[SOC] Epic Edition

I have wanted to do one of these posts and let it run for an extended length to see where it takes me. This will be that post. I don't know where to start though.

It is Saturday night, and I am listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers music. It strikes me that they don't really rock on a lot of songs. I'm used to bands cranking up the distortion and going for the power chords. These guys do some funk and soul shit. The music is good, but it isn't Black Sabbath. The effect is bittersweet.

I have been alone today. I got some exercise, went grocery shopping, and spent time on Facebook and writing for the C-blog. But I have spent most of my day sleeping. I feel tired like I have a cold. I have been jacked up all week on caffeine and exercise, but I have crashed today. Even though it is after 9 p.m., I am seriously considering a fresh pot of coffee. I am in no condition to make this an epic post, but I feel there is a ton of shit in me that I want to get out. You can insert a constipation joke here.

The way I make coffee is pretty simple. I have a Mr. Coffee, and I put five scoops in the basket. I get the cheap Colombian coffee from Walmart. I am not a coffee snob. I don't really care for a French roast or using a press or an espresso machine. I let the coffee shop handle that for me. But when I make my own, I go with regular coffee made super strong. When I drink this brew, the flavor should be hard. When I get a coffee from the Waffle House, it tastes like dishwater to me. I have to drink a gallon of that stuff to get what I want.

When I toss back the coffee as I am doing now, I get a feeling from it. It is hard to describe, but it is a sort of hum. I feel warm and happy inside. People become more tolerable. In fact, I feel quite happy having them around. This is because they are going to suffer my caffeinated persona. This is different from my regular persona which is much quieter. I get louder and more gregarious.

When I am drinking coffee alone, I have to channel this energy into creativity or work or exercise or something. Most of this blog has been written with the aid of many pots of coffee. I ran out of ideas long ago, so most of it comes from the coffee now. This got me to thinking about the substance aids that many creative people use.

The first and most basic substance writers and musicians have used is tobacco. Smoking is a huge spur to the mind even as it destroys the lungs. Studies show that nicotine helps brain cells communicate more effectively. This would explain Ayn Rand's devotion to the cigarette and the glowing ember at the end being a metaphor for the creative mind at work. I have observed many smokers and their rituals, and the cigarette seems to open their brains. They sit back and reflect while puffing away on the cancer stick. Then, they go to work.

The second substance is alcohol. Alcohol's reputation is mixed. Hemingway used it. But there is little evidence that it does anything to boost the brain. It would seem that it does the opposite. But alcohol is good at reducing fear which is a block to creativity. It is mostly rock stars who like to get liquored up, so they feel the courage to perform before thousands of people. The problem is that the performance really sucks because they are fucking drunk. My personal belief is that the reason alcohol is praised by these people as a creative aid is because they just like to drink, and the creativity thing is just an excuse to be drunk all the time.

I did an experiment once upon the suggestion of a writer and got shitfaced and did some writing. What I produced from that session was the absolute most awful fucking shit I have ever written. This was the single worst piece of creative advice that I have ever received. I have never repeated that experiment.

Another substance is speed. Ayn Rand had a notorious reputation for being on Benzedrine and other amphetamines which helped her write Atlas Shrugged. I don't think these uppers necessarily help with creativity, but they clearly help you to stay awake to get shit created. Kerouac who created at a furious pace had caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines keeping him going. That fucker was so wired that he put a continuous roll of paper in his typewriter, so that he wouldn't have to stop to put in a fresh sheet of paper. This may sound crazy, but this is how we compose work in the digital age. I remember using a typewriter and being pissed when the paper was done. It broke your train of thought as you had to put in that fresh sheet and start again.

LSD and psilocybin gets rave reviews for creativity. Steve Jobs revealed how dropping acid changed his life. From the Beatles to Pink Floyd, we can see what psychdelics can do for you. Science indicates that these substance actually rewire the brain and can even change personality. It can also make you an acid casualty like Syd Barrett. That part gets glossed over.

It is obvious why I go with caffeine. It isn't injurious to one's health or sanity. It won't cost you your job or get you a DUI. You won't get sauced up and beat the shit out of your significant other. It works.

