Well, I said I was going to do this...

Just thinking out loud.

Right now I'm learning that my biggest obstacles are those associated with having habits, routines, and procedures in place to... organize my activity.

The problem now IS activity. I'm inspired - big whooping doo. I have this itch to write - I'm sure you've all experienced it. But I can write it down and it gets me not a whit closer to where I want to be. Because it's just the... ramblings of a dilettante. At this point, it's not about writing.

It's about starting a career.

And to accomplish that, I need to first to get into a productive... not frame of mind - the problem is not mental. It's, slightly, mental, but it's mostly pragmatic....

Incidentally one of the things that amazes me right now is the benefit of having an object of focus. Right now, I know exactly what I am trying to accomplish and where I am trying to go. As a result, I have standard by which I can measure my actions... a rule... and this makes me ABLE to focus in the first place.

I feel as if I hae a laser-like insistence on this particular thing...

Everything in subordination to it....

Most important action items in terms of encouraging my productivity: getting in contact with people who will inspire intellectual ferment (first and most notably the chair of the Business College at UAH); and setting up an action plan for pursuing writing as a continuous activity.

Right now, everything must be subordinated to the goal of getting me writing a lot and writing for purpose, and writing with the intent of possibly seeking publication (or at least dissemination) of what I write. I.e. becoming a freelancer.

We'll see what happens....

Meetings with Remarkable Men

Those of you not familiar with the work of G. I. Gurdjieff will no doubt fail to recognize the title of one of his most important books. While that is specifically intentional, it is not my purpose here to actually talk about Gurdjieff, in no small part because I’m not actually terribly familiar with his work. I’ve read exactly one book by his disciple, P. D. Ouspensky; that, combined with what biographical information I have regarding both men have convinced me that there is something there, if it is approached with an open mind and minimal preconceptions.

(I’m a firm believer that recommendations made by one person to another can only be taken as seriously as the product of the second person’s open-mindedness towards the subject at hand, and the respect that the recommendee accords to the recommendor. As such, the less I say about particular subjects, the better.)

The inspiration for today’s post is rather subjective and personal. To borrow a phrase from a dear friend, I have friends (including her) that are awesomely amazing and inspire me to interesting heights and ambitions. I had a conversation with one of them today. It was… flights of analytical abstraction on topics as diverse as society and economics and education and politics that was… good old-fashioned “intellectual conversation.” It reminded me of the heady days when I was an undergrad at Samford, ready and willing to take on the world. It put me to mind the kind of salon atmosphere that has always been my most productive source of intellectual ferment. It made me long for circumstances that are vastly different from the ones wherein I currently find myself. 

It also convinced me that… this obsession thing is… just exactly where it’s at.

Because, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel as if I’m a victim, a passenger, on tides and happenings beyond my capacity to appreciate or ability to control. I am aware of the specific forces at work and the operational principles of those forces, and more to the point, of how I ought to navigate them. And, most important of all, I have a specific destination in mind of where I want to go, where I want these currents to take me.

Right now, I want to concentrate on the endpoint, the final destination. This temptation must be resisted. As a firm believer in the pragmatic value of the “Line upon line, precept upon precept” perspective, I know that there is no surer way of hobbling myself and preventing myself from ever accomplishing my ultimate goals than to get a step or two or three ahead of myself and attempt to take on roles and responsibilities that I’m not yet ready to assume.

At the same time, it has probably never been more important to fix my endpoints firmly in mind. I KNOW what I want to accomplish, and some of the steps necessary to accomplish them. And I (quite frequently) have ideas of what I can be doing (practically!!!) to accomplish those goals.

Right now I need the following kinds of “social structures” the “scaffold” me into the course I want to ultimately pursue. First there will be those friends/acquaintances who can inspire the ultimate goals and share in the intellectual ferment of heady ideas and concepts. They’ll “keep me inspired” and encouraged, make me want to keep at it, endure the indignities of hard work. And then there will be those of my friends who, in the interest of aiding my success, will help me focus on the necessaries, the nitty-gritty, trudging details that are a requisite of any kind of success….

It all makes so much sense right now. It’s pretty obvious to me that, at the moment, I’m riding a manic high, but that’s no reason not to start laying some groundwork, start getting stuff done NOW that’s going to really matter in the long run. The paradoxical problem is that whenever I DO feel like accomplishing a LOT, my temperament runs toward the big picture stuff, towards the grand and glorious synthetic visions of the world that have nothing whatsoever to do with starting a writing career. Must avoid getting ahead of myself.

So, just a friendly FYI: I am likely to turn this blog in particular into a dumping ground for my practical ideas and to-do lists that, short of being written down and therefore concretized, will simply vanish into that particular hell where Good Intentions always seem to slip off to. I have a couple of guidebooks/self-help/pathway-to-success titles that I’m going to be following/instituting/realizing/pursuing/performing/executing. In the process of doing so there will be specific steps that I will need to accomplish, and I’ll probably be noting that here.

If my “thinking to myself” gets odious or onerous or some other adjective starting with ‘o’ and denoting some sort of negative reaction inspired by said thinking out loud, just let me know and I’ll alter my behavior accordingly. For now…

For RIGHT now, I’m going to list my next project, so that someone out there will know that it’s a project I know I *should* do and that I am therefore putting it out there for people to encourage me to actually do it. I’m going to write down, in actual, handwritten or typed text, the specific goals I have in mind. For the purposes of this exercise, I won’t bother being either terribly precise or specifically programmatic – I won’t bother laying out the exact steps that I’m going to take to get there, in other words. But I DO intend to start writing it down, as well as start writing down, in separate notebooks, both ideas (big picture concepts) and procedures (specific, practical blueprints).

Let’s get going, shall we?

Magnificent Obsession, Part 2

Nobody really understands the economy.

This isn’t exactly a statement that inspires much dissent.

The current meltdown in the financial markets is probably, probably a good thing for someone who’s interested in the line of work I want to tackle.

These are fine, fine times to be a metaphysicist of economics.

(Wouldn’t that just make me a Meta-economist?)

(Nah, that sounds like someone who studies economists.)

A friend of mine, recently, told me something that Scott Adams suggested. Interestingly enough, another friend of mine, long, long time ago, told me that Scott Adams was into the whole “affirmation” thing (yes, that was you) and lately, that stuff has started to make more and more sense.

It’s that obsession thing I keep talking about. For those of you who are not aware of the fact that I do “keep talking about” it only read my blog. Shame on you. Get to know me as a person, dagnabit.

Anyway, back to obsessing about obsessing:

There’s something I want to do. I want to be the premiere thinker on a specific aspect of economics in the world – specifically, on the metaphysics, the underlying background, the fundamental stuff of what the ecnomomy is and the rules under which they opereate. It is my belief – nay, my conviction – that the state of economic knowledge today is commesurate with that of medicine before the days of William Harvey. Just as the absence of any knowledge of knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology, I’m sure that bleeding a patient who had a fever seemed perfectly sensible. Likewise, without any true understanding of what the economy is about, economic policy is likely to be just as helpful.

As I said, these are fine, fine times to study Metanomics. Unfortunately for me, that is not (yet!) my job.

You see, I want it to be my job. But as of right now, however well-informed my ideas are,k however accurately they model reality, no one gives a damn about my thoughts on the subject. (Well, maybe not no one but certainly no one who, given the context, matters.) So, my current job is to make the job of studying the metaphysics of the economy my future job. But that, my friends, is a multi-step process.

And here are the steps:

Ultimately, I want to be recognized as the foremost authority on Metaeconomics.

Before that I need to be recognized as an authority in economics.

That I will achieve by being a significant writer on the economy and economic topics.

But first I need to become a writer.

However, as I indicated earlier, I’m not exactly self-motivated material. To become a writer I must first REALLY, REALLY WANT to be a writer.

And that, my friends, is what my current job is: becoming obsessed with being a writer.

Magnificent Obsession

One of these days, I’m going to get myself into trouble…

I recently decided it was in my best interests to become a writer.

Now, coming to this decision was at once suddenly unexpected, and painstakingly obvious. A friend mentioned freelancing off-hand in a conversation. I was at the bookstore, and looking for a book. The title Six Figure Freelancing appeared before me. Voila!

There’s just one small problem…

I am, without a doubt, one of the least qualified individuals ever conceptualized (I would have said “conceived” except that that’s not what I meant) to be what effectively amounts to a self-employed artisan. What, me, actually, going out there and banging down doors and convincing them to pay me good money to craft words for their pleasure? Right.

The problem isn’t that I’m not good at it (no comments from the Peanut Gallery, thank you: you’re reading my blog.) It’s not that I don’t have something to say. It’s not that if it gets written, it won’t be worth reading. It’s that I have no sense of organization, self-discipline, commitment, planning, or prioritization.

In other words, I don’t have any reasonable skill whatsoever at elements that are necessary in the make-it-or-break-it, dog-eat-dog, insert-generic-expression-for-cutthroat-competition-here world of independent contractor.

What I am is very, very, VERY smart.

(Maybe only very, very smart.)

It’s not looking-so-good for me.

(Philosophical in-joke regarding predication. Pay it no mind.)

My situation, as I explained it to a friend of mine (I have those, every once in a while) is that of having a very, very, VERY powerful punching arm (maybe only a very…) and wanting, therefore, to go into boxing.

While being completely untrained in boxing. And, for good measure, also being completely out of shape.

It’s not to say it can’t be done. And it’s not to say having a powerful punching arm cannot be a perfectly fine asset to have as a boxer. It might even both a) compensate for weakness in other areas and b) help one to excel in general in the sport. But before you can even bother to get into the ring, you had minimally got to lose 20 pounds and get some wind. To say nothing of learning to spar….

Which leads me to obsession.

Look, I know I’ve obsessive tendencies. (If you’re reading this, you probably know me well enough to confirm it.) So I’m thinking if this might not be a case of one problem being the solution to another problem. Would be kind of handy to have: an obsession for __________ that impelled me to excellence in the field of __________ to such a degree that I became a hard-working, productive writer in order to become a well-renowned expert in said field.

Understanding the underlying metaphysics of economic systems. Philosophy of Economics.

This is the plan I have in mind for my life.

Wish me luck - I'm gonna need it.