The Big Sort
Priorities Activity 1: The Quick List
I’ve done this exercise before multiple times in the last five years. I don’t think anything has changed. They are Family, Finance, and Fiction. The last one is the reason I’m doing this exercise, because the first two overshadow everything, and more importantly, the second one subsumes the first one sometimes by becoming a “diamond problem”. Work has allowed me to make excuses for being neglectful, for lashing out, for chasing avoidant activities, for being miserable, for not being present, for shirking. It is a problem in that every person on the planet – in one way or another – must pursue it. It is another, in my privileged case, to choose to do relatively well at it. I’m not supposed to explain anything during this phase. But I have. But most important is that I am constantly butting up against it. It is NOT something I’m happy that I’m doing, it takes up a lot of energy, resources, and mental bandwidth, and there’s been mounting resentment towards it.
Let’s start from the beginning. Family – ensuring my three children get more opportunities in a more stable, secure environment than I had. My immigrant parents did a LOT for me, but we grew up poor. Blue collar lower middle class. Not poor-poor, but definitely shop only during sales, tons of coupons, and hand-me-downs. But fortunately, in the 80s during one of the biggest bull markets in history. Our fortunes never rose above the working class, but it gave me enough to leverage to the next level. I exploited my innate intelligence and boundless energy to get to the upper middle class. And now, I hope to get to actually financially independent, and ensure my children have more access, more privilege, more resources, a foundational security and environment to thrive, and hopefully, in turn, if they choose to have children, provide the next generation with the continuous upward mobility that’s afforded us.
All this requires sacrifice. Hence Finance as the second priority, that often, and throughout my history, supersedes Family in practice. I will openly admit to the periods of neglect that has occurred in my pursuit of building this wealth. And as I wrote above, leads to all sorts of bad behavior. HOWEVER - It’s not enough to get by. I am determined to reach a level of wealth where work is optional. I’m far from there, but I’m not nowhere either.
October 2 Insert: I think perhaps this is the dichotomy that drives me to be hateful sometimes, and bring me to lows at other times, and immense frustration at others. (I am writing in an accretive manner, going over sections and adding more thoughts and layering stuff – so while yesterday (Oct 1), I was relatively calm and happy to sit down and do this exercise, this morning (Oct 2), I am angry. I am angry because I’ve worked two ten hour days this week and was barely able to get to my other client, and the other client’s stuff is way behind, and I’m so angry at how drained I am, and this morning, this dumb machine wouldn’t load without a restart, and I woke up and dawdled, and I wasted a lot of time yesterday and the last two weeks on LCG, and I JUST DON’T HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING TIME TO DO ANYTHING… and garbage is not put out, and IT’S JUST SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING that I can’t make the amount of money I need to move forward without bleeding so much lifeforce on the floor and I’m getting older and I’m running out of time with my kids, I’m running out of time with myself, and this thought keeps coming up and up: I AM GOING TO BE SO FUCKING ANGRY IF I’M SIXTY AND I’M NOT PUBLISHED… and it feels existential now, and later below, you’ll read of the January Incident and how I HATE that I’M SO INSECURE, UNCERTAIN, and UNSURE of how to even act in this community. I feel like every move is a tripwire, every word said or unsaid could be construed as bad and therefore cancelled. And everyone is so fucking sensitive . Or maybe I AM toxic and my views are wrong and I don’t belong. And what I have to say is outdated and wrong and nobody wants to hear it. And all this is just maddening.)
Back to Oct 1 stuff. Finally, Fiction. My intention in this realm has been questionable of late. Is it purely ego and an unnecessarily insecure need for attention from strangers? Accolades? Awards? Why do I really want this? Am I saying this as a joke or a blunt truth to push people away? Or do I need to actually explore why this has never gone away despite making me miserable?
Priorities Activity 2: Priorities as Identity
- I will continue to create the economic foundation necessary for each of my immediate family to thrive. This includes having the means and privilege to pursue opportunities, access, and resources.
- I endeavor to create the secure, safe, and stable environment for my children to develop the values that allows individuals to excel and perform: resilience, resourcefulness, and risk-management (not risk-adverse, but choosing the right risks to advance and being able to afford taking on such risks).
Oct 1 SIDE NOTE: I don’t know if this exercise is helping. All I’m getting is that I prioritize financial independence and family over everything else. These are non-negotiable priorities. Neither can fall. But maybe that’s the lesson here. For the last two months I’ve been flippant about why I want to write fiction. I tell people, it’s purely an ego thing. I want awards and recognition and to show off, and have people see how fucking clever I am with my easter eggs, rabbit holes, and oblique references to other literary, political, socioeconomic theories and analogues. BUT IS THAT THE REAL REASON? Could it be that I’ve been struggling to carve time out PROPERLY and dive into the CRAFT of it, to FIGHT THE RESISTANCE that inherently comes with making stuff… could it be because all this comes down to me having BAD/WRONG/NON-EXISISTENT INTENTIONS?