There is something else that is a spur to creativity, but it is counterintuitive. This would be boredom. If you turn off the TV and the internet and spend time without distraction, the boredom will hit you. At first, it will be unpleasant. Then, your brain will turn on to fill this white space you have created. People in sensory deprivation report hallucinations not unlike what you experience on psychedelics. It is obvious to me that the human brain abhors emptiness and seeks to fill it.

The problem with using boredom is obvious. You end up going to sleep. The goal is to be bored while also staying awake. This is called meditation. In meditation, you achieve altered states of consciousness. But sitting in a chair meditating will only put your ass to sleep in a short while. This is why in Eastern traditions of meditation they adopted postures, stances, and movement. Everything from yoga to kung fu to tai chi all trace their origins to a desire to remain awake while being bored. Practitioners of these arts will howl at my depiction of their disciplines in this way. But I study these things, and it becomes clear to me why kung fu types would spend hours in the horse stance. I can't manage more than a minute or two in this posture because it is excruciatingly painful. But you are definitely not going to doze in the horse stance.

The easy way to go is to run or walk. I think it was Longfellow who would take long daily walks. I don't think the same effect can be achieved with swimming or cycling for the obvious reasons that you would either drown or ride headlong into an obstacle. Putting one foot in front of the other seems to be slightly slower than the speed of thought, so your mind is free to roam while your body moves. Of course, this is negated by the mp3 player which I do not recommend.

I have spent many hours on roads and trails either walking or running. This habit lapsed in my early thirties as my thoughts became more troubled. I really hated my life, so having time to think and reflect didn't help this at all. I then obliterated those thoughts with as much work and creative work that I could muster. The goal was to not think. But I have come full circle.

I stated my resolution at the beginning of this year to find inner peace. I have made progress in this area as I have deliberately chosen to spend more time with my thoughts absent any distractions. When it comes to problems, you only have two options. You have solution, and you have resolution. For example, when I began to question my faith in God, I was searching for a solution. Frustrated, I let it go for awhile. This was resolution. Eventually, I realized the problem came from wanting a fairy tale to be real when it wasn't real at all. That realization lifted a huge weight from me such that I don't even consider the subject anymore.

My inner peace thing has to do more with people. I don't have a solution to that problem whatsoever. So, I have taken the path of resolution. When it comes to dealing with people, your best option is to diminish your expectations. I have little trouble making and keeping friends. I have nothing but grief with women and family. That grief is tied firmly to expectations. I have no expectations of friends while I do have expectations of girlfriends and family members. They fail because this is the way people are. People let you down. They betray you and even seek to destroy you.

Those who know me would conclude that I have some sort of residual bitterness or anger from past hurts. This is not the case. I am quite adept at letting old things go. I nurse no grudges. I keep no tally of rights and wrongs. I don't care. It isn't the past that troubles me. It is the future.

Imagine a man engaged to a shameless whore. How could this man ever find happiness with a woman like this? He could use her for sex. Or he could be a Platonic friend. But he could never have any serious loving relationship with this woman. She is a fucking whore. It isn't about forgiveness. This is what she is. The diminished expectation is the only rational response in this situation.

People think the reason I cut it off with them is because they have done something to piss me off. But this assumes that I am someone easily offended. The string of hatred and bile I endure here in the comments on the C-blog should show this is not the case. I have the skin of an armadillo.

The primary reason I become done with people is because I know that my expectations of them will never be met. Imagine a college football coach who has a starting quarterback that can't stop drinking and partying. At some point, he has to let that kid go. A single action may be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it would be foolish to assume that a single act is the ultimate cause of that coach kicking the guy off his team. You know that kid is going to portray the coach's actions as being severe overreaction to a single act. But we know better.

In my case, I can't make things work with any woman because my expectation is companionship. The women I date have never met this expectation. I am not unique in this expectation as I have talked to many men both young and old, single and married. They all have the same expectation. When this expectation is dashed into the dust, they go ahead and start fucking around. The only difference between me and them is that I don't make vows that I will break. Marriage is a lie.

