[This was originally written prior to Labor Day, but I procrastinated and forgot to take action]

So I ended up down a Martin Scorsese trail on youtube, and during this interview he states

“People say you are a master at times, maybe because you get old enough, you think you know what you’re doing. The beauty of it is you never really know, and part of the fun of it, the fear of it, the anxiety of it, is finding out as you go along.”

And here we are. Finding out as we go along. All of us are doing a variation of the same pattern of creation, work, life, love, hopefully anyway, and not necessarily in that order. And from each broad paint brush motion, clumps of unstirred liquid infect our masterpiece’s canvas of our life. Perhaps we need to learn to love those clumps, appreciate the happy accidents created by our laziness to not ensure the paint was stirred properly prior to our venturing down the creative pathway. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance is something an asshole once said to me, and while I don’t remember his name, my memory draws a silhouette of a douchebag uttering that decent advice. 

The battle of proper planning against embracing the calamity we cause ourselves is the latest in the long string of internal struggles we as the human race must come to grips with, should we actually ever choose to acknowledge our internal battlefield that doctors call the brain.  Planning’s next door neighbor is procrastination, and they love that they live down the block from results and accomplishments. So where does action live? And is the relationship between planning, action, and procrastination just a living realization of the Dicks, Assholes, and Pussies relationship, explained in the theological masterpiece film Team America?

Buckleup buckaroos, cause if personalities can be broken down to Dicks, Assholes, and Pussies, and we apply those same rules to Planning, Action, and Procrastination, we might get some clarity in this search for answers. 

We all remember the rules of Dicks, Assholes, and Pussies. It’s better to be a Dick than the other two. Pussies get fucked by Dicks, and shit on by Assholes. Assholes can shit on Pussies but can still get fucked by Dicks. Dicks, on the other hand, can fuck both Pussies and Assholes. If we pretend Action is the Dick in this metaphor, and Planning is the Asshole, leaving Procrastination as the Pussy. Procrastination gets wrecked by both Planning and Action, where as Planning gets stuff done by shitting on Procrastination, but it still destroyed by Action. Action, the Dick of accomplishment in this metaphor, can crush Procrastination, and Planning. 

Now, I could ramp up this idea, and go all Ted Talk on ya’ll asses, but frankly I don’t want to do another few thousand words giving this concept a deep dive. I’m trying to be simple and quick with these blogs, and perhaps I’m failing. But shit, I just realized maybe I am where I am in my life, because I do that same pattern over and over again, which is create or come up with an idea, start down a pathway and then bail because I get too lazy to finish it. Looking over my accomplishments and history, the demolition derby that is my resume, one could argue that is a life pattern of mine. So, where does that leave me now? 

Goddamn. Maybe I’ll just push post on this thing and be gone for a minute again. I apologize for word puke, but if you actually read the early days, this is the only thing I promised the blog would be. So, blargh, and here’s some pictures I made of ’68 from last Saturday. 

So the weekly blog idea for this year went the way of the average American Lose Weight Resolution. Almost in stereo with the hopes and dreams of slicing and dicing dress size numbers did my attempt at textual conversation fall into the grave of attempts at accomplishments. I choose not to see that as a failure of my dedication and solely as a failure to maintain focus on this creative outlet. Maybe it’s a cop-out or maybe its just what my conscious needs to tell my sub-conscious to so that I may maintain riding the bicycle of the “grind” that is the chorus of the evangelical VaynerBros culture populating modern mid-20s and early 30s male life. 

Focus is always the arch nemesis of the interesting individual, or perhaps the interested individual. Shiny object syndrome is what someone more well paid than I, but not necessarily as intelligent, once verbalized, and that term is as accurate as it is infuriating in my life. The arms reach of modern creative tools breed a pit in which this syndrome grows, and thus it eats and destroys accomplishments though distraction. Maybe the great masters of the past were only masters because they only had their one discipline nearby in the life, and not the ability to download a pirated copy of Final Cut Pro and an iPhone, leading to the middle of the night questioning of why you haven’t made a feature length movie. “Fucking Soderbergh made an iPhone movie, why haven’t you, you goddamn lazy pussy?” may or may not have been an actual thought at 3am a few weeks ago, as I politely lost a staring contest with an egg shell ceiling. 

Jony Ivey, who you either love or hate, depending on if you are a good human being or not, once said “There needs to be sacrifice. The thing with focus is it’s not like this thing you aspire to, you decide on Monday ‘You know what, I’m going to be focused.’ It is an every minute, a ‘why are we talking about this? THIS is what we’re working on’… What focus means is saying ‘No’ to something, that with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea, and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it, because you’re focusing on something else.”

The bald headed bastard with an angelic voice was on to something, and I think about that quote often, as a male fighting off the harsh realities of social expectations of where I should be in my intimate relationship with time. The pile of sacrifices of good-to-great ideas is a bloody trench of possibilities, and if you’ve ever had a real life conversation with me, you know I romanticize possibilities over any other alluring traits of a person. Possibilities and potential are almost erotic in my love of them, they drive every engine in my soul, they blanket my coldness in winter and they give me oxygen in the summer. So as I look upon the pile of cast away chances, it is like visiting a cemetery of close friends you never fully got to meet.

So when you look upon your other pile, or perhaps a wall, however you want to store your accomplishments, it shall, and should, always pale in comparison to your discards. For the accomplishments that are lifted upon your mantel, have been cared for, and fed, and they have grown into fully formed entities. You have been a parent to great a number worthwhile tasks, some mighty, some mouses, but all living, beautiful creatures that you breathed life into, and molded with your hands, proverbially or in actuality depending on how you want to take that metaphor. If you place your piles in too-close proximity to each other, the stench of death from the ideas you took out back and put a bullet into, can infect the shine on your valuable accomplishments. This is where the emotional under belly of your other senses do battle with your logical brain, and you feel depressed and sad, even while staring at a wall of good things.

Focus does require sacrifice, and deep sacrifice, of loved ideas and potential. And when you send them into the pit, you must have the foresight to build that pit far away. Deep in the earth. Your memories of what could have been can not impact the great work you are capable of doing now, with clear mind and heart. Yes, you may learn from your ideas and most certainly your attempts, but they have a shorter half life than your calling, your vocation, or your true desire. 

Personally, and it’s my blog, so fuck off if you think this isn’t all about me, sacrificing what could be for what can be has been problematic this year. I moved from essentially Left of Bumfuck Nowhere, to a place where literally you can do anything you want. You just can’t do EVERYTHING you want, and that is the ugly, smelly, devil on my shoulder. I am but a glunton-ist. Going overboard is, for me, an emotionally logical first step. The dreadfully painful second step, the most needed one before the leap, is the unemotional logical analyzation of how to proceed. 

So in the battle of focus verses everything else, sometimes you lose. I lost for a bit this year, and we can analyze that all we want to, but that is premium content that you have to buy me a drink to hear. I’m tired of writing now, despite not having brought this shit think piece to a completion, so here’s pictures of Surfbort from the other week with deepest apologies if you came here for writing and not bad ass punk rock pics.

I went to a bunch of shows and had a blast. Here’s some photos.