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2011

Mold and The Law

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My house is moldy and Parkinson’s Law is mostly responsible. If you’re not familiar, the Law is usually spelled out like this: “The time required for a task expands to fill the time available for its completion.” It works for money too.

So when you’ve settled into a schedule filled with recurring tasks, they each have a tendency to expand until they press up against the next one, and then they don’t move around very easily. Without much variation (a day job does this quickly) the parts get dusty, then mold grows between them, and you begin to forget that they can move at all. Instead of a series of independent tasks, a routine can come to look to the mind like it’s one solid, familiar ring, seven days in circumference, studded with the odd unexpected task or birthday party.

I’m doing some house cleaning and I still have some mold problems, so I’m giving a large part of a routine a quarter-turn by dialing my regular article forward to Mondays for a while. I’ll see where the other bits reassemble around that. It’s like defragging my schedule, for you computer geeks. Call it a mini-experiment.

Certain important things (namely reading books and meditating — probably the two most wholesome things I do) have been flung out of the ring due to substantial G-forces, and there are no obvious gaps for them to jump back in safely.

I’m aware it’s more of an internal adjustment that isn’t really meant to interest you, but I thought I’d say something today because I don’t like to be a mysterious no-show. You might also want to try this kind of defrag in your own routine and see how it settles out.

And while I have you here for a moment, there are a few interviews I’ve done with other bloggers that I never had a good chance to share.

Sui from Cynosure asked me about self-love and hard times.

Nicki from The Veggie Tales talked to me about food.

And (quite a while ago) my friend Srinivas from BlogcastFM interviewed me about blogging in this podcast.

Anyway, see you Monday.

-D.

***

 Photo by Monster Pete

 

 

by David Cain on October 19, 2011
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How to avoid terrible curses

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In April I told you people that an established publisher had contacted me wanting to know if I’d considered writing a book. I was naturally very flattered but unsure of what angle to take on it, so I appealed to you for feedback and you delivered. Thank you.

What I didn’t mention is that I had been contacted almost six months earlier, and I’d been stuck on it since then. I didn’t really know what kind of book I wanted to write. My post was intended to get me moving by creating public accountability and stirring up some ideas.

It didn’t, really. I pecked at it over the months, and a clearer outline began to emerge. I wasn’t in love with it, but it was something that could be built on. Yeah, I could pull this off, I thought sometimes.

Two weeks ago a literary agent contacted me, unaware that a publisher had already expressed interest, and it looked like it was a sign that now is the time. After avoiding it a bit more, I dug out my notes and got to work again. I ignored my doubts and kept putting words down.

What quickly happened surprised me. Saturday morning, on my 31st birthday, I had my first moment of clarity about what I should do. It hit me like a truck:

I have no desire at all to write a book right now. None.

And just like that, a yearlong spell of uncertainty dissolved. In hindsight it had been that way from the beginning, but I felt like that shouldn’t matter — the opportunity was so great. But there is no opportunity if the author isn’t interested.  Read More

by David Cain on October 11, 2011
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Let’s use the C-word more often, and really mean it

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Someone wrote in with a comment that almost made me clap:

“You use the word compassion sometimes. I like the *idea* of compassion, but I don’t know, it irritates me. I’m not saying I’m not compassionate, I think I am. I just hear it used by a lot of people I don’t like. Not you, other people. Fluffy people who have all the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I hate that word but I still think it’s a good thing, whatever it is exactly…”

I added capital letters and removed an LOL or two, but he captured my thoughts exactly.

I avoid it too because it has undeserved connotations about sissiness and self-importance. But I guess I have let the C-word slip a few times, sorry.

Compassion, as a word, hasn’t really found a widely-accepted role in our culture. Not everyone is comfortable with it. I think part of its problem is that it contains the dubious word “passion.” Part of the ick-quality of this word comes from its shameless overuse in marketing this last decade (along with fellow bad words “dreams” and “excellence”) of everything from DeBeers diamonds to mortgage brokers.

I think it might help to clarify that the “passion” part of compassion actually refers to suffering, not to enthusiasm for watercolors or for the Allman Brothers Band. Think The Passion of the Christ, not “I have a passion for 1960s girl groups.” The “com” part refers to “with another.”

Politicians conspicuously avoid it, because it sounds like they support a welfare state. Too risky to bust out the C-word in a forum where you’re pandering for the widest and shallowest approval possible. Too many people don’t know what it means. The C-word is a bad word outside the Green Party.

Compassion is associated with bleeding heart socialists, self-help junkies, hippies who sob over dead trees, pasty-faced emos and any other people who suffer from throes of uncontrollable sympathy — even the misguided commies who want to give away health care! (Can you imagine?! Helping people without demanding their money! Some people are sick.)

The C-word has been relegated to these weak and senseless groups, when really it’s something that everyone would be in favor of it if they knew what it was and understood what its implications are.  Read More

by David Cain on October 4, 2011
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You and your friends are all going to die, and that’s beautiful

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And then he started using words like nyingma and shentong and I became more interested in my beer than anything else. Zen is a neato thing to talk about but depending on who’s doing the talking, it can get a bit too stiff for me.

