Saltwater

Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

If you give a man saltwater, he'll know better than to drink it, for fear of making his thirst worse.

But if you give a shipwrecked man saltwater, soon enough he may well resort to drink it, for fear that his thirst may very well get worse if he does not drink.

So if you want the man to never drink saltwater, what do you do?

You never give the man saltwater to drink. And you never give the man an ocean of saltwater to drown in.

---

If you give a man a bad option, he won't choose it, for fear of making his situation will be worse.

But if you give a desperate man a bad option, soon enough he may well resort to choosing it, for fear his situation may very well get worse if he does not choose.

So if you never want the man to choose a bad option, what do you do?

You never give him a bad option to choose. And you never give him a sea of bad options to drown in.

---

The common language and framework design mantra is make the simple things easy, and the complex things possible.

But perhaps the better design mantra should be make the right choices easy, and the wrong choices impossible.

The only thing left, then, is to argue which choices are the wrong ones.

The Horsefly and the Gnat

Big problems have a way of getting noticed. They hum around lazily, circling in wait until they can bite us in the ass.

We see them immediately – they're loud, and a big target to hit. So we swat and swipe each time they return until – Thwack! – the head of the swatter makes contact.

---

Little problems often go unnoticed, go unacknowledged. They zip around so quick, there in gone in a moment, that we don't have the time to pay attention. Sure, they buzz and whine, but it's not so loud that it can't be ignored.

But the first little problem is often a sign of more to come. Pretty soon, it's not one, or two little flecks of annoyance, but a dark cloud of them. Suddenly it's a swarm, and that fly swatter you've spent so long getting good at using is mostly useless.

---

Problems have a way of making sure they get dealt with, sooner or later. We notice the horseflies because they carry the biggest bite, but it's often the gnats that sneak up on is and multiply, until we're drowning in a swarm of a thousand stings. Do you deal with the problem before it becomes one, or do you wait for it to deal with you?

Soundtrack

We could buy a radio.

Do you feel the same way I do when you listen?

I listen and I've just said goodbye to the home where everything worth remembering from my childhood had happened. I close my eyes and I'm back in that elevator, stuffed full of furniture, then down the hallway of the shitbox apartment. I breathe in and smell the melange from every other identical door in the hallway. I breathe out and wonder whether it's the apartment itself, exhaling the lives from twenty-odd years of first-generation families. I remember closing the front door for the last time and saying farewell not to brick and mortar, but to a life I had.

Does it hit you the same way it does me?

I still remember the way I felt when I listen fingers running through hair. Breath on the back of the neck. Long after the name has faded away, I still remember the basement, the single lamp dimmed, the clock creeping closer to midnight. I remember waiting for midnight. I remember the wait for the right time to say goodbye.

When it plays, are you back again, at the first time?

I close my eyes and I feel the movements inside my body, still. The twists in the arm, the shifts in weight, the twirls pushing further away, the pulls bringing in closer. I can't see the crowd – that there was one, sure – but every smile, every whisper? When Sinatra plays, how could I ever forget?

So I wonder if you, like me, listen not to forget, but to remember.

Not to sink, but to float.

Not to leave, but to return.

Vivisection

Underneath the skin lies sinew and muscle; underneath that lies ligament and bone. But what beneath that, but the foundations of man? Are we built on bedrock or do we sit atop shifting sands?

What does the mortician feel, in that moment?

The body lying cold on the slab, the soul long departed. What does he feel, as the blood flows away, flows downstream, into the drain. As the color drains away, the cheeks no longer flush. As the physicality of the body reflects the knowledge of the mind: that life, like every other fluid, only flows down hill, and can never be recovered.

Does he feel, as I would, the pang of his own mortality? Does he wonder if underneath those heavy eyelids his own empty eyes may soon be hidden away? Does he embrace life all the more as he watches it, every day, drain away?

I wonder just how powerfully he feels himself in that moment. I wonder what comes alive in him. I wonder if that moment engulfs him in its throes and when he emerges, he is momentarily made again.

I wonder if he feels profoundly alive, surrounded by the dead.

---

I don’t cohabit with the dead – not, at least the kind of dead bound for the morgues and funeral homes; rather I watch the transformation occur in vivisection. I watch not the draining of blood, drawn for those who no longer need it, who will not miss it, but rather the draining of youth, drained away willingly, poured out and spilled with fervor, with delight even. I see the floor slick with it, I see the color draining from ten thousand graven faces, and I cannot but think that all too soon we will need it, all too soon they will miss it. But youth, just like life, just like all fluids, only flows downhill, and will never return.

Do they not feel it too? Do they not feel with every pull of the bottle, with every head back swallow, the ethanol solvate their source of energy, their very spring of life? Do they not feel it drain away, drain out with every sip, expelled out with every heave, every wretch of the diaphragm as the body helplessly rejects the poison out inside it?

Do they not see what could be built? Do they not see what the world could be made into? There are great works in the world to perform, great stories to tell, but they’ll not be found in the dank corners of a college town bar.

If only they felt as I felt, this crushing sadness, this terrible pity. Not for them, nor for me; they and I chose this fate, now committed to the outcome no matter the consequences. No, I pity a future that could've been, but now never will be. I feel this uncontrollable sadness has passed up on spending their best years making a difference and instead chosen to get their dicks hard and their memories blanked, then cherish their accomplishment the following morning.

How can you not feel hopeless against this backdrop? Even now, just the thought of it, my heart clenches, my throat closes shit and I'm nearly consumed with overwhelming anxiety. I can't bear to watch, I can't bear to continue believing that it doesn't have to be this way.

Is the only way out to drain myself dry? Is there no other place to go but down the drain? Is the only way to un-see to go blind and imbibe?

If only I saw, if only they saw, if only we all saw that what we’re looking for cannot be found in the bottom of a bottle. It must be found within us, and brought into the light, for everyone to see: our greatest failures, and hidden beneath them our even greater successes, unlocked by the hard work of youthfulness.

This is what I see in the blank stares of a Saturday night escapade. This is what I feel, far worse than any hangover, in the heartache, two rounds deep: that we go not out of enjoyment, but instead we go to forget all the good we could do.

We go to forget ourselves.

---

I wake up every morning and avoid the mirror for as long as I can, because what stares back forever haunts me, my own vivisection, laid bare. I watch the color drain, day after day, not given willingly, but rather squandered, as payment for sloth and recreation. And every day I grow more resentful, more wistful that I could have back the day. But youth, just like life, just like all fluids, only flows downhill, and will never return.

If, when I grow old, I look back and regret that I had spent more time in recreation, I shall live with it, content that what I did instead will be made worthwhile. But I cannot bear to think that instead in many years’ time, that I will look back and wish that I had spent more time in meaning, and not lived a life of leisure.

And what then will I do, but wait for my eyelids to grow heavy, and my body to fail, as my will did so many years before. As my youth did so many years before.

Missed Opportunities

I came across a note today, about Belligerent Mars, that I had made for myself back in June. I bring this up because in it I stated a clear and succinct goal:

Transform Belligerent Mars into a place to publish “deeply personal essays”.

I’m not one for nostalgia by any means, but there is something to looking back on this milestone set four months ago and determine whether or not the current reality lines up with the expectation. There is value in reflecting honestly not just on whether that goal was met, but whether it’s even still a goal worth pursuing.

Having recently watched Jim Coudal’s Webstock talk, I’ve been thinking a lot about goals. How they should be lived-in and well-worn from constant review, scratching out this line or appending that line. The corners frayed, the sheets bent, a sheen from the wear of daily use – goals should be our utilitarian companions on our journey, rather than some souvenir we hang on our wall after the destination is reached. Our goals should reflect not only where we’re going, but where we’ve been - and who we’ve become as we go along.

Jim says that if we want to be successful with our goals, and happy when we do meet them, we should be writing them not as the person we are when we put pen to paper, but rather who we will be when we achieve them. Our goals, in working towards them, change who we are. The goals we set produce an external change in the world, and in applying the necessary force to achieve the desired effect, we too are molded.

