Fuck Mindfulness.

NON SERVIAM = ‘I will not serve’. 

I will not submit to… 

Fear —  don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying.

You will die, you might as well try. 

Past — don’t dwell, rage, or resent every time a new flashback of things that have happened pops up.

What’s dead is dead, if not: kill it, don’t re-live it.  

Future — don’t let inertia take over because of what might happen. 

Don’t submit to your self-made dystopia and/or paradise.

Others — don’t let the approval of others determine your mood.

You are the sun, not them.  

Myself — don’t let yourself get in the way of yourself. 

What makes you think you know what’s best for you? 

Metrics — don’t get hung up on your account size or your age or your title. 

Your values and metrics are wrong! 

Solitude — don’t look for others to make you whole. 

Learn to love your own company, be your own best friend.  

Fatigue — don’t avoid movement just because you feel tired.

Always forward, physical movement is the best antidote to weakness, ageing, and depression. 

Addiction — don’t let the addiction to social media and YouTube take any more of your time. 

Surf the urge and do deep work.    

Distraction — don’t let the life’s of others be a distraction of what you have and what you must do with what you have. 

Keep your eyes on the prize, spend time on what matters.  

Noise — don’t try to drown out the noise of your monkey chatter, instead find the signal in the noise and commit to what matters. 

Stop, breathe, and re-commit as many times as it takes. 

Context — don’t let the external control the internal. 

Never ever forget this.

Self pity isn’t it?  It always comes down to self pity and entitlement.

You are entitled to nothing.

Embrace the nothingness.

Having nothing is freedom.

Be a monk.

Fuck it.

Truly mean it.

Fuck it all.

The self pity.

The self loathing.

No guilt.

No regrets.

Burn it to the ground.

All of it.

ALL OF IT.

Nothingness is your creed.

Your love.

Your sigma and alpha.

Your everything.

You are nothing and nothing can be taken away from you.

Nothingness is your everything.

Pray to it.

Worship it.

Come to terms with it.

Sit with it.

Every fucking day.

On good days.

Nothingness.

On bad days.

Nothingness.

On in between days.

Nothingness.

In fields of kins, between life and death, racing towards the end of the journey, accolades and disasters make for Jack shit, self pity will only slow you down, resentment is not an option, fairness is for fairytales, and nothing matters.

All journeys come to an end.

Own the nothingness.

Every single inch of it.

Make best friends with the space.

The void.

The abyss.

Death is unavoidable, nothingness is all there is.

Yes you are a failure, but now what? 

Yes you got rejected. 

Now what? 

Yes you got a bad rep. 

Now what? 

Things didn’t turn out they way you wished. 

But now what? 

Nothingness. 

The suffering and pain and abyss and nothingness should be leaned into. 

Not turned away from. 

Pivot. 

Into nothingness and get whatever needs getting done.

After the smoke has settled, after everything is said and done, after the after math, you’re left with just one option: fight or flee. 

Take the nothingness, own it, and make something.

Your values are wrong! Your metrics are wrong! It’s not about the exact number in your bank account. It’s not even about the numbers you produced today trading. It’s not about having the perfect carrier or the perfect relationship or the perfect family or the perfect home. None of that matters -- it’s not about triumphs or disasters. Not about accolades or failures. It’s about chipping away at each decisive moment, making the best of it, no matter random variance or circumstance. It’s about virtue, and kindness (including to yourself), and discipline and commitment and not panicking or trying too hard to please others. It’s about not caring what others think or do or how they live, instead making the most of what you have and the cards present in your hand. 

Don’t fall into the trap of obsessing on the wrong things! Don’t obsess on your age. Do not cling to happiness. Don’t ruminate on the past. Don’t cling to the future or goals and dreams. There is no single life-purpose. Life is about connections not achievements. Make sure not to fall into self-pity, neediness, or envy. Catch yourself when inconsolable rage creeps up and refrain from feeding more into it. Catch yourself catching yourself and pivot. Stop. Step back. Shift. Change the state of play. Find a way. What are you not seeing? There are so many options, so much possibility, if you just get out of your own way. You have to actually make something with what you have in front of you. Commit and recommit with incremental steps. Each decisive moment is an opportunity for making another connection to what matters to you right now.

Do you ever catch yourself catching yourself? 

Do you ever think to think about thinking?  

How to watch yourself as you are watching yourself? 

It’s how you disconnect from the story and the pain that you are clinging to.

It’s the key to your best moments, to your best life, to being yourself.  

Not getting caught up in whatever bullshit story you’ve created.

How to not repeat the same narrative over and over and over again?   

Do you ever catch yourself speaking to yourself but not listening to yourself?

How can you be without you creating the story of you. 

You from yourself -- dispatched and disconnected -- observing yourself without consuming yourself.   

Whatever bullshit happened or didn’t or might or might not -- can you create distance from the story of happenings, the story of you? 

What is yourself is not and will not be unless you write that narrative of yourself.

Do you ever catch yourself writing about yourself and creating yourself? 

The story of yourself unfolding as you are telling it to yourself.

Do you believe the story of yourself or do you write the story of yourself as you see fit? 

How to catch yourself as you are creating yourself? 

The me from myself, dispatched and disconnected, so I can invent and re-invent me. 

Do you ever catch yourself catching yourself?

In a lifetime of stories and storytelling: you can be the author of your life if only you stop and catch yourself as you are writing the story of yourself.

In these moments with yourself can you zoom out and watch yourself watching yourself? 

Do you ever catch yourself catching yourself catching yourself? 

2020 was the year of the rona – it disrupted my writing habits as life became life in the front lines fighting covid 19.

The rona disrupted life and nothing will ever be the same again.  

I wrote a total of 6 posts. 

‘Shift’ in January about the art of the pivot – whatever keeps you, whatever holds you, respond appropriately.

‘Riley’ in February about the new girl in the game – Ellis new best friend, existing in between worlds, as she finds delight in literally anything, everything, in happenings. 

‘Ok’ in Mars about Riley whispering: it’s ok, it’s alright, it’s inevitable – things will never be the same and it’s ok.

‘Petals’ in April about Riley standing in the cherry blossom field with her Yoko Uno sunglasses – lucky breaks or unlucky shitstorms, petals to the wind, no comment, and no bother.

The unrest feeds on fears — of crippling loneliness and the fear coming from your neediness that is in turn hinged on social approval and the opinion of others.

The unrest wants your mind, all day, every day.

It feeds on your insecurity and on the silence and absence of others.

The unrest wants to be in the center of your attention.

Lin-Manuel Miranda said once,

’How do you write like you're running out of time?’

Miranda was referring to Alexander Hamilton.

Miranda said,

’Everyday you fight like you're running out of time.’

But, really, we’re all running out of time — blink and it will all be over.

He said,

’Are you running out of time?’

Yes.

’How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive?’

Because it’s the only way that makes any sense to live this life.

’How do you write like you need it to survive?’

I need writing to organize, review, and evolve my plans, thoughts, and actions.

I need writing, in a very literal sense, to survive.

I need writing or else I will get caught up in my own mind — I will fall victim to my irrational and fearful monkey-mind chatter —  to the noise of depression.

’How do you write every second you're alive?’

Writing is the great equalizer — it helps put life and death, anxiety and loneliness, triumphs and failures — it helps put it all into perspective. 

Writing helps make it all manageable.

Writing creates distance to thoughts.

Writing helps you separate the signal from the noise — if it’s good writing. 

Good writing equals clear writing equals clarity of mind.

Writing consistently helps you improve your writing and thus your thinking.  

Writing, the simple act of constructing words together, is the only way to code and de-code your life.

It’s the only chance you have at designing and re-designing the life you want to live.

Writing helps you keep record(s), build project(s), and review and adapt.  

So I write.

I write like I need it to survive, every second that I’m alive, like I’m running out of time.

Killing yourself was the greatest thing you did today.

Killing yourself will be the greatest thing you’ll do tomorrow.

For the life of me, for the death of me, me from me, I shall banish — I shall banish.

The trade off when it comes to living each day is: you are also dying each day.

The trade off of life is death.

Breathe, get out of your own way — what’s choking you is your selfmade narrative.

What has you drowning is comparing the past with the present.

What got you tied in little knots is you fearing the future.

What gives you anxiety is the fact that you are dying without a commitment to dying.

Killing any notion of yourself, of who you are or who you were, is the only way to move past the past and into aliveness.

Make the make don’t let it make you.

This is the greatest lesson you will ever receive.

This is the best opportunity to practice making the make.

This is everything you make it to be.

You are lucky because of all of it.

Whatever metric you are using to measure self-worth: it’s wrong.

Whatever you care about: it’s too narrow.

Whatever has your attention is wasting your attention.

Whoever is ghosting you is treating you badly — and still you long to belong?

How can you be that ignorant?

Whatever you think you’re doing — shift to the pivot.

Rotate your world.

Kill yourself and nothing and no one can hold you down a second longer.

Put care into being careless. 

Practice not caring.

You will be better for it.

Don’t let their insignificance become significant — this game is so much larger.

This altitude is so much better.

There is so much more.

The proffesional and resistance.

Loving misery and finding delight in adversity.

Trusting yourself and standing tall.

The field is never level —  expect nothing — keep patiently adjusting in the margins available.

Return to this, this, this.

The happenings will happen.

The happens have happened.

What is happening is happening is happening.

Keep feeding the make you are making.

Add to the add, everyday in every margin, in every way.

Live — die — repeat.

The aliveness is the aliveness that feeds the aliveness.

Forget accolades, worship the craft, remember: autonomy above all else.    

Diverge with assymetrical disruption.  

Autonomy above all else.

What happens happens — the chips will where they may.

Keep true to you, above all else, keep yourself and remake yourself.

The cost of outsider pain is, always and without fail, worth insider integrity.

Cherry blossoms, the red field, the change, the in and out.

Riley says,

No comment.

Riley says nothing, her prescence, the silence, in fields of cherry petals, apparing and wanishing at the same time.  

Just this justness in the margins of the injustice and justice.

Lucky breaks or unlucky shitstorms, petals to the wind, no comment, and no bother.

Just the proffesional and whatever the resistance, good or bad, sad or indifferent, what makes the make is untouchable by the outside.  

The make is always deeper.

Feed the feeding that feeds the self made self.

I dont fear falling to my death, I fear being trapped in submission.

It sounds trivial, but it holds true: if you’re not ready to die you’re not ready to live.

It’s the only aspect of life you can control, and it’s the only guarantee you have to fall back on.

Aliveness and deadness and holding the two simultaneously and rigorously.

Riley says, 

It’s ok.

It’s alright. 

She gets control not by just not caring, but by not caring about control either. 

Unlike Ellis, she finds herself finding and re-finding herself. 

Like she just started. 

Like she just begun. 

Like she just. 

Riley won’t let anything hold her down, not so much because of pure movement, but in her ways of finding delight. 

Even in the face of ugly. 

She has embraced determinism like none of the others. 

She lives the inevitable. 

She is the inevitable. 

Now. 

Then. 

Before. 

All of it and none of it.

Empty. 

Full. 

Pain. 

Joy. 

Sorrow. 

Loneliness.

Togetherness. 

In field. 

Out of field.  

She finds not only solace, but delight in all of it. 

She doesn’t shift away but towards whatever happens and smiles.

She doesn’t need to create distance — she lives in and out of it.

It’s effortless for her like movement without friction is effortless for Ellis.  

True freedom? 

Riley is free, not in the absence of others, but regardless their trajectories.   

She says, 

It’s happening, right now, it’s happening to you, and it will keep happening just like it has happened.  

She says,

It’s ok, let it happen.

She says, 

Things happen. 

The way life happens, no matter what, you can still take delight.

It’s yours, even in the midst of it all, it’s there in the happening. 

She says, 

It’s ok. 

It’s alright. 

It’s inevitable. 

She says, 

You don’t need to kill it — it is already dead always. 

So why bother with anything except delight.

So she begins and re-begins. 

So she finds and re-finds delight. 

And whatever control she has comes from that discovery and re-discovery. 

Like it moves her moves. 

Riley says, 

Things will never be the same and it’s ok. 

It’s alright. 

It’s inevitable.  

Riley brings something new to the game. 

She seems completely fearless the way Ellis is fearless but without the death wish. 

Ellis moves into hellfire, always looking for the kill, unfased. 

Riley has no desire for the unneccessary risk. 

At the same time she doesn’t flinch when it rears its head. 

Like she is in between worlds. 

Like she can’t be bothered. 

Riley says: 

What got you tied in knots is just the noise of wanting to live forever. 

She says: 

Control is good but this is better. 

This what? 

This. 

Can’t you feel it? 

The serene withering of everything. 

It’s kinda magical. 

The dying breed. 

All of us. 

Whether we have community or not. 

Whether we have someone or not. 

Withering. 

Can it be mitigated by the company of others? 

Sure, but it can also be lost in that distraction. 

Everything, nothing, something, whatever that ugliness is — what if you hold it here for what it is instead of mitigating it. 

What if you didn’t obsess about drowning it out. 

The high and the rush of others might drown it out. 

Others might want to drown it out. 

But what if it can be savored instead into something more than anyone or anything could ever provide. 

And, unlike others, it can never be taken away.  

Cause it was never there, just like you, an illusion made of billions of seamingly unlikely events. 

An emergent property of hydrogen turned primate turned into fleeting consciousness. 

No free will. 

No other possible outcome. 

No worries. 

What does that leave? 

Something pretty similar to Ellis’s life on the edge ready to jump but not taking the leap.

Only difference is Riley already has one fot on either side of the edge. 

She is not making any distinction when it comes to what’s pre or past her.

Why bother bothering?

What got you tied in knots, she says, is just the noise of wanting things to last forever.

They don’t. 

Ready?

All systems go. 

I like that, I like that very much. 

They say it isn’t personal. 

Para mi si. 

Shift. 

Pivot. 

Angulate. 

Resist the path of least resistance. 

Never again. 

Shift is the new default. 

Always forward like nothing else matters. 

Whatever happens, there is still the shift. 

Whatever happened, it’s happening, to you, whether you like it or not.

So what are you going to do about it? 

Shift. 

Pivot. 

Angulate. 

Find a way to navigate with the movement needed to move forward. 

This movement is all you have. 

The rest is dead.

Out of reach. 

It happens anyway, it’s going to happen and your going to respond. 

In the meanwhile what’s happening might be beautiful in all its ugliness and you’re still squandering it.  

Isolation can still be a gift. 

It’s the mark of the kins. 

Fail everything except yourself. 

And when you fail yourself pick yourself back up again. 

The disconnect then connect paradigm. 

The symphony is always there all you need to do is listen. 

The mark, the allies, the pivot, all of the mentioned, ever present. 

The past shows up and your response remains.

Movement is the only remedy for that folly.   

The ugliness of neediness, disconnecting from wanting, is the only remedy.

So much we want that we can’t have, fuck it is the appropriate response.

So much unfairness and injustice, response is the appropriate response. 

Not panic. 

Not hiding. 

Lean into the doing. 

Lean into the movement. 

Lean into the nothingness. 

Whatever you failed, stop failing yourself. 

Shift. 

Pivot. 

Angulate. 

Marginal adjustment. 

Turn the narrative. 

Re-position the entire scope, outside the noise, in front of the field in front of you.

Isolation is a gift. 

Degrees of freedom. 

Checks and re-checks. 

Whatever keeps you, whatever holds you, respond appropriately. 

Shift.

Pivot.

You think it’s obvious, but obviously it’s not.

It seems it’s falling apart at the seams.   

Ellis says, 

’Oblivion is nothing to fear, my dear.’

What sets her apart is how she doesn’t take part.

Cringe at the tasteless taste in these Instagram frames. 

Don't let the inferior stories, sold by others, slow you down.

The tales they tell, they paint heaven of hell. 

Getting caught up is easy. 

Staying power is hard. 

Parts fall apart.

You’d think it’s obvious, but obviously it’s not. 

She says, 

’Oblivion is nothing to fear, my dear.’

When life falls apart at the seams, you have nothing to lose except your life — your life — your life. 

And your life wasn’t yours to begin with. 

You’d think it’s obvious, but obviously it’s not. 

How are you letting entropy upset you son? 

In the blink of an eye you and everything you care for — gone. 

She says, 

’Oblivion is nothing to fear, my dear.’ 

What sets her apart is how she is ready to depart.  

Holding on to anything, holds you down.

Do not partake, it’s only your life that’s at stake.

Keep yourself until it’s time to sleep yourself.

You think it’s obvious, but obviously it’s not.

It seems it’s falling apart at the seams.   

She says, 

’Oblivion is nothing to fear, my dear.’

What sets her apart is how she can’t take part.

Make peace with these pieces, make due with due diligence. 

Turn the turnings until it’s turned around. 

Accommodate accordingly to altitudes above the asinine. 

Set the set, adjust the settings. 

The in field view and the out of field view and the movement in between. 

She says, 

‘Oblivion is nothing to fear, my dear.’ 

Resting in the place of restlessness.  

The return.

To this, only the single greatest, consistent, and continuous make I ever made.

The connect is uncanny.

The complete change of field, the level of game, the depth of signal vs noise — it's asymmetrical and disruptive, but only in the best way possible.

The connect is the disconnect from the mundane to the worthwhile.

To movement as Ellis would say.

To ownership and autonomy as Charles would say.

To hell and back as Merc would say.

It's the mark of the Kins.

The disconnect to connect to what truly matters.

The dying before dying before dying.

The fall that becomes the flight to altitudes and magnitudes above the grovel.  

Not letting yourself get lost in the narrative of social stigma.

The disconnect is the connect.

The script, the allies, this discipline — it’s more than a feel good distraction — there is no other alternatives, no other way to live.

Discipline breeds discipline, disconnect breeds disconnect — making the meaningful connection stronger.

At every junction, at the very bottom, at the fringe of doubt and self-pity, at life: trust your commit to this.

Commit harder.

Commit more often.

Commit when succeeding, commit when failing, commit to this even as everything else is falling apart.

Never trust their praise, do not look for accolades or social confirmation.

Just keep to this single commitment.

It’s not like anything or everything else, it’s better, but it takes discipline and trust.

Trust this, return to this.

Addiction must not happen, if you trust this commitment you can make what you want to happen happen.

Things will happen, they are happeningen, what matters is how you commit to this even as they happen.

Disconnect from addiction so you can connect to substance.

Don’t be fooled any differently.