Go ahead you can laugh all you want
I got my philosophy
(It keeps my feet on the ground)
And I trust it like the ground
That’s why my philosophy
Keeps me walking when I’m falling down
– Ben Folds, Philosophy
Been promising this post for a while, and I guess it is time to put it all down. I may have written parts of this here before, but more than likely I’ve put some dots here and there, and this may connect them better.
I guess the linking has been the problem, more than anything. I’m one of the few people who sees a lot of these connections.
Recently my mother visited and during the trip asked about the book. How it seems like I’ve had enough time to finish it, and she just wants to see how it does already. And, as with all people who ask, the intention is coming from a good place, but it always seems to be asking about the wrong things.
So, I basically shut down, answered in Buddhisty answers that seem far too simplistic, but are the only honest answers. The book can’t have been done sooner, because it’s not done. To argue with the past is useless, so I don’t do it. I would have LIKED for the book to be done by now, but that’s irrelevant, it isn’t? Also, it touches on the whole end result angle of the book, which is so… boring to me.
I realize that when my book is published that is when it begins to exist for most people, but as a work of art, it ends for me there. Hopefully that is where people begin to find it, hopefully find it resonates with part of their lives, and it can become bigger and larger than a Word document on my hard drive. My role at that point will be one of looking back on what the book is, but artistically, it is over at that point. I can’t change it anymore. I’m not going to tweak it for the paperback release or anything else. I’ll be working on a different book at that point.
There is also implication in what my mother asked, too, along the lines of whether taking time to work on a novel (and time away from earning money, building a career, etc., etc.) has been worthwhile. Again, well-intentioned, but too far away from my thought process to deliver easy answers. I don’t see the novel as a detour away from corporate America whereby I’m rolling the dice to see if I have to return at some point.
Again, though, this is because I’ve not been connecting all of these dots for people. My family doesn’t really like delving deep into stuff like this, though. It’s sort of how they know I don’t follow organized religion anymore, but rather we don’t discuss it because, quite honestly, my beliefs directly counter theirs on a lot of points and they really like to have faith without questioning things. That’s not my deal. So, when I get asked about the book, but the subtext is questioning how I’ve used my time, my career, my life, etc., etc., it does tend to build a bit of anxiety.
But, I think it’s better to explain things directly here rather than assume people know how these puzzle pieces fit together.
My viewpoint on my life as of late is that I’m learning how to be a spiritual person, someone who is comfortable and happy in their body, who lives indifferent to schedules and diets and plans, who is preparing themselves to become a good partner in a relationship, to overcome a lot of how I grew up and managed my education and work lives up until now, and is trying to learn that happiness is not a goal, but the path itself.
And, on top of all of this other stuff, I’m writing a book. It is really the most trivial part of what I’ve been trying to do. That said, it is deeply connected to all of the above and never leaves my thoughts. Not an hour goes by when I don’t think about the book. I do know that when the above things are aligned, the book will be written without pause.
I think the biggest flaw of the past two years has been that I never committed to being an artist. Part of my yuppie, corporate mindset never died in the process, and the safety net of having the ability to write for companies was always available. It is somewhat similar to how people in corporate jobs always tell me they plan to write a novel, they use these dreams to see themselves as beyond their day job. This is just a temporary stop, and someday, it will be a part of their past.
Recently, I read “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor” by David Mamet. Partially read it because I want to explore acting as a way to better appreciate the way text informs how character is interpreted. Actors, by definition, have to read text, gain insight into how to portray that character based on the cues given to them by the writer. Readers of books, similarly, have to see that same world in their head, but stop short of physically inhabiting the characters. But acting seems like a way to force me one step out past the “reader” level, and seems like a good place for me to be. Technically, I know way more about the book, the story, and the characters than will ever make it into the novel, so I already know more than anyone else ever will about things. But on a scene, sentence, and beat level, I am on the same journey as the reader, so anything that helps me hone my skill to use less words to paint more detailed visual imagery is useful, hence, my interest in acting as of late.
In the book, Mamet talks about having a career to fall back on. Basically, the second you have one, you’ve chosen to fall back. He writes:
“The best advice one can give an aspiring artist is ‘Have something to fall back on.’ The merit of the instruction is this: those who adopt it spare themselves the rigor of artistic life.”
My life has been, for the most part, my fallback position. When I was young and floundering around trying to figure out “what to do” with my life, the question was disingenuous. It was always about how to build a career on something related to what I wanted to do, and never pursuing the core desire itself. I was into music, so I studied music education, but then realized my desire was not to teach music to other people. Similarly, writing was always “creative writing,” at one point I know I had information sent to my home on NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to study screenwriting. But creative writing got reduced to writing, which got boiled down to journalism, because there seemed to be more opportunity as a journalist than a screenwriter.
