Digging in the Mind

In the spirit of the last post, allow me address a similar matter.  See, I go through periods of introspection, where I evaluate myself, my life, my choices and my ambitions.  I've been doing this since my teenage years, though the results is more piercing and carry a greater expectation, but the agenda is mostly the same: am I happy with what I'm doing; am I approaching the work, or my family, or my general well-being in the best manner that I can?  Is it time to make a change?  Why am I doing this, whatever "this" is, in this way?  Is there a better way?

I used to think everyone did this from time to time, but, to my surprise, no.  Yesterday's post came out of these reflections.  I found myself thinking about "not taking enough swings," because the phrase was used casually last Saturday on a site I read every day.  Sometimes I think I take too many swings, but of course, as I argued, that's wrong thinking.

It's night as I write this, but the post comes out of thinking I did last night before sleeping.  For about a week now, I've been acutely conscious of not being terribly happy ... a combination of the trip being something of a disappointment, and my feelings of being overwhelmed by work and tasks I want to accomplish.  Of wanting these writings, and my ideas, to be seen by more people.  Of wanting to feel that what I'm doing is relevant.  I think that's a question we run from, generally: "am I relevant."  Not in the sense of "important," and certainly not in the sense of greatness ... but really, as it applies both to being needed and in the way that we'd like to believe that our presence here makes some kind of difference.

I have readers tell me all the time that I am, and that I do.  Sometimes, people try very hard to convey that to me, I think because I have made a sufficient difference that they feel passionate about expressing that.  And it is appreciated.  But I have this absurd bent of mind that isn't as satisfied with "having" made a difference as I am with "going to," or "about to" make a difference.  This isn't a conscious choice.  It's the way I'm put together, for good or ill.

So I was thinking last night about what it is, exactly, that makes me want to spend so much of my day working on a book that seems too big to finish, or working on a wiki that, let's face it, can't be finished, or any of the other works that I do that sometimes challenge my confidence and my enthusiasm.  It's a given that I'm going to go on doing them, even if ultimately nothing else comes of the work ... but why is relevant.  I've always pitched in and worked at things, maps and writings and designs, but honestly it's been a long time since I've dug into why.

Asking myself why I like this, the simple answer is that because it gives me satisfaction.  But this is really just kicking the can down the road.  I see people giving this sort of answer all the time, explaining things in terms of the emotional gratification they feel, in broad terms, but it doesn't answer the question.  Why does it give satisfaction?  Why do I want to do it?  What specific concrete thing is it in the process that provides this satisfaction and sense of relevance?

It's so easy to put a label on things and go our merry way.  But we can't build upon a label.  We can sit down at our desk and say, "Okay, I'm going to satisfy myself ..."  Well, we can, but then we're not talking about being creative.  What we want to have in our pocket (heh heh) is the power to say, "I'm going to do this specific thing, because this specific thing is what satisfies me."  And without a lot of thought, and practice at introspection, it can take a lifetime to piece the answer to that question together.  Part of it demands that our threshold for what we'll take as an answer has to be very high, because otherwise we'll just quit.  We'll just shrug our shoulders and find the label that works and ... not grow.  And be dependent on things going well ... because its in despair that we realise that labels are useless.  When the satisfaction ceases, and we don't know why, because we never figured out where it came from.  Because we didn't take the time.  We may have asked the hard questions, but we never forced ourselves to get down into the mud and wrestle with those questions until we had a firm, real answer.  Instead, we took the bicarbonate that settled our questions and let us sleep.

I think what satisfies me is the size of things.  It's my nature to take a very small concept, something that would fit into a sentence ... like, an object ought to have a different price depending on where it's bought.  Or, suppose I dug up a bunch of recipes and made a menu.  Or, what would I say to a DM that already knew how to run a game?  And from these tiny beginnings, one step at a time, one choice at a time, I build these enormous castles or these beautiful objects.  A little bit at a time.  I have a vision in my head of how a thing might work, or what it might look like, and then I find, after working at it, that it winds up looking far more magnificent, and impossible to achieve, than it really was.

That's a really interesting transformation.  I look at the 1,416 pages on the wiki and while consciously I know that I've created every page from scratch, starting around 2014 — just nine years, starting with the first format wikispaces — and am overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of the project.  Such that if someone were to say, "Hey, could you start a wiki right now and make it this long, with this many words, could you do it?" and my answer would be, "No.  No I don't think so.  It would take too long."

And this reminds me to pay more attention to the Chinese proverb that it's better to want a thing than to have a thing.  Because it's not having the wiki that gives me satisfaction.  It's not even working that gives me satisfaction.  It's that I want the wiki to be larger, and knowing that I can make it larger ... because I have the power to do that.  It's knowing I can write the book, that this is something that isn't beyond me.  That there isn't a reason to feel overwhelmed by the size of these projects.  There's reason to put aside and forget that there's an end to be strived for.  If it's a project that can be finished, fine, there'll come an end to it ... but the end doesn't have to weigh upon my mind.  I know that given time and resources, I'll get there.  And I will when I get there.

KNOWING is a tremendous thing.  Knowing that I can do these things separates me from tens of thousands who'd like to do them, but who spend so much time regressed in the certainty that their vision is defacto unattainable ... because it would take too long.  That's such a trap.  Truth be told, none of us know how long it'll take.  Look what I've done since 2015.  Not just the wiki, but all these blog posts, the menu, the time spent on maps, the time spent on a book I never published and the time spent on a book I'm publishing right now, along with other projects that will never see the light of day.  None of us know what we can do with the time we have ...

But we can know we'll do something.  Some small thing.  Something that takes a day.  Or an hour.  Followed by another something and another, until this tiny, tiny seed grows into the magnificent tree, and we find ourselves wondering, "How did that get there?"

Getting up this morning, after this thinking last night, I didn't feel (as I often do) tired and dragged out, and unable to face the monsterous task I'm still at.  Because I do know.  It's not a trite bit of help-yourself book nonsense I'm telling myself to soothe or placate my doubts.  I don't have any doubts.  If I work on the book, at whatever pace or manner I wish, it will be finished.  There's no other possibility.

And that is satisfying.