Tempestuous Thoughts and The Confusing Art of Self-Sabotage.
The unravelling of the modern mind
Have you ever sat and thought about eating your fingers?
I wouldn’t recommend it.
By which, I mean I wouldn’t recommend the act of thinking about it.
(I also wouldn’t recommend eating your fingers either, obviously)
Let’s stick with the topic of thoughts.
Sometimes, incredibly unhelpful thoughts have a way of creeping up on you.
Imagine
One day you’re munching the end of a crisp (chip) in your fingers and find yourself considering if you might nibble a little bit of finger.
Or perhaps you’re stranded in the middle of the ocean, as one is prone to do.
There you are with nothing but the very occasional and quite measly fish to survive on and you don’t even like fish.
The obvious conclusion is to start putting your own fingers on the menu.
Relatable right.
Or perhaps you read a strange blog on Substack that starts on the classic topic of eating your own fingers.
Even though the title wasn’t about eating your own fingers.
Or was it???
What the f*€# is going on in this blog???
Who cares.
Actually someone does care.
Me.
And you.
We’re working together to get through this.
Let’s gather ourselves and focus on the important topic that we’re all here for.
Why do you read things on the internet
Knowledge acquisition?
Entertainment?
Companionship?
Distraction?
Your friend does it…
Regardless of what you might tell yourself, what you sign up for is to think thoughts.
You’re here to read a curated list of someone else’s thoughts that you can then think for yourself.
The goal is to feel usefully occupied and potentially think thoughts that make you smile or feel smart.
Occasionally we might click on things that will make us angry and pissed off at the world.
It helps to know how many stupid people there are on the planet…
Relatable right?
In all cases of our digital consumption, someone on the inter-webs spent time wading through their messy minds to find clarity.
Gathering possibly sensible (or frequently idiotic) thoughts and publishing for anyone in the world to consume.
What is useful?
The art of putting sensible thoughts together is easy.
For example:
Don’t jump out of moving cars
Don’t fool airport security into thinking you have a bomb
Don’t put your dick in a toaster
Easy.
The art of putting original or useful thoughts together is like herding sheep that live on different sides of the planet and your only assistance is a French sheepdog who wants early retirement and a long lunch break with two glasses of wine.
It’s not easy.
Beautiful Distraction
In the process of trying to write something useful, people can come up with all sorts of weird and self-sabotaging side quests.
They may or may not have even thought of eating their fingers and wondered where the hell that thought came from.
The fundamental reality of distraction is that we are finding a source of thinking for our brain to do.
A book, a movie or an infinite scroll on social media.
They are all things we can project into our minds so it can think stuff without effort.
These passive options contrast with the act of creating.
In a creative mode, we put the responsibility on ourselves to think thoughts without assistance.
We can then eject these thoughts from our minds into words or art.
Dis-ease
At the heart of consumption-based distraction is an uneasiness with the haunted landscape or our own minds.
Our modern disease is our shocking dis-ease with difficulty and boredom.
The minute we have a moment to pause and look inside the mind it tells us unpleasant things like:
This is hard
You aren’t good enough
Find something to occupy yourself
Get your phone out
Watch Youtube
Read a blog
Maybe eat your own fingers
Oh, STOP with the finger-eating already.
Jeeze Louise.
Next, you’ll be wishing your socks were elephants and then we’re all fucked.
Screw everything
Go for a walk without your phone.
Trust me.
Raw dog a flight if you have to.
Learn to break out of other people’s word vomit you spray at your brain day in and out.
Human beings are all going crazy.
Our attention span and ability to do hard things is collectively being ruined.
Unsubscribe.
Slow down
Let your heart beat for its own sake.
Let your chest rise and fall with the rhythm of life.
You are a biological miracle.
30 trillion cells indescribably work together to create you.
Stopping the inflow of breath into your lungs allows the outflow.
Your nature understands tides.
When you stop putting ideas into your mind, you’ll find ideas start forcing their way out.
The internet has infinite ideas for you, but so does your mind.
Let your own mind burst with ideas that need to be shared.
It needs to breathe.
Extras
This is normal
We are increasingly alone and don’t feel good to be alive.
And committing suicide.
My mum cuts my hair.
And on that, I’m off to a Vipassana tomorrow to have a word with my idea sheepdog about his work ethic 🧘