It is Saturday morning as I write this. I think people have figured out that I write things to be published at a later time. I have a rough editorial schedule that I follow which is why I don't publish things as soon as they are written. I fail to keep that schedule because writing is something I do sandwiched between doing other things. But they key reason things don't get written as planned is because of lack of inspiration. Sometimes, you just don't feel up to the task of working on a project.
These free writing posts give me the freedom to break away from the schedule. It is a way to procrastinate without actually wasting the time. Without a set agenda, I can just let the words flow as they always do. This is a very useful exercise for any writer.
No SOC post is complete without a reference to coffee. I had a nightmare that I accidentally bought a can of decaf, and it was all that I had for java. How whack is that? I'm not making this up. I had a nightmare about decaffeinated coffee. Crazy shit. I admit it. I am an addict.
I have two favorite coffee cups. The first is a blue mug that is twice as big as a normal coffee cup. I would like to get one that is even bigger and TALL. But the blue mug is what I go with when I am at home. The other cup is my tall stainless steel travel mug that goes with me on my commute to work or Fight School. It keeps the java warm, and it is a full dosage of that good stuff. When I get to the bottom of that thing, I always feel right.
How much coffee do I drink in a typical day? At least one liter. This does not count the Diet Mountain Dew I drink throughout the rest of the day or the occasional Red Bull or Monster I will get while working. Maybe I should feel shame over this clear addiction to a stimulant, but I don't.
One idea that is making the rounds is that coffee was responsible for the Age of Enlightenment. I believe it. Here's a nice video on the subject that I enjoy:
Clearly, coffee is the thinking man's beverage of choice.
When it comes to creativity, I have learned that you need two main ingredients. The first, of course, is caffeine. The second is a cauldron of various ideas having sex. Whenever I need ideas, I fire up the Mister Coffee and hit the internet. Magic happens.
People talk a lot about distractions and how they get in the way of getting things done. I just don't have this problem. The distractions are a primary wellspring of my creativity. Not only do I use Facebook, but I have 5000+ friends and almost 3000 subscriptions to other people's feeds on Facebook. This generates the variety and ideas having sex that I need to spark my creativity and thinking.
I think this sort of reaching out and engagement with the world is what is needed to prevent intellectual staleness. How do I reconcile this with minimalist ideas of simplicity and focus? I don't. When I sit down to actually create, this is the flip side of the coin. I put away those distractions and let my mind work on what it has absorbed. I think you need both distraction and contemplation.
This syzygy philosophy is working its way through my life. On one side is my Renaissance/autotelic/robust pursuits. On the other side is my Leo Babauta/simplicity/minimalist side. I try to keep both simplicity and variety. You have to have both of these things. If you want to see ideas having sex, there are two ideas getting down hot and heavy right there.
I keep up with the minimalist bloggers, but you have to admit that they are now into repetition and stagnation. But on the flip side, the maximalist way is so overdone that you get bloat and exhaustion. I do the picture and the frame thing which I have written about before. You need to have simple frame for your life, but you also want something to be in the picture.
Minimalists make the mistake of putting together an elegantly designed sparse museum but forgetting to put pictures in it. The museum should serve the function of housing and displaying the art. Another example would be the iPad that is simple in design but complex when it comes to what you can do on the screen. The extreme minimalists never even turn the thing on. This would ruin the beauty of the device.
Syzygy is the way to go. I want both simplicity and variety. I don't know if I pull that off, but I see that holding these opposites together makes the most sense. It is an amazing place to live in.
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