Maybe that’s all very obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. And it’s obvious that it wasn’t to me, too; these goals were written by someone who had hours on his hands, not minutes, and who had something deeply personal to say. But the man who was working towards fulfilling them often had minutes to spare, and who could draw on a rich span of self-deprecation and flawed behavior and thought to craft into writing.

That’s not to say that the two men are diametrical. They both had a strong desire to write beyond their current ability, they both cared about making writing into a constant rather than a part of life in flux, and they both struggled with how to go about doing that. But it belies a much deeper goal:

Write about what you care deeply, but most importantly, write.

It’s not lost on me, that second point. Because setting that goal raised the bar substantially. It’s no longer just about the writing, it’s no longer just about the care. It’s about meeting an incredibly high-expectation of producing great work without the acceptance that great work involves writing a lot of trash.

Barriers

In moving from a focus on quick opinions and observations to an expressive, narrative story telling, there’s been a subtle change in approaching the work, in coming to the act of writing. There is a feeling of preciousness of words, and of writing, and it creates this concrete barrier, bisecting my prefrontal cortex, and it brings to a halt nearly every piece I begin to compose.

Before, what mattered most of the writing was the what of the piece — the idea, the opinion the explanation. That’s no to say that language, or composition, or pacing didn’t matter, because they always do. But these considerations were subservient to the cause of properly getting across that idea.

In this new attempt, what matters most is the how of the essay — how a reader is led through the story, how they arrive at the intended conclusion, how a main point is conveyed from paragraph to paragraph, and then from sentence to sentence, and then again from word to word.

Of course what really matters is both the what and the how. And often it’s the how that follows the what – a writer struggles to produce a compelling effect without having a passion about the subject. This can be overcome with practice and discipline, of course. But a much simpler, and far easier solution is to write about what you feel strongly about.

Expansive

What scares me, perhaps, is the gap between a concise, web- and attention-friendly, 500 word post and the longer, expansive, and thoughtful essays that I believe I can write. Pieces that stretch for 1500 words, or 2500, but don’t feel stretched — rather, they feel as though they were meant to be that long, that they could be no shorter.

In between that comfortable range around 500 and that mindfully crafted length of 1500 or more is a terrible slog. The easy turn of phrase, the surface-level analysis, the obvious examples — all of it dries up. To make it across that thousand-word gap, you need to engage in real serious thought. The kind of thought that needs to stew; the kind of thought that, for this brain and these hands, can’t properly be done with fingers resting on the keyboard. Graduating from these longer forms is moving from grilling burgers to cooking ribs. It’s the same kind of process, but you’re adding time.

Looking Ahead

I’ve been Icarus. I’ve said too much about what I want to do, not gone about the actual doing of it, and fallen in a heap back to earth, singed from the encounter. But writing is something I care deeply about. It’s something I’ve committed to making time for, at the expense of other parts of my life. You will see a more regular set of works here. I won’t pretend that they will all be profound – I won’t even pretend that any of them were ever profound – but I will go on pretending that I am trying always to make them better.

Write what moves you, but above all write. Some good advice to remember for all those moments when you realize just how hard the written word is.

Remember Your Worth

Skating is what you do, not who you are.

My favorite DCOM, and I hope yours as well, is Brink. This quote, which comes at a boring, sappy point in the movie in between the awesome action scenes of hardcore inline skating madness, has always stuck with me. What follows is a great explanation of not falling into the believe that what you do defines who you are.

It’s by no means a perfect analogy, but I do think it is an apt one. Even if that work occupies nearly every moment of your waking life, even if you love, living, breathing, sleeping, and being completely immersed in the work, you do not equal it. There is no equivalency (you != work, for the technical), there is no summation over the domain, there is no amount of arithmetic or logic that can equate you the person to the list of tasks, projects, and responsibilities that you the person create and have control over.

You do work, but you are not defined by it.

That’s an important distinction, and one I think is lost on a lot of men and women my age that have just begun their careers in the knowledge worker industry. It’s certainly something I’ve fallen prey to, if I’m not careful about my work.

Because it’s so easy to get sucked into. It’s so easy to open up Outlook and start “handling” email – responding to questions that come in, sending off questions of your own, replying, forwarding, cc’ing, flagging as important.

Or maybe instead that cyclone of focus is Excel, whipping up spreadsheets like it’s nobody’s business. Hardcore spreadsheet mode, marking up cells in all sorts of meaningful color, writing up formulas that would take a Rosetta Stone to decipher, pivot tables, Gantt charts, and all manner of project management tools squeezed into the workflow of an accounting and tabulating application.

I’ve seen this happen to developers, too – have it happen to me as a developer. Working off a bug list, squashing, stomping, eliminating left and right. Or working off a requested features list, implementing, implementing, implementing, every widget and bubble deemed important enough by a user to write a hastily and poorly spell-checked and formatted email coded up and shipped.

Work like this is comforting. It’s easy. There’s very little in the way of thinking, very little that needs to be thought about; it’s all do, do, do. There’s a satisfying rhythm to it, getting yourself into the checklist mentality of completing the items off of a list. There’s a visceral pleasure to making a list of everything and crossing out each item s they are assassinated with elbow grease over the course of the day.

The trap that we inevitably stumble over, fall down, and tumble into the dark, gaping maw of is that we let the “what” of our work define the “why” of it. Our projects successively morph from “successfully implement foo” to “respond to email about foo” to “catch up with all this email.” Soon enough, you are the loud guy in the hotel lobby pounding away on his blackberry keyboard and yammering on his Bluetooth headset about how great he is at email.

Maybe you’d argue that this is just an imprecision of language; when we discuss our need to reply to email, our implication is that it’s in service of the projects and priorities that we own, manage, and concern ourselves with. But an imprecision of language, I’d argue, implies an imprecision of thought; if the distinction is not made in behavior, it stands little chance of remaining distinct in the mind.

Email, Excel, code – they are what you do, not who you are. It’s an obvious point, but I belabor it because while we recognize that these tools define us, we often fail to realize that they’ve come to define our work.

You are not an email out, email in machine. It isn’t your job to respond to email; if it were, you’d be working in a help desk somewhere wondering when they will build a machine that is smart enough to replace you. Email is a tool to communicate in service of accomplishing the actions and projects you care about.

You are not a spreadsheet machine. It is not your job to spend countless hours making a spreadsheet working and looking phenomenal. Spreadsheets are a tool that you use to display and manipulate information to complete thee actions and projects you care about.

You are not a debug machine, not a feature-implementing machine. It is not your job to fix every bug and implement every feature your users report. Code is a tool that you use. Your job is to use your best judgement to decide which bugs to fix and features to implement with the time and attention and energy that you have available at your disposal.

We need to resist the temptation of elevating the work we do with our tools to the same status as the work itself. To do otherwise is to risk losing site of the real work, of the important work, the hard work of doing and being better, rather than the easy work of completing a set of items from a list.

Good Work

When was the last time someone bragged to you about all the hard, important work they did staring at the wall. About all the ideas and insights they had by stopping what they were doing, dropping everything, shutting the fuck up for just a minute, and doing some quality thinking about the projects and plans that are important and laid out before them?

I sincerely hope that time is not in recent memory, because that would sure as hell put me in a tight spot with what I thought was a rather brilliant example.

In many ways, Belligerent Mars is a confessional for all the work sins I commit, all the shameful, head-shaking, tut-tutting, face-palming actions I see others do and tell myself I’ll never do – and then proceed to do anyway.

Mea culpa. Might as well get that out of the way.

One of the major sins that I find myself committing (and mind you this is business related - I could extend to my personal life but I’m quite sure there’s not enough ink on the Internet to cover all those), along with nearly everyone around me, is the email brag. Okay, sure, it starts more as an email complaint – “Ugh, I’ve got all this email I need to get through.” But what it really is, in the coded language that the all too many who trade on business credibility understand, is a badge of importance, a sign of how needed you are, how busy you are, how in demand you are, and therefore how important your work is.

