Your Brain Hates You

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the process of writing, which is why there hasn't been much of it showing up here.  Writing is obnoxiously difficult--especially if it's going to be any good--and thinking about writing is just so much vastly simpler.   

And to be honest, reading what other people say about thinking about writing and how miserably hard it all is, is infinitely easier than actually malforming my own thoughts on the subject.  Which is why I got very excited and may have done a little dance when one of my favorite writers/thinkers/internet denizens, Merlin Mann, wrote the following on his blog, 43 Folders:

WARNING: Totally out of context excerpt that Merlin would probably hate:

Achieving expertise and doing creative work is all horribly complicated and difficult and paradoxical and frustrating and recursive and James Joyce-y—and any guide, blog, binary, guru, or “nice guy” that tries to suggest otherwise is probably giving you a complimentary colonoscopy. Do the math.

Want a new syllabus? Sure:

Run straight into your shitstorm, my friends. Reject the impulse to think about work, rather than finishing it. And, open your heart to the remote possibility that any mythology of personal failure that involves messiahs periodically arriving to make everything “easy” for you might not really be helping your work or your mental health or your long-standing addiction to using tools solely to ship new excuses.

 "Duh."  But at the same time, "Huh?"

The primary impediment between you and my retchings and rantings here are distractions.  Some of these distractions are legitimate in the sense that if I don't keep one eye firmly locked on the dog, I'm going to either lose some shit or gain some shit, which isn't much fun either way.  Other distractions are less legitimate in the sense that there's no reason I need to read every article in my RSS feed or spend a half an hour searching for an iPhone app that will let me print PDFs to my office network (still haven't found one, so there's a few bucks to be made there, people!) and there's certainly no one holding a gun to my head to ensure that I spend at least a solid fifteen minutes skimming through my twitter feed.  But the worst "distractions" are my own psychological impediments.  Typical responses my brain has to the thought of sitting down and writing include:

"You don't want to to write about THAT, you've already written about THAT (kind of)!"

"Don't write about that excrement-spewing politician, it will just get you angry and then you'll have a rotten night thinking about how inescapably doomed we all are!"

"I promise, no one reads your blog anyway."

"This is a topic that a lot of people infinitely more intelligent than you have already covered at length, why waste your time?"

"Okay, so your Mom reads your blog--want a cookie?"

"You're not amusing in the least."

"If you put this opinion on the internet now, you'll probably end up being wrong, and small children will laugh at you and point their fingers and call you 'Dummy!'"

"[Person You Respect] disagrees with you on this topic, why make them hate you?"

"Seriously, you aren't funny."

My brain is a jerk.

And I ENJOY writing.  

These mental road-blocks are so effective because they were designed for you by you.  You are your own worst enemy.  These neuron saboteurs plague all of us on some level or another, and each and every time we give in to them they become more legitimate in our own estimation.  Over time, they become paralyzing--preventing us from doing the things we love, even making us ashamed of our talents. 

If you've convinced yourself that you can't or shouldn't do something you used to enjoy doing, chances are you've lost your mind--and it's out to get you.