communicate.
So, plenty of writing. Just not enough creative, private writing, writing for pleasure - although all writers know it's not really such a pleasure. I don't remember who said it - probably Hemingway, I could look it up but that's no fun (remember when we used to have to remember things?) - that a writer only writes when the pain of not writing exceeds the pain of writing? It's not that bad, these days, though it used to be.
No, these days it's more about time. I'm in one of those typical modern catch-22 situations, in which I spend all my time working so I have enough money to afford travel I can't take time off for and books I don't have time to read. I'm not even a parent; God only knows how working parents can survive and keep a shred of personal ambition, growth and interests. It's hard enough to keep up with my "these days, 60 hours or more" work week, which leaves just about enough time to have one to hours of "leisure" in the evening, after dinner but before bed. Mornings, afternoons, early evenings are all about getting ready for work, being at work, doing work, or taking care of such mundane but necessary tasks such as eating or commuting (after all, I can't beam to work). Nights are for sleeping - and yes, I do still sleep a normal amount and am aware that's where busy people shave time when it's needed elsewhere, but I can't help it, I love sleep.
And what's crazy about this situation is - it can just go on and on. This cycle, this routine, this way things go. In fact, going on and on is what it does best. There's a reason you hear phrases like "treadmill" and "rat race" - we go round and round. And time passes - time passes at an alarming rate. Of course, everyone knows this. We all talk about it. It's a cliche, it's so well-worn territory. I heard adults complain of it when I was a kid, and once I became an adult, I heard older people say something similar, perhaps summed up well by Pink Floyd: "And then one day you find / ten years have got behind you / no one told you when you run / you missed the starting gun." Ain't that the truth.
When you're young - a teenager or early 20's - this seems absolutely preposterous, because ten years is a huge chunk of time; it's half your life or so, and you don't remember the first few years anyway so it seems like more, and the idea of half your life passing in a blink is patently ridiculous. I remember when I was in a my late 20's, a friend who was a good decade older once said, "The sun goes up and down like a bouncing ball." How true that has turned out to be.
Now, knowing that - having listened to Floyd at a young enough age, having watched and been tremendously moved by Dead Poets Society (having had an English teacher who made an unmistakable impression on all his students), having embraced "carpe diem" as a really good idea - I have done my best to pay attention. To suck the marrow. To try and leap whenever possible, to travel, to embrace, to say yes, and blah blah blah. And it's been great, and it's gotten me some incredible moments - and a feeling that, even if it were over soon, I'd have felt like I did a lot and saw a lot and loved really a lot; in short, I've lived. I've not measured out my life with coffee spoons, and I've given barbaric yawps (ok, really I just sing in public, but same idea).
But it's very easy, when all engaged in life, to just rely on life continuing to engage you. And it does, but now in the form of work. I'm lucky, very lucky, in that I love my job in many ways, and my co-workers in many ways. My co-workers are like friends, but I'll be honest about the job - if I didn't get paid, I wouldn't do it. Actually, some parts of it, I would - which is incredible. But most of it - the spreadsheets and the dull copy and the cat wrangling and the goals reviews - I would not do if I had independent means. But I think all jobs - in America, these days - suck you up. You can like it or not - and most people don't, which is tragic, an awful waste of human creativity - but either way, work tends to suck up one's time and energy.
And it's very easy to suddenly realize, it's been months since you've blogged. I went many months, very uncharacteristically, without journalling, even though since I was a teen, I've written practically weekly or more. For decades, I did this, and then I just stopped; I didn't mean to, but when you've got just a couple hours a day, and days go by very quickly - bouncing ball, bouncing ball - it's very easy to think, oh, it's been a while, I should writing something. And then when you go to write something you realize "a while" is almost a year, and then you do a little, and then it's another few months, until you are sixty and you realize you are never going write / finish / start (whatever) that novel.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of those actors about whom you can say "was the greatest actor of his generation" and not sound unreasonable, died yesterday. He was 46. I don't want to say exactly how close he was to me in age, but it was close enough to that my second thought - right after I realized that all the Philip Seymour Hoffman in the world is all the Philip Seymour Hoffman we are going to get - was holy shit, he was about my age, and that means I could die. And not later, but now - tomorrow, or right now. I could die right as I am writing this sentence.
