The Process, Thoughts Leave a comment

Work on What Interests You

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I am interested in so many things, almost everything, but not interested enough to put time into it. I have the sense constantly that my time is slipping away and so I must find out the most effective way to use whatever time is right in front of me. It’s not worthwhile to do some task for ten minutes today when it won’t get completed until two years from now, because clearly I’ll be dead in two years. And then two years goes by and I am staring at a wall thinking how to best use my time that day. And wouldn’t it have been nice if I had done that thing two years ago. And that other thing twenty years ago.

So how to fix? Do the thing that you would be happy you had done two years from now? But I can’t. Why not? Because I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in other things. Like what. Like whatever will be the most effective use of my time right now. So you’re interested in the effective use of time, so you should make an app for helping people to keep track of what would be the most effective use of their time at any moment. Yes that would be good. First I have to learn to code. But I won’t learn for like I don’t know a few months right? And I’ll be dead in a few months.

So how to fix?

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Movie Reviews Part 2

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I was thinking more about The Banshees of Inishiren.

Does this need a spoiler alert? When I wrote my term paper in high school and read criticism of John Updike’s Rabbit Run, did the critics say spoiler alert? I guess that was before the internet.

Anyway there’s a scene where Colm is confessing to the priest. The priest sails in every Sunday. And Colm is clearly an atheist but still a Catholic. So he goes to confession every week. I think there are three confession scenes. Maybe two. Two of the scenes are pretty funny because in one him and the priest start yelling at each other and telling each other to get fucked and stuff like that. But the other one is the one I’m talking about.

Colm stops talking to Padraic which is the inciting event for the whole movie. Well I guess I don’t have to tell you how the plot goes if this is literary criticsim, right? I guess I have to read some literary criticism and stop just going off my memory about it.

Anyway Colm finds out Padraic’s donkey chokes to death and Padraic now wants to murder Colm because it was Colm’s fault to a degree and next thing you know the asshole policeman comes into the bar and starts to insult Padraic and his donkey and Colm punches him in the face. It’s a great scene but that’s also not the scene I was thinking about.

I was thinking about the scene with the confession and the priest says doesn’t Colm have anything else to confess about? And Colm says no and the priest says, “punching a police officer isn’t a sin?” And Colm says, “If punching a policeman is a sin, we might as well pack up and go home.”

I was going to say some more about what I thought about the movie or whatever but it has taken too much time and effort to get to this point. I guess I rather watch the movie with someone and then be like, “Did you see when he was saying punching a policeman is…that part? Ha that shit was awesome. So true.” And pretend we both understand what it means.

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Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall

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I don’t know what the fuck to do. Have a vision. Don’t have a vision. Plan for shit don’t plan for shit. Follow your interests. Don’t have any interests.

That’s why I’m working on these paving stones.

I swear to God that is my life right now. Paving stones.

I decided on paving stones because sometime in August, four months after I began attempting to ‘open’ the above ground pool that came with this house, my wife said, ‘for my birthday, it would be cool to have a pool party.’ So for two weeks I fully committed to getting this damn pool open which had hitherto been a struggle for reasons I don’t want to get into right now but at some point I might.

So I fully committed to getting the pool open and in two weeks I did get it open. I thought I was the shit. Then it got fucked up again and I really had to learn all about pools and shit.

But two or three weeks later I knew damn near everything about pools. Like the ten percent of things about pools that you need to know in order to make the water clear. That’s what I know.

So then I swam in the pool and it was awesome. And then I sat in a chair in the sun after the three minutes I was in the pool, since, as Mitch Hedberg pointed out, that’s exactly the amount of time you can have fun in an above ground pool. And I realized it didn’t matter that you can only have three minutes of fun. And I realized I didn’t figure shit out by realizing that, it’s just that three minutes is some amount of time and having fun is some amount of good so it turned out to be some amount of worthwhile.

And I said fuck man I’ve never been able to do shit in my life but I got this goddam pool open. How did I do that?

And I literally spent weeks thinking about that damn pool ahead of everything else.

Now it’s silly as shit. Because I got kids and a job and all of that to think about so who gives a fuck about a pool. No point in really focusing all my energy on a pool.

But then again the pool was beautiful. I had made something beautiful. Just the water. The outside of the pool looked and looks like shit.