Oct 1 SIDE-SIDE NOTE: I don’t know if I have priorities that – in the exercise – are “lingering” and “out of step”. Truth is, I’ve been my whole life, for the most part, a self-absorbed, elitist introvert. I’m selfish with hard boundaries. I spent fifteen years in the b2b freelance space where “business was business” and where after services/money was exchanged, there was no obligation to maintain a relationship. Did I make some lifelong friends in this game? Sure, a few. Colleagues and fellow peers. But would any of my clients call me up to do something social? Not that I want them to, I have no interest in it, but I also don’t think they would… unless there is business to be had. There’s a nice cut and dry cleanliness to the people in the direct response business world. They don’t care who you are as long as you make them money. And freelancing is the ultimate in people creating this parasocial relationship where you act friendly, you act loyal, you act responsible, but once the project is done – one of you got paid and increased their social currency and brand, and the other, the vendor, made progress and profit in their business with your service. I was very good at this game. And what that games teaches you, if you play it properly, is that you don’t do a lick of work unless you’re getting something in return. Not promises. Not brand. Not exposure. Actual hard currency. And turning that part of me off for personal relationships has been a challenge over the years. I used to be a lot more generous with friends, but over the last decade, I’ve started to shut down and distance myself from most “medium level” friends who are not as invested in the relationship, nor are interested in that sort of relationship. I have a small tight circle and I prefer it that way. Outside of my closest friends and my immediate family, I keep everyone else at a arm’s distance. But is THAT TRUE too?
I’m thinking about how I deal with new people and the whole Incident from earlier this year. I think, without knowing I do this (or maybe I do, but forget how natural it is to me), I troll people with shit-tests when I meet them for the first time. This is a defense mechanism in which I can quickly “green-beard” people. I come off as a dickish, elitist, braggy snob. which I am for the most part, and I see if you put up with it or shoot it down in a playful manner… and I can tell if you’re cool and we can be friends. This tool filters out most people and gives me a signal as to whether we could get along. IT IS PROBABLY SOMETHING A 43YO SHOULD STOP DOING BECAUSE IT IS IMMATURE. I think the January Incident has shook me in ways that I’m still dealing with. WHO AM I? WHY AM I THIS WAY? DOES BEING A DICK AS A FILTERING MECHANISM STILL SERVE ME? IS THIS WHY I DON’T GET DC COMICS where everyone is a boring goody-two-shoes who is polite and does good things only, and are omg so boring.
BACK TO ORIGINAL Oct 1 SIDE NOTE: OK, we’ve established I’m a dick. But more importantly, I do it as defense mechanism. And I put people off because I don’t want to deal with people unless they “click” with me. I hate having my time wasted with idle chit-chat that doesn’t go anywhere. We’ve also established that that doesn’t serve me. I can be friendly and still say no and have hard boundaries. I don’t need to show off and troll and be a snob. That’s just insecure.
We’ve also established that I don’t have priorities that are “important to others” that I can cut. But let’s test this properly. Maybe I don’t have personal priorities because that line is so hard. But do I have PROFESSIONAL PRIORITIES that make zero sense? Right now, I have two clients. One is full-time, the other is part-time and backfills the income I’m looking for. Twenty-percent of that income feeds into XXX. XXX’s original intent was to be a “one shot kill”. Get it built up big enough so that it could be sold and everyone is financially independent and none of us have to work anymore if we don’t want to. It’s been three years and it’s still not operationally where it needs to be. I have sunk over $XXX into this venture now. $XXX that could’ve put my own investments at $XXX (or even more). And yet here I am, three years later, and still at $XXX inside holdings. This is far from the $XXX I need to stop all this work nonsense. I am 43, I’ve been playing this game since 29, and I only have $XXX to show for it. What in the actual fuck.
And this is why FICTION keeps getting snuffed out. I simply want wealth more than I want something as “frivolous” as fiction accolades. Wealth is important to me because i didn’t have it growing up. It was the thing that was talked about - the lack of it, over and over again. And now, I have the opportunity to pull out of it and establish it in a way that the last two generations couldn’t. Grandparents on my father’s side were poor Vietnamese. Entrepreneurial at one point, but destroyed by communism. Mother’s side was always cagey about it all. Well, they were both super cagey about it. Whenever I did those stupid family tree exercises they make you do at school, both my mom and dad were super cagey and defensive about it. It’s was like (or probably because of) all the trauma they suffered growing up poor. It’s like they were both Gatsby and didn’t want any part of it. I dunno. My dad recently turned 73. Maybe they’ll talk about this shit now. Maybe they can stop being so cagey about it. But I remember as a child that they just wouldn’t want me to talk to my grandparents about this stuff. I got mad because I’m an achievement addict and school said I had to do this and didn’t you tell me school was the most important thing and if I didn’t do this exercise, you’re putting my grades at risk, how fucking dare you. So I never learned much about my past because my parents were cagey about it and it wasn’t until Robert asked me again to do this when I was 29 or 30 and I found out my aunt Lesley had been the family historian and I got a ton more about my Vietnamese past from her. Why am I on this tangent again?