Of course, I didn't. Most of us don't - die untimely, that is. Yes, we all go in the end, and I feel like I am philosophically reconciled to that. Birth and death are like heads and tails - they don't "go together" like peanut butter and jelly do, they are part of the same thing; as Robert Anton Wilson says, head of cat and tail of cat might look separate when you see them through a picket fence, but it's the same cat, and the fence is just an illusion brought about by viewing the cat from that particular perspective. Yes, we're born and yes, we die, and I'm good with that - I want to live, I am down with life, and so I necessarily have to be down with death, and I am.
It's just - NOT YET. I want to live a bit more - and by live, I mean not just exist but enjoy all those juicy (and shitty) parts, like love. Like struggling to make art, to express myself. I want to write that novel. I've written two of those starter 72-hour novels, but that's not my magnum opus. I always assumed my magnum opus would someday come. I'd have to work on it, sure, and I will, I will - it's just these 60-hour weeks, 1.5 hours per night, I've got laundry and paperwork and I'm feeling a bit tired anyway, so I'll just lay down and watch a little Colbert....
And BOOM, it's a decade later and where the fuck is the magnum opus? Or worse, you're Philip Seymour Hoffman but in this reality, you didn't make 65 films (he really worked) but instead you just made one, or none. Now, he did heroin and I don't but that's just a detail - there's any number of ways to go. And by the way, I'm not trying to say in any way that I'm a great artist, as he was. My point is, I was inspired - scared, maybe - by yesterday's events. I thought, well, how many decades DO I have left?
As if on cue, the Colbert I watched yesterday covered a new product from a company called Tikker, which produces a watch that - can you see this coming? - will calculate (based an your age, medical history, habits, etc) just how much time you have left and count it down in seconds. For, presumably, the rest of your life. They don't do this to give people psychotic breakdowns - the first ones get shipped in April (provided their Kickstarter gets funded), so we don't know, that could happen. They produced this awful thing (a bargain at only $60!), they say, to encourage people to make the most of their life - make every second count. Except that's not really the best way, I don't think - to literally count down your life. It's not very Zen. It's more short-term quarterly gains thinking, which we have had quite enough of, thank you, and is also partially responsible for my dilemma to be begin with - if I were on the dole, for instance, I would have time to write!
I do have time to write, though. Here I am, proving it; it really is a matter of priority (and energy - my personal failing). I just took that 1.5 slice of daily time and did something I've been meaning to do, wanting to do, actually do care about - which is write. In this case, here, in the blog, which I think is worthwhile. It's a beginning. The novel - oh, the novel, yes, has to be started, in earnest. I've one started, two in mind, so I better get going. Which is not to say I won't be back here soon.
It's a zero sum game, in a way - every hour I spend here is an hour I don't spend on the novel (thanks Tikker) - but in another way, it's all just fine. I've taken steps towards where I want to go. Increased focus on meaning-making, more time spent being creative, and ultimately, hoping that will illuminate my path out of the 60 hour work week - and I'll go from a job I love but do for someone else to a job I love that I do for me, and I'll have time for everything else I like to do. How do I know this? Well, I listened to what the universe had to tell me, and it said, get cracking, Kar.
There's always a lot that can be planned and sorted out and goals to be made and all that jazz. But the main thing is to start - whatever it is, just start on it, no matter how small. I think of often of the Zen saying (Confucius, attributed): "It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop." Well, maybe it matters a little how slowly one goes. Philip Seymour Hoffman had 46 years and he did not go slowly, and we're all grateful for that. More slowly, and we'd have 35 films, or 24, or 5, or none. I'm sad, so sad, he's gone, but I'm glad, so glad, for what he left behind.
As for me? I guess my good news is, I've got two novellas, some short stories, a few screenplays, a couple of one-acts, scattered poetry and....this blog, in fact. I'm not at none. There's some comfort there. But there's no harm in starting over, in renewing my promise to myself to - in a very un-army but kind of Private Benjamin-y way - be all I can be. Will I veg out in front of Colbert? Sure. Will I come here more often? I hope so. Will I get that novel done or strike out on my own professionally? I don't know, but I'm starting on that. When?
RIGHT NOW.
Let's see....a few months ago, I realized I had not been writing as much as I wanted. Not just here, for all you lovely people (all seven of you, hi Dad and Danny!) but just writing in general. No wait, that's not true: it was not writing in aggregate, not writing per se that I'd stopped, because I was doing plenty of writing for work. And I mean that in two ways - one, in a semi-snarky way that alludes to the fact that my email is, as I have typo'd, emauling me and I spend too much time sitting in a dark, quiet office sending out silent missives; and two, in a semi-serious "who'd have even thought I'd actually be using my communication degree to communicate?" way that alludes to the fact that writing copy is sometimes my job (not ad copy, but more like - oh, newsletter recaps and manuals and yes, occasionally, something a bit creative); I am paid to communicate.
