The theme is: "Avoid thinking in absolutes."
The moral is: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
The corollary to the moral is: "With the right equipment, it can be one hell of a toboggan ride."
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The reason for this rather Vonnegut-esque beginning is to give me some focus, because I don't
know how to start. So, here's the idea:
The theme is what I want to be thinking about as I write; it's the idea that seems most pervasive when I look at what's wrong with me. I want my writing to reflect that. In other words, I don't want to get done writing 800 different posts only to realize I spent half the time making bad jokes about psychotherapy and the other half bitching about why Verizon is a shitty, shitty, SHITTY phone company.
The moral, as everybody knows,
comes at the end, and is sort of like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. I don't want you to be disappointed when you get
there, so I'm letting you know now ahead of time with minimal up-front investment. GET OUT NOW WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD.
The corollary is the other 98% of the content. At least, that's the theory. In practice, who knows. I'm new at this. Let's forget about that part for now, and get back to the theme.
"Avoid thinking in absolutes."
It's pretty boring and lifeless, I know. Even as a theme for some retard's retarded web log about his retarded life. You'd think I could dress it up a bit, add some pizazz or a big word in there or something...come on.
I realize this. Believe me, It's
depressing in itself when you realize a major part of your
fuckedupedness is something so goddamned simple. You imagine yourself
to be all complex and mysterious, so in a strange way you want all the
answers to be complex too. It is like being given a riddle that you
spend a tremendous amount of energy on solving, only to find out it was
just a trick question. Ha! That was funny, you really got me there!
No, that's not what I want. I'm looking for something more like...climbing a steep mountain to find the Swami at the very top, and when I get there I'll ask him something like, "what is the true meaning of existence?" and his answer will be something so profound -- so mind-bogglingly deep -- that it will instantly change my whole perception about life and shit, and I become at total peace with the universe.
See this is the exact type of thinking I should avoid. Not. Helpful.
Swami or no, I still spend a lot of energy looking for complicated answers to my problems, and I get more depressed when I find only simple ones. You know what I mean, things like "exercise more" or "set realistic goals for yourself." Let me tell you how depressing it is to go see a therapist, telling them all your dumb problems and how everything is so terrible and awful and unsolvable, and then they say to you, "How much do you exercise? You look like you need more." GEE, THANKS, HERE'S YOUR $200, THAT WAS WORTH IT.
So finding only simple solutions and being dissatisfied with those, I've tried extremely hard over the past few weeks to make things more complicated than they really are. I've set harsh directives about how I'm going to change my life, and set for myself exacting, complex specifications of what I'm capable of doing and what I'm not. I've said things like, "I NEED TO SIMPLIFY MY LIFE." Which is true enough, but then I go too far. "WHAT THIS LIFE SIMPLIFICATION IDEA CALLS FOR IS A 500-POINT PROJECT PLAN FOR THE INITIAL PHASE WITH A 4-6 MONTH IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE."
The result of that work has been an even deeper push into depression and full-bore despair.
Then, just a few days ago and completely coincidentally, I found that my favorite writing tutorial
is publicly available on-line. One doesn't usually find help with one's
life problems in a book about the written word, but flipping through
it I came across this well-known passage and it was kinda one of those moments where you go, "Oh yeah, this thing. I know this. It is a good thing to do."
Omit Needles Words.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a
drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short,
or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but
that every word tell.
-- William Oliver Strunk Jr, The Elements Of Style, 1918
Wow,
did old Strunk ever say a mouthful there. If you were to apply this notion
to everything on the Internet, you'd probably have juuust about enough
left over for your book report on "BUGS THAT CAN'T FLY (AND ALSO SOME BOOB PICTURES)."
So, my new theory is to use this tool I call "Strunk's Razor" not just (hopefully) in my writing, but in my thinking process as well. What I need right now isn't a 500-point plan with bar graphs and milestones. I need a maxim -- something with "no unnecessary parts" and that "every word tells."
I need something so that when I start viewing the world in that "depressed boojit" way -- when I'm hating everything on the planet and everybody on it, and I feel like I'm the biggest fucking hateful useless bastard piece of shit ever created -- that's when I need something simple. Simple enough just remind myself where I'm going, what I'm doing, and how I got here.
"Avoid thinking in absolutes."
That is the theme for me, for right now, for how I want to write these pages, and for how I want to start viewing the world.
It's a start.
