Choosing the title is always the last thing I do. The number-one mistake anyone makes in writing is believing that the first thing that comes to your mind will be a good way to open. You always have to just get started and then go back to the beginning and fix it. The beginning always needs fixing.
Unless you’re writing a stream-of-consciousness blog, then it doesn’t matter.
But I do have to go back and give this post a title, like all the others. And that’s what I’m referring to. That’s what got me started with this waste of three paragraphs in the first place.
This whole blog is the front line in my fight against the internet distraction machine. That hungry beast is probably best visualized as a parasitic brain-sucker, feeding off your brain waves and making you a hazy-minded zombie in the meantime. You don’t just pull this monster off your head, you get rid of it by focusing very hard on some task and completing it. Divert your mental energy to something useful and there is none left over for it. It simply starves.
You have so little time and there’s so much more you could be doing. You have to focus on those things. Every day, five percent more work. It adds up. It gets more done than you realize. You’ll dig yourself out of that hole faster than you think. You can really shred all that horrible nonsense and get closer to the place you want to be.
All of this devolves into free-writing so I’ll just let it go:
You think you can escape bullshit. You cannot. It’s crazy to try to escape from bullshit, which is everywhere. You can escape from your own bullshit, though. You can pay attention to the excuses you make for yourself and stop making them. You can listen to your own thoughts and put a stop to the useless ones. You can align yourself with something better. You can stop drifting and propel yourself toward something. That’s the point of all of this, after all.
Keep resting your mind gently against the problem. Remember it always, think of it often, and you’ll gradually crack that safe. It will open for you if you are patient with it and with yourself.
Patience with oneself is hard but it is the only way to sustain effort for long enough to get something really important done.