Maybe that’s true – as you travel up the food chain you’re typically forced to handle a higher volume of email. But there’s an issue in chasing high-volume as a sign that you’re doing important work. Okay, in all honesty there are several,but I’ll do my best to take it easy on you.

It’s a bit like looking at a top performing runner and equating their success to the fancy Nike’s and flashy spandex that they wear during a race. The outfit is a product of performing at the highest level, not a cause. If you think that walking into Fitness ‘R’ Us and getting yourself a pair of expensive sneakers and for fitting workout attire will suddenly make you a world class athlete, you’re going to find out just how wrong that thought was about a half mile into your first marathon.

But of course you wouldn’t think that, because you are a smart, rational, human being capable of independent thought.

Somehow though, the realization that the exact same consideration about being good at email doesn’t in any way translate for a good majority of people in the knowledge worker field. You can’t reply, forward, and cc yourself into importance. And more importantly, you shouldn’t. Every email you reply to, write, or otherwise engage with (other than throwing it into an archive to be searched upon should the need arise) is an obligation you either place onto yourself or someone else; and in the latter case you’re usually generating some amount of additional work in order to verify the action you you delegated actually got completed as desired. Do you really have the ability to take on obligation after obligation and do an excellent job at it?

If you’re nodding along and chortling to yourself and thinking, “of course I can, I’m great at email”, well for one you might as well close the page now and get back to your inbox,and more importantly you should recall that most men think this about their, uh, performances too. That is, until they start asking around for a second opinion.

In fact, the best email users, the ones that really, truly, honestly could brag about being “great at email” (which of course, they don’t, because you know – they’re great) are the ones that respond to very little of what they receive. You get great at email as you get great at all other areas of your work, not by piling more and more work upon yourself, but by recognizing what actions and potential obligations are worth your time and attention. That starts with realizing that email is a tool to be used, not a job to be done.

The best knowledge workers in their field recognize that every minute they spend “doing email” is a minute they cannot be doing their real job: thinking.

Because real knowledge work is a process of collecting information, organizing that data into logical collections, reviewing the aggregate as aggregate whole, and then artfully synthesizing a result before communicating it effectively. Realize that nowhere is “doing email” listed; it may be a part of that process, it may even be a heavy component of many of those processes, but in no way is it work itself. It is no more than a means of getting the real work done.

What I’m advocating is a small amount of email mindfulness. A recognition that,yes, there are (perhaps unreasonable) expectations than every email sent necessitates a reply; but there must also be a recognition that there are more important things to do during the day than sit in email and respond.

It’s not hard to be great at replying to and sending out a high volume of email. After all, well over ninety percent of email is spam – it’s clearly we’ve long since cracked the secret to sending massive amounts of email without consideration and insight behind each message. What is difficult is saying “no” to the keep-busy attitude that email alcolytes and inbox culture has generated. What’s even more difficult, and even more important, is protecting the time that could be spent reading and answering mail for more quality work pursuits.

Even if – no, especially if – that work is staring at a wall, mind engulfed in important thoughts.

It Will Always Collapse

Won’t it?

Three weeks of travel.

If you’re looking for an excuse for why I’ve been absent from the keyboard, from the pen and paper, from the site… Well, you won’t find it here.

Consider it an explanation. And an apology. And, if pressed, an admittance of failure.

But it has made me think, these weeks alone, silent, thinking to muscle that I have neither time or energy to do the things I want to do.

Won’t that always be the case? The urgency of the needs seem to crowd out the aspirations of the wants.

I haven’t recently given practical advice on the site, so indulge me, for a moment, while I depart from the land of the telling a good story and reflect on how to solve this problem.

---

If you’ve ever read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, you’ll probably find these three types of work familiar:

1. Doing pre-defined work: working of of to-do lists, action items, inboxes, etc. that you’ve previously defined.
2. Doing work as it arrives: these are all the interruptions from phone calls, urgent emails, knocks on the door, that we never expect (but should always plan for).
3. Defining your work: this is the time you devote to making sure your actions and projects are in service of your higher goals and expectations and your work is headed in the right direction.

Did you notice that, the meat in that sandwich of doing your work? The 600lb. gorilla in all of that is the work that arrives. It’s undefined, unknown, and it’s highly variable.

There’s even more to it than that though. Because often this undefined work comes at a frantic and high-energy place. It’s fun to get wrapped up in, and more concerning, it’s easy to stay in that mode. The longer you spend fighting fires, the more you think that every problem needs to be doused with a hose.

And so we start to forget all the work we’ve defined. We forget all the work we need to define. And the work that we put on our plates, the work that we want to be doing, the aspirations that we have about what we could be, starts to collapse.

How do we take back our time from the demands of others? How do we keep the commitments to ourselves, those secrets we’ve chosen not to share with anyone else, when our commitments to others are so visceral and externalized? How do we stop our day from getting eaten up by the unknown work, and keep our balance between doing, defining, and crisis management in check?

I don’t have all the answers, and if you’ve noticed, I haven’t even really found something that works. But I do have an idea that I’ll be trying out.

The Aspirational Review

One of the biggest reasons we – and when I say “we” I most certainly mean “I” – get sucked into constant crisis mode is because we haven’t done the work on the front-end to identify the work that needs to be done to avoid the problems in the first place. We sit in meetings, take notes, determine action items – and then we head to another meeting, and it’s all forgotten. Repeat over the course of the day, and you have a list of things that needs to get done, but no time to actually review the actual actions that need to be taken to do it (let alone actually do the task in the first place).

Meanwhile, there’s a list of pet projects and wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-dos a mile long, waiting for a sliver of attention, that you’ll never get to because you’ve made yourself “too busy” to actually manage any of the work that you take on for yourself. Instead, you play a constant game of catch up, running just in front of the ten-ton boulder that is your work catching up with you, hoping no one notices the perspiration from you sprinting all over the place, or the bags under your eyes from burning the midnight oil.

Phew. Do I sound a little irritated? Don’t worry – I promise this is (mostly) a moment of self-deprecating introspection. It’ll be over soon.

There really is a list of a hundred story ideas – most of them outlined, ready for me to just put in some words and post to a site – and at least a dozen more pieces that are in some state of completion. But they don’t get done, because they are written out, and then they go unnoticed, tucked away in some corner where the sun don’t shine.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t, really, truly, be this way. Because all it takes is a fifteen minute review at the beginning of the day, and maybe another fifteen minutes at the end of the day, to get the work you have on hand under control.

What is a review exactly? I see it as three things. First, as an opportunity to compile and define all the work that you generated for yourself over the course of the day and has gone unfinished. Second, it’s an opportunity to plan your day ahead (or verify that your plans were kept) based on the time you have available and the tasks you’ve given yourself. And third, and most importantly, it’s an opportunity to review the actions and projects you keep telling yourself you wish you had time to do and make time for them.

Because here’s the real deal – if it’s important to you, why aren’t you doing it? The excuse of there not being enough time just doesn’t cut it – either it’s important, and you make time, or it’s not important. And that’s certainly all-or-nothing, and it’s definitely totalitarian, but it’s a simple fact.

Anyway, I do find that this review time helps keep me on track, mindful of the fact that not everything that comes up during the day is a crisis, and aware that the important things I’ve defined for myself still matter, and still need to get done, even if they aren’t part of my “work”.

This is important to me. This is a commitment. And this is what I’m choosing to spend my time on right now.

Letter to the Editor

Well I botched it up. That's not an uncommon thing, of course, so let me elaborate. The direction of Belligerent Mars that I've been meandering along of late is to thought-provoke, to leave something to the imagination. To leave it up for interpretation. Unfortunately, the other end of the vague spectrum is communicating another idea entirely. Unfortunately, in writing, you only get credit for what you say, not what you mean.

