It’s all Made up and Nothing is Real
It may not look like it, but this blog is about my experience in taking my Pressooks chapter outline from ‘pitch’ to written draft.
I could feel it mounting all day, and then inevitably it all came to a head in the form of a mental melt down. It was a typical halt and catch fire reboot. Too many things going on and too many competing anxieties to keep it all together.
I went up to the cabin to spend a few days trying to focus on writing with visions of me as Hunter in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), but in all the noise and rush, I left my laptop on the corner of my desk at home. Oh, I have the charger and all the accessories, but computers tend to work better with the actual computer part. Poof, this was all I needed to write-off the whole night. Over the years, I have developed a cerebral safety valve which triggers just before a catastrophic failure occurs. This is an improvement on my teenage coping process involving several days of sleepless Pink Floyd The Wall sessions filled with utter despair.
One of the downfalls of being an atheist and an anarchist, (there are many) is that I have no institution to turn to for solace. One of the key functions of social constructs like religion and countries is to provide simple, digestible narratives that bring disparaged individual together in the name of a higher purpose. In times of trouble, I am led to believe that some people can find comfort in mythology or patriotism. As sense of greater purpose supersedes the localized pain and disperses it across a web of predetermined solutions. I, unfortunately, am too aware that these processes are entirely made up, as is everything, so there is nothing left for me to hang my hat on.
In the morning, the Facebook algorithms decided that Joel from 2018 had a message for the Joel from 2021 and popped up a memory I posted containing this quote:
“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make a heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew. To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son”
by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling, written circa 1895
What did I take from this? Solitude. It likely comes from my experiences with extreme conditions where the goal is to reduce your wants and needs to the absolute minimum, sever all ties to material things, and focus on the fundamental requirements of life such as air and water. More than a few times, I have been in survival situations (training and real-life) where absence of food, warmth, comfort, and certainty of the future were critical factors. Reduced to literally nothing, no God, no greater social purpose, no other requirements than to meet the absolute minimal biological needs of the human body, in this space there is joy; there is peace.
Sometimes we unwittingly drink our own Kool-aid. By remembering that all the pressure and stress is made up and self-imposed, we can choose to walk away from it all and re-decide what matters and what we are choosing to do with our precious resources of time and energy.
I guess I should go back to working on my chapter. I acknowledge that, though it is worthy exercise that I am choosing to participate in, I will not trade it for my quality of life.
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
― Ferris Bueller
Link to chapter draft (Read-only):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JlZBF3LbhtKpiyNyeEILgqsEHUfyrKsXBLpuS0AgJe0/edit?usp=sharing