Unquiet Desperation

Newton’s first law states: “A body continues to maintain its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force.”

The same can be said for people. We try to stay in the comfortable, safe spot, and anything that seeks to move us from that position is viewed with suspicion.

And yet…we want to create. Stories, poetry, song, software…all manner of creative pursuits. We crave the thrill, the rush of being in the flow, swimming along with the current and seeing where it will take us.

We love it, but we fear its power.

Inspiration is an unbalanced force. It whisper, sings, shouts at us to move in a particular direction, write a certain thing down. And yet…we resist.

Why? Comfort? Fear? Guilt? All of the above?

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, sums it in a single word: Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever resolved on a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever felt a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Resistance is the shadow, the Dweller on the Threshold who challenges you to a duel. It will always be there, and the more you need to do something, the stronger the Shadow will be. Ironically, that’s a good thing…it shows you what you need to do the most. The more it scares you, the more you need to challenge it.

It doesn’t matter what you do…writing code, playing music, painting. The unbalanced force of Inspiration will give you the push you need, but you’re the one that needs to stand before Resistance, challenge it, and ultimately, cause it to yield before your might. It will mock you, taunt you, reason with you, and do anything it can to divert you.

DO THE WORK YOU ARE CALLED TO DO.

Push onward.

Charge!

Coming off of a month of almost no podcasts, RSS feeds, IM, and Twitter gives you an interesting perspective. This online world of messaging is loud. It’s like walking out of a quiet cabin and onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone is shouting for your attention. Twitter, popping up every other second.

Forget it. I’m done with that. It messes with my new-found serenity. The detox was far better for me than I ever could have hoped.

Within twenty-four hours of my detox, I felt like a weight has been lifted. It was no longer my job to keep in touch with everyone. I had a respite. This, I realize, is entirely my problem, but there is something powerful in giving yourself permission to drop off the map for a while. To allow for the fact that, yes, you’re going to miss some witty banter and clever repartee. It felt wonderful.

Within three days of shutting down all my messaging apps I noticed that my headaches went away. Completely. I think it’s probably because my eyes were focused for longer periods on one thing rather than flitting from window to window as messages came in real time.

Being available is highly overrated.

Within seven days of not reading three hundred blogs and listening to seventy podcasts, the words began to return to me. I started to write. Just sentences at first. Just an idea or two, a snippet of dialogue, then more. Not, the great novel is not in the works, but these essays are a start. I’ve rediscovering a voice I thought I had lost.

Within fifteen days of going without the writer in my head would not leave me alone. My inner voice will not let me sleep until I got down what it needed to say. Yes, in a weirdly psychotic way, I consider this progress.

Now, thirty days later after I began, I realize that I prefer this peace to the way I was living before. While the quality of my writing has not improved much, the content has gone from trivial things to deeper thoughts, from mere conversation to contemplation. I prefer this state of being, this place from which I can engage the world by own action, rather than by a Pavlovian reaction every time the email or twitter notification sounds.

Did I miss my friends, my tribe? Of course I did. I look forward to talking to them again. But it was interesting…when something important happened, I found out about it via email, or phone call. Anything that I missed was usually trivial. The important stuff will find you.

I think that’s the most important thing my info detox taught me. The important stuff will find you. Stepping away is good for the soul.

I should be packing. I’m leaving on a trip to Chesapeake, VA tomorrow night, and should really get things in order, but I’ve been meaning to sit down and write a post for a while now, and if you cannot put of packing to write, what can you put off? I ask you…

To say that things have been a little crazy would be an understatement. It’s funny, every time I take a job or attempt to simplify my life, things seem to get that much more complex. See…the issue has been this: when I was laid-off last June, I took on three clients with the intention of building my own consulting practice. Well…thirty days into it, I was offered a very nice position with [Optiem](http://www.optiem.com), and since the family needed to eat, I took the job. (I also love the folks at Optiem. I miss them a lot.) But then, of course, there were still the contracts with the three clients to work on. And [Podiobooks](http://www.podiobooks.com). And three podcasts. And, at some point, I wanted to see my family.

On top of that, the long workweeks on the computer gave me a nasty case of RSI ([Repetitive Strain Injury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury)), so unless I pulled back, I’d no longer have much of a career in programming. Thankfully, my clients were understanding about this, and gave me the space to work a little slower than I might have otherwise.

At long last, the contracts are finishing. I’ll miss the income, but the feeling of freedom that is coming with the handoff is wonderful. The fact that I can turn off the computer and walk away for a while is liberating. My last contract is up on June 30th. Once that is done, I’m not taking on any new work for a good long time. My wife will KILL me if I do.

No new programming work, that is. Heheheh. I got me some writing I want to do. I’m hoping to get to it this fall. I have two possible projects that I’d like to undertake. The first is a book on podcasting. Not a technical book, but a history of the medium. I know there are a great many stories out there. I’d like to record them for posterity.

I’m also considering doing a [Wild Cards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards)-style collaborative project. Each writer comes up with a super in a world that I’ll outline, and then each of them writes (and, perhaps, records) a chapter. The world is not going to be modern day. It’s going to be something rather different. The theory is this: Evolution is reactionary. Mutation is not a cause, it’s an aftereffect which allows a species to survive. What sort of world would it take for people to actually evolve super powers?

Sound interesting? Drop me a line if you want to partake in the fun.

The other goal for the summer is make more time to meet up with the gaming group at [Kris's](http://www.kjtoo.com) house. We got together last Tuesday and played a good came of Marvel Heroes, a fun (but terribly complicated) board game. There is talk of [Primetime Adventures](http://www.dog-eared-designs.com/games.html) next time. One can only hope.

Beyond that, work is going well, the family is healthy, and we’re coming up on vacation season. The kids are ready for summer; Cathy and I are ready to send them to summer camp. On a special note, I now have my wife completely hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My 22-month old son is also hooked. When given the choice between Buffy or the Wiggles last weekend, he chose Buffy. Now *that’s* my boy.

And no, the Unquiet Desperation podcast is not dead. it’s just waiting for the host to get off his ass and record it.

I should go pack now. The coffee is wearing off. G’night all.

Earlier this week, Howard V. Hendrix, vice president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, allows this to be posted to a Livejournal post:

I’m also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they’re just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they’re undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) — given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the “net time” they seemed to want at this point in the organization’s development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.

I could go into how wrongheaded and myopic this is, but Mike Stackpole (NYT Bestselling author, podcaster, and cool guy) just pinged me on Skype and let me know that he had already done so. While I personally think that “webscabs” are the most innovative and adventurous people I know, I think Mike’s comments are more salient, and come from a place of more experience in the industry. I recommend you listen if you’re at all interested in the future of book publishing.

Click here to hear Mike’s thoughts. (mp3)

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