(abandoned substack draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No piece of work can ever fully contextualize itself, you\u2019ll go mad trying. But what if things were more artful? What if I made an effort to thread all my posts and essays artfully? There would be less to remember\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
artful incompleteness \u2013 the only sensible approach for finite beings in an infinite universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
i like the phrase, i like the sketch, and this might be constraints pt 2. steve jobs quote about obsolete with grace. do i still like it? i now feel overwhelmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My favorite thing about this charcoal drawing, shared by DrPunkNomad, is its incompleteness. I love that there are whole sections that aren\u2019t filled in. I love the contrast between the nuanced detail of shading in the woman\u2019s face, contrasted with the loose and sketchy lines of the man\u2019s. I love that the lines where her hands would be trail off to nothing. I like it more, I think, than I would\u2019ve liked it if it were complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve noticed this to be a recurring pattern for me. There\u2019s something lively and fresh to me about the drafted lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every utterance requires editorial decision-making. You said what you chose to say, or write. That was a choice. Maybe it was a subconscious choice. Maybe it was a reflex, in which case it was a reflex informed by years of practice. We are our choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(sufficiently caveated advice is indistinguishable from chaos)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote a note to myself in my Google Keep years ago that said, \u201cwhen publish, I happy, when no publish, I no happy\u201d. Seems like it might be hackable, right? Why not just be publishing all the time? Well, implicit in there is that I have standards. I don\u2019t mind tweeting large volumes of mildly interesting thoughts, and I don\u2019t mind publishing noisy drafts on various side-blogs, but it\u2019s important to me that if I were to capital-p Publish something, that it be deliberately thoughtful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But here\u2019s the annoying thing, I\u2019m a finite being with finite knowledge. I can imagine spending years workshopping on my Essays \u2013 and I know that there have been people in history who did exactly that, and in some sense that is what I am doing<\/em>. But I can\u2019t go years without publishing anything. One, that would make me unhappy. Two, it\u2019s an unwise thing for an author<\/p>\n\n\n\n Explanations- king died and queen died. Queen died of grief. Why do you love her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Struggling? Toiling, grappling. In some ways this is the dream. Not many people get to spend a year of their life just thinking. I was hoping that this would be fun and pleasurable. And in some sense it is, but in another sense I\u2019m just getting my ass kicked every day. But is this the worst I\u2019ve experienced? No, far from it. It was worse being 13, 17, 25. We think in problems. The mind is a problem simulator, generator. We experience reality as a set of constraints and regulations, limits to our powers. Walls we can\u2019t walk through. But not all walls are solid, many are hallucinated. Video games taught me <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farmer with no crops, hunter with no catch <\/p>\n\n\n\n As finite beings in an infinite universe we have to learn to be okay with imperfection. Or not! Many people surely die unhappy and dissatisfied<\/p>\n\n\n\n Showmanship<\/p>\n\n\n\n My wife asks me what I\u2019m writing about. I ask myself that question too. What\u2019s it about? I struggle with it. It takes a long time to know what something is about. I wrote two books without really knowing what they\u2019re about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been struggling with context. Who are these essays for? What is their purpose? I could try and write them to impress people. It\u2019s always nice to impress people, especially impressive people who aren\u2019t easily impressed. The hardest and easiest person to impress is myself. Easiest because you know yourself better, hardest because you know yourself. In a way it\u2019s like masturbation? Which is such an ugly word and a phrase used so dismissively. Oh he\u2019s just jerking off. They\u2019re all jerking each other off. What\u2019s so wrong with that? I bet u kiss girls f*ggot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A phrase from an old Meryl Streep interview has been ringing in my mind, where in describing her process she says \u201cI\u2019m so inscrutable to myself\u201d. It gives me a sense of relief to hear someone so much more established and professional than me admit that. And my theory is that it\u2019s actually what allows her to produce great work, magical work, because she isn\u2019t limited by her own flimsy bad explanation of how she works<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what I want to do with my essays. I want to live into possibility. I want to expand imaginations. There have been times where I\u2019ve doubted the value of my work. And here I get a callback to some of my earliest posts, over 10 years old, \u201cwhy does the world need another blog anyway?\u201d I have lots of answers to this<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201ci’ve been working on like the same ~15 essays for 20 years and sometimes i wonder if i’d be liberated if i just decide that i’m done with them lol. i’d like to at least draft them out this year. realistically i think this is a life’s work that will take 20-40-60 more years but project management is about figuring out intermediate incomplete steps that one is ok with (this itself is one of the essays, very meta)\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (abandoned substack draft) No piece of work can ever fully contextualize itself, you\u2019ll go mad trying. But what if things were more artful? What if I made an effort to thread all my posts and essays artfully? 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