And now we\u2019re on to the third and final vomit of the day. It\u2019s 1210am on a Sunday morning. And I have to admit this feels good. It feels good to get something out of the way. I could make this my life\u2019s mission \u2013 to do things early and get them out of the way. Because I never did that when I was a child. I always chose the dark playground first. Which you can never fully enjoy either because you know that you have work in the back of your mind. And I always told myself, \u201cBut there will always be more work!\u201d And it\u2019s true. I\u2019ve written 2 vomits, and I\u2019m about to write a 3rd, and there will still be 339 word vomits left to write after I\u2019m done with this. And yet. And yet I\u2019m already starting to feel a little better inside. I\u2019m starting to feel \u201chey I can do this\u201d, \u201chey I\u2019m a good person for looking out for myself and my goals\u201d. I don\u2019t yet deserve to slack off for the rest of the day \u2013 after this I think I\u2019m going to hit the gym to , and then I\u2019m going to get started on some real work. <\/p>\n
The point that I want to internalise is this \u2013 you don\u2019t need to get everything done in order to feel good about yourself. You just need to have done enough for the day. And your subconscious does seem to generally be smart enough to know what is \u2018enough for the day\u2019. You can reevaluate and modify your idea about what is \u2018enough\u2019 later on, but in the interim, you do physically, in your body, know the difference between a day well spent and a day not. And it\u2019s really only about 4 hours of work, I believe. But those 4 hours have to be focused, un-distracted, applied hard and heavy towards the things that matter. <\/p>\n
This is still counter-intuitive to me despite me reflecting on it over and over again. I started writing my first vomit today at 1130 am. It\u2019s now 1215am. It\u2019s been 45 minutes. So it seems I\u2019m averaging about 20 minutes per vomit. That means I\u2019m committing myself to an hour a day. Is that a big commitment? It seems reasonable, considering the amount of time I usually spend dicking around on the internet everyday \u2013 that\u2019s probably about 2 hours a day at least. A bunch of it is spent on commutes, which seems reasonable, but that time could really be spent reading. I know that reading books is kind of energising, and reading social media is kind of exhausting. So I think I should really change my behaviour on that front. Now that\u2019s a 4th principle waiting to happen. What are the principles again?<\/p>\n
* Publish 3 word vomits every day to demonstrate your commitment to yourself as a serious writer
\n* Publish these first thing in the morning so you aren\u2019t worried about them for the rest of the day, and so you can sleep early
\n* Sleep early because being cognitively alert is great, and early mornings rule (good for writing!)<\/p>\n
The 4th one would be \u2013 when you\u2019re commuting, make sure you\u2019re either reading or writing. In an \u2018extreme\u2019 case, if I write 3 word vomits in the morning, then write 1 on the way to work and 1 on the way home, that\u2019s 5 word vomits per weekday. That\u2019s maybe a bit much. I don\u2019t know. Let\u2019s stick to 3 for now and keep it going for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I also want to think about my reading habits. I have like a hundred books in my study \u2013 probably more. Almost definitely more. And I want to read almost all of them. This reading is not happening. So what is going on here? Do I want to read, or do I just want to want to read? Well I picked up a couple of books a couple of days ago with the intent of getting rid of them, and before I got rid of them I felt that it was only fair to just riff through them a little \u2013 and in the process of that riffing I found them fascinating and I really wanted to read them all the way through. (Letters to Thinkers, and the Letters of Vincent Van Gogh \u2013 both books that I thought I\u2019d be quite comfortable getting rid of). <\/p>\n
If I were really forced to get rid of them, I would, but otherwise I suppose I like having them around as some sort of indefinite option. \u201cIf I ever feel like reading Van Gogh\u2019s letters\u2026\u201d \u2013 but that feeling has not come to me randomly since I got the book,w probably about 5 or 6 years ago. Why? Because I do not make time to read. It\u2019s funny. If I go to the library, I\u2019m quite likely to pick up a whole bunch of books and then try to start reading all of them at once \u2013 and ultimately be foiled because there simply isn\u2019t enough time. At some point I racked up a massive library fine (well massive for when I was a teenager \u2013 about $30. I paid it since) and I could no longer borrow new books. And even now the idea of going to a library to borrow books feels a bit indulgent or silly, knowing that I have so many books at home. <\/p>\n
But I used to have books at home AND library books, and the great thing about library books were the deadlines \u2013 you\u2019d have to return them or pay a fine. So there was an urgency involved with library books. Books you own feel different. They\u2019re old souls that you can get comfortable with over years and years. But I haven\u2019t accumulated the books in my home library through slow and careful consideration. I bought a ton of them at a library book sale for $2 each, and other similar events. There\u2019s a place near my parents\u2019 where people simply leave old books for others to take. I\u2019ve taken a bunch. I used to almost always take something overtime I visited, and it was one of the things I looked forward to when visiting.<\/p>\n
I guess I\u2019m starting to get a glimpse of what my life is like without social media and constant internet urgency. I do miss a life of reading books. There\u2019s sort of depth that you lose yourself into when reading books that isn\u2019t quite the same when you\u2019re opening 20 tabs in chrome or swiping on your phone. There\u2019s something about that physical action of sitting with a book that I really enjoyed. And I\u2019m going to make more time for it. Should I make time for it today? Well \u2013 since I\u2019ve already written my 3 word vomits for the morning in the morning, I suppose I could read in bed tonight before going to sleep. That sounds like a wonderful plan.<\/p>\n
* write 3 word vomits first thing in the morning
\n* sleep early
\n* read a book before sleeping<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s keep this simple for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And now we\u2019re on to the third and final vomit of the day. It\u2019s 1210am on a Sunday morning. And I have to admit this feels good. It feels good to get something out of the way. I could make this my life\u2019s mission \u2013 to do things early and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-10493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-reading"],"yoast_head":"\n