This is largely about growing up where people were taught not to dream too big, where coal mining and factories closing down always left the notion of jobs being a crucial thing. So, “do what you love” was easily translated to “do something similar to what you love based on how you might get a job at it.”
So, I wanted to write books or movies or something along those lines, but found myself taking journalism classes. I remember it being my fallback. I remember actively positioning it like that. I would write books or movies, and if that didn’t work out, I would always have journalism.
While I was in college, I already had a job at the daily newspaper. After I graduated, it was a quick move up to reporter, then courthouse beat reporter. When I moved to California, I intended to put journalism behind me and write for software companies, but I went where my experience existed and covered the tech industry before landing in corporate communications. All the while, there were essays, seeds of stories, this small part of me that refused to die out.
At this point, the scale weighed in heavily on the side of journalism and marketing, because I never really wrote any major fiction, short stories, etc. My essays were mainly personal things with a lot of polish, but still… nothing that said “quit your job.” In fact, it became the pipe dream that most people have: If I weren’t at this job, I would be writing the Great American Novel…
Of course, this is where it was supposed to stay, a big “If only” that never got tested. But then, I went on sabbatical to Thailand.
The intention was that I probably wouldn’t write while there but… just in case, I packed some notebooks and pens. Touring alone and reading amazing books the whole time, it happened, and I wrote a substantial draft of the book, all longhand, at a level that had never existed before. There were characters, interlocking narratives, setting, and, most importantly, a huge realization.
“If I weren’t at this job, I’d be writing a novel” stopped being some quickly dismissed shorthand to pacify my dreams. It was true. I had a stack of notebooks filled with text to prove it.
This is the moment where the career I had clearly became what was obviously a 15+-year fallback plan that grew out of control. It was time to start living the real dream, and dump the fallback. But credit card debt, no savings, etc., etc., all dictated I had to hang out for a while. So, I did. I saved. I paid off my debt. But the longer I was there, the more I soured on the job: dreading it, blaming it. I started posting on this site about my plans to leave soon, which ended up getting me fired. I couldn’t complain, though, because that’s WHY I posted it online in the first place.
It was very recently that I had lunch with a former co-worker, and talked about the Mamet stuff and how the second you plan to fall back, you planned how you will fall back. This co-worker also has plans to write a book, but has spent a career in PR. I saw us as both being in the same boat, we planned and executed our fallbacks, but she didn’t see it that way at all.
“I hope that he’s wrong and that doesn’t happen to me. I’d hate to think I’ll be in PR forever.”
No amount of explaining on my part could seem to make her realize that Mamet’s words were already true. Her fallback was PR, and she has already built a career doing PR. She held onto the fact that she plans to write a novel and thinks PR is just a temporary thing.
*
Sadly, a lot of other forces in my life also existed in the same state as my creative writing aspirations. It seems a lot of my real life was actually lived in the future conditional, where I had lost weight, found a boyfriend, and written a book. All of this had no basis in the past or present, and it was unclear when something would have happened to get all these balls rolling.
There’s a word for this: delusional.
So, while most people imagined I was home burning through my freedom and writing a book with wild abandon, that wasn’t happening. I was trying to determine who I was.
That was the evil flipside of all this introspection: If you build a life on false pretense, it is a false life. Who is the authentic me that got put on hold back then? Could you even go back and find that element of yourself? Or did living a safe, boring life irrevocably alter who I was at that point?
This is the basis of a lot of old postings on here about anchors. If you have no job, few friends, no boyfriend, no love life, no family connection, etc., holding you to this area, should you stay here? This was how it was written and largely taken at face value (Jeff wants to move), but the real story was these are things people use to reinforce who they are, and I had removed so many at once, it left me in a position of not knowing how to begin rebuilding this core.
I had a life that mentally existed when I was skinny, in love, successful, happy, content, accomplished… and decided to call bullshit on it in one fell swoop. I don’t think I knew how aimless it would be to do that so abruptly. Who are you if you decide to tell the truth one day after propping up a life built on lies?
This all sounds like I was ripe for therapy, but I don’t believe in therapy, since I (and Camille Paglia) think art is the one true way to resolve my conflict, not yammering away to a stranger. Not to mention, Freud once said: “The Irish are the only race of people who will not benefit from psychoanalysis.” So, there’s that angle as well.
What ended up happening was detailed self-exploration. Why do I believe the things I believe? became the question put to everything. Why am I vegan? I don’t care for pets, and don’t seem to have any special affinity for animals… so, why won’t I eat them? I hear all these hippie vegans talk about looking into the eyes of a cow and feeling their pain and getting all self-congratulatory that they looked into its eyes and knew that, for the first time, it saw/felt love and compassion. Ugh… Give me a break. Who would ever be vegan if you had to check your brain at the door in such a manner?
But still… why be vegan then?
Everything got put to the test.
And, a lot of things pointed to one door: spirituality.
I was trying to work around it, really. It would always be looming, but better leave it looming than to open that can of worms with all of this other craziness going on…
But everything I read seemed to have a spiritual component. In as much as I wanted the physical benefits of Yoga, it was always about finding that meditative/spiritual element that was the magnet. I read about yogic life and meditation, Buddhist texts, Dalai Lama books, and even learned useful lessons from Byron Katie, who said arguing with reality is the sign of a crazy person.
But the book where a lot of things all came together into a unified package that made sense was Wayne Dyer’s Inspiration.
When I first heard him speak on PBS, it was mainly in relation to writing that I tried applying his lessons. He said that most people lived lives based on motivation, rather than inspiration. Inspiration requires the removal of the ego, which we’re trained not to consider as an option. But the words rang true, as I had not been able to sufficiently motivate myself to finish the book. The short story was nearly forced out of me subconsciously, in a process whereby I just had to stay out of the way and let it happen. The question was always how to find that state again, but the issue is that the human, ego-driven reaction is to spark inspiration through motivation, but the former is by tapping into your spirit (inspiration = in-spirit), the latter your ego. These two forces are at odds with one another.
One of the interesting things I also read in the Mamet, and another acting book recommended to me by a talented young actor, mirrored my own misguided attempts at getting into a “zone” where I could effectively write. In the book, Mamet decries the Stanislavsky notion of “method” acting, whereby actors need to get into the mindset of the character to the point where they feel they are the character in that setting:
“The Method got it wrong. Yes, the actor is undergoing something onstage, but it beside the point to have him or her “undergo” the supposed trials of the character upon the stage. The actor has his own trials to undergo, and they are right in front of him. They don’t have to be superadded; they exist. His challenge is not to recapitulate, to pretend to the difficulties of the written character; it is to open the mouth, stand straight, and say the words bravely — adding nothing, denying nothing, and without the intent to manipulate anyone: himself, his fellows, the audience. To learn to do that is to learn to act.”
I’ve been trying to balance Mamet’s words with my own viewpoint that the emotional state of the author when writing informs the subtext of his book. Having met certain authors, it just seems to pop out when you can tell they are having a good time telling the story. In Lolita, I visualize Nabokov smiling and bemused, which I don’t recall ever seeing in any actual photo of him.
But on a nuts and bolts level, I have been attempting to be a “method writer.” I don’t stand outside the characters and write about them, I have always tried to step inside them, and write their truth from the inside out. This is a useless exercise. For, they have no truth inside of them that exists separately from the truth inside me, as they are fictional. I need to trust enough in myself to stand back, and know that whatever is inside of me that needs to be accessed to write these characters as best I can… it will be found.
My hope is to take some acting classes in the near future, once the job thing resolves.
The spiritual path found in the Dyer book also has made me want a more spiritual life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan on going to church, temple, sangha, or anything else anytime soon. I still separate religion and spirituality as different things, and only the latter is necessary.
Since losing my job at Macromedia, I have become a more calm person. But as much as it marked the end of an era, a new era never quite started. Once again, I spent my present teetering between my past and my future. I was a corporate marketing writer, I would be a novelist, but today I’m between the two. Which is why it all failed on some level. There was always a “I hope I don’t have to go back to that” element, and once again, once you have a fallback, even a reluctant one, you plan to fall back.
Despite all of this though, I still learned to relax a lot more. I take time to cook, to read, to breathe, to unwind. All the digital clocks in my house are covered with black electrical tape. I read all about the Slow Movement, and its return to a life without Blackberries, and e-mail, and all of these productivity devices that have become leashes keeping us chained to our jobs virtually.
When I walk around the city, I tend to not know what time it is. I don’t know when I woke up, left the house, anything really. There’s a clock at the gym, and I know I’ve been on the machine for 45 minutes, so that’s a bit regimented. And if I have plans, appointments, a movie to catch, I have the ability to know the time. But I largely don’t care.
Life is way too short to operate at such insane levels. Although, I will allow that when I finally get all my pieces aligned, all part of my spiritual plan, I will work harder and longer than ever before. But at that point, none of it will seem like work. I’ve never been one who can convince myself to act as though I believe in something. When I do, it’s real. When it’s not there, I don’t even bother to try.