When I dumped my girlfriend in May, it was because I desperately wanted this companionship, and she was never going to provide this. When someone tells you to shut up over breakfast, you know she is just misery on two legs. My entire time with her was nothing but hearing about her problems. It was nothing but a drumbeat of misery. Each time I saw her, it was going to be a rundown of the latest problem. It is hard for me to relate to this because I don't have problems. It isn't that my life is perfect, but I don't spend my days obsessing over trivialities. The reason she told me to shut up was because I was interrupting more of her talk about her endless problems.

How do people live like this? I think I would eat a bullet at some point if all I did everyday was worry about paying a phone bill or getting my car fixed. But this is the crap I listened to for three fucking years. It's like listening to old people talk about their physical ailments all the time. What an empty existence.

All my other girlfriends were the same way. People can't understand my infatuation with Rachael Ray, but I imagine her as a woman who doesn't piss and moan about her fucking problems all day. The fact is that everybody has problems. Life is one long series of problems. But I like to think life is more than just those problems. It better be because there is no end to problems.

I dumped my girlfriend because her problems were more important than me. They always were. They always would be. It isn't that I didn't care about her problems. But most of them were self-inflicted, and solutions took a backseat to bitching. With her gone from my life, my existence is damn near tranquil. It has been such a relief that I simply don't ever want to be in another relationship with another chick ever again. It has been pure giddy goddamn joy with her gone.

The reason people obsess over their problems is that they imagine that if they can get to a problem free zone they will be happy as hell. This isn't true. I am happy not to have her problems anymore, but I still have my own. I just don't obsess over them because I know problems are forever. What makes them loom so large is not the problem itself but the unrealistic expectation that they can all be removed in some permanent way.

Companionship is shared happiness. For women, it is simply shared misery. This is why studies indicate men's lives are enhanced by being married while women's lives are the same single or married. This is due to a man's nature which tends towards happiness. A woman's nature tends toward misery. This is why we call men who whine "pussies" or "bitches." The language we use ascribes misery to women. At some point, men learn to tune this shit out. They quit giving a fuck. This is resolution.

Unless a woman is happy, there can be no companionship. The happiness I refer to is that Aristotelian eudaimonistic happiness. Rachael Ray has this. She is a stunning exception because most women are misery on two legs. This is why they aren't worth bothering with. As some smart ass quipped, "When you pay for a prostitute, you aren't paying for sex. You are paying her to go away."

I tried to tell my ex this stuff. It was in one ear and out the other. She knew everything except how to fix her problems. I know that in 30 years it will be nothing but problems for her if she is still living. Her entire life will be wasted going from one problem to the next hoping to get to that non-existent problem free zone.

The only way I see a relationship living up to the companionship expectation is if both people are flourishing individuals. Rose and Milton Friedman would fit this description. Both were economists, so they were even luckier to share a passion for the same subject. Rose Friedman was very accomplished in her own right, and you can bet that the two of them always had something interesting to talk about.

Most women I meet are very uninteresting in any intellectual way. I have thought back over the many dates I have had, and I have never met a woman who had this spark much less dated her. The closest was a real bitch who could read, but she didn't care about anything you had to say on any subject. She had no use for either my atheism or my libertarian politics. The only thing she seemed to really like about me was the fact that I didn't drink.

People wonder why I can be so candid on my blog here about these women, and the answer is that they never bothered reading what I write. I go through the same pattern with women. They become interested in me because they think I am some really bad guy. I've never understood this aspect of women, but there it is. Then, they discover I am a lot nicer than they initially thought. Then, they realize that first impression of me was actually correct. I am a mean guy. This usually occurs to them as their ass sails to the curb.

Happiness is a solitary thing. This realization has dramatically altered my dealings with women. If the dating game is like lifting and moving an object, I no longer do any of the lifting. I make zero effort. It is funny to watch as some chick expects me to ask her out, but it never comes. A woman merely has to glance in a flirtatious way at a man, and he is on that like the proverbial stink on shit. I let it hang in the air and ignore it. In times past, I would jump and seize on that like any other man. Now, I have reached such a level of don't give a fuck that I am simply indifferent to it all. I don't think about bedding the chick so much as wondering how hard it would be to make her go away when it was over with. It's like admiring a new car but choosing to not buy it knowing how difficult it would be to make the payments. Or it is like seeing a bartender pour some nice drinks and wanting one but choosing to stick to the Diet Coke.

