Writing a Better Story

So, it is 2016.

For some time, I have been pondering writing a "New Year's post" or something deep and meaningful to mark the passage into a new year.

It seems trite. Contrived. So I didn't.

Last year-- which was, in most ways, very trying and challenging-- Sarah and I started talking about 2016 being "The Year We Become Better Writers." It was her idea, and we sort of adopted it. From time to time, we would use that saying interchangeably with "2016 is the Year We Write a Better Story."

How? Better than what?

The self-development and enlightenment business-- and even pop culture, these days-- uses a lot phrases like "we create our own reality."

Which-- from where I am sitting-- amounts to little more than a dressed up version of "choices have consequences" or "you reap what you sow."

I look around me in this world, and it seems to so often live by a paradigm of people either wanting to reap things they never sowed... or people who want to reap before they have sowed. We are really not very good "farmers" in our own lives, anymore... maybe our capitalist consumer society has done too good a job of teaching people to "party and enjoy NOW" and "do the work and pay later." I see this all the time, on forums and in groups of even "evolved" people.

Maybe my expectations are unrealistic; perhaps because I happen to be married to one of the few truly conscious people I have ever met...

But that's really a sidetrack... and not related to "Writing A Better Story," except (perhaps) as a cautionary statement about staying mindful of the intentions of the world around you.

Which brings me back to the whole Consciousness and Mindfulness business.

In order to write a Better Story for our lives, you have to know what that looks like. Simply saying "a better story" is little more than saying "I want to make more money next year!" At the end, you made $28,010 instead of $27,995 for the year... and voila, "goal accomplished," but was that actually what you wanted?

It's difficult to Write A Better Story without taking time to identify precisely what you want that story to be.

At least, if you don't, you expose yourself to the very likely possibility that your "story" isn't actually what you had in mind. Choices have consequences.

And you have to know what you truly like, and don't like... and what you're realistically willing-- and able-- to do to get from point A to point B.

Some would say "Yeah, but I have a pretty clear sense of what it would feel like, at the end!"

Whereas that may be true, there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes between "here" and "at the end." And you can't just ignore it.

"Yeah, but a benevolent Universe (or "God" or "The Force" or whatever) should know what makes me happy!"

In my 50-some years on this planet, I have never quite figured out what to do with such assertions... but they always have the feel-- to me-- of being a way of "passing off" accountability for our choices and actions to "something else," rather than being accountable for the fact that our action A results in outcome B.

Of course, I can only know what it's like to live in my shoes.

Some would say "you have to have faith!"

Agreed...

But tossing a handful of random seeds on a patch of dirt and then becoming all butt-hurt because they don't turn into the field of sunflowers you wanted... and then blaming "God" or "The Universe" for not giving you what you wanted... makes absolutely no sense to me.

Perhaps this all sounds very "Common Sense 101," but I find it remarkable how many expect "something" to come from "almost nothing," or from "something else."

So in order to Write a Better Story, we not only have to know what the story truly IS, we have to be willing to sit down and personally write all the chapters that make up that story. Could someone/something else write the story for us? Sure... but then we must live with the consequence that it might no longer be the story we wanted.

We have to do the work.

Consciousness and Mindfulness is a LOT of work! And maybe part of the reason it often seems like we don't get what we want (or hope for) is precisely that we "go to sleep" and allow external factors to not only disrupt our true story, but actually write the story for us.

And it just doesn't turn out well.

So, the Better Story for 2016 remains "under production," because first there must be a clearly defined plot. And then, there is lots and lots of writing to be done...

Dear Service Provider...

Dear Service Provider,

Thank you for your recent statement showing that my account with you is, once again, past due.

I noticed the small "please let us know if there is anything we can do to assist you" appended below your demand for payment.

Unfortunately, the only way you can "assist" me is by re-pricing your service at a level that allows me to derive a benefit that's in proportion to its cost. 

The simple fact is that I can't afford your services-- ostensibly designed to "help me make a living"-- because their cost actually contributes to preventing me from being able to "make a living." It makes no financial sense to pay $299 a year for a service that adds-- to the degree it is trackable-- $100 a year to my bottom line. If I am lucky. Your assertions that your service makes me "cooler" than my peers remains meaningless until you can talk Safeway into accepting "cool" in exchange for groceries.

I'm am not impressed by your advice that if I only "invested another $500 in services A, B and C to customize our program" my results would improve. I am not impressed, in general, with service providers whose primary selling point consist of nebulous promises of the "possibility" of better results, sometime in the "future," which may be 17 years away.

But what really does not impress me is the subtle subtext that you get to "charge whatever you want" for your services because you consider yourself to be "the only serious contender" in your market niche. 

I am taking the time to write this letter, because I want you to know that I no longer have any interest in doing business with a company whose fundamental strategy for establishing their pricing is "because we can get away with it." 

Sincerely,
Me, your customer no more.

----------------------------

The above, of course, is a fictitious letter.

However, it reflects a common "issue" in our world, especially here in the US where capitalism and greed get to run rampant... namely that lots of companies, individuals, organizations and other entities try to get away with (and often succeed in) charging large sums of money for something that amounts to little more than "air."