Right. FICTION. Art. Doesn’t make money. Therefore don’t do it. I also distinctly remember a story that stuck with me on my mother’s side. Apparently, my grandmother wanted to be a nurse, and she often complained to her children that she couldn’t because she ended up having them and raising them instead. That narrative of “I sacrifice my dreams for my family” has been a strain in my DNA forever since. “I sacrifice my dreams for my family”. And I wonder if my mother had the same strain. Well no, I know she did. She was a professional commercial artist. She gave that up to raise me and my brother. She had dreams of designing fashion. Never did it. I saw a few drawings. Another snuffed out dream. “I sacrifice my dreams for family”. (October 8 Insert: reviewing notes on the father’s side, and I’m reminded of how much my grandma on that side also had so much bitterness and resentment. She was a self-possessed, resourceful person, but as age took more and more away from her, and her ROI from her thirteen kids never manifested the way she wanted it to… she just got more and more bitter about it). And I get it… we came from poverty. That’s why both sides of my family immigrated to Canada. Opportunity. So as the firstborn on Canadian soil on the Chung side… there was/is tremendous obligation to make something of it.
IS THIS IMPORTANT TO ME or TO OTHERS? I dunno. As “westernized” as I am as a banana… maybe this is the one Asian cultural thing I can’t shake. This isn’t about me or others. This is about US. Is this important to the, fuck, sounds like Game of Thrones, but is this important to the BLOODLINE, is this important to the FAMILY’S LEGACY?
I think we’ve established over the last decade that I’ve hated and resented this freelancing thing I’ve gotten myself into, but at the same time, what choice do I have? What else on this planet will pay me $XXX a year? I have no degree. I don’t have many other skills. I am good at marketing in a hyper specific niche, And I have NOBODY to complain to about this without it sounding like a privileged victim. Who the fuck complains about my income level, and still “not having enough”, especially in a community that attracts every single oppressed minority on the planet and cherishes them and builds them up and raises their voices? What right do I have to step in and tell my story when all these voices are not heard and deserve to be heard? I remember I got invited to a weird solo-but-simultaneous RPG game with this programmer person I met a long time ago. Ended up with a trans-woman, someone with a disability, a black girl… and I’m like, yeah, I’m a POC, but I never dealt with what you’re dealing with and it’s not a competition about who dealt with more shit but it sorta feels like it is in the art world sometimes. I am literally just a boring conservative cis-het Asian dude. (Conservative in action and risk-taking, not values, just in case it’s not clear I’m a socialist left-wing snowflake). I didn’t exactly follow the stereotypical path of becoming a lawyer, doctor, or finance… but I still ended up with a pretty damn good income, could build wealth, have my health and energy, and I’m way ahead in terms of material, security, and even emotional health than most. And I’m realizing how weird it is to write all this out, oh poor me and my privilege. And maybe this is something I just need to stop worrying about. Because why the fuck am I so hung up on it? Right. Because I’m constantly worried about getting rejected and cancelled when I STILL HAVEN’T FUCKING WROTE OR PUBLISHED ANYTHING WHY ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT SOMETHING THAT COULDN’T EVEN HAPPEN YET? Yeah. Ok. Maybe I am dealing with a lot of PTSD from that January Incident. More than I thought.
Oct 2 Continuation I need a behavioral template or something to model after. Because no, I do NOT want to have a reputation of being a dick, as I so elegantly created with one Discord group already. I really just need to SHUT UP AND DO THE WORK. I don’t need to be opining on shit. I don’t need to be sharing my critique. I don’t need to be talking to people about things I don’t like. I need a templated answer to things I don’t like moving forward, and only bring it up if people ask. Something like, “unfortunately, this piece of media didn’t work for me. I’m glad it has fans and it’s not my place to yuck their yum.” And if asked further, “I think it’s bad form to say more publicly.” There. That’s it. I can just stop worrying so much about being a dick on social media. Just state things like that. Don’t insult. don’t be clever. Don’t joke. Don’t go into details about why you didn’t like it. Don’t critique. Not my job. Doesn’t get where I’m going. And it just invites more discussion and defense and energy and mental bandwidth I can’t afford. Alternately, I can praise, and be effusive and promote work that I truly believe in. That’s a good PR strategy.
As for my identity, my online persona. Just be praise things you love effusively. Don’t be critical. Don’t comment if you don’t have nice things to say.
October 2 Summary Again: Ok, so. So far, we’ve established that I will always prioritize Finance due to the bundle of cultural, family, and personal insecurities, opportunity, obligation and whatever the fuck else. That is a non-negotiable. I am not going to “make less money” and “be an artist”. I have loyalties to ensuring my three children get as much opportunity and privilege and advantages they can. So the bloodline matters. It’s old and conservative and weirdly Game of Thrones, but that matters to me. So those two priorities : Finance and Family are inextricably tied together. They are non-negotiable. There are potentially priorities that are “important to others”, sure, but also, important to me and my sense of self and who I believe I am.
