I’m trying something new. I started reading Visakan Veerasamy’s ebook INTROSPECT yesterday, and it has been everything I have needed and more. It contains a lot of useful stuff, but the one thing I knew I needed to start doing immediately was this: stream-of-conciousness journaling. Visa (I call him Visa cuz it already feels like I know him personally) calls them ‘wordvomits’, journal entries that are as raw and unedited as possible. He describes it this way:
“Done well, journaling is a way of outrunning your inner critic, your homeostasis engine, your
mind’s propaganda department that tries to pretend that everything is stable and familiar.
Journaling is a way of executing the jailbreak. It might seem silly and trivial at the beginning, but
over time it compounds into something remarkable. It’s the best way I know to see for yourself
how your mind works. When it comes to your life, you are both the detective and the crime
scene. There is a lot to be learned.”
I love this quote. I need to break free from my own prison. I have been trapped for too long. Or rather, I keep breaking free but the cops keep catching me and keep putting me back in there. I keep making the same mistakes and spiralling down into despair when the answers are already in front of me. I have so many videoclips of me telling myself what my problems are and how to solve them, and then I set out to do just that, but after a while I forget and return to my former state. A state of discontent, anxiety, chaos, loneliness, creative blockage, isolation, disconnection, despair, neuroticism, arrogance, self-obsession, attention-seeking, and much more.
I hate that Visa wrote this book because it means I cannot be the one to write it. I have wanted to produce a work like this forever, but anything I ever do in this trend will just seem like a ripoff. Not to others, per se, but to myself. Maybe I could write a better version of it at some point, or a version that would have been better for me to read, but the effort necessary to produce it would be so large that it wouldn’t be proportional to the small gain in value that my work would have over his. Then again, maybe it could. I don’t know whether I could write something better. Or maybe I shouldn’t think of it in those terms, maybe I should think of it in terms of different. Or maybe I should convert the insights I gained from his book to different forms.
One thing I have realized is that you constantly need to work at getting yourself out of your default state if you want to do something great. It’s not even like the cops put you back in jail from time to time, it’s that you are teleported back into the jail, the memory of being outside being wiped completely from your mind. You need to keep forcing yourself to remember those memories, remember what you learned. If you don’t, you will keep making the same mistakes. You will keep executing the same escape plan, but the cops already know your plan and are waiting for you right below the outer wall of the prison. Every time you are able to remember how your previous plan failed, you can devise a new one and attempt to execute it. In the end, you may never be able to stay free permanently. You will end up back in the same old jail cell every single time you escape. But maybe you can stay free just long enough to catch a glimpse of something beautiful. Maybe you can sit on a beach and watch the sunset. Maybe you can truly see your loved ones for who they are. Maybe you can create a great piece of art. Maybe you can inspire someone else to escape their prison.
I’m already loving this. I’ve already expressed myself way more beautifully than I ever expected. Knowing that I could go back and edit what I just wrote to make it more beautiful, but choosing not to, is freeing. My perfectionism forcefully disabled. Thanks Visa.