So, plenty of writing. Just not enough creative, private writing, writing for pleasure - although all writers know it's not really such a pleasure. I don't remember who said it - probably Hemingway, I could look it up but that's no fun (remember when we used to have to remember things?) - that a writer only writes when the pain of not writing exceeds the pain of writing? It's not that bad, these days, though it used to be.
No, these days it's more about time. I'm in one of those typical modern catch-22 situations, in which I spend all my time working so I have enough money to afford travel I can't take time off for and books I don't have time to read. I'm not even a parent; God only knows how working parents can survive and keep a shred of personal ambition, growth and interests. It's hard enough to keep up with my "these days, 60 hours or more" work week, which leaves just about enough time to have one to hours of "leisure" in the evening, after dinner but before bed. Mornings, afternoons, early evenings are all about getting ready for work, being at work, doing work, or taking care of such mundane but necessary tasks such as eating or commuting (after all, I can't beam to work). Nights are for sleeping - and yes, I do still sleep a normal amount and am aware that's where busy people shave time when it's needed elsewhere, but I can't help it, I love sleep.
And what's crazy about this situation is - it can just go on and on. This cycle, this routine, this way things go. In fact, going on and on is what it does best. There's a reason you hear phrases like "treadmill" and "rat race" - we go round and round. And time passes - time passes at an alarming rate. Of course, everyone knows this. We all talk about it. It's a cliche, it's so well-worn territory. I heard adults complain of it when I was a kid, and once I became an adult, I heard older people say something similar, perhaps summed up well by Pink Floyd: "And then one day you find / ten years have got behind you / no one told you when you run / you missed the starting gun." Ain't that the truth.
When you're young - a teenager or early 20's - this seems absolutely preposterous, because ten years is a huge chunk of time; it's half your life or so, and you don't remember the first few years anyway so it seems like more, and the idea of half your life passing in a blink is patently ridiculous. I remember when I was in a my late 20's, a friend who was a good decade older once said, "The sun goes up and down like a bouncing ball." How true that has turned out to be.
Now, knowing that - having listened to Floyd at a young enough age, having watched and been tremendously moved by Dead Poets Society (having had an English teacher who made an unmistakable impression on all his students), having embraced "carpe diem" as a really good idea - I have done my best to pay attention. To suck the marrow. To try and leap whenever possible, to travel, to embrace, to say yes, and blah blah blah. And it's been great, and it's gotten me some incredible moments - and a feeling that, even if it were over soon, I'd have felt like I did a lot and saw a lot and loved really a lot; in short, I've lived. I've not measured out my life with coffee spoons, and I've given barbaric yawps (ok, really I just sing in public, but same idea).
But it's very easy, when all engaged in life, to just rely on life continuing to engage you. And it does, but now in the form of work. I'm lucky, very lucky, in that I love my job in many ways, and my co-workers in many ways. My co-workers are like friends, but I'll be honest about the job - if I didn't get paid, I wouldn't do it. Actually, some parts of it, I would - which is incredible. But most of it - the spreadsheets and the dull copy and the cat wrangling and the goals reviews - I would not do if I had independent means. But I think all jobs - in America, these days - suck you up. You can like it or not - and most people don't, which is tragic, an awful waste of human creativity - but either way, work tends to suck up one's time and energy.
And it's very easy to suddenly realize, it's been months since you've blogged. I went many months, very uncharacteristically, without journalling, even though since I was a teen, I've written practically weekly or more. For decades, I did this, and then I just stopped; I didn't mean to, but when you've got just a couple hours a day, and days go by very quickly - bouncing ball, bouncing ball - it's very easy to think, oh, it's been a while, I should writing something. And then when you go to write something you realize "a while" is almost a year, and then you do a little, and then it's another few months, until you are sixty and you realize you are never going write / finish / start (whatever) that novel.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of those actors about whom you can say "was the greatest actor of his generation" and not sound unreasonable, died yesterday. He was 46. I don't want to say exactly how close he was to me in age, but it was close enough to that my second thought - right after I realized that all the Philip Seymour Hoffman in the world is all the Philip Seymour Hoffman we are going to get - was holy shit, he was about my age, and that means I could die. And not later, but now - tomorrow, or right now. I could die right as I am writing this sentence.