But I perked up when he said the most rewarding thing he’s ever done in all his years is to sit and contemplate his own death.

I was in an expat bar in Chiang Mai on trivia night and an informal lecture had broken out. Half the room was shouting out answers to sports history questions, and the other half was gathered around a once-American philosophy professor, listening to him talk about Zen. I was trying to do both.

We chatted on the balcony later, and I asked him about what he said about death. I drank and nodded as he talked and smoked cigarettes.

“When you’re sitting there long enough that you finally see that unbroken line between here and your grave, that you really are that grave every bit as much as you are sitting here… you’ll never feel as free as that.”

The night was long (three bars long) and full of conversations, but that’s the one that was in my head when I was nodding off that night, and in the shower the next morning.

For the next few weeks I kept having these spells where I’d see something super ordinary — a stranger yawning at a bus stop, or something — and I’d get the sensation that I was looking back on it, as if I was visiting it from a place where that doesn’t happen.

It culminated on a beach in New Zealand a few weeks later. I had another spell, and realized what was happening. I was being repeatedly overcome by the simple fact that I was here. That doesn’t sound like an astonishing revelation, but it was, and that had something to do with being simultaneously aware that I will one day not be here.

Understanding those two insultingly simple facts — that you’re definitely here, and that you will definitely one day not be here — combine to form something beautiful. The professor called it anicca but we can call it impermanence. It’s irrefutable, and we kill ourselves trying to refute it all the time. Things change constantly, and when you insist they don’t, you suffer. When you can learn to go along for the ride, ordinary moments become compelling.  Read More

by David Cain on September 27, 2011
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A Day in the Life

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The day began without my permission, at around 4am when I awoke to the unmistakable sensation of a person getting into bed with me. I whipped myself around to see the lanky Irishman who normally sleeps in the far corner, pulling my blanket over his legs as if it were his own bed.

It was so absurdly inappropriate my body sprung to life and gave him a hard shove that almost sent him over the side.

He regained his balance and gave me a puzzled look, like I was being rude to him and he was genuinely hurt.

“Calm down,” he urged, as if he were the voice of reason.

“What?! Are you insane? This is my bed!”

He sprang up and marched back to his own bed. “Fucking yankee!” he snapped, then dropped into the fetal position on his mattress.

It took a few moments before I realized that it wasn’t a dream, and there was no hope of getting back to sleep. I wasn’t exactly frightened, just completely stunned. I will never know what he was thinking.

I sat out on the hostel’s porch and read my book until sunrise. Read More

by David Cain on September 21, 2011
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How to walk across a parking lot

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Ease up on the gas, that’s the first thing. Drop your speed to just a little slower than “necessary”, because to do this right you can’t be getting ahead of yourself.

And there could be kids around. Maybe yours even, if this is one of those times when you don’t know what they’re up to. As always, you’re in a china shop, so be gentle.

When you see a vacant spot, your natural tendency might be to thrust your motor-carriage in there as quickly as possible, antsy that some circling vulture in a Jeep YJ and white sunglasses will wheel in there first and pretend he didn’t see you already headed that way.

That won’t happen, but you should be prepared to let it. Letting angst park your car for you is a rookie mistake. There is a better spot farther away. Walking a little more is an advantage, unless you think (as many do) that walking across a parking lot is a wasted and purely obligatory part of a person’s life. Clearly you wouldn’t be reading this if you were truly convinced that the worthwhile part of life happens only once you’re across the parking lot, inside Wal-Mart or Safeway or whatever.  Read More

by David Cain on September 14, 2011
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My Seven

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My friend Fabian Kruse recently invited me to participate in a viral blogging campaign, which is normally not my thing. I don’t like anything reminiscent of chain letters, especially the digital kind (neither does Fabian, for that matter) but this one looked fun to do and I think you’ll appreciate it. It’s churning up a lot of almost-lost great content around the web so I want to give it a spin and keep it going.

The idea is pretty simple: a blogger is invited to link 7 posts they’ve written that fit seven particular categories, as specified in the original post. Then they invite five other bloggers to do the same. The idea is to get some good content up to the surface all across the web, give readers an easy way to discover content that’s been hiding, and give bloggers an easy way to connect.

At the end of this post, I’ll nominate some other bloggers whom I’d like to see dig some of their best work out of the basement.

So enjoy.

My 7 Links

All of these choices are made from the writer’s perspective, because it’s the only one I have. You might disagree, and if you’ve been reading for a while I’d love to hear what you would have chosen instead.

1. Most beautiful post

A Day in The Future. It just came out like that and I have no misgivings at all.

2. Most popular post

Believe it or not, my now-famous “88 truths” post was really a just a throwaway I’d been playing with, which I posted one day because I didn’t have a decent post ready. It has been the one I’ve received the most feedback and praise for, and in those terms it is probably the most popular. When it comes down to raw numbers though, 40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist is clearly the most popular: 326 comments, 10,000+ facebook likes and almost one million views.  Read More

by David Cain on September 8, 2011
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How to Play Ball

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There’s a skill I’ve referred to casually in a few posts but I never stopped to explain what I mean. It’s more of an intuitive skill but it can be learned, and I’m going to break it down for you.

