{"id":14588,"date":"2024-09-16T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=14588"},"modified":"2025-03-02T15:45:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T15:45:01","slug":"ego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2024\/09\/16\/ego\/","title":{"rendered":"sparring with the ego"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Barubary vs Ryu, Breath of Fire II (1994)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

writing on commutes to preserve creative spirit \u2014 minor success, patreon, ramen profitable \u2014 it\u2019s a kind of purgatory \u2014grand goal remains ultimate creative freedom \u2014 even partial creative freedom seems to reduce \u2018hunger\u2019 \u2014<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. sparring with the ego \u2014 how do you remain cheerful and upbeat when confronting a repeated pattern of failure? “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!” “I’m not trapped in here with you…” What assumptions about failure have we inherited? What if we decided it was fine, actually?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I used to have a job (2013\u20132018), I would write feverishly on my daily commutes, to try and keep at least some of my creative spirit alive. It was a daily act of desperation in my phone\u2019s notes app. I was determined to stave off my most dreaded fate: becoming someone who gave up on his writing, because he was too busy, too tired, had too many worries and responsibilities and so on. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words this way. Not many of them were good. Most of them were janky, transitional clunkers. Here I\u2019m tempted to say \u201cI made my peace with that,\u201d but that\u2019s not entirely true. It seems more accurate to say that I was simply in such a rush that I didn\u2019t have time to make my peace with it. I was so afraid of ending up doing nothing, that I was willing to tolerate doing poorly. Now I\u2019m tempted to joke \u201cI was fighting for my life in there!\u201d \u2013 which is obviously an exaggeration, and yet there\u2019s an emotional truth to it. I wasn\u2019t fighting for the physical survival of my meat body, but for the survival of my psyche. I was fighting for the life I wanted for myself<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came some measure of minor success, which changed the game. It wasn\u2019t exactly \u201ccover of a magazine\u201d type success, but rather \u201cI\u2019m doing it\u2026 I\u2019m actually doing it!\u201d success. I left my job and wrote prolifically on all fronts. My Twitter started picking up thousands of followers. I started a Patreon which got support from about a hundred people. I did a bit of consulting work. I visited internet friends halfway across the planet, and I put together a book that was bought and well-received by a couple of thousand people. I no longer needed to have a full-time job. I was now free to write whatever I wanted. To borrow some startup lingo, I\u2019d call this a state of being \u201cramen profitable\u201d \u2013 meaning that as long as I keep my living expenses low, I can stay in the game. That\u2019s where I\u2019ve been now, from 2019 to 2024 (present day).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramen profitability is a kind of purgatory. For a creative, it\u2019s a much better place to be in than in The Bad Place (creative death and\/or financial ruin), but it\u2019s not somewhere anybody would wanna be indefinitely either. Over the past 4-5 years, being ramen-profitable has meant having some measure of creative freedom. I haven\u2019t had to do any work that I didn\u2019t want to do. When I do consulting work, I get to pick and choose the clients that I want. When I sell my books, I don\u2019t have to be pushy with the marketing\u2013 I get to do it in the artfully improvisational, patient and playful way that I prefer to do it. If I don\u2019t want to do any work for a month, I can do that quite comfortably. Actually, I feel like I\u2019ve hardly done any work since my son was born 9 months ago. And\u2026 I suppose that\u2019s about my limit, it\u2019s the point at which I start to get antsy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to feel like I\u2019ve gone more than a year without having done anything \u2018of substance\u2019. A part of me will say, \u201cWell we ARE doing work, it\u2019s just not visible yet,\u201d but another part of me will say \u201cWell, why not? Why aren\u2019t we making any of that work visible? We\u2019re costing ourselves opportunities with our reticence.