The best part about the Dyer book is not that it provided a specific plan for becoming inspired, but that I had already achieved so much of that plan instinctually. Reducing your clutter, taking time for yourself, shut out things that don’t inspire…
I used to receive a lot of magazines at home. My mornings began reading news websites. When I got bored in the afternoon, I would listen to Air America. Thankfully, all of my magazines were set to expire at the same time, and I let them. I removed a lot of the negative websites from my bookmarks. Others, I still load, but don’t click into as many stories. The only magazine I read cover to cover is Ode, which is a magazine of good news. I don’t watch TV news.
An interesting thing that I heard recently, for which I have forgotten the attribution, is that a majority of people first goes to the sports pages of the newspaper. I always knew this, but never thought about it more than dismissing it as a nation preoccupied with sports. But it is really the one section of the newspaper that rewards achievement; almost every other section is about man’s worst failure, a printed document of the worst things that happened around the world in the past 24 hours. I have no intention of letting that element into my life again. And here’s the interesting thing, since I did it, I have found very few times where a news story was discussed and I wasn’t aware of it. This stuff is inescapable, so best to remove the higher concentrations of its polluted effect.
While I’m talking about everything, I guess I should address the veganism. Because it is also part of my spiritual path. People always ask, and I say it was a health decision. This is true. But not the whole truth. And, truth be told, my patience for the “Well, I’m a carnivore” comments, from people with whom I’ve been around for a while now, is growing thin. I think animal products are part of an unhealthy lifestyle. I think the verdict is in and they actively promote (not necessarily cause) cancer. The amount of restaurants at which I eat in the city has diminished somewhat, because I want to reward the vegan places with more of my money. I think the consumption of animal products is one of the biggest forms of groupthink in the country, and I’m not moderate at all on this topic. When I am with someone in a restaurant, and they order chicken, I hear them say that a chicken must die now so they can consume it. My existence should not require the suffering of others to continue. Along the same philosophy, I continually try to reduce my number of possessions, because I think they have a negative hold on us.
One friend points out to me, despite my previously explaining that his science is wrong, that without meat consumption our brains would have never grown to the point they are now, making us the dominant species. (It was actually a dietary adjustment in a certain region whereby consumption of omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs achieved a 1:1 ratio, rather than being skewed toward omega-6s as per usual). But my question is always, what good is a bigger brain if we lack the ability to use it?
How can we adopt an “everybody does it” attitude about diet, something that is directly connected to the top pharmaceutical drugs, the leading forms of cancer, the obesity epidemic, etc.? And I do understand the problem, which is that largely that it is easier going along with the pack. It is cheaper (thanks government!). It is more available. And, also, people often can’t cook all that well, and between grilling a steak, and making a good vegan meal… the verdict’s in, steak is easier. Hell, we even label fruit as organic (rather than poison-free), and the “conventional” stuff flies off the shelves. My nephew loves bananas, and when I asked why not give him organic bananas, the usual scapegoat came up, cost. Organic bananas are almost always exactly 20 cents higher per pound than conventional. What do we value?
So, yeah, the vegan thing is not temporary. It is still not entirely about animal rights, because I think that is a backward philosophy, but again, something that people tend to do. We always want to handle things too late in the process. We invent heart bypass surgery instead of reducing fat and cholesterol. We develop more Diabetes medicines instead of eating healthy. We treat everyone getting on a plane as a terrorist instead of learning how to better identify people more likely to blow up a plane. But it is all an interlocking system on some level: we eat foods from big agribusinesses, that makes us sick; we go to the privatized medical industry to get treated; they give us pharmaceutical drugs to cure the problem; and the government “regulates” and monitors the whole thing, while its members get contributions and incentives from all of these huge businesses to maintain the status quo, and then dumps millions into helping profitable businesses, medical research facilities, farmers, etc., etc., to help prop it up even further.
So, I’m opting out. I’m not trying to make a difference. And, although I still don’t care what other people do, it is becoming harder for me to question why THEY don’t care.
As another part of the spiritual path, I plan to remove (almost entirely) my consumption of alcohol. I would say drugs and alcohol, but I already don’t do drugs, so it’s just alcohol at this point. I see it as a thing people use to temporarily access their spirit or, more appropriately, deaden their ego. I don’t require a buzz to approach cute boys, dance, have sex, or anything else. At present, I plan to partake in celebratory, single serving portions of alcohol, so if there is a toast, celebration, etc., then I will join in. Wine for cooking is still acceptable, as the alcohol burns off.