Why do they "get away with it?" Because we're often "too busy" to be informed and "too distracted" to seriously consider why we perceive ourselves to be afraid of "not having" aforesaid services or products in our lives. Or we believe in the "Big Bugaboo" we've been sold, called "We have no CHOICE."

They "get away with it" because we have persuaded ourselves that we "need" (metaphorically speaking) that 2nd 5-terabyte hard drive, even though our existing 5-terabyte hard drive is only 8% used and will still have empty space in 2050. We also suffer from a sort of "selective cognitive blindness" that prevents us from grasping that we will probably be DEAD, in 2050.

In other words, we keep investing in "more" of "something" we already have plenty of, because we fear we don't have "enough." We have a multitude of reasons for doing so, surprisingly many of which revolve around some variation of the core thought "But what will people THINK?"

Of course, there is more to it than that... but it's really time for people to WAKE UP and evaluate their choices, and to start doing things for reasons other than "it sounded good."

Staying Conscious with Millions and Millions of Words

I was sitting here, earlier this morning, contemplating "writing."

More specifically, I was contemplating the fact that I have been writing "actively" since age 13 yet have very little to show for the millions of words I have churned out, over the years.

Maybe that's just the way of the world-- we get in the habit of "going about our business" without staying actively aware of having any specific purpose in doing so.

Because "I'm into that sort of stuff" I did some quick calculations. Going by what I have written in my personal journals, and then on blogs, forums and web sites, and then articles, and not missing years of writing for work-- from being a technical writer to eBay descriptions-- and then the eternal string of email over the past 20 or so years; a conservative estimate would be that I write about 2500 words a day, in some form of writing. String that out across 40 years... and you end up with some 36.5 million words... at least half of which were written by hand.

For comparison's sake, let's consider two massive "bricks" of literature that most people are familiar with (or abhor), to some degree: Tolstoy's "War and Peace" (587,000 words) and Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" (645,000 words). So... I've written "War and Peace" 62 times... If that's too esoteric for you, the 66 books of the King James Bible (Old + New Testaments) have an estimated 788,000 words, so I have written the Bible 46 times... in 40 years.

Of course, I haven't. I'm just playing around with statistics.

To someone who struggles to peck out a 100-word email to their mother, this probably sounds like "evil wizardry." Besides, why would anyone want to? Moreover, why would anyone want to write so much and not turn it into some form of "measurable output," like a Stephen King or Isaac Asimov?

I guess one of the most common responses writers give when asked "why" they write is because they "feel compelled." For me, it has mostly been a case of being able to "think better" in writing than I do in my head, and that I usually "express myself" better in writing than I do by speaking.

On any given day, I probably write more words than I speak. I expect this is because writing is a "slow" way of expressing yourself, and I have a "slow" brain, thanks to something scientifically described as "Sluggish Cognitive Tempo." I just think I have a "slow brain," not a "condition," but what the hay... science likes to put a "name tag" on everything.

But I digress...

What led me to thinking about all this is the fact that I so often give lip service to the idea that "I don't have time to write." Which, of course, is patent nonsense given what I have just outlined above.

So why do I feel like I "don't have time to write?"

This is where we start poking at the essence of the human condition-- and it applies to everything, not just writing:

Being Present and Mindful and Conscious.

What I claim to "not have time to" do is really a statement about feeling like I don't have the energy or inclination to put forth enough effort to write with Presence and Purpose... because that calls for me to be "engaged" rather than allowing me to "zone out." And-- to use some of those 21st century buzzwords-- "Staying Awake" and "Being Present" and "Consciousness" all are a lot of WORK. "Sleeping" is infinitely easier... and that's why we can look at the world and feel like "everyone is sleepwalking through life."

In my case, "writing" is merely a metaphor wrapped around the context of my lament of "not having time."

I can punch out 1000 words of random thoughts in 20 minutes, but to write a "Meaningful and Purposeful piece of prose" (or an article) of the same length takes me hours of concentration. Which reveals that my "real" excuse below the words is that (a) "it's too much work" and (b) "I don't get compensated for it," the latter always being a major consideration when your financial life perpetually hangs by a thread.

So what are the lessons-- the "takeaway"-- from this?

Seems to me that anytime we feel like we "don't have time" to take on some project we really actually want to take on... could be writing, painting, creating a garden, building a sun room, organizing a baseball card collection... what we're really facing is our fear of the "discomfort" of awakening from our comfortable "slumber" to become "active agents" in our own lives; to become "engaged" in what we're doing, rather than just "skating by."

Modern society works against us, in many ways because it is filled with "sleeping pills," from television to junk food to "meaningless busy work" to gossip to Facebook to the relentless pressure to pursue more things rather than good things. The pursuit of "more" is particularly odious because it attempts to trap us on a treadmill where we stay in a state of constantly "flitting between things" without paying real attention to any of them... because "we just don't have TIME."

It is time... to evaluate how we really think about-- and use-- our time.