\u201d There are many arguments like this going on in my head at almost any given moment. On one hand, such extensive argumentation is tedious, but on the other hand, it\u2019s also been really lucrative. See, another argument! It never ends. I feel every imaginable way about it. But currently the main feeling I have is, I would like to witness myself making some real progress on my writing. That would feel really good for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t yet properly gotten to answering the question how the game changed for me. While I still have my eye on the grand prize of \u201cultimate creative freedom\u201d (which does increasingly feel like a platonic ideal that can be approached incrementally but never truly reached), the truth is that even partial access to relative<\/em> creative freedom seems to have made me\u2026 less \u2018hungry\u2019, in a sense. I don\u2019t really \u2018write like my life depends on it\u2019 any more. And here too I\u2019m conflicted, because\u2026 in those years, for example, I didn\u2019t spend much time with my wife, or even my friends, and I regret that. I was sacrificing a lot of my \u2018actual life\u2019 to fight to preserve my shot at the life-I-wanted. It\u2019s complicated. I took a calculated risk that my obsessive focus then would buy us more time and freedom later, and that did pay off. Now we have a son, and it\u2019s so important to me that I\u2019m present for his childhood. I definitely<\/em> don\u2019t want to be sacrificing my family life for my writing, that\u2019s a hard red line for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the situation isn\u2019t binary. It\u2019s not like I can only choose one or the other. I\u2019m reflecting on how, in 2015, I would have my day job, and I\u2019d write feverishly for maybe 2 hours a day. I no longer have a day job, and<\/em> I don\u2019t write feverishly at all. I just sorta take a bunch of notes, sketch out some drafts, but there\u2019s no productive urgency to any of it. Sometimes I have unproductive<\/em> urgency, which doesn\u2019t help at all. When I step back to look at the bigger picture of my patterns of behavior, it can be quite funny. I clearly have some inefficiencies in my process, and I feel like it\u2019s about time I address them. (We\u2019ll return to this.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectually I think I\u2019ve always \u201cknown what to do\u201d. The challenge is that emotionally I seldom feel like doing it. Which is funny, because I did write an entire book about how to deal with that class of challenge. A lot of it boils down to respecting the emotional truth of the situation, and really listening to that. However, just because I\u2019ve solved several puzzles before\u2013 and have written about what I\u2019ve learned solving those puzzles, and have received feedback from others about how my writing has helped them with their puzzles\u2013 none of that is any guarantee that I\u2019m going to be able to solve the next puzzle easily. All of that experience simply makes me better able to withstand the process of puzzling. Y\u2019know, it\u2019s not like all doctors are perfectly healthy or like skilled marriage counsellors never have any difficulties in their own marriages. Having problem-solving skills doesn\u2019t mean you have a problem-free life. It just means that you can<\/em> address those problems better. It doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that you will. <\/em>In fact, hubris can really fuck you up here, if you think, \u201cOh, I know how to solve these problems, so it\u2019s not a big deal if I accumulate a bunch of them.\u201d Problems can compound and spiral. But if you manage to stave off that hubris, I do think it\u2019s probably fair to say that you\u2019re less likely to have debilitating<\/em> problems, because problems now look like solvable puzzles rather than unsurmountable afflictions. I\u2019ve always had some amount of self-doubt, which I think is healthy, but I\u2019m also grateful to note that it\u2019s been many years since that doubt was so totalizing as to reduce me into a helpless, godforsaken wretch. I\u2019d like to believe that I have a handle on it now. It still beats my ass, but now I see it as a friendly (though annoying) sparring partner rather than a demon eating away at my soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve often burdened myself with this unrealistic expectation that I\u2019m supposed to make myself perfect before I can do anything. From time to time I realize this is happening, and once I can\u2019t ignore it any longer, I make the effort to work through it. I\u2019ve found it to be quite like stretching out stiff muscles\u2013 in both cases, there is an immediate relief, and some lasting benefit, but then eventually it returns again, constraining my movements and my happiness. And I have to remind myself again that the reoccurrence is not necessarily a major personal failure on my part, it\u2019s simply the reality of being human. Is it conceivable that I might be able to someday identify something upstream that, when addressed, permanently resolves the issue? Maybe. In the case of tight muscles, for example, a lot of it boils down to being generally sedentary. If I weren\u2019t sitting around so much, I wouldn\u2019t have to stretch. So maybe the interesting question to ask is, what is the unrealistic expectation a consequence of? Where do unrealistic expectations come from? The first answers that come to mind are \u201cschool\u201d, \u201csociety\u201d, \u201cculture\u201d, \u201cfamily\u201d, but all of them seem feeble at the moment. They\u2019re not real explanations. Maybe the better question is, \u201cwhat purpose do unrealistic expectations serve?