I took three vacation days this week. I don’t remember why I did that, but the timing was perfect because it was either take some time off or quit my job in spectacularly definitive fashion. I’m talking double-birds over the shoulder as I kick my way through an emergency exit door kind of good timing.
Naturally, on Day 1 of my Conspicuously Scheduled Vacation (CSV), I put all the things on the whiteboard that needed to get done. It was a comprehensive list.
I did almost none of them. I did manage to work on the budget to finally get a clear picture of how screwed I am (the answer is: “well and truly,”) but I mostly just binge-watched “The Pacific”—HBO’s complementary series to Band of Brothers. I knew better than to get into a series while I have so much work on my plate, but evidently I woke up and chose insanity.
Why?
THAT was a good question and, I hope, has a good answer.
On Day 1 of CSV I looked into the abyss, although I had no intention of doing so. I was energized, excited, and ready to GRIND. But then…abyss.
That’s how you know you’re getting a message from above, or, if you’re the type who always orders the sampler platter, “the Universe:” the message takes you completely by surprise. Something like a piano falling out the 15th floor window somehow and hitting YOU, of all people, because you decided not to toast your bagel after all, making you just about a minute earlier than usual, and just in time for destiny.
Yeah, something like that.
I’d planned everything out, all these tasks. All these loose ends and broken windows to fix. As always, I presumed I’d get to them after an aggressive publishing schedule. I had certain ideas about the direction of this thing despite—or because of—certain setbacks.
The blank page slayed me before 10:00 AM on CSV:1. It was as though I had nothing left in the tank. I mean, it was a void of creativity and ambition so complete it would have made the Buddha take notes.
I have a men’s group on Tuesdays. It’s all online and consists mostly of guys based in Europe. This Tuesday was our quarterly goal conversation. It was time to share what we were going to do in certain categories in the coming quarter. Mine? “I got nothing, guys.”
I think I’ve illustrated the point. That’s 400 words saying, “I got nuthin’.”
A lot of this creative constipation comes down to this damn thing. If you’ve read it since the beginning, June of 2022 or so, you know why and how I started it. For the time-being, I can’t really talk about those reasons anymore, but suffice it to say that the purpose of it has been morphing because I am morphing.
I am well and truly morphed.
When I started this publication, my intention was to untangle the things that led to some pretty significant implosions in my life. Operating under the principle “extreme ownership,” where not everything was my fault, but was certainly my responsibility, I thought I’d work it out the only way I knew to be effective—by writing it out. If it helped someone along the way, great. Maybe there would be some dopamine hits in it.
I also wanted to prove to myself that I could consistently produce copy and stick to a grand project even if I couldn’t possibly know the final outcome.
I’ve had mixed success on that. As it happens, when you set out with firm intention to do a hard thing, things get hard.
I got tired of being the subject of every newsletter. It was embarrassing. Self-serving. Self-referential. There are thousands of writers on Substack alone whose most interesting subject seems to be themselves. I read their work and, while appreciating a certain kind of bravery, still think, “Ew.”
I note with guilt, avarice, covetousness that the most successful writers have a subject. They have a BEAT! Something useful or insightful they share with others, and it helps or enriches their readers’ lives. Mirabile dictu!
Me? Here’s my schtick: “Here’s another somewhat amusing story where I did a dumb thing. And to punch it up a bit, here’s a life lesson that’s pretty much obvious to anyone who’s capable of learning that a stove is hot the first time.”
That was unsustainable.
So I got a mission. It was weird.
I adopted another mission. It was wrong.
I identified another mission. It made me feel dirty and uncomfortable which, let’s be honest here, is usually also pretty fun, but that too was unsustainable.
Well, hell. What now?
Well, that’s the interesting part…
Life at the monastery has, about half the time, felt more like a prison than a hospital. Or maybe a prison hospital, because it seems like I’m not getting out of here until I get better.