Maybe if I focused on something similarly complex (that is to say simple as fuck), I could make that beautiful. Maybe that would be a worthwhile thing to do.

So I decided to get the weeds out of the front walk. I thought it would take five days or so. I’m still working on it 9 days later and probably have 3 to 4 days of working on it left.

And I keep forgetting that nothing matters but that goddam front walk. As long as I make progress on that shit every day I am allowed to go to sleep at night. Fuck it all. All except the pool and the front walk. And my kids. Maybe my wife. But definitely the paving stones.

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Movie Reviews

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Last night I watched The Banshees of Inishiren for the first time. It was a great movie. I love Martin McDonaugh. If you like this blog you probably like or would like Martin McDonaugh, too. He is always having some outlandish shit happening in his stories. His work is sad and funny and true.

I went online afer the movie was over to get some idea of how people reacted to it, as I often do. I found that I couldn’t really find a movie review that made sense to me. I probably just don’t understand the idiom of film reviews.

I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Something like a literary criticism essay.

Anyone know where to find that?

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Are Diaries Killing the Earth

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If I’m not going to publish what I’ve written, should I not then delete it, since I won’t likely read myself what I don’t see as valuable for others to read?

Sometimes it’s good to have a diary. Like if you want to look back at what you were doing a few years ago and all. But what if you have too much diary? Like I have hundreds of thousands of words about how I was feeling on whatever particular day. Similar to how I have thousands of pictures that I have yet to look at. I guess for most people writing a thousand words is not something you would normally do but for writers with computers it’s just too easy to type shit and store it. Like if I was surrounded by stacks of notebooks I’d be like ok some of this shit’s got to go, I guess. I wouldn’t do anything about it but I would see that it was a problem.

Back in the old days, writers would write letters to each other. Then sometimes if the writer was really good some of those letters would get published. But the original intent of the letter was to communicate with someone else. What is the purpose of writing a shit ton of words in Evernote that you are never going to look at?

On the subject of taking photos that you are never going to look at, I saaw something recently that said, “For Tammy, photography was the way she saw the world.” Or something like that. So looking at the photos afterwards wasn’t the point it was framing life in some kind of…frame. But I also remember watching Exit Through the Gift Shop and Mr. Brainwash was just filming and throwing the tapes in a closet. That can’t be healthy. But then Mr. Brainwash made a lot of money. Money is always a good indication of value. Every time.

ChatGPT says:

Remember, the essence of diary writing isn’t always in the reviewing but in the act of expressing oneself. Whether you ever read it again or share it with someone doesn’t diminish its value. The fact that you’ve dedicated time and energy to reflect and document your life has intrinsic worth.

ChatGPT

Maybe so. But what about all those server farms full of all those notes. Wouldn’t it be better for the environment if I expressed myself and then deleted the note, or expressed myself over the old note? But I can’t even delete anything even when I’m editing. I have to copy and paste the whole damn thing into a new note before I can bear to delete it because I’m a hoarder in every sense.

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Yard Work

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It’s not that I have figured out so many things that I can now just go fuck around in my yard trying to make my house look nicer. I’m not trying to make my house look nice because it’s the last bastion of disorder in my life. I’m trying to make my house look nice because it’s one of the few things outside of myself that I can have some effect on. It’s easy to forget when talking to people about what kind of paving stones you have in your front walk that you’re not done with everything else. It’s only that you have to start somehwere. Paving stones may seem trivial but removing the weeds from the cracks improves the way the house looks to a surprising degree. No one is going to walk up and think, “Hey look at this front walk, there are no weeds in it.” But people who walk up a front walk with weeds in it may think, “Nature just has her way with everything doesn’t it? We’re all going to die. Our children are going to die. The universe will slowly burn out to zero degrees Kelvin and everything we build is only to distract us from that fact.”

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Different Things Are Different

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A walkway covered with moss in the context of a forest house may be beautiful while a walkway covered with moss in town might upset the home owners association. The degree to which we should interfere with nature in our lives depends on the effect we are trying to produce, or the context, or location where we are. How manicured should your lawn be? Should it be able to host the PGA tour? Well then, will kids not want to play on it? But perhaps kids are not meant to play on it. If you want a lawn kids will play on you make it nice and you don’t pile sharp rocks around on it. Sometimes you want a place for kids to play and sometimes you want a Zen garden. One thing can’t always be another. For some reason, I don’t know why exactly, a screwdriver that is one size feels better than a screwdriver that uses interchangeable bits.