It’s a verb I borrowed from baseball, where it’s a very specialized skill, but if we think of it in a broader sense it could be one the most useful skills a person can learn.

Fielding. The ball comes your way, so you field it.

For example, in Deal With it, Princess I used it this way:

As I gradually come to understand the relative unimportance of the form my problems take, the better I get at fielding them in real-time.

That’s why fielding is a perfect verb for it — it implies that the acceptance and response happen in real time.  It implies that you take responsibility for it, and that you deal with it without resenting it.

Before we go any further, let me say that I’m not really a baseball fan and you definitely don’t need to be one to get something from this. I’d use a football analogy but this one works too well.

Fielding Your Moments

Life unfolds only in moments, and a lot of those moments require a response from you. You can’t really avoid responding in some way, even if your response is to just wait and do nothing. Most of the time your response is probably an unconscious reaction, like swatting a fly that lands on your face.

In any given moment, chances are pretty good that something new is emerging: someone says something, or you notice it’s too warm in here, or you hear a crash in the kitchen, or you realize it’s 10:10 and you figured it wasn’t even 9:30 yet. These events aren’t always bad (dinner’s ready!) but there are so many thousands of them daily that some are bound to give you some degree of a pit-in-the-stomach feeling.

An event can emerge any time and if you don’t consciously field it, then by default you leave it to unconscious reaction, and that’s really just rolling the dice. It’s something like letting Facebook “suggestions” choose your friends for you. It’s using autopilot for something that might be pretty delicate.  Read More

by David Cain on September 5, 2011
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The Revolver: Well-Kept Secrets Edition

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Life is always right in front of us but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what we’re looking at. The best-kept secrets are in plain view.

PostSecret

I guess it’s possible that somehow you haven’t heard of PostSecret, and that you have not experienced the spike of empathy that comes with reading one of these homemade postcards. In 2005 Frank Warren created a self-perpetuating art project by asking people to decorate a postcard, on which they anonymously reveal a personal secret they have never revealed to anyone. Some of these are shocking, others hilarious, others might feel like you could have written them. I saw a few hundred of them in an exhibit at my local Art Gallery a few years ago, and suddenly strangers became a lot more interesting. Frank’s Twitter feed is also worth following.

Animal Minds

A fascinating National Geographic article on one ever-underestimated quality of animals: their intelligence. Again and again, scientists are surprised by the discovery of complex behaviors in animals that were once thought to be exclusive to humans. Animals can make tools, understand languages and even learn to lie.

Money As Debt

A light and entertaining animated feature about what money really is: debt created by banks on the spot. Amateur videographer Paul Grignon aims only to inform, and spares us the hysterics about international banker conspiracies that are so popular these days. It seems like something every citizen should understand, but I bet this will shock most of you.

Waking Life

Most people won’t like this bizarre film, so don’t try too hard, but a certain minority will never forget it. No plot to speak of, no character development, full of self-important philosophical talk, even banter about the meaning of dreams! Yikes! Not for everyone, perfect for some. It’s shot in a beautiful and maddening rotoscope format that I can’t stop staring at but will probably make some people throw up.

***

Photo of Chico the cat by David Cain
by David Cain on August 27, 2011
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Procrastination: The Finale

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Now and then I do habit experiments here on Raptitude, usually trying something out for a month or two to see what happens. See them all here.

It’s about time I got around to wrapping up my procrastination experiment.

A quick recap:

Over three months ago, I recognized that my problem with procrastination was, in a way, threatening my life. Deep-rooted avoidance habits were keeping me from making any meaningful ground towards my goals. Days, weeks, and months would go by with lots of busyness but no real progress. It felt like it could continue that way until I was suddenly eighty, with none of my aspirations having materialized.

So I posted an official experiment on my experiments page, and immediately launched into the three most productive days of my life. After that I just kept falling a little bit shorter every day, and the momentum faded. Soon I wasn’t really doing anything resembling an experiment, just bumbling along as usual.

What went wrong?

Well, I’m not about to say the experiment has been a failure. Life is different now in a good way. But I quickly ran into a stalemate with the rules I had set for myself, and after a few weeks I no longer had a real idea of what I was doing, until I wasn’t really doing anything.

The premise was pretty simple, with three rules:

1) Check in with myself at the end of every day — Get clear on the plan for the next day. Make a to-do list on an index card. Put away anything left out in my house.

2) Check in at the end of every week — Tie up all loose ends by emptying all inboxes and deciding what I’m going to do about everything that has come up. Get all my concerns on paper and set reminders for anything I need to be reminded of.

3) Put a stop to aimlessness the moment I notice it — Recreation is fine, breaks are fine, as long as I always do what I’ve decided to do, and I know when I’m going to get to work again. Whenever I notice I’m being aimless, I decide what to do right then.

The problem was the third rule. Read More

by David Cain on August 24, 2011
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