(Just in case it wasn't clear by this point, this is your beloved author speaking, not the character he plays on the site).

With "Settlers", the intention was to describe how the dreams and aspirations we once had don't depart because we realize they are improbable, implausible, or impossible. Rather, they depart because every moment we are surrounded by signals that tell us that even having these dreams – let alone the dreams themselves – is unreasonable. In American culture especially, there is an omnipresent haze of expectation about the life you are supposed to be living. I call it checklist capitalism – what don't you have and why don't you have it yet.

From discussions I've had with readers, I think I failed in describing it properly, describing it in full. Of course, "Settlers" wasn't – or rather, isn't – meant to be the denouement. It posed a question, and I dropped the ball in answering it properly.

Rather than mope about my failings as a writer and internet citizen any further, I'll do my best to answer some issues one of my very intelligent readers sent in:

I think that each and every day we're all just doing mini-analyses on what it is that we want our goals to be --redefining them partially- and whether it's worth pursuing them in their original form.

Absolutely – especially in the post-college wasteland of the early and mid twenties, I find myself constantly redefining what's important, what I want to pursue, what I value. But I'd argue that it isn't just an internal process – our environment is shaping us, influencing us, suggesting to us. There's interplay of course, back and forth between what our environment allows us to accomplish. But it's also immersive, wouldn't you agree? And that immersion, when it's so constant and embedded into our culture, can – and I think is – a damning influence.


I guess my point is is that people don't just wake up one day in a position where they aren't at their "goal" when they should be. They make distinct, discrete decisions that either cause them to stay the path to the "goal" or veer from it, based on their wants and wishes at that particular time. It is not a blind process.

No, it's not a blind process, in that we don't in the blink of an eye go from a twenty-something hipster with radical ideas and the thought that, like, we're gonna change the world, man, to a thirty-four year-old mustachioed man in dad jeans picking up his kid from daycare in the corporate stooge job that he hates (there I go with the hyperbole – this is what got me into trouble in the first place). But we are blind in the sense that we don't have a grasp of how our environment is leading us in one direction or another.

As an example, consider two classrooms filled with an assortment of more or less identical first-graders. Tell one class that they are math whizzes, algebraic rock stars, and give them encouragement; tell the other class that math is really difficult, that it takes a lot of work to be good at it, and reinforce the complexity of it all. I bet you can guess how this turns out. Is it because one set of kids chose to be bad at math, and another chose to be good? In a sense, absolutely –they either made decisions which led them to get better, or worse, at the additions and subtractions and all the other mathematics I've long since forgotten. But what they didn't have control over was the environment they were in. They made choices, but those choices were not wholly their own.

[T]here is something wrong with people who look back on the whole entire picture and are just regretful and confused as to why they aren't in the ideal position that they had imagined and are sad about it.

There is something wrong with people who chose not to look forward toward where they were heading and see it coming and not try to do something, however desperate it may be, about it. (One such person is doing one such something by devoting an entire week writing on that very topic, out of terrible fear he'll become that regretful, confused, sad person.)

[Y]ou are cognizant of the motivations that lead you to make the decisions that you do and you should be happy with the decisions you make according to those motivating factors –why else would you make them? You graduate college. You get your first job. You get your own place, your first real place. You get a car. You get a girlfriend. You get married. You get a house. You get a dog. You get a kid or two. Maybe you get divorced. Maybe you just get a mistress. You get old. And then, you get a grave and a headstone.

Why did you do what you do? Because it's the thing to do. It's what everyone asks you at Christmas, at dinner parties, at all the horrible, soul-crushing gatherings where other people have something you don't, and they wonder why you wouldn't want it, and when the hell you're going to get it. Call it peer pressure, sure – but I think it's more than that. It's expectational debt. There's no real question of if, and there's certainly no question of why. The if is irrelevant. The why has already been answered by the millions of "happy" people who came before you and checked off the same boxes. The only questions is when.

When, when, when?

And the people who find themselves exactly where they wanted to be and still unhappy...fuck them.

Fuck them, indeed.

---

This is exactly the kind of feedback I love. Belligerent Mars was never intended to be some classical piece, played once, recorded on a wax cylinder, and cherished for eternity by frumpy men in thick spectacles. It's a living breathing work. Like tennis, like jazz, like great sex – it's made good with any sort of partner, and made unforgettable with a great one. If you have something to say, do get in touch.

Greater Than

Isn't it funny?

In a way it has to be. It must be. It could not be anything else. Without humor, it couldn't just be brushed off. Without the laughter, the tears take on a whole different meaning.

Isn't it funny?

Well, yeah. But who's the one laughing? And what does it say when the laughs and the tears aren't coming from the same person?

---

Man's got a sense of humor. Must - no other explanation. Guy goes to work every day, same time, same route. Eats the same lunch. Holds the same meetings, answers the same phone calls, asks the same questions, does the same work. Punches out – leaves at the same time. Stops at the same take out place. Orders the same meal. Flashes the same smile to the same cashier. Who asks for the same amount and hands him the same bag. Tips the same amount. Leaves the same way he came. Parks in the same spot. Opens the same mail, the same bills for the same things. Watches the same shows. Goes to his room at the same time. And then sits down on the same chair at the same desk with the same pen and the same paper and writes the same words. The same words. The same words.

Maybe it's raining. Or snowing. Or hailing. Or sleeting. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's sunny, or cloudy, or foggy. Maybe it's hot out, and humid, or maybe it's not humid but still hot. Sweltering. But it's still the same. It's all the same.

Maybe the client on the phone is different. Or the line of code. Or the agenda. Or maybe it's all the same again – the same discussion, the same bug, the same question, or concern, or complaint. But it's still the same. It's always the same.

Because nothing moves the man. The man does not change. The man does not exist in time. He is out of it, removed completely. Time moves around him, through him even. But the man is not carried along. The man remains the same. The man is all the same. The man is always the same. And this is why the man writes at the same desk in the same chair with the same pen and the same paper and writes the same words. The same words. The same words.

So the man must have a sense of humor. There is no other way. Because those same words same the same thing: be something different. Be something better. Be something greater than the same.

There's the great irony of it all - that the man, that very same man, has the nerve to write about becoming different. The man who is trapped in his glass box of same, who is happily adjust to his stable routine of sameness, thinks himself able to write about being different. The man who can't escape his sameness, who can barely tell how deeply in same that he is, spends every night writing about what different is all about. And so he must have a sense of humor.

Mustn't he? After all, what does the incarcerated man know of freedom? What does the poor man know of wealth? What does the fool know of knowledge? What does the bachelor know of love?

What does the man, the same man, know about different? Perhaps he's dreamed about it. Perhaps he's longed for it. Perhaps he's watched it from a distance, hoping it would come to him. Perhaps he's spent so long desiring and pining for it that he's come to accept his sameness. Perhaps he's come to understand what different is. Perhaps his sameness is just enough stability to know first hand just what different is.

Perhaps it doesn't even matter. Perhaps the same words written on the same paper with the same pen at the same desk with the same chair where the same man writes every night can be something more.

Perhaps words can be greater than.

Inflection Point

Every time I come in, they tell me I’m completely normal.

You’d think a man walking into a nut house on his own free will would have some sort of credibility. After all, this is the kind of place that isn’t used to calm – they’re used to the guy who thinks aliens have miraculously saved his child, the guy who hears voices at all hours of the day, the guy who thinks he’s been transformed into the family heirloom grandfather clock. These are the kind of guys that don’t really deserve credibility. But the guy who walks into one of those polished oak parlors - I always imagine for some reason that every therapist’s office is tucked away on the first floor of some shabby and forgotten English manor - and declares himself mad? You’d think he would at least have the tiniest bit of clout.

Surely the man who’s done it three times must have some sort of screw loose. He’s gone mad by the sheer act of believing that he is mad. Been driven mad by the very thought of his own madness. Doesn’t it all come down to belief, after all? What does it matter how sane you are when you’re certain, when your full to the brim with the belief that you’re hopelessly mad.

