Discipline

Why is discipline (of all kinds) so difficult for people to adhere to?

Well, it is my belief that people's minds are not built to natively enforce discipline. Human cognition is more like a regression model than a flow model - that is, factors are weighted for "best fit", not added or subtracted in order to mimic functional need. In order to be a flow model, evolution would need sufficient time to work and sufficient latitude for proper selection (in other words, rationality would have to equate to higher reproduction rates).

When we have to make a decision, first, a situation compels us to utilize conscious thought to identify relevant inputs and generate a new output (action). We will retain a gestalt sense of the decision, along with a more vague sense of the factors we considered. One thing we will not retain well is the actual process by which the factors are weighted to come to a decision. If we try to remember why we made a decision, we will overwhelmingly confabulate the reason based on our memories of the inputs and output (this based on studies of patients with separated brain hemispheres).

Our output for a given decision will be of varying quality, based on our rationality, experience, and the decision subject matter, but ultimately, it is not the quality of the decision that matters in the long run. What matters is how well we are able to select pertinent inputs in a manner that is consistent across decision cycles. This is to say, how disciplined our mental processes are.

Pertinence is important for fairly obvious reasons - if we allow cognitive distortion to destroy our ability to normalize brain process to true rationality, we will not achieve sufficiently successful outcomes to optimize our learning.

Consistency is important because if we make a similar decision in a different way each time, we will never improve the quality of that decision-making process. This is because we will never accurately identify correlations between our decisions' quality and our decision-making factors.

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Enthusiasm, Is That You?

I've certainly been an enthusiastic consumer of many artistic forms in my time, but so what? That's easy; ideas beget ideas. Do you want the secret to a good life? Self-examine your heart and your ways, and learn what turns your mind on. Then, in that mind, sow some lonesome corner so many flowers bloom.

I have gone through phases of false promise in regard to creating art. I could eliminate some occurrences that would fit some people's technical definitions (The Real Inspector Hound), and I would be left with a series of haphazard disappointments and frustrations (losing song lyrics and at least one entire short story at different points). These frustrations may be symptomatic of a latent capacity for one or more art forms; or they may be nothing. Maybe I am pawing at the glass and I will turn around to sleep in the wood chips now.

More mysterious is what triggers such latent desire to create. There have been two occasions this year that have left me feeling ready, and they have come during times that I can not explain by any conventional means. Perhaps their triggers are not explained by my external life, or my internal life, but by happenstance to encounter their mediums with time to explore and a little luck to bolster confidence. Yes, confidence is often my undoing. I would sooner call it "sobriety"; that I try to control my ego and be objective, but the difference between myself and most others that make music or write literature is that they ultimately have a surplus of confidence in their abilities to do something worthwhile, while I do not.

And to end with something that I think most people would think is a total lie: I have little desire for others to experience what I create. What I want more than anything is to be able to admire something I created for myself, knowing that it was born in my mind alone and the result of my witness to the world in its becoming. And if this is a satisfaction born out of loneliness or isolation, then so be it, but I will go on at peace with an idea, which is enough for me.