But, again, I don’t see this as a restriction. When I didn’t drink alcohol for a long time back, it wasn’t spiritual, but fear-based. My father is an alcoholic, and my hometown is loaded with people who turn to it amid their depressing surroundings. I wanted to drink when it was celebratory. I did, had fun, and I think I proved that I’m not an alcoholic, or else I’d've fallen over the edge by now. But I’d rather a celebratory life than celebratory drinking.
There is one fear in all of this, though. It does add a lot of dating issues. I get to be the non-drinking, non-smoking, vegan, spiritual guy, and in this community, well… the people who often gravitate to that side of things don’t interest me at all. I don’t want a big beard, to wear hemp clothes, to not bathe, to go to Burning Man. Everything for me is personal, not political. (When I write about things in books, they then become political inherently). I don’t really want to make a statement, because then it is judgmental.
It is funny, but most of the stuff that comes up as judgmental rarely involves me. People always seem to have conversations with themselves around me. My mother will be describing a party and say: “Well, we also had… now, I know you wouldn’t think this is a good thing to have at a party, but everyone there liked it, and you can’t be healthy all the time, but it was a coconut custard pie.” Friends tell me: “I know you won’t like this, but we had a great steak at that restaurant.” And then, I get accused of bringing this stuff up, when it is usually people’s guilt steering the conversation with no help from me.
So, now that I’ve outlined a lot of this stuff, what is the plan? How do I get from here to there? The good news, I’m well on my way.
The first thing that needs resolution is the job thing. I am looking for some corporate stuff, but also steering things away from that path for now.
I do think some of my previous directions were misguided. Waiter? Too old, very physical job. Bartender? On your feet all night, noise, and now, of course, thinking everyone is drinking to access the person they’d prefer to be (although you have to be that version of you drunk, so a bit of a losing battle).
Nah, I’ll probably steer toward office jobs. Banking. Something like that. I’m still best inclined for writing, but I’d rather write for me than for anyone else. Plus, if I want to take acting classes, yoga classes, cooking classes, etc., etc., best to keep my schedule free. I live pretty light these days as far as cost of living, so that should work out fine.
The second thing after the job is the book. I need the job for income, and that job/income will allow me to get myself out of the apartment enough to take classes, do fun things, etc., which will then give me limited time to work on the book. I always work best with some confinement issues. If I have two hours to do something, it’ll get done. If I have all day, probably not. Why is that? Who cares? I know that’s how I work for now, so just go with the flow.
The third thing is I need to expand my circle of friends. This is hard because of how I view the world. Some examples:
Writers. Obviously, I would love to know and hang out with more writers. But, every writer I have met in San Francisco, and I mean EVERY, has talked about how you have to love writing because you’ll never make any money at it. Well, I believe in the law of attraction, and visualization, so… I think they write their future with their words, and hopefully they do enjoy writing, because they never will make money. They already put that energy out there. I think that might be a Counting Crows/SF thing. They were based in San Francisco and made it big, and said the scene rebelled on them, saying it wasn’t about success, but being part of a community, etc., etc. They moved to L.A. and surrounded themselves with working artists.
Vegans. As much as I am committed to this, it is so rare to find vegans who don’t drive me crazy. I tend to have Thanksgiving at Millennium (gourmet vegan restaurant), and attend with the SF Vegetarian Society (because it is served family style and like $25-30 cheaper). Nothing drags down a meal more than people thinking they are better than everyone and congratulating themselves on their choices. Blah… who cares? There is nothing hard about this. Here’s what you do to be vegan: When you see an animal product, don’t eat it. Is this really worth patting ourselves on the back?
I actually don’t need to share many common traits with other people. If anything, it’s an opportunity to learn about different people, cultures, etc. Part of the new spirituality is that we are all connected, so every time I think I am better than someone, I’ve failed.
The fourth thing is the body. This will resolve itself really. But there have been steps taken and not documented here that reflect a new thinking. I stopped going to Weight Watchers. I just felt that it was way too Western/American for me to know my weight each week to a tenth of a pound, track everything I eat, etc. Almost makes wearing a watch seem relaxed. I want my body to organically reflect my choices, and if I do the other things properly, there will be no overeating, etc. Right now, I’ve been weighing in every 3-4 weeks. Sometimes it is up a bit, more often than not, headed back down. I did pork up a bit in the unemployment zone of late, but that is temporary. It will resolve itself soon.
So, that’s pretty much what’s been going on with me. I think it is yet another major shift, but at the same time, mainly just giving words to the path I’ve been gravitating toward. I’m obviously taking the road less traveled by, but I think it will make all the difference.
For the longest time, I thought happiness was the goal. But, all along, it has been the path.