\u201d And ah, I feel something here\u2026 they serve to protect me. All of Kenny Werner\u2019s riffs about how the ego gets in the way of a musician\u2019s performance<\/a> are relevant here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll try to restate it in my own words, my own interpretation\u2026 basically it seems like the \u2018ego\u2019, or the mind, or the self-preservation complex\u2013 it\u2019s name isn\u2019t really important, so let\u2019s just go with ego- constructs elaborate mental architectures to protect us from having to face uncomfortable or unpleasant feelings. The straightforward read here\u2013 which I feel a personal flinching from, which probably means it\u2019s likely true\u2013 is that my unrealistic expectations of \u201cfirst I need to be perfect before I can write about <topics>\u201d are meant to protect me from the unpleasantness of having to deal with people\u2019s interpretations of my imperfect work. And here I feel this rush of familiarity\u2013 I had this exact<\/em> problem when working on Introspect! And I struggled with it and fought it and it beat my ass into submission and I had to get up and fight it again, and I lost that battle many, many times before I eventually was able to go through with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a couple of loose ends from earlier that I want to return to. (1) is the inefficiency in my process, which I will save for a separate post. (2) is \u201cintellectually, I\u2019ve always \u2018known what to do\u2019\u201d. Those quote-marks are important because\u2026 I think<\/em> I know what to do, but\u2026 if I don\u2019t have an internal consensus that it is indeed the right thing to do, and as such am unable to do it\u2026 then, from a bigger-picture perspective, IS <\/em>it really the right thing to do? We arrive at a somewhat philosophical question about the nature of knowledge. How do I know that I\u2019m right when I say \u201cI know what\u2019s the right thing to do\u201d? What if I\u2019m wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of this feels like a matter of\u2026 the decent plan executed now is infinitely superior to the perfect plan that never gets executed.<\/em> A bird in the hand is worth many in the bush. This is actually related to the problem of unrealistic expectations. Not only do I have unrealistic expectations of who must I become in order to do things, I also seem to be attached to the idea of a perfect-but-unfeasible route to get to where I want to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking this through explicitly and seeing it in writing is\u2026 quite something. Humbling, maybe. Kinda funny, kinda sad, then kinda funny again. I have a blogpost from years ago where I quoted Ray Dalio: \u201cI learned that failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and that achieving success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities.\u201d <\/em>In that post I wrote about the silly pattern I was stuck in as a schoolboy, where I\u2019d promise myself that I would do my schoolwork later, but then never do it, and then never quite seem able to properly acknowledge the reality of that pattern, let alone deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, really, what I\u2019m going through now isn\u2019t all that different from my schoolboy pattern. Which\u2026 I find kind of exciting, actually. And THAT\u2019s where something is different, for a change. I used to quickly get depressed when I encountered repeated patterns of failure. But now I seem to have accumulated enough wins, enough kinship, enough self-trust and self-belief, that the idea of facing a powerful old enemy no longer intimidates me into despair. I feel more like Dr. Strange going, \u201cDormammu, I\u2019ve come to bargain!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent a long time being quite upset about the idea that I had failed myself as a kid, and a part of me wished that I would have a chance to do it over. Well, here\u2019s a chance. I\u2019m once again faced with a pattern of behavior. And this time I\u2019m stronger, wiser, braver, more discerning. I think I can accomplish something here that I haven\u2019t been able to so far. Not immediately; it\u2019s going to take some work. But this is starting to feel like a weight that needs lifting that\u2019s maybe 10% heavier than my current max lift. It\u2019s within reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

writing on commutes to preserve creative spirit \u2014 minor success, patreon, ramen profitable \u2014 it\u2019s a kind of purgatory \u2014grand goal remains ultimate creative freedom \u2014 even partial creative freedom seems to reduce \u2018hunger\u2019 \u2014 4. sparring with the ego \u2014 how do you remain cheerful and upbeat when confronting… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[730],"class_list":["post-14588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-substack"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-ego","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14591,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14588\/revisions\/14591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}