Unfortunately, Finance is also draining, it makes me resentful at times, and burnt out. I am suppressing these emotions and just grinning and bearing it. I am aware that this repression has also expressed itself in lashing out, in avoidant activities (hobbies that go nowhere), and in quiet rage. None of it is healthy. I will be angry that my lifeforce is being bled out for doing something so stupid and useless to the world, as hawking supplements and get-rich-quick programs as long as I’m doing it. I will forever hate that capitalism has created a game in which the least tangibly valuable work, like marketing, law, and finance is what pays the most money while we exploit and underpay people who are doing ACTUAL tangible valuable work: nurses, teachers. I don’t think I will ever get over how stupid it is that what I do (right now) doesn’t actually contribute and move the human race forward.
October 3rd Continuation: I think the response that well-meaning people usually ask is, do you have to make X amount of money. Or they ask if I can make X amount of money doing something else. Or is X amount of money really that important. And this is one of those questions I’ve struggled with for over 15 years now. Not making less, but finding alternate routes. I don’t think so. Another line of questioning is the premise that you only have one life, shouldn’t you make less so you can actually enjoy it? Sure, yes, but how does one pay for things in life and also save up so you can actually retire or have that emergency fund where if something happens you have back up? How does one get ahead in this system? How does one actually retire in a meaningful way and not worry about going back to work in their sixties?
PRIORITIES PRIORITIES PRIORITIES. I have a full time client. It eats up a lot of energy from 800AM to 6 or 7PM. That’s 9, 10 hours a day. Last two weeks, due to exhaustion, I’ve had to nap during the afternoon after a barrage of calls, just so I can wake up to review copy and keep things moving. I haven’t done any quadrant two work for a long time now. But that’s fine and I don’t care. It’s a job. I think the thing I need to figure out is how to do this job, not nap, and not dawdle, and put a hard stop on it because it’s neverending.
What about Client B? It’s good work, it’s work that’s actually helping people in need. It’s why I started XXX (which sadly is failing and burning out my CEO at this moment and we’re looking at considering bankruptcy). AND THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. The two things in my life I’m doing that’s actually HELPING PEOPLE IN NEED and actually DOING GOOD in the world either doesn’t pay enough, or is about to crash and burn. What the FUCK is wrong with the world where helping people doesn’t pay you? Why is the world so fucked up. No, let’s keep giving all the money to people who don’t create anything of value. Tech Bros with their AI, Crypto, and vaporware apps that “disrupt” the economy but just shifts the power structure. Lawyers and Finance people, who just move words and money around on paper, and make a ton of commissions. Marketers and advertisers like me, who just push and sell products that nobody really needs. This is what we value as a world.
October 3 Night: I had a terrible day today. A caffeine fueled day of doing the bare minimum. And it was like all my good intentions were destroyed and tested. I think this whole exercise is simply drudging up something I really don’t want to face. Something I’ve been avoiding, something I’m suppressing, something I’ve been very good at mitigating, ignoring, and pushing away with distractions and dreams. The godawful truth is my work makes me so fucking miserable when I have to think about it, the meaning of it, how it’s this empty thing that pays good money… and even that is questionable post pandemic inflation. All the money does it it covers up the hollowness. And you say to yourself, it finances what I have. I don’t have a lot of material desires. So thank god for that. But today, today… even though I wasn’t DOING anything but procrastinating… I just felt miserable. So the question is – what does my pursuit of FICTION actually mean anyway? Why pursue something that doesn’t get me out of this hole? Why are you so hungry about it? Why is it so existential for you? Why is it even a thing you want?
Is it really because you just want accolades and your name on stuff? Is that really what you want? To feed your bottomless ego? You know it’s an empty chase. So why? Why do you actually want it?
WHY DO I ACTUALLY WANT THIS? Because until I figure that out, I don’t think I can really drive myself forward. I don’t think RECOGNITION is sufficient here. It’s an empty ride. I knew it was an empty ride. External validation is not going to drive me. External validation in the form of money and gigs is where I am today because I actually got good at chasing it. I need an actual drive. I don’t want to be miserable anymore. I don’t want to get into this whole fiction thing, get a bunch of accolades, and be in the same spot and probably making less money.
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO TELL STORIES??? You spent the last nine months cracking this code, you studied and studied and dissected, and broke down, and taxonomized, and categorized for NINE MONTHS… and it’s like this drive that has no explainable reason other than you WANT IT. But WHY? Is it seriously for external validation? You already know it doesn’t make money. You already know the success rate is low. You already know that you’re entering a hyper competitive world and you’ll flounder in obscurity for years. WHAT’S DRIVING IT?