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Change is Possible

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You know when you keep doing something and you watch yourself do it and you finally realize that you do it and you keep doing it anyway? Well I guess you just don’t have any self control. I guess you don’t have any control over yourself. For instance, what are you thinking about right now? So there’s no free will. And so on like that. But the thing is sometimes you can watch yourself doing something and stop doing it. But you know what? It could take years or decades. And you don’t have that kind of time. Because of the apocalypse. But there’s a word for people like you. People who think the apocalypse is just around the corner. I don’t know what the word is.

ChatGPT knows what the word is:

“People who believe that the apocalypse or a catastrophic end of the world is imminent are often referred to as “apocalypticists” or “millenarians.” They may hold these beliefs for religious, philosophical, or other reasons. Additionally, the belief in an imminent end times or a transformative event is often associated with “millennialism” or “eschatology.” However, it’s important to approach these terms with sensitivity and care, as they can be broad and pertain to various cultural and religious contexts. Not all individuals who have eschatological beliefs, for instance, think that the apocalypse is necessarily around the corner.”

Anyways, what’s ‘eschatological’? Unless ChatGPT is hallucinating which is what people who talk about ChatGPT all the time call it when ChatGPT says something wrong, eschatology is the beliefs concerning the events at the end of all humanity.

For instance here are some eschatological beliefs set forth in Norse mythology:

In Norse mythology, the eschatological events are described in tales about Ragnarök. Ragnarök, often referred to as the “Fate of the Gods” or “Twilight of the Gods,” is a series of prophesied events that result in the death of many major figures, the destruction of the world, and its subsequent renewal. Here’s a brief overview:

  1. Prelude: Tensions rise among the gods and beings of the Nine Worlds. There’s a series of harsh winters (called Fimbulwinter) without any intervening summers.
  2. Beginning of Ragnarök: The great wolf, Fenrir, and the sea serpent, Jörmungandr, begin their onslaughts. Heimdall, the guardian of the Bifröst bridge, blows his horn to signal the beginning of Ragnarök and alert the gods.
  3. Major Battles:
    • Odin faces Fenrir. Odin is swallowed by the wolf, but Odin’s son Víðarr avenges him by killing Fenrir.
    • Thor confronts Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent. He manages to slay the serpent but succumbs to its poison shortly afterward.
    • Freyr, deprived of his magical sword, is slain by the fire giant Surtr.
    • Loki and Heimdall, ancient adversaries, kill each other.
  4. Cosmic Destruction: Surtr sets the world on fire, leading to its near-total destruction. Most beings, gods, humans, elves, and giants alike perish in the cosmic conflagration.
  5. Renewal: After the devastation, the world rises anew from the seas. Some gods survive or are reborn, including Odin’s sons Váli and Víðarr and Thor’s sons Móði and Magni. Two human survivors, Líf and Lífþrasir, repopulate the rejuvenated earth. The new world is characterized by peace and abundance.
  6. Post-Ragnarök: There are hints in some texts that Baldur, a beloved god previously killed through Loki’s machinations, and Höðr, his blind brother and unwitting executioner, return to live in harmony in the renewed world.

Ragnarök is not just about destruction but also renewal. While it is a cataclysmic event that wipes out much of what was known, it gives way to a new, rejuvenated world. This cyclical understanding of time and fate can be found in various other mythologies as well.

I can cut and paste all that from ChatGPT and put it here and that’s totally cool with copyright laws and shit. Pretty sure. How fucked up is that? I can make a whole blog out of asking ChatGPT questions for you. I guess everyone knows that by now. Pretty funny anyway.

But also, I bet you always wondered about Ragnarok and now you know more about it than almost anyone. You know more about it than I do because I just copy and pasted that shit without reading it. Too many weird ‘o’s in there. Get it?

But yeah man sometimes you watch yourself doing something for years and years and you find a way to stop doing it. It’s like a river if you were looking at a river and it’s like decent sized, maybe a few meters across, to use a non-imperial method of measurement so as to appear worldly and compassionate, and you wanted to change it’s direction. Well, you know you can’t do that. But one day you see a giant rock on the side of the river and you push it in there and then years later you notice that the river doesn’t flow the same way it always did. And you ask yourself whether the river would have changed whether you pushed that rock in or not?