What does “better” mean? Welll… that’s a tough one to define. Which is to say, “a couple thousand more words than I’m willing to inflict upon my readers when I’m already up against my arbitrary and consistently unrealistic word count.” So, let’s just say it means something very specific to me.
Anyway…despite the prison feel of things, it’s been extremely clarifying. It brings to mind Chapter 3 of Dan Simmons’ peerless novel, “Hyperion.”
Brief background about the book: Six strangers take a pilgrimage to a planet called Hyperion. There, they will petition the Shrike, a nightmarish creature made of hundreds of blades (think, GOT’s Iron Throne, but ambulatory), for one wish. The pilgrimage takes some time, so they decide to tell each other their stories so as to help their individual cases.
“The Poet’s Tale” is Chapter 3.
Martin Silenus’ story begins when he was a papered child. He was educated by the best tutors on the planet (Earth, that is). He discovers that he’s a “poet,” although in the beginning he’s a pretentious dilletente who left his “doggerel” around the mansion for people to find.
However, Earth is dying—violently—and he’s shipped off to another planet at sub-light speed, which means he spends a hundred years or so in cryogenic fugue. He survives the trip, but at the cost of 99.99% of his vocabulary.
I’ll quote a bit of the section here just because I love it, minus the decidedly un-family-friendly words:
For the record, here [was] my entire vocabulary of manageable words: [nope], [nope], [nope], [no way], [never], [no freaking way], [nope], peepee, and poopoo. A quick analysis will show some redundancy here. I had at my disposal eight nouns, which stood for six things; five of the eight nouns could double as verbs. I retained one indisputable noun and a single adjective which also could be used as a verb or expletive. My new language universe was comprised of four monosyllables, three compound words, and two baby-talk repetitions. My arena of literal expression offered four avenues to the topic of elimination, two references to human anatomy, one request for divine imprecation, one standard description of or request for coitus, and a coital variation which was no longer an option for me since my mother was deceased.
He has to learn to rewire his brain just to be able to communicate with the denizens of the badly named mud planet, “Heaven’s Gate.” Given that they were mostly mud harvesters, shakedown artists and “crib doxies,” his sub-literate vocabulary served him just fine for awhile.
And so he he begins rebuilding his vocabulary and rewiring his mind, not by memorizing verse or meditation, but through back-breaking, ball-busting labor that kills more men than anything else.
In this context, Silenus recovers his powers of speech. More than that, he learns how to write poetry—real poetry—for the first time in his life. He attributes it to his brutal conditions:
“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.”
This has been my monastery experience. Compared to the fictional world of Heaven’s Gate, the monastery has been a cake walk. But…it’s been challenging, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.
That, I believe, is the point.
Am I trying to say I’ve stumbled into some sort of satori? Haha. No. The path ahead is as unclear as always. All I can say is this: I’m burned out beyond the hope of orchestrating any events. I’m burned out on all the ideologies—the restoration of authentic masculinity, positive vibes, even our Orthodox Christian ideology. The act of planning, strategizing, taking action is all too much to bear anymore. I don’t mean it in a “it’s too hard” sense of things, and it’s not despair. It’s just…distracting.
Nothing seems right anymore.
Except one thing: hitting the road without so much as a pouch with a crust of bread inside. Whatever I need can be found somewhere on the road ahead.
I hope. Who knows? This could be some kind of fugue event and I’m going to look really stupid living in a truck that breaks down on the side of some Arizona road in a couple of months. (No, mom, I’m not moving to Arizona).
I definitely don’t know what it means for this blog/newsletter/stream-of-consciousness other than this: I want it to be fun again. This has been a slog lately. Some of you have found it useful or at least amusing. Sometimes it’s only been the knowledge that I have about 200 subscribers keeping me going, especially those of you who have so graciously supported the effort with a paid subscription.
So, I’m going to keep at it and hopefully have some fun.
Onward…
As much as I like to write, there are so many times when life is calling with other things. However, I've vowed to be fairly consistent with it, especially having a handful of paid subscribers. Oh, how even the enjoyable things rely on discipline to move us to the next level!