Of course, I didn't. Most of us don't - die untimely, that is. Yes, we all go in the end, and I feel like I am philosophically reconciled to that. Birth and death are like heads and tails - they don't "go together" like peanut butter and jelly do, they are part of the same thing; as Robert Anton Wilson says, head of cat and tail of cat might look separate when you see them through a picket fence, but it's the same cat, and the fence is just an illusion brought about by viewing the cat from that particular perspective. Yes, we're born and yes, we die, and I'm good with that - I want to live, I am down with life, and so I necessarily have to be down with death, and I am.
It's just - NOT YET. I want to live a bit more - and by live, I mean not just exist but enjoy all those juicy (and shitty) parts, like love. Like struggling to make art, to express myself. I want to write that novel. I've written two of those starter 72-hour novels, but that's not my magnum opus. I always assumed my magnum opus would someday come. I'd have to work on it, sure, and I will, I will - it's just these 60-hour weeks, 1.5 hours per night, I've got laundry and paperwork and I'm feeling a bit tired anyway, so I'll just lay down and watch a little Colbert....
And BOOM, it's a decade later and where the fuck is the magnum opus? Or worse, you're Philip Seymour Hoffman but in this reality, you didn't make 65 films (he really worked) but instead you just made one, or none. Now, he did heroin and I don't but that's just a detail - there's any number of ways to go. And by the way, I'm not trying to say in any way that I'm a great artist, as he was. My point is, I was inspired - scared, maybe - by yesterday's events. I thought, well, how many decades DO I have left?
As if on cue, the Colbert I watched yesterday covered a new product from a company called Tikker, which produces a watch that - can you see this coming? - will calculate (based an your age, medical history, habits, etc) just how much time you have left and count it down in seconds. For, presumably, the rest of your life. They don't do this to give people psychotic breakdowns - the first ones get shipped in April (provided their Kickstarter gets funded), so we don't know, that could happen. They produced this awful thing (a bargain at only $60!), they say, to encourage people to make the most of their life - make every second count. Except that's not really the best way, I don't think - to literally count down your life. It's not very Zen. It's more short-term quarterly gains thinking, which we have had quite enough of, thank you, and is also partially responsible for my dilemma to be begin with - if I were on the dole, for instance, I would have time to write!
I do have time to write, though. Here I am, proving it; it really is a matter of priority (and energy - my personal failing). I just took that 1.5 slice of daily time and did something I've been meaning to do, wanting to do, actually do care about - which is write. In this case, here, in the blog, which I think is worthwhile. It's a beginning. The novel - oh, the novel, yes, has to be started, in earnest. I've one started, two in mind, so I better get going. Which is not to say I won't be back here soon.
It's a zero sum game, in a way - every hour I spend here is an hour I don't spend on the novel (thanks Tikker) - but in another way, it's all just fine. I've taken steps towards where I want to go. Increased focus on meaning-making, more time spent being creative, and ultimately, hoping that will illuminate my path out of the 60 hour work week - and I'll go from a job I love but do for someone else to a job I love that I do for me, and I'll have time for everything else I like to do. How do I know this? Well, I listened to what the universe had to tell me, and it said, get cracking, Kar.
There's always a lot that can be planned and sorted out and goals to be made and all that jazz. But the main thing is to start - whatever it is, just start on it, no matter how small. I think of often of the Zen saying (Confucius, attributed): "It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop." Well, maybe it matters a little how slowly one goes. Philip Seymour Hoffman had 46 years and he did not go slowly, and we're all grateful for that. More slowly, and we'd have 35 films, or 24, or 5, or none. I'm sad, so sad, he's gone, but I'm glad, so glad, for what he left behind.
As for me? I guess my good news is, I've got two novellas, some short stories, a few screenplays, a couple of one-acts, scattered poetry and....this blog, in fact. I'm not at none. There's some comfort there. But there's no harm in starting over, in renewing my promise to myself to - in a very un-army but kind of Private Benjamin-y way - be all I can be. Will I veg out in front of Colbert? Sure. Will I come here more often? I hope so. Will I get that novel done or strike out on my own professionally? I don't know, but I'm starting on that. When?
RIGHT NOW.
I see I'm not the only person terribly saddened by Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. I'm taking it very personally--just loved the guy. So if the event makes you finish your novel, at least it will have that much of a positive effect. Get crackin''!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement. I loved the guy too.
DeleteWelcome back! I see I'm not the only person welcoming you back to your blog. Kudos!
ReplyDelete