Unless it comes down to honesty. No one is honest with themselves anymore. We can’t tell what we are, we can’t look at ourselves in the mirror – and I mean really look at, stare into those pale blue droplets that have impinged themselves on that polished glass across from you – and have the nerve to glimpse at what we really are. So instead we tell everyone the story of ourselves that we’d like to be known, and we tell it over again, for the first and second and third time, until it’s no longer our own, until the fake memory that we’ve made has gone out into the world and is there to remind us when we forget. Then it’s simply a matter of asking our closest confidants what they think of us – they’ll happily parrot back the lie we’ve sculpted for ourselves.

Or else it’s a Catch–22 – the Catch–22, in fact; no doubt shamelessly stolen and repurposed. The insane man who recognizes his insanity cannot possibly be so, and so he is not, and so off he goes back out into the world. I’ll leave it to the reader to understand how the reverse logic works, then – how the sane man who thinks he’s sane cannot possibly be so.

As if that makes any sense. And of course none of it makes any sense. I explain this to them - them, always amorphous, for I cannot remember their faces and they seem to all have adopted nondescript names - for the first and second and third time, lying on my back, faux leather riveted to the fainting couch, crackling – cackling, in fact – along with my increasing frantic explanations; whether in earnest or in jest, I can never tell. They smile and nod and write it all down and say that’s nice and ask me about my mother. Or maybe they write nothing down, maybe it’s all just doodles of Freudian fantasies or silly cartoons. And then when it’s all over they smile and nod again and hand me a little white slip with god only knows what kind of incomprehensible nonsense and say, take two of these and call me in the morning.

I don’t want the pills. I just want someone to listen. If nothing else, that must make me crazy. /right?

I’m convinced it’s a matter of timing. It doesn’t take a great engineer, thankfully, mercifully, to know that if you have a high point and a low point, then there’s a pretty good goddamn chance that there will be an in between. That’s when I notice it of course, when the up, up, ups start to become the down, down, downs. or the reverse, or is it the converse, or the inverse - whatever verse it might be – the down, down, downs climbing back to the up, up, ups. When I’m feeling not just this incredible pull from one extreme – when I’m feeling exactly where I am. Not up. Not down. Just In between.

When I find myself in that point of inflection.

I’m certain that this is where they catch me. That perfect balancing point of normalcy. That brief moment when you’re coming off the hideous high of mania ad headed right toward that horrible hole of depression. You’re weightless, in that moment, nothing’s pulling at you, nothing’s a rocket and nothing’s gravity. You’re just… normal.

You come home and all you think about is the leftovers from the fridge and the re-runs on TV. You come home satisfied with what you did at work. You come home not to scheme, or plan, pr plot, or ponder, but rather you come home to relax, to rest, and, tomorrow, to repeat.

That’s what it’s like to be an everyday human being?

That’s what it’s like to be ordinary?

That’s when I reach out for the phone and dial the suicide hotline.

Maybe my kind of insanity is normalcy. The desire to have a regular bedtime and a relaxing eight hours of sleep and to grow old with a loved one and have a kid or two and a backyard with a lawn mower and a garden with flowers only my wife can pronounce and a commute with a morning talk show and me yelling at the callers and the disk jockeys and the five lanes of traffic I’ve somehow been sandwiched between and a quiet day at the office with birthday cake and corporate gossip and 401(k)s and health insurance and fringe benefits and comparison tables and Gantt charts and dependencies and deliverables and college savings and worrying, worrying, worrying at 11:58 PM when my teen-aged daughter hasn’t pulled into the drive way yet and all of it and every moment of it without spending a second being a frantic maniac knowing you’ll change the world or a hopeless wreck knowing you’ll never amount to anything.

Not up. Not down. Just in between. That’s what I find so fearsome. That’s what I find so insane. Because what I live for are the highs. What I live for are the lows. I live for the moments when I truly think that the work I’m doing can make the world a better place. I live for the moments when I doubt myself and every thing I’ve ever produced.

What makes you a better person is thinking you’re nothing and proving yourself wrong. What makes you a better person is thinking you’re everything and proving yourself right.

What I don’t understand, what I’ve never understood, is wanting to prove neither of these things. What I don’t understand is not wanting to prove everything at all. What I don’t understand is that in between the ups and the downs are the in betweens - and most everyone is just fine with that. What I don’t understand is why I’m not.

I’ll never be okay with a life lived in between.

Surely that must make me crazy.

Right?

Settlers

Conestoga wagon. All covered up. Spokes are brand new, shiny – couldn’t afford the full set of wheels. Axle’s not in the best shape, had to get it used. But hitch it up to a pair of ox, and she’ll go just fine. Not the best oxen, mind you – but the oxen that’ll get the job done. It’s all a bit secondhand, thinking about it.

But this’ll do. This’ll do just fine.

---

It started with a dream.

Well, to be honest, it probably started with a nice date, maybe too much wine, and five seconds of forgetfulness on someone’s part, in the heat of the moment. But that’s probably rewinding the tape a little too far.

Anyway.

It started with a dream. The reasons for being here. The reason it all started. The reason this all started. It had to – no arrival is by chance. Every destination has an embarkation – and for this life, this present, this now, a dream was it.

---

Prairie schooner. She’s all full up. Thought of everything, planned for everything. For the winter, for the stretches of road where there are no supplies, for the dangers. For the disasters. Even prepared for the tragedies. Mentally at least. Hopefully, at least.

But this’ll do. This’ll do just fine.

---

How did it start? How does it always start? Sunday cartoons and too much sugar in the cereal. But maybe that’s too harsh.

Instead, maybe it was a wild imagination and not enough adult supervision. Just time. Time for that mind to expand. Time not to wonder what’s in the way, but time to wonder why it’s even there. Time to think. About anything, about nothing. Time to dream about what could be, not know what was, is and always will.

And maybe those cartoons helped a little.

Wonder how they laughed. Not right away of course – never right away – but after, when it’s polite to do so. An inventor – no, what was that? A flying motorcycle inventor! Never mind the intractable engineering. Just the audacity to suggest those two things should go together.

Wonder how they laughed. Did they even laugh? Would they even listen? Do they even know? Were they ever told?

If they were, oh how it would’ve ended! Not right away, of course – no never right away – but after, when it’s polite to do so. When it’s polite to say that dreams are just that. There’s nothing to do about them then to wake up, and realize that they aren’t real.

But maybe that’s being too harsh.

---

Been dreaming about this for a long time now. About that coast. About that destiny that no one else controls. Been dreaming about the future, a future, every future. Any future. Well, not any future. But a chosen future. Not the best future.

But this’ll do. This’ll do just fine.

---

Wake up. That dream, any dream – it isn’t real.

Wake up – that’s how it ended. That falling feeling, that tumble that comes in the flicker of a moment between asleep and awake. That’s how it all got here, that’s how this place, this feeling this life became the destination. In that tumble, that flicker of a moment. Those twenty-two years of hearing what can’t be done. The falling-out, the realize, the acknowledgement. The waking up. The waking up to a reality that says dreams aren’t real. That dreams can’t be real. Who’s reality is that? It belongs to the ones who have woken up.

---

That heap of lumber, she’s all washed up. Can’t move much when the spokes are broken. Can’t move much when the axles split in two. Can’t move much when there isn’t an oxen left to pull her. That golden coast, that future, that destiny. It’s not just anywhere. It’s just past that horizon. But this is the end of the road. Guess it’s time to settle. It’s not any future. But it’s a chosen future. Not the chosen future.

But this’ll do. This’ll do just fine.

---

They called them settlers. They called them that because they stopped and said what they had was good enough.

They called them pioneers. They called them that because they never stopped finding the next frontier.

Ordinary

What do you think about when the working day is over? What courses through your head when you come home? Are you numbed, are you spent, are you tuned out, turned off?

No, not you, because you are not ordinary.

