SLAY Don't Wait

the online process of Matt Slaybaugh

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You Have One New Message from Resistance

I was perusing my own blog posts, from seven years ago, and I saw this one, titled “Let Resistance Be Your Guide.” Here’s the part that grabbed my attention today…

We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

That’s the part Steven Pressfield wrote. And here’s the part I wrote…

Wondering if that project’s worth pursuing? If it wasn’t you wouldn’t be questioning it so much. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t feel so tired just thinking about it. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have three empty notebooks with the project’s name carefully written on the cover and nothing inside. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be asking all your friends what they think of it.

Chances are – and this might be the scary part – Resistance knows what’s good for you even better than you do.

Earth to Matt, are you getting this message?

Seth Godin: “You need to make art.”

Seth has a new book coming out at the end of the year. It’s called The Icarus Deception. It’s what I’ll be giving everyone for their birthday next year. (Sorry to ruin the surprise.)

I took part in his fantastic and educational Kickstarter effort to support the publishing of this brave, new book, so I’ve got a preview of the book this weekend. It’s about a subject close to my heart, how everyone needs to make art. (In order to be more fully human, in my opinion. In order to fulfill your potential, in Seth’s.)

Here’s a quotation that made my heart flutter, so I had to share…

This is about doing work that is personal, that requires guts, and that has the potential to change everything. Art is the act of a human being, doing generous work, creating something for the first time, touching another person.

This is a book about why each of us should make art. Why it’s worth the price. And why we can’t wait.”

Somebody’s Got a Case of the Four-Fifteens

There’s that terrible commercial, right? For Five Hour Energy, the most disgusting product I can think of, and some woman chides her co-worker, “Somebody’s got a case of the Two O’clocks!” Urgh.

I don’t get the Two O’Clocks, though. I get the Four-Fifteens. Do you get the Three Thirties? Or maybe you work late and get that really depressing jab of the Eleven Twenty PMs.

Whenever you get it, it takes effort to recognize and deal with that extended moment of weakness. Really, it was just a few weeks ago that I suddenly realized that every late afternoon, in the gap between most of my appointments and seeing my wife after her workday, during which the incoming emails finally slow down, is regularly my LEAST-productive time of day. It doesn’t matter when I got out of bed, what I have left to do, or what I have to look forward to. Those are the couple of hours when I find it hardest to focus on Getting Things Done. Resistance gains a foothold and I just wanna nap, or look at Facebook, or kid myself that online shopping is a productive use of time.

So I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf. When I feel that lethargy coming on strong, I switch the game, I do the opposite of what I’ve been doing. If I’m home, I leave. If I’m out, I go home. If I’ve been online, I close the computer. I turn off the phone. I read. I write. Anything to avoid wasting those hours.

Sometimes it even works.

Now I’ve just gotta figure out why I always get tired just in time for rehearsal.

How to Succeed (thx, Sth)

Seth Godin with another fine list. This is a bunch of ways to succeed (or not, depending on your situation.) Here are some of my favorites…

1. Be very focused on your goal and work on it daily
2. Go to college with someone who makes it big and then hires you
…
4. Practice every day
…
7. Do the emotional labor of working on things that others fear
…
12. Inherit
…
18. Contribute more than is expected
19. Give credit to others
20. Take responsibility
…
26. Treat every gig as an opportunity to create art
…
29. When dealing with employees, act like Steve. It worked for him, apparently.
…
32. Have the ability to work harder and more directly than anyone else when the situation demands it

Some of those reflect my values. Some of those are funny.

Maxwell & sci-fi and stuff

I’ve got so much to do and I’m way behind. So how does my mind work today?

Y’know the great struggle of my life is really that I love getting shit done only about 5% more than I love to sit around and drink coffee and read. Maybe you should read, Matt? That Gene Wolfe book only gets better as you go?

What’s this email? Maxwell’s going on tour? Oooh, Maxwell, I haven’t listened to Maxwell in awhile, I should make a Spotify playlist with my 10 favorite Maxwell songs. Man, where’s that tour going?

WAIT – this is RESISTANCE! Ack!

I better blog about it.

Your DFW moment for the night

The new volume from University of Mississippi press arrived today, “Conversations with David Foster Wallace.” You can expect a slew of quotations in the next few days.

Here’s one from 1993:

… managing to be a really alive human being, and also do good work and be as obsessed as you have to be, is really tricky.

Simply said and heart-breakingly true.

Seth: You will be disappoint me

You will disappoint someone.

That’s part of the deal of being in the world.

The alternative, I’m afraid, isn’t to choose a path where we make everyone happy and always exceed their expectations. Nope. The alternative is to hide, to fail to engage and to produce nothing.

A pretty easy choice.

F’in right.

I can’t write I’m too worried

I can’t write, I’m too worried about my bills that are due next week.

I can’t write, I’m too nervous about this interview.

I can’t write, I’m too tired.

I can’t write, I’m too hungry and we don’t have anything I want to eat.

I can’t write, I’ve only got 15 minutes.

I can’t write, this room is a mess.

I can’t clean-up the room, if I do, I’ll won’t have enough time to write. [Read more…]

Restlessness

Straight from the heart this one.

It’s certainly not that I have nothing to do, though I’ll use that excuse. Rather, it’s some sort of boredom mixed with a lack of urgency and some nasty impatience mixed in.

The list is long, long enough to inspire frustration. There’s a kid whining outside my window, I’m a little hungry. Under all this, though, the real reason for my inability to do anything worthwhile is lurking.

Maybe it’s cause I need to email that guy and it’s a little past the expiration date and so I’m dreading that. Writing that email is going to be difficult and I’m going to feel embarrassed and conflicted about it.

Maybe it’s the larger project that I’m also ostensibly behind on but know that all my collaborators are also behind on and therefore even beginning to make progress feels impossible today.

Maybe I just need to turn some music on, eat a little something.

Maybe it’s the three or four errands I need to run. Maybe it’s the heat.

Of course, it’s really just resistance, feeling particularly tricky. Resistance got out of bed early today. I didn’t. Fuck me two times.