Willpower is easy when you realize how empty the temptation will turn out to be. When the candy dish is empty, you stop going back to it. I was making this point the other day to a guy who is 28. He was engaged, but things went sour. If I remember correctly, she cheated on him with one of his friends. So, he was telling me how he was back in the game looking for some new chick. I told him to not even bother. He was wasting his time. He wanted the companionship thing, and I was the pin to his bubble of hope. I beat that hope down as hard as I could. He believed his disastrous relationship with his previous girlfriend was an aberration. I told him that was the norm.

There is one thing old bachelors like me have in common. We have experienced multiple relationships with different women, and we know that all women are fundamentally the same. Each bad relationship reinforces this knowledge like learning scales on the piano. You build up a callous on your psyche such that you feel very little anymore in regards to women. I imagine George Clooney to be like this. I laugh as he follows his usual two year cycle of dating and dumping. I know in 2013 that Stacy Keibler will be out on her ass. The funny thing is there will be another one waiting in line.

Clooney can do this sort of thing, but I can't. I want some peace in my life, so I'm in the monastic mode for as long as I can sustain it. I call this move "austerity." It grows out of my minimalist lifestyle. I've just taken it up a notch or two. I've been eliminating bad habits for the last couple of years. I gave up drinking. I gave up hamburgers and french fries. I recently gave up going to Hooters. I gave up watching sports. My Gamecocks have imploded this season, so I am safe in the knowledge that I am not missing anything historic.

Atheists don't become monks, but I find myself living a more monklike existence. If your life is spent working, reading, working out, and abstaining from vices, how is this not the life of a monk? The only difference is that I'm not participating in meaningless prayers or going to church. I suppose writing would fill the space of spiritual practice. But my life keeps taking on a more austere edge. My biggest indulgence these days is reading too much.

The effect of this austerity is not what you think. My life feels fuller and richer for it. I feel happier and more alive. I have been pretty happy for the last five years, but I didn't think I could take it up a notch like this. But it is what it is.

The opposite of austerity is indulgence. We attempt to sate ourselves with as much pleasure and good times as we can find. Those efforts leave us empty. I have gone in the opposite direction seeking to deny myself in some areas, so that I can fulfill myself in other areas. This is easy to do when you don't have a girlfriend. When you have a girlfriend, your life is consumed with trivial bullshit. This is when you expend an hour discussing what to fix for dinner. Now, I become so engrossed in what I am doing that I forget to eat. I spent last Saturday doing so much that I ate one meal that morning and did not eat again until Sunday. This was not deliberate starvation so much as not wanting to be bothered with taking the time to prepare a meal. Monks would call this "fasting."

The purpose of fasting was for the sake of greater devotion to spiritual practice. The importance of this is lost on us in a world of fast food, microwave ovens, and energy bars. But in the old times, the preparation of food consumed the bulk of one's day. Women were largely tasked with this chore. Monks not having women around to do this for them probably enjoyed the break from this chore. Granted, hunger sucks, but it pays off in more time and greater devotion.

My aims are more secular than what monks seek. For me, it all comes from reading. I indulge my curiosity about things and spend a lot of time on the internet or on the Kindle. This is supplemented by perambulation where I get to reflect on all that I have read. This gets turned into writing.

I have virtually doubled my output this year from last year. A glance at the sidebar of the blog will show this. The funny thing is that with this austerity I still feel like I am always running out of time. I am one of the few but superior people who still wear a watch. Despite the minimalism, the austerity, and the solitary nature of my life, I still don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. It all goes by in a blur.

I could keep writing on this stuff for hours, but I am ending it here. I have other things to tend to, and I need to pinch it off. I just know it felt good to really indulge myself with this epic edition SOC post. It probably sucked for you to read it, but for some reason, people like to peek into my brain. These are just some of the things that have been on my mind lately. The other things will be turned into more readable and more focused fare. Thanks for hanging in there until the end.

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