No, when the night swallows up the day, it is your buzzing brain that keeps the light on. The ordinaries go home to their televisions and their microwave dinners and their unsatisfactory relationships and their too-large apartments and their inadequate collections of art and unimpressive love-lifes and their unfulfilling hobbies and their discarded diets and their six packs of beer and their poorly adhered-to exercise plans and their beds that give them back problems.But not you.

No, not you, because you are not ordinary.

You dream about the future. You think about how the world is going to change. You think about the way the world is changing. And you think about how you'll fit into all of it. How you won't just go along for the ride. How you'll be in the driver's seat. How you'll be the change in the world. Wonder why anyone would want anything less. And you'll know how Alexander felt, how Rommel, how Patton, how Agamemnon, how Hannibal, how Xerxes felt. The whole world before them, ready to be conquered.

No, not you, because you are not ordinary.

So I wonder - What do you think about when there is no more "work" to be done, when the job has been confined to the closed door of the office, or underneath the lid of a laptop. Are you content to let your mind lie fallow?

Or can you not turn it off? Is it not satisfying to go home and enjoy the few hours of leisure before heading to bed and starting the whole thing over tomorrow? Is it not enough to put in a honest eight hours of work at a job you like working on projects you enjoy? Aren't you content to be successful at your job, to be respected by your peers, to be seen by your friends, to be loved by your family?

No, not you, because you are not ordinary.

You wish you could turn it off, but it's no use. So instead you begin to build an empire in your mind. Oh the problems you conquer. Oh the armies of solutions you command. Oh the wars you have fought to convince yourself that you are normal, that you are content, that you are ordinary. After all, everything around you tells you that this should be enough. But there is no satisfaction in it. There is no glory in retreat. So instead you press on, you throw yourself into the dreams you've held onto for so long in your head. You fight for them to be real.

Perhaps instead you feel like Horatius, the only man on the bridge, the only man against the hordes. Would you turn and flee?

No, not you.

Because you are not ordinary.

Just like everyone else.

Bandwidth

Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

It was a whisper. Or a whimper. A little flutter of a thought, not borne out through the vocal cords, but rather exhaled, warm breath barely escaping the lips.

That whisper, whimper - whatever it was - it left your lips and tumbled toward the ground. I didn’t catch it. I never do. Wonder if I ever will, am ever supposed to, should even try. Wonder if you ever want me to.

I didn’t catch it. So then it’s on to the questions. The inquisitions. The accusations. Wonder if it’s even about that first uncaught line. That’s just the trigger. The yodel that launches that avalanche of questions.

All the questions. None of the answers. Never any of the answers. Wonder if there are ever any answers. Wonder if it’s even about the questions. Do the questions matter? Should I bother to ask? If you have to ask, you really already know. Should already know. Don’t want to admit that you know.

But what do I know? Maybe it’s just about the attention. About the connection. About the confrontation, one-sided as it is. About me and you having a moment. A back and forth. A choreographed little dance.

A dance. ’s alright with me. I’ve always loved the movement, always enjoyed the rhythm. Always enjoyed leading. Always known that I’ve really been led. Was it me or you who loved the twirls more? Me, because you were always so beautiful spinning around in my hand. You, because you never had more fun than in that moment.

No, a dance is alright, will always be alright. Have to remember that a dance is no substitute. There’s Real Life, and then there’s the little plays we put on to fill in the details. To dramatize it. Make it a story worth telling, to someone, someday, somewhere. At some point real life needs to come back in. Can fawn, and faux, and foil for only so long.

So I keep coming back. To the whisper, that whimper, or whatever it was. And I wonder, whatever was it that you were really trying to say?

Whatever is it that I’m trying to say?

---

What if you and I could only say one thing a day to one another? Each of us having a single chance to get it right for the day. Changes things, doesn’t it.

Now what about a week? A Month? A year? And what about once in a lifetime? Only one more thing to say.

Something happens, when you only get one shot to say something. First you pile it all in, every moment, every little detail, every possible thing that might be important. More, more, more. Wouldn’t want to miss something.

But then the timespan dilates. And interestingly, there’s less to say. But not really less – less only as in the quantity, less only as in raw bits and bytes. Because suddenly, there’s more to say. There’s more gravity, there’s more at stake for saying the right thing.

So you compress. You cut. You edit. You slim down. You trim. You are ruthless. You nip and tuck. No need for the details. Because all you need is all that matters.

In the end, it's all about bandwidth. When there's a lot if it, too much if it, all those unnecessary bits creep in. When it's limited, when every word and phrase counts, you make the most of it. Have to make the most of it. And something better comes out of it. Earnest. Honest. The truth. Everything that matters.

---

Communication has become so commodified, so prolific. Saying a thousand things in the course of a single minute is hardly a challenge anymore. We are inundated. Flooded.

But aren’t we really parched? Commonality brings frivolity, and frivolity destroys all meaning, all significance. What we sought was a connection; what we got was nothing more than a pile of words.

The Hook

Those noise-oholics. Those quiet-ophobics.

It's that part of the song.

Maybe it's a ho-hum melody. Your toes are tapping, in that kind of lethargic, reflexive way that they do. The beat's good, or good enough at least, in the kind of cookie cutter fast food assembly line prefab highly compressed noise arranged rhythmically that passes for music nowadays. In short you're into it, but you're not into it. This isn't the kind of song that makes you want to rub the fly of your pants into the back pocket of some girl at a club, spilling your drink over the entire left side of the dance floor in the process. Well, maybe you would, but you'd certainly be soft the whole time. That's probably her fault though. Not shaking it hard enough.

Where was I again?

Right. This isn't the song. Wasn't the song. Because now its that part of the song. In between the part of the song with the gummy, unintelligible lyrics and the part of the song that gets stuck underneath the layers of neurons and axons and dendrites and you'll need an auger and an aspirin or two to get out of your skull.

There's the hook.

The hook, where the music becomes original and personal for the tiniest moment, the only moment. Where the mood shifts, and things get real groovy, where you can't help but get carried away by the beat, where you feel it, really feel it, for the first time.

The part of the song that makes you want to jump in.

---

Jump in.

You know that look a dog gets on his face when he's on the edge of a pier? In that split second before he jumps with reckless abandon, instinctively making the Superman pose as the gravity pulls him closer and closer into the water. His eyes are wide, there's a fire burning hot in each pupil, tongue hanging out, a little mouth-cape flapping in the wind.

He knows it's his moment.

I'm surrounded by hounds, eyes fixed on that great body of water the one our conversation is drowning in. All poised, haunches cocked and ready to launch. Who's the lucky one that gets the next jump off. Who gets to make the next wave, ripples on the mirrored face. Who gets to make the bigger splash. Who gets to win. All of them, every one, waiting for the last few rings to flatten away to infinity in that reflecting pool - I wonder if they even see the water they're diving into, or just the glassy, shiny reflections of themselves.

I'm surrounded by hounds, and all of them, every one, are looking to be top dog. there's nothing to listen to but the panting, panting, panting as they wait to jump in.

---

A great conversation isn't much different than a great song. An ensemble of parts, coming together, all beating together, back and forth, ebb and flow, give and take, playing off one another.

This isn't the song. This is the wait your turn. This is the out-do your neighbor. This is the look what I can do. This is the look what I did. This is the I can do better. This is the did I tell you about the time. This is the never heard this one before. This is the one-upping. This is the arms race. This is the mutually assured destruction. This is the cold war.

This is cock measuring, and there are no ties.

This is the hook. In between the part of the conversation where one person ends one boastful non-sequitur and another one begins. The part where the ripples fade in that gleaming pool of water and the muscles tense and the spring tightens and in an instant it'll be off to the races because being first means it's you, interesting you, the everyone gets to bob their head to and tap their feet to and sing along to for the foreseeable future.

Make it count - every story needs to be better than the one before it. There's an irony if there ever was one, because it's only the ending that has any value. Surrounded by hounds, and all of them, every one, has their snouts in the air, and they're sniffing out, searching for a denouement. Getting ready for the next chance to jump in.

