An Update, plus: Change Your Ways Strategically
My absence & a helpful analogy on how to advance
Sorry for having been absent for a while. First, I fell ill with some stupid bug, then I suddenly felt the irresistible urge to write a few songs (I might eventually share some of that). So there was no inspiration left for writing.
But I have things in the pipeline. I’ll be back soon.
As a little thank you to my paid subscribers for sticking around, below you’ll find a short text I wrote some time ago about strategically doing violence to your habitual ways.
And don’t forget that I have lots of essays here which are all more or less timeless—if you have a hard time reading something that didn’t come out yesterday because of our messed up dopamine systems that make us addicted to the novelty factor, just trick your mind by pretending I just published the essay.
Here are some suggestions:
Thanks again, folks.
Hope you are all alright, facing madworld and whatnot, advancing your understanding, and finding creative ways of letting your soul bring forth a worthy life, craziness and all.
A great analogy for how to deal with the desires and drives that hinder your growth comes from the mystic Simone Weil.
Say you want to change unhealthy habits—like procrastination, overeating sweets, dissