7 February 2003: Start Again

How easy to fall out of the habit of writing!

I find that good habits require diligent effort to maintain, and can be broken through simple laxity; bad habits maintain themselves by default, require diligent effort to break, and can be slipped back into through simple laxity.  Why?  Because good habits are created and animated by the power of our will, our attention and intent.  Whereas true bad habits are qliphotic life-forms, what my dad would call "evil spirits" or "inorganic living beings."  Like viruses, bad habits are not conscious, but they are alive, with a built-in drive to survive and reproduce.  All evil works the same way; all evil is viral.  Good habits die if you don't actively remember to cultivate them; bad habits will impel you to cultivate them until you actively take a stand and defeat them.

One of my worst habits at the moment is that I stay awake when I'm too sleepy to do anything that I really want to do.  I browse the web aimlessly.  I stay up until two in the morning with Argus and Gemrise, watching bad movies from the 1970s and eating french toast and squid jerky.  I do this under the ridiculous belief that if I stay up long enough, I'll do some writing.  This does not work.  I write best if I get up early and write before I go to work, and I can only do that if I go to sleep on time.  At night, I try to write, but I'm tired and I just stare at the monitor and then convince myself somehow that if I browse the web or watch a movie or something it will be restful and I'll be able to write afterwards.  Not so.  What's restful is sleep.

It's almost certain that I'll be moving out of this house at the end of May.  I don't want to.  I love it here.  And moving is a pain in the ass.  But if nothing ever ended, we'd never get to find out what happened next.

 

The birds they sang at the break of day
Start again, I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be.

- Leonard Cohen

It may stop, but it never ends.

- Matt Howarth

Overheard at work:

Teacher: (talking about a loathesome character in a book) You know, he reminds me of that nasty little slimy guy in The Two Towers... the one who was after the ring... what was his name again?

Student: Yoda!