WHAT DO I HAVE TO SAY THAT’S WORTH SHARING??? ah. There’s a question that’s finally worth answering. Who am I? No, really. WHO AM I? What do I got to share with the world that’s actually ADDITIVE and not REDUCTIVE or DERIVATIVE? What can I do that nobody else on the planet can?
October 4, 2024
- I am a son of Asian immigrants. I’m here in Canada partly via a convoluted path due to my uncle who fought in the South Vietnamese army, two drowned uncles who attempted to escape communist Vietnam. I’m here because of a weight of history and family. It’s not just about the past, and the opportunities in the chaos, the resilience and enduring nature of people facing hardship, it’s also the immigrant experience, my parents in the eighties in a strange land, the cultural gap that has divided us since, the first generation, the attempted close-knitted nature of a extended family… and me being so outside of it. What’s unique about me is how I pushed that away, hated it, and maybe they blamed the individualism on Western culture, but it was more akin to the strain of intellectual elitism that my father had, who stood out from his nine other brothers. These are stories about an INSIDER who often struck out to be an INDIVIDUAL OUTSIDER… but never quite leaving the network. Never quite actually striking out on their own. Or it’s a evolutionary process. Maybe it’s only in Western culture that I’ve evolved that strain of individualism further. Where idiosyncrasies, and standing out are praised and encouraged. And being an child of immigrants, a Canadian next to America, once upon a time in the direct response marketing world, the lone Asian in a sea of mostly White – I am also an OUTSIDER looking IN, wanting in.
- I am an intellectual creative. My mother was a commercial artist. That strain of being an artist was instilled in me early on. I have started four rock bands. I understand music theory, can play instruments. Music was a tangible part of my life from five until twenty-five. Most intensely from 13-22. A decade of longing and desire to leverage music to “get out” and “get in”. To get out of blue collar poverty. To get into this other world. So similar to fiction right now, this similar unexplainable want to pursue this – but why. It’s this blind animal drive, this inexorable ambition and hunger, for fame? For recognition? For external validation? To show off? Or is it to STAND OUT? to be significant in the sense that I did something few people can and have? I’m going slightly off track here as the intellectual creativity also brings its own bundle of individuality. I know I see the art and craftsmanship and structure in a way that very few people on this planet experience and see art. I know this via the analogue of how people approach copywriting, and voice, and structure. That is something I know I would bring to the table and it’s unique to me. I shouldn’t be ashamed of the fact that I love easter eggs, rabbit holes, hidden references, and layered themes and ideas. How I construct stories in that way is uniquely me. More off-tracked-ness. The love of art and multiple disciplines of it… that’s uniquely me. But WHY ART? WHEREFORE ART. Aside from fellow artists, we don’t deconstruct art for its craftsmanship. We appreciate art at a base level to escape, at a higher level to transcend and make meaning. OK, that’s a little boring and well-worn. But if we zero in on the “making meaning” part… it’s also about language and how we communicate to each other across time and space. That’s interesting. It’s about how we make meaning of the chaos and the quotidian. That’s interesting. It’s how we see beauty amidst the violence and crudeness of socioeconomic inequality, political powers that crushes, things out of our control. In art, we can briefly escape or transcend.
- And maybe that’s one of the core reasons I want to do this? To contribute to the flow of those who came before me and those that will come after me, another brief interlude for someone like me when I was growing up, wild uncontainable imagination, absorbed in the fantasy of the day, TMNT, He-Man, Transformers, Dragonlance, X-Men, Spawn, all those brief moments outside of my daily life where the thrilling emotional drug of characters and story swept me away into the sea of another world. That resonates a lot, but it’s still very much a vehicle reason, and not a substance answer.
- What are the values and beliefs I want to push in my stories? I mean aside from the stuff that’s too high level, like the human condition, and using those tricks to make people feel something grander? One level down, it’s the briefness of our existence, how my atheism/humanities defines how this is it, this is all there is, and we should cherish it together, and not devolve into bigotry and hate (still too high level). How destructive our other side is, the power grab, the intrigue, the games. I dunno. Maybe this is too broad and abstract. Let’s skip this.
- Why do you want to have your stories published? Skip the questions about having gatekeepers give you external validation, and with it, a higher level of acceptance from the mass market. Skip the questions about your ego, and fame, and attention. Skip the questions about getting your jollies from being a reaction addict. Or maybe that last one is OK. Ram V did an AMA on LCG yesterday. The answer he keeps saying over and over again is getting a strong emotional reaction from his readers. That’s what he enjoys. Maybe all writers and artists are reaction addicts, and that’s just part and parcel to being an artist. I mean, why else would we throw our vulnerabilities out into the public and bleed in front of people? Normal people don’t do that. They go about their lives and are find without inviting exposure into their lives. You look at the influencers and how they curate this public persona, it’s not real, it’s not vulnerable. It’s goddess worship. No, artists are different. They want people to look at their pain and the horror inside. OK – SO SKIPPING ALL THAT. Why? Is it because part of me strongly believes I CAN and I SHOULD and I SHOULDN’T WASTE it? That’s the ego talking.
- Maybe it’s all of it together. A conglomeration of all of that. But framed inside the process of craft. Maybe to convert this from external validation, it’s more like I want to see if internally, I can consistently craft stories that get a emotional response from people, and where whether or not it acts as a sugar pill to push a secret agenda of whatever – humanity is worth fighting for, fuck around and find out, there’s a cost to everything. And the act of creating well-crafted, finely tuned stories is in and of itself satisfying… well, no, unread well-crafted stories isn’t what I want either. Otherwise, I would just internally write stories for the sake of writing stories, which I don’t. I want the reaction still. I think the trap is when I weigh the reaction too highly, and it should be more focused on the craft first.
- WHO ELSE AM I? I am a marketer, an advertising conman for the last fifteen years but grifting in grey areas for clients who are not doing illegal things, but are definitely unethical things. The world of marketing, finance, politics, law, whereever power is to be had, wherever it’s accumulated and concentrated, where the minority’s decisions affect the majority, we have grey areas. Areas that affect their lives. Lives are preyed on, exploited, abused, lied to, manipulated. Those are all things I’ve been inside the corridors of, not to the degree of Washington DC or law courts or financial institutions moving trillions… but at a microcosm in the direct response world. That world informs my stories. That view of people that could be easily led into cults, led by gurus, the religious fervor. A topic that, as someone who was brought up an evangelical Protestant, who as a sickly child held his faith in God so much, praying so often… and leaving the church in a passive-aggressively violent manner against my mother, against the church I went to, against institutions. Always, always back to this love-hate relationships with institutions. Never fully inside, always outside, but having a part of me wanting to be inside it. Always going out to find other outsiders, and being a leader - maybe that’s why I was so shook by the January Incident. It was the first time a fellow outsider rejected me, didn’t put up with my awkwardness, my sense of humor. Wasn’t given a chance. My bad behavior was shut down. And yes, that’s a good thing and this whole existential loop is ultimately good for me.
- WHO ELSE AM I?
October 8, 2024 Morning
- WHO ELSE AM I? I am a bleeding heart romantic. I love my rom coms, my chick flicks. I cry so much at films and theatre. I choke up so easily. I want the world to be fair, to have this utopia, but I see it for what it is, especially after working in advertising and marketing and studying power for so long now. The system is broken and power tramples over people and it is incredibly sad, depressing, and frustrating. Stories give us escapism. It gives us a sense of agency. It gives us control in a world where we often lack control. You could say that it is a “safe place” or X-Men’s danger room where you can train and grow before heading into the real world. How much of me is because of Leonardo, Cyclops, and Tanis Half-Elven, and Jean-Luc Picard, and huh. That’s weird, I just realized I never identified with ANY of the characters in Star Wars. I guess if I were to pick today, it would be Leia as general or Jyn Erso as the broken, toxic rebel. Speaking of, how much of Raphael, Wolverine, and Raistlin is inside me as well? That outsider, that barbed and prickly asshole character? The Chandler, who used humor and a deflection and defense mechanism. The scary edgelord because that’s how you protect your weak, sensitive heart when you’re a teenager and just need to keep most people away and only let a few in?
- WHO ELSE AM I? I am that person who is scary with spreadsheets. I will analyze and breakdown and bring my intellectual prowess to bear when it comes to the complexities of life. I will chase rabbit holes and backfill my head with a tremendous overwhelming overflow of trivia and knowledge and facts. I will drop them surreptitiously in conversation, just so I can explain it later, to show off how well-read I am. That’s that me, espresso.
- WHO ELSE AM I? I create micro-communities. Always have, always will. Small groups. Small batch designer. Micro-networks. Creating a small band of rebels. Outsiders. Weirdos. Loners. This has always been me but I got shook earlier this year. Didn’t know who I was after that incident. But after what OH went through this year and seeing LM help her through it, recognizing and remembering that’s who I am. I create these micro-communities and relationships are founded and flourish because I triggered it. omg, how can I forget these things because of one incident? I lost my groove because of this. I’ve been running scared and confused because of it. And listen, I know. This is privileged victimhood, the worst kind, but it doesn’t invalidate that I – reasonably and correctly – got knocked down. I had to deal with this behavior and I’m glad it happened now instead of years down the road. But still.
October 6, 2024 Night: Or maybe, it could simply be the joy and happiness you get from crafting a satisfying story. The joy you get from reading X-Titles and good graphic novels the last two months. How can I capture that feeling and deliver it to others? The satisfaction you get from exploring and learning something new, and transmuting that knowledge into something else. The joy of having done something hard and sharing it with people.
October 7, 2024 Morning: Maybe I’m overthinking all of this (as I always do). That was another theme that came up during the Garage Fiction Group Therapy session. How much of a plotter I am, or at least I’m being accused of, but really, I’m a nothingburger until I actually act.
