Distracted.

26 08 2011

Sit down. Fire up the computer. Pull up a word document. Write three sentences. Use the need for a thesaurus as an excuse to get on the internet. Spend the next half hour checking Facebook and Twitter. Back to work. Reread the first three sentences, condense the first two into one and delete the third. Try and recapture the mindset from a half hour ago. Write five more sentences. Cell phone rings, pick it up, talk for 10 minutes. Ok, back to work. Reread the six sentences on the screen. Write two more.

It’s unfortunate that this seemingly hypothetical hour of “work” is a fairly accurate assessment of my time spent trying to get things accomplished. And the hypothetical didn’t even include the nonstop barrage of text messaging happening throughout the hour. Basically, I’m really fucking distracted all the time. No, I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD, but damn if I can’t seem to get anything done in the time I have to do it. I find it nearly impossible to keep my head in the game and handle something through to fruition without some type of external distraction getting in the way. There are just too many things, pulling too many ways, raping and pillaging my attention span until I’m not even sure what it is that I’m supposed to be doing anymore.

Here is my new initiative: No multitasking.

Banned: texting, the internet, social networks, phone calls, any other random shit that needs to be done, but isn’t the task at hand.

Not banned: Kicking ass at one thing at a time. Finishing that thing. Moving on to the next one.

I’ll let you know how it goes.


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Things I Despise

1 08 2011

There are very few things that I can say that I truly hate. In fact, off the top of my head I can think of only two, and these two may even be able to be condensed down into one umbrella hatred. For the purposes of this post, however, I’ll give them each their own independent existence. I hate:

-Laziness

-Lack of Initiative

I write this now because I am guilty of both. There’s no Casey Anthony justice system failure in this one, no hung jury, nothing. I am indefensibly guilty on both counts.

In the last 103 days I have written a grand total of one blog post. That’s one quarter of a year with a single post to my name. The worst part is that this post was an excuse, a stay tuned message utterly devoid of captivating content, lacking entirely any modicum of critical thought or artistry. “Hey world, I’m still alive.” It should have said something along the lines of “Hello world, I have been incredibly lazy and will use this as an excuse to forget entirely the things that really matter to me while I get caught up in bullshit activities that don’t mean much.” That would have been a much fairer assessment of how I have been spending my time. And not only have I allowed this neglect to reach its infertile fingers into the microcosm of this blog, but (more importantly) it has halted my music production like a truckload of cocaine at the border. Why? Well here is where I start explaining that I have been working and going to school and interning and that August is the first time since January that all I have on my plate is working full time. But for what? That’s all true, but it’s all bullshit. People make time for the things they love, and let me assure you, I am in love with words and music. So what is it then? Honest answer:

Laziness and lack of initiative.

I have used the excuse of being busy with other things (my “life” getting in the way) as a means to shirk the responsibilities I have to do what I love. Yes, responsibilities. Writing, both music and prose, is something I not only enjoy, but am skilled in. I hold myself completely accountable for pushing myself and continually pursuing greatness in the things I am passionate about. Lately, I have hardly even given myself the respect of sitting down to do them. This is completely unacceptable. What could possibly be more important than doing the things that set my soul on fire? Going to school? Working? Interning?

Fuck that.

I have not finished anything that I’ve started in 2011. Not one thing. I’ve been floating amidst the fuzzy, comfortable waves of the status quo, perpetuating my own laziness with excuses and creating nothing of value. The two things I can say I truly hate have replaced the burning furnace of creativity that I pride myself on.

But they won’t anymore.

 

 


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Writing About Writing

24 03 2011

“The first draft of everything is shit.” -Ernest Hemingway

Truer words may have never been spoken. Sitting down and creating coherent prose off the cuff is a daunting task, even for the genius that was Mr. Hemingway. I have come to realize this particular point much more acutely in the short time since starting this blog. This being my first attempt at writing any original content since college, I have been reminded quite blatantly of the difficulty that comes along with the creation of original content worthy of putting on the page. Sitting down to write after a long day of work, or school, or both as is my current case, does not lend itself to the creation of literary masterpieces. Even coming up with bullshit rants seems taxing after a 13 hour day. Even still, I find that the greatest challenge for me is not sitting down to do it, it’s accepting the inevitable shitty first draft. I never allow myself the ugly, childish, disorganized draft that facilitates the eventual cohesive final product. You know, the first draft that you wouldn’t show to anyone, ever. The one that is so bad it makes you reexamine your life and want to retire from creative thinking altogether. Either that or put a fist through the monitor glaring at you with your pathetic prose. Regardless of how you deal with the insulting mindfuck that is the first draft, the real difficulty is realizing its necessity. Without putting together some type of rough outline, the work can become a case study in meticulously finding the perfect word for each situation, while missing the flow of the piece as a whole. Micromanaging the first draft, as I always somehow manage to do, leads to the death of coherency. I have spent ten minutes (not an exaggeration) fastidiously crafting a perfect sentence, using all the words with the correct connotative references to whatever it is that I’m trying to describe, orchestrating the proper cadence, and rearranging everything to perfection, only to move on to the next sentence and forget entirely the trajectory of the section I’m working on. Fifty perfect sentences don’t make a perfect written work. Fifty perfect sentences can create fifty different wonderful worlds of creative prose, and still lack the continuity and flow of a well written piece. I can’t tell you how many times I have spent hours writing an excruciatingly small number of sentences only to abandon them in their infancy on the church steps of my computer’s trash can because, though great sentences, they don’t coalesce into the whole I had originally envisioned.

And here it becomes obvious why the shitty first draft is so invaluable—it allows a stream of consciousness flow of ideas to be recorded as it happens, unhindered and uncensored by self-criticism. It permits thought to be articulated in its entirety, before it can be cannibalized by our internal editorial filters, allowing the essence of the idea to exist in the form in which it comes to us. The shitty first draft is the record of an original idea, in all of the chaos and imperfection that accompany creative expression.

These moments of inspiration should not be subjected to the constraints of censorship, as doing so has the potential to stifle the original idea before it is fully formed. In other words, let the first draft be gloriously shitty. Turn the censors off. Create something. Worry about word choice and run-on sentences later.

“Art is what we call the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.” -Seth Godin


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A Brief Autobiography

10 01 2011

Here is what you need to know about me.

I started this blog for selfish reasons–I wanted a place to record things. I could go into detail about how I am part of a moment in time wherein it’s possible to record and share events as they happen and all of the benefits and cool points this allows, and they all would be true, but instead I will explain things from a more personal perspective.

I have been part of the “working world” for two years now. Other than it being extremely tiring and tedious going to work every day, the problem is that because every day feels like the exact same, I don’t remember one from the next. I find this frightening. The fact that I am living in the perpetual groundhog day of a 9 to 5 desk job, trading the precious hours of my life for a dollar amount while feeling like I am contributing nothing of value to the world is a terrifying realization. In an effort to mitigate the conflation of days into a single shapeless mass, I am going to write things down. Not only will this provide a series of beacons in an otherwise monotonous onslaught of business casual, it will also allow me to flex my writing skills in a way that no matter how many legal pleadings I draft, my job has yet to provide. I love to write, I love to create, I love stories. This is mine.

Here’s what to expect.

Random thoughts. Music. Pictures. Opinions, lots of them. Eventually, the story of exactly what I’m living complete with all the burning details that typically evanesce through the fog of time. This is going to be fun, check me out every now and then.

Oh, also, I really like Hemingway.


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