---

Jump in.

I'm surrounded by hounds, and they're looking at me like I'm the sheep. Looking at me like I'm dinner. Looking at me and don't know what to think because I'm still dry, still haven't made a wave, made a splash. Still haven't jumped in.

Jump in.

It's less of an invitation and more of a plea, now. More of a demand, even. More of a walk the plank situation, really.

None of it computes. Here I am, gagged and bound by my own choosing. Here they are, blindfolds on and earplugs in by their own actions.

Here I am, waiting for the right song, the right duet, the right instruments, the right band. Here they are, waiting for the right moment to jump in.

Jump in?

Thanks, but I think I'll take my chances on the shore.

The Feel of It

Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, but in the feel of it.

Well, maybe you’re trapped.

Or, maybe trapped isn’t the right word. Maybe captive is closer. Or maybe stuck, instead. Or walled-in, or frozen, or grounded, or affixed, entranced, petrified, tied down, tied up, shackled, chained, bound, gagged. Or maybe you’re many of those things. Or maybe you’re none of those things. Maybe you’re some other right word.

The right word.

I spend a lot of time thinking about that. About the right word. Thinking there must be a better way to express this feeling, must be a better way to illustrate this thought, must be a better way to convey this meaning. Must, must, must. Me and my engineering mind, always thinking there is an optimization.

Me and my liberal arts heart, knowing better than that.

You see when I look at writing and I start to think – and that’s the trouble with the brain, always going on about the thinking – it’s always about thinking that this word, this phrase, this sentence, this piece – this something could be better. Must be better. That somewhere in this convoluted, symbolic, horribly inadequate medium we call writing is a best way, is the best way to communicate.

The trouble with thinking too much is that you start to believe that there’s a solution to everything. Just give it another couple of minutes, you think, and I’ll have solved it all.

But my heart knows better – there I go again, with that word – not better then, but different. Is not concerned with better at all, in the slightest. Knows its not about what’s good or bad or best or worst or any other sort of shade. Understands that in this line of work, it really is a binary matter, a black and white affair. Believes it’s about asking a very simple question, and answering it in the affirmative.

Does it move?

Simple questions carry far too much weight. Ambiguity seeps from them, taunting you, practically, to ask what sort of convoluted meaning could possibly be inferred from answering such a stub of a question.

What does it feel to move? Surely you could know the feeling when you’re own to feet take you from point to point. It is no different with words. When they take us places. When they compel us. When they give breath and life and action to a scene. That is movement.

When I can feel the words leaping off the page and accelerating into my retina and ignite in a brilliant staccato and I can hear the faintest sizzle as they unmake themselves and become little pulses and travel down my nerves and up into my thinking brain and I can smell the ozone of combusted language and the ferrous bite of ink that once was and now is no more and I can feel each word go back down to my vocal chords and try to escape and all and each one of them jam up in my throat and cannot and mix into a jumble and I am left gasping for air and am made desperate and unable to speak and my eyes hunt for another word to engulf and starve when there is nothing left of the page but the dead pulp of a tree and a pile of letters and punctuation where a set of words and a meaning once where and would you put them all back where they were thank you much and make sure they are in the order the author damn well intended them to be. That is movement.

When you feel ravenous. When you feel emaciated. When you feel like there must be more to go, but you can see the end of the line and you know that there is not. That is movement.

---

But where were we again?

That’s right. Well, maybe you’re trapped – or some other right word.

Some times the best way out isn’t to think a solution.

It’s to move.

If it Mattered

Does success purely result from luck? Or rather, does fortune favor the prepared?

Maybe you find yourself in your mom’s basement, three in the afternoon, but fuck it, you’re still in your pajamas. There’s a bowl on the coffee table, the now-melted remnants of an early afternoon ice cream binge. The color-changing room, lit only by the soaps and informercials emblazoned on the TV screen. And then there’s pitiful you, perspiration causing you to stick to the dark brown leather.

In a way, it’s admirable, the way you’ve defended your descent into darkness. Maybe you just didn’t figure out what you wanted to do until it is too late to change. Maybe you feel that the life college was supposed to prepare you for just didn’t quite pan out.

Enough with it already. The history books are filled with men and women who go quietly; but they’re written (and told) by those who have decided to make a noise in the world.

If you think that your diploma, or your internship, or your thesis or whatever shining badge you think demonstrates your awesomeness to the world somehow entitles you to the life you want, you’re mistaken. There is no entitlement in the world. There is the life you want, and your hands - now go out and reach for what matters to you.

There’s point A, the recognition by our generation that we don’t have to accept the world around us, and point C, the point where we have the new world we want to live in. But our generation has forgotten part B, the hard work, the part where it isn’t handed to us on a silver platter but rather must be toiled over, sacrificed for.

Of course you’d say that, is the pitiful cry heard most often. You’ve got a great career, a great life, a great everything! Why wouldn’t you tell everyone how easy it is? After all, you have it so easy.

Nothing could be a more pathetic excuse. There are a great many people in this world that don’t have opportunity, that will never get a chance, that will never know what having it easy" means to people like me. But if you’re whining on Facebook about not getting that perfect job, or that raise, or winning this week in trivia, I can guarantee that you are not in that category of people.

It’s easy to conjure up excuses, about how the interviewer had it out for you, or you weren’t feeling it that day, or the test was unfair, or any of a hundred thousand petty little things that you could claim to have gotten in your way. But here’s a better question: did it matter to you? Did it really matter, in the kind of aching, bone-deep way that the most important things in life do?

Then why did you let anything stop you? Why did you let some insignificant factor in you life throw up an insurmountable roadblock? Because if it mattered, if it were important, you would’ve found a way around it, or a way through it.

Truly, what is it that’s holding you back? Because the only thing that separates those that are doing and those that aren’t is that one person did, and one person did not.

Some Nights

Days and nights fly past, fly past; what am I doing right now?

Every moment is as fragile as the next. We won’t know, we can never know, what the next one will hold, whether we will make it through or simply cease to be.

It’s easy to quote the odds, how unlikely that it is that the next second will be our last, and so what does it matter if there is a missed opportunity here or there? I know the odds; existence now is a very strong predictor of existence in the moment. But tell that to the aneurysm. To the semi-truck you didn’t see. To the heart attack, to the virus, to the cancer. Remember how unlikely it is that you are here in the first place, remembering that the house always wins. The universe will collect, someday, and is not particularly concerned about whether you’ve adequately prepared.

---

Maybe some nights you go to bed convinced that you might very well not wake up in the morning. You go to sleep with the very plausible idea in your head that your expiration date was now, that you’re finished, through, that you’re not just washed up, that you’re washed out, you’re washed away and you better be okay with everything that came before this moment, that you haven’t wasted it, that the pieces of your life matter to you in some spectacular fashion.

There are nights like this. Nights that stretch into infinity, the passing of every second swelling to a crescendo before falling silent again, announcing their arrival and with it the realization that I am still alive, still breathing, and I still have a chance to change the world, even in some immeasurable way, or be touched by, changed by, the connection I make with another beautiful person.

But it’s bullshit, of course, thinking that somehow having a “near-death experience”, even one as convoluted and utterly made up as mine should somehow change the world around us. If you’ve got the idea that somehow thinking you’ve very well near died has some sort of life-changing property, get it out of your head right now. That moment, the moments like it that many of have had, or will have, or have heard, or seen in the movies, is in no way phenomenal or spectacular or utterly out of the ordinary. There is nothing different about reality; there is nothing that changes in the world. That moment, and all the other moments before and after it are utterly ordinary. The world goes on, completely unaware and unconcerned. Life goes on.

Life feels more real, sure, but it has always felt this real, and we’ve just gone on ignoring the pressing, suffocating reality of existence. It’s always just been a matter of ignoring the overwhelming presence that life forces upon us.

So has something changed? Have you, have I, been unmade and forged anew? Perhaps. But it’s not like each moment suddenly has more meaning. All that’s changed is that we see the value of each instant passing before us.

If a single second is spent not working towards how you want the world around you to be, or not making a connection with someone you can’t live without, isn’t that a second that’s been wasted? When every instant in time costs the same and this second, this living, breathing piece of time that you and I are both trapped in might be our last, then shouldn’t we be spending our time to make the world the way we want it to be, to craft the life we want, to do amazing things for the amazing people in our life? To not waste what wonderful, spectacular, inconceivably valuable moments we’ve been given, to craft meaning, to forge connections. To make the world into our vision of what we wish it to be.

Is it a lot of pressure? You bet.

---

Maybe some nights you go to bed convinced that you might very well not wake up in the morning. You go to sleep thinking that this might very be the end, and you know, you damn well know that this day, this now immeasurably valuable day, doesn’t hold up, wasn’t filled to the brim trying to change the world into the way you want it to be, wasn’t spent making the most of those sparks of a connection you have with the ones you love for the briefest of moments, that those moments weren’t just missed, they were wasted, callously discarded, unlovingly destroyed in the pursuit of something that now feels so banal.

There are nights like this. Nights that stretch into the abyss, each second that passes screaming to proclaim their existence, to remind me that I am still alive, still here, and that yet another second has passed that I have let go fallow, not put to good use, not spent making the world, or the life of another, better.

Expiration Date

How many Saturdays do you have left?

Here is the regret.

Another unused and unloved vegetable is tossed out. And another. And another.

Dozens of bright colors turned to a dull sheen of brown from neglect. Florets overgrown with the soft fuzz of mold. Stalks once straight and sturdy have since been made slimy. The crunch of freshness is now a sagging, limp affair. There is a certain pungency to the crisper drawer.

And every trashed bag of former produce is a reminder of a wasted opportunity.

---

Moments in our life sometimes have a similar tendency to broadcast their expiration date. Those experiences that are given weight, that carry importance, simply because they come with an expiration date attached. That by not only knowing that something will end, but the when of it, we draw greater meaning, and we seek to make the most of the moments until then, when it has rotten, or become stale and is thrown away.

Surely you remember this? That vacation you took in paradise which you knew would only last so long. That wonderful person you met by accident as your summer adventure in a new country was just coming to a close. Every second was made that much more potent, that much more poignant, knowing that the big deadline loomed. You knew exactly when it would end, and that meant every moment you spent not enjoying the time that was left was a moment wasted. There was a fairy godmother, that carriage will turn into a pumpkin, and that magical night will all end at the stroke of midnight. Enjoy it while it lasts.

---

This is the exception, not the norm - most days come and go and make little announcement that anything has changed, that they’ve expired, utterly and forever, and that you’ll never get a chance to cook with them again. Most things in our life don’t have expiration dates, don’t have an expected shelf life, don’t have tell-tale signs of becoming rotten. They are here, they are gone, and if we blink, we may miss it all.

And then every moment afterward, we are tainted by a faint pang of regret. If only there were more time to enjoy it. If only I had known that it would be gone. If only I had spent my time more wisely.

Knowing when a thing will end enhances our experience of it. This shouldn’t be. Because we can never know where the endings are, where the hard edges stop and the cliff falls away abruptly and suddenly there isn’t, there isn’t that person you planned to spend more time with, there isn’t that opportunity that you wanted to take up. Was is an inevitable and impending outcome of is. Things will cease to be without warning, and without taking comment from us to see if we’ve prepared for it.

We look at life as if it were a well-made candle. A long wick and a thick column of wax. We don’t notice how the shape changes over a single day; it happens to slow, and we know that the flame will still be lit in the morning. But we forget that a candle can be snuffed out at any moment. Suddenly, abruptly, and without notice.

First There Wasn't, Then There Was

Remember this, because it is an important point: first, there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be.

Is that clear? I think not, for if it were, you’d close the page and run out into the world, screaming, stark-raving mad.

This is the fundamental law of the universe. There is nothing more, or less to it. Existence is the brief exception, not the rule.

---

There is a glass in my hand. It is cool, slick with perspiration. The volatile liquid shimmers and careens in lock step with my movements. The whole system is precarious. The slippery grip, the manner of movement. In a moment’s notice, that glass could find itself on the floor, shattered, in a heap of itself.

But of course it hasn’t - not yet at least. But surely it will, someday. Perhaps it will slip out of my hand. Perhaps it will be knocked off a counter in a moment of carelessness. Or perhaps it will be left in some cabinet, unloved and forgotten, until one day it is discarded. But what is certain is that this glass exists as a whole for only the briefest of moments. It will be a pile of shards and silicate dust, and later still it will cease to be even that. It will, as all things do, spend a far longer time not being a glass, or shards, or anything for that matter.

It isn’t a question about whether that glass exists at this moment, because that is clear. The glass has heft, weight, it has gravity and in my hand I can feel that self-evident truth, that proud declaration of existence. It is that the existence of this glass is the exception. It is that these particular molecules arranged in that particular manner will only remain that way for so long. Fate, entropy, whatever you believe - there are forces conspiring to unmake that glass and every molecule within it.

Those molecules know nothing of what greater part of a whole they made up. All they remember - if they remember anything, at all - is that one day they were crystalline structure, then they became an amorphous solid, and then again crystalline. Perhaps they too remember the binding, fiery moment that brought them into molten compliance, and the incessant howling of the wind that unbound them. But what does a molecule know of a glass, of being beloved, cherished, or even holding liquid? What does sand know of being shattered, swept away, and loved no more.

We may feel the briefest of pangs of sentiment, the tiniest tugs of remorse. We mourn, even in the smallest way, the loss of our possessions that gave us not even the briefest bit of pause just a moment before. But why don’t we mourn the grains of sand that are fired, made white-hot before being pressed, pulled, and cooled to hold the shape of the glass? Why is it anything different? For that glass to exist that pile of sand must cease to be; and yet one passes without any sentiment while the other we lament, however briefly.

---

What difference does it make then, of the composition of the vessel, of what it may hold? It matters not if the container is a glass, holding water or a body holding a conscious mind. In either case, first there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be.

Our bodies feel the pressures of unmaking even more violently. Not only are there a host of external forces malevolently aimed at us, all manners of physical and chemical agents eager to refute the nature of our existence, but our bodies themselves participate in their own undoing. Every day we lose so much of ourselves, our cells, our fluids, our thoughts, that if we weren’t engaged in an all-out race to replenish them, we would quickly wither on the vine. And even with all this starting and ending, this equilibrated making and unmaking, what makes up us knows nothing about its greater whole.

What exactly do our neurons know of our greater whole? When we are gone, in that brief instant between the end of life and the cease of function, will they reflect upon the memories they maintained, on the beautiful sensations they produced? Or will they remember nothing but the glorious ecstasy of every action potential they produced, that beautiful loop of stimulation, excitation, and electrical convulsion.

---

Too much fuss is made about the end of things. We note the passing of all manner of persons, or places, or objects, or ideas. We obsess over the absence of what belonged to us, of what was in our lives. We treat the end of things as if it were somehow the unfortunate exception, coming at the wrong time. But that’s precisely the reverse of reality. Absence is the constancy, it is what is inevitable, it is the rule that all things must obey. We treat the loss of something as if it were anything other than inevitable.

It is the presence of things, the connections we make with one another, that are the inconceivably uncommon. The odds of the two of us, me and you, having any sort of connection are incalculably small. We must fight tooth and nail against space and time, against physics and chemistry and biology, against all manners of entropy to exist, together, in this moment. Every fundamental law is working against our very own existence, let alone our shared connection.

And yet exist we do, connected we are. And that is truly remarkable. In a brief moment, something that by all odds could never have been suddenly becomes. Every moment thereafter that connection still exists should be a reminder that what is right here in front of us is incredible for even being.

Remember that in all that is between you and me, first there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be. But not now. And now, right now, is all we have.