For the last couple of months, since I started buying floppies and seeing how I burn through them in 10 minutes for a $5-7 product… I’ve made it a habit to read the comic at least twice. Once to just inject the story into my eyeballs as quickly as possible, because that’s just how I read. But then a few days later, I slow down and read it again, this time, I take notes and do a page-by-page breakdown. They are essentially thumbnail sketches that I can borrow the plot structure and character arc from. So the question is – what if I wasn’t so precious about these stories? What if I got my stamina up and wrote throwaway stories in my first productive year? MRK did one story a week when she first started.
Bryan kept saying trust your intuition. It will kick in. How much of the last six months has been real fear? How much was it procrastination? How much was it genuine lack of a good foundation? How much of it was internalization? How much of it was lack of time and energy?
OCTOBER 8 CONTINUATION: Listen, there are a million reasons why you didn’t draft any stories the last six months post MRK SSC. It was basically a bundle of insecurities. Did you need to build out an indexing system? No. But are you glad you did it? Kinda. Maybe you just need to accept that that’s who you are, espresso. That you have trouble producing and creating things until you understand the inner workings of it like an engineer. The POSTIVE of all this is that you STUCK to it this time. The POSITIVE is that this time, you didn’t do it on your own and spiraled, you got access to a short story cohort with MRK and you saw how it worked, what you can ignore because you’re naturally good at (prose and MECH), and what you were severely challenged on (PROG and ARC and well, story). You spent a month understanding PROG. You spent six weeks understanding ARCs. All that is knowledge and tools you know to use when you need it now.
October 10, 2024 Morning So it sounds like what I’m going to do to shift, pivot, and refocus my drive here is, instead of saying feeding my ego in a flippant way, and to get awards and attention, I am STILL feeding my ego, but on the internal process of being able to CRAFT STORIES WELL. I have my unique set of intelligence, perspective, and life experience that would create stories through my lens. That is worth creating in and of itself. I can still try and get them published, try and get the attention and awards, but the shift is in focusing on the craft and being proud of the craft. As that viral video of Bryan Cranston talking about auditioning says, don’t focus on better, focus on what you’re bringing to the table that’s different. WRITING REALLY GOOD FUCKING STORIES – THAT ARE UNIQUE TO ME – IS THE END GOAL. That’s it.
THE RULES
RULE 1. Don’t criticize art publicly or even in private communities. It invites discussion and a requirement to defend it that wastes your energy, mental bandwidth, and resources. You are here to make art, not critique it.
RULE 2. Be effusive in your praise of things you love publicly. The public likes talking about things they love. It also doesn’t invite pointless conversation that wastes your energy.
RULE 3. Aside from your son of an immigrant POC status, you are extremely privileged, well resourced, and have a lot more advantages than this community. You simply have to be nice. Stop worrying if you’re messing things up and could get cancelled. If you follow rules 1 and 2 and shut your mouth and focus on your own work, and let your own work speak for itself, you’ll be fine.
RULE 4. Stop being so fucking clever, jokey, and troll-y in public. Nobody cares. It’s insecure. You are 43. You are privileged. Just shut the fuck up and do the work. Reroute ALL ENERGY into the craft. You don’t need to engage with the community. You don’t need to spout opinions. You don’t need to get distracted. You started late. You only have 20 years of productive energy left for art. Shut the fuck up and focus on the craft.
RULE 5. I need to create HARD STOPS for my client work. The work will always be a neverending stream. That’s what a retainer/job is. And client A is basically a job. I think I’ve worked without boundaries for the last six months because… well, new job. First full-time job in fifteen years. I’m going to keep working hard but I can’t be doing 10 hour days consistently. There is a point of diminishing returns and I’m hitting them. I’m also aware that there was/is insecurity here. That new relationship and not just be on your best behavior, but your above-and-beyond behavior because you don’t know if it’s going to end or not so you pour ALL your energy into it to the point where it’s painful sacrifice. Point is, I need to put a hard stop on things.
RULE 6. I need HARD STOPS for social media and community interactions as well. I am, like most people who are on social media, a reaction addict. I want to see my “content” get attention. I mean, obviously, we want our fake Internet karma points. Our likes, our reposts, our comments. Our look at me points. Our vanity metrics. But none of what I post in Discord, BlueSky, LinkedIn, whereever ACTUALLY MOVES MY STORYTELLING FORWARD. It’s just one-off reaction bait. I get my likes and comments and I check it nonstop after posting, and read and reread my own content over and over again after posting. IT IS A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME. I need to be purposeful about this.
RULE 7. WRITE THROWAWAY STORIES. Take a THB, file off the serial numbers, write five versions of it. Get back to PLAYING. You haven’t PLAYED in such a long while. You made it into this studious engineering thing. Breaking the craft apart, dissecting it, taxonimizing it. Let’s aim for five iterations of a borrowed THB each week.