But just for the sake of having any agency in this life you decide it did make a difference after all. And you were meant to feel like that. Because you don’t have free will of course and just because you know thyself doesn’t make you any better than anyone else.

But just for the sake of pretending to have any agency you throw another rock in there and holy shit all the sudden you are the same old piece of shit person but goddam, things have changed around you and maybe you could put even more rocks in there and maybe one day you will be living in a palace drinking wine with Banksy and they’ll bury you in a big stone box engraved with a quote from Goethe and everyone will say they wish they could hope to do the thing you did but they can’t because they have no free will.

And then the apocalypse happens.

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Relaxing All the Time

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I went back to my novel in the works last night and spent like 2 hours writing and organizing. I hadn’t looked at it since 2021 or so. I tried thinking of what success would look like.

My son told my wife that she is tired because she works all the time and all I do is relax.

I thought what if he thought I didn’t relax because I have finished a novel and he can read it if he wants. When he’s older and can handle learning why betrayal is the evilist of all the sins.

My wife spends eight hours a day at work at least and another hour or two talking about work. She is the breadwinner because she makes fourteen thousand dollars a year more than I do and she will probably get promoted before I do. I watch the kids when they’re not in daycare or school. I do the yard work and clean the pool. I clean the pool a lot.

I thought what would the book need to look like to make my son not be ashamed that I am sitting around writing potboilers that don’t sell. I thought maybe it would have to be published by a major publisher and that would make him feel like he could tell his friends that his dad was an author.

But then I thought about how dumb people in my company are, and how people in publishing companies are probably collectively dumb as well. So just getting published wouldn’t guarantee that I would be objectively not a deadbeat.

So I guess I will have to just continually invite his friends over to see how clean the pool is.

Blogging, Journal Type Shits, True Stories, Writing , 2 Comments

Bitch I Am Going to Write

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Let’s talk about some current events to get a foundation for what the fuck is going on here again. This time I am going to try coming back tomorrow or sometime in the next few days. I don’t give a fuck man I have a house now. I swam in my pool this morning I don’t even give a fuck man. I am the Wolf of Wall Street. I am getting hot down here in the basement. Just a second ago I was fine. It was the movement of the fingers? Or the sun is coming through one of these two tiny windows. And I happen to be sitting near that. Maybe I’ll get a sandwich.

Used to be you could sit somewhere and eat cakes. People would come up to you. Now they don’t. I have two kids.

Shit man I guess we have to really understand just what the fuck, things are different now. I guess we just have to say fuck a bunch of times. But things are different. Like I pray to God sometimes man. Sometimes I fucking weed my garden man. I don’t even give a fuck sometimes man. Like I went to a diner at 4 AM and I saw some old men at the counter and I saw myself and I said this is the future man. It’s almost here. If only it wasn’t going to explode before we got to it. But the future is basically now man.

Shit man like I’m trying to tell you. Like what has this blog meant. Like I read this shit I don’t even remember this shit. Like this shit was here the whole time. I don’t remember writing this shit at all. I stopped writing. Like I write the occasional diary entry. I show no one. I write a letter once in a while and people are like damn you are good at writing letters. I use ChatGPT now. I don’t. Even. Give. a. Fuck man I’m telling you that I don’t even give a fuck.

Like I make 83,200 dollars a year man and I don’t even go to work. I don’t even live in the city any more. I still can’t pay my bills but I have nicer shit now. I have two cars and one of them gets 15 miles to the fucking gallon man. That bitch has winter tires on it. I give no fucks. I have a fucking deck bro. I got a front porch. I got a new boiler. It’s red and has copper pipes. Shiny ass pipes man. Like I am sitting here next to a $200 dehumidifier.

I have been sitting here in the middle of the goddam day reading blogs and shit. Half of which are mine and half of which are people’s that flowed into my mind after I suddenly had a thought last night that I could write a book. I told myself for years that I was going to Die Young. I am young for an old man now. I told myself for years to stop writing and one year back a couple years ago I stopped writing books and one year my only resolution was to sleep eight and a quarter hours a night. Shit, that was this year, and this mother fucker isn’t even over yet.

Not even forty yet bro. Mother fucking shit man I don’t even give a fuck.