Just Fucking Do It, Dammit!

Cool things have been happening. One, I started writing a poetry book with the kids. Inspired by Dr. Seuss & Shel Silverstein. The kids are illustrating it and my daughter’s even adding her own poems. Two, I’ve been writing a lot in general. Three, I feel good about myself. Not like sniffing my armpits and saying it’s roses, but just…living. Doing my thing and letting what comes of it come. I’m getting away from having goals or purpose or whatever. I don’t give a shit where it goes, I just wanna enjoy what I’m doing now. I can’t see anything “bad” coming in the future if my present goes with the flow. Every time I think, I screw it up, so I’m trying to not think without trying to not think because that makes me think too much.

I realized discipline is my biggest problem. It’s not so much that I don’t have it, it’s more that I don’t know where to get started. I think I get so caught up in big pictures, I forget the forest is made of a lot of trees. It’s like, one step in the right direction is almost always a journey of a thousand miles. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I have to work more to clear away all the shit that’s keeping me from just taking one step forward. Discipline isn’t a destination, it’s a process. It’s taking one step and then one further. Discipline can be as much getting up after you fall down, or going when there’s nowhere to go. You can’t make discipline happen, it happens to you. That’s life, in a sense, if you just go with it. Discipline is the natural order of chaos. It’s the circadian rhythym. It’s the sun set and moon rise. Nature is perfect discipline because of perfect chaos. Our watches may say what time it is, but nature has a clock that has no hands. And that’s all of us.

A lot of times, I tend to make progress by not trying to make progress. I’m actually hesitant to even write about it, becasue I feel like everytime I think about it, I mess it up. I feel like my life is governed by inverse proportionality. The more I want to/try to quit smoking, the more I smoke. The more I want to/try to write, the less I write. The more I want to/try to stop thinking, the more I think. On and on.

It only happens when I get my Jonathan Davis in the beginning of Clown on and “Just fucking do it dammit”. Or Nike, right? Just Do It. Nike – the goddess of victory, said to go to soldiers in war and bless them with greatness and successful endeavors. It doesn’t matter, I can study, but a lot of thinking results in a lot less doing. There’s a world between learning to play bass and just letting the music play itself. That’s life. It’s just life. You can’t think about it, you gotta let it flow through you. The more you try to make it happen or whatever…it’s like pulling the reigns back on a horse as you’re kicking and clucking to make her go.

You either or are aren’t. It’s like binary code. That’s the whole jist of the Tao Te Ching. Life is a series of affirmation and negation. If you’re trying to x, you’re also saying that you’re not x. Language is tricky, there’s always an implicit meaning. And so much time and effort can be expended on finding the right words, when the more efficient usage of time is turning on the faucet. You don’t have to find anything, it’s all there in the space between trying and doing. You already have the forest, go look at the trees. Go to them, one by one, and see where it takes you.

I wrote a song this morning. I’ve wanted to write songs and turn them into music since I don’t know. I could see myself like Weird Al, or Maynard, or whoever. I have admired so many artists, projected so many of my good qualities on them and allowed them to become gods to me. It’s as delusional as thinking wearing Nike’s will make you a better basketball player. Yet, it’s that admiration that drives…that desire to become something better than what you are. You don’t need the shoes, you need the practice. You don’t need the practice, you need to just do it. Always. Whatever it takes to get there. Sometimes, there’s some gnarly paths to get there. There’s some questionable decisions, huge mistakes, great losses, indescribable pain. And then, you just keep going. And somewhere along the way, you realize that you learned how to handle this because of that. You see that you can make this because you read that. Or that this little nugget you found interesting then, becomes so poignantly perfect now. It always feels like riding a bike – you never forgot, maybe you’re a little rusty, but it’s there. It’s all there. The forest, the trees, victory, whatever…it’s all right there. You just gotta turn on the faucet.

I wrote a song in less than 15 minutes, yet it’s taken me 15+ years to do it. I somehow had to grow up, get miserable, and realize I was unhappy because I was nothing like who I was when I was kid. I took all my hopes, I took all my dreams, I took everything I loved and I shoved it in a box hoping other people would like it. Maybe everyone liked that box, but for me, it was a coffin.

And the only fear I have left is that I won’t live before I die.

I write mainly to remind myself of all the things I love to forget. That’s all it ever is. I forgot how to ride my life.