RULE 8. TIME TO HUSTLE AGAIN - Go to bed by 9. Like actually go to sleep by 9. Wake up at 3:50AM. M/W/F, you get your 30-40m in before gym. T/R, you get an hour to 90m in before you make breakfast. AT WORK – don’t dawdle, block LCG and whatever else you’ve been checking non-stop, set Freedom restrictions up again. You can read comics on your break, that’s physical and analogue. That’s your treat. Don’t backfill in-between meetings and morning times on non-work stuff. Let’s get all the copy reviews done AT WORK, so we can hit the hardstop of 4PM, say. 8AM to 4PM is eight hours. Let’s put in the incredibly difficult 30-40m of client two that you keep putting off AT WORK. That’s the challenge. Write for 30-40m even after you’ve been battered by client one work. That keeps the rhythm going. Then be done by 530 or 6PM. Aim to leave the office by 6PM latest. 545PM. Maybe even get a clock or timer like The Bear? Ha ha. No. Maybe? But I need to hustle again. The last two weeks has been at once good (new community on LCG, refinding genuine joy and excitement in storytelling again in comics), but net-negative in terms of doing the “circling-around-hobby” stuff too (shopping, reading on news, talking about hobby).
RULE 9. Maybe it’s time to hit the RESET button on several of the stories I have that aren’t really going anywhere. Get them off the prjs page. Get them out of the EOW updates. Reduce the backlog to ONLY stuff that’s hit at least S4.
To reiterate the stages again:
- S1: MECH/CDA pair + PROT/ARC = Have the “gee whiz idea” matched with whatever deep thing you want to say. The theme. Play with the POV that has the most to lose and pick an ARC (not necessarily plot out all of DREAM, but pick one)
- S2: DSR/PROG + WANT/ANTG = What is the PROG here? Is it an INQ, QST, or NTW? How will it kick off via the DSR? Because it’s a short story, we need to have that show up or be warned of it in S1. (ah, I see why I didn’t love my stages now, S1 is scene, not stage). And what’s the CONFLICT? Who’s causing the tension? That’s the WANT and ANTG. Can we throw in a TTB? Time and/or resources.
- S3: Outline ARC/PROG = Now let’s weave the PROG and ARC together so that they meet elegantly at key points, but most important, the CMX so that you get your EGP. This is the “sticking the landing” that makes it hard. I want my CDA, my ARC, my PROG to ALL COLLIDE BEAUTIFULLY into one amazing penultimate scene before the afterglow/aftermath of the DNM.
- S4: Scenes 1 and 2 and/or CMX
So the way I see it here is… S1-S3 is basically the THB. We take ONE THB structure from a proven single issue or short story. We create five iterations of it. Keep it under 150 words. So let’s collapse S1-S3 into one thing? THB? Convert S4 into fSW (as in first scene written, and not the actual first scene of the story)? OCTOBER 8 2024 UPDATE: OK, I did the above. Edited prjs so that it reflects the new column headers, removed all the half-baked ideas I had from MRK SSC that weren’t exactly complete THBs. I also ordered a reading lamp for getting through more novels and short stories in bed. Marvel Unlimited has been amazing for burning through comics, but I need a not-as-instrusive light source to read physical books. Finally, I read up on Zettelkasten. I’ve been aware of this system since 2018, but never actually explored it. (Of course I have Sönke Ahrens book. Of course that’s a book in my collection I bought after hearing about the concept and than quickly shelving it.) Point is – I think going analogue with a real genuine index card case for a zettlekasten would be good. Get away from my computer. Build a physical system.
RULE 10. DISSECT ONE SHORT STORY A WEEK. Getting into comics again has been a boon. The single issue with its 20-22 pages and about 5-6 scenes is basically a short story. I’ve been thinking about the shortform across media a lot. The single issue. The short story. The sitcom episode. The pop (or rock) song. 20 pages of art, 20 pages of prose, 20 minutes of video, 200 seconds of music. It seems short, but the LAYERS. OMG the layers you can add to it. And then the FORMAT, there’s so much you can do and experiment with inside these constraints. With comics, the 3x3, the five wide panels, the 4x4, even 5x5, or a mix of it, the splash with insets, the two-pager with insets, the paneless and merged actions splash, the vertical panels. There’s magic there. In a similar token, short stories don’t have to be the 6 scene standard. You can have back-and-forth over 20 scenes, you can have a listicle with 10 scenes, you can layer it with atmosphere, interior monologue, description, have POV tight-third that does multiple things with multiple purposes. Sitcoms? Just rewatch Community again. Dan Harmon broke and parodied so many formats – all in 20-22 minutes of story. Sorry – this was a long tangent to the rule I wanted to express, which is to READ AND DISSECT SHORT STORIES MORE OFTEN. I already dissect all my floppies upon second read. And I did the 38 THBs over the summer, but I think I want to transfer – SLOWLY AND DELIBERATELY and WITHOUT SACRIFICING ACTUAL BREAKING STORIES AND DRAFTING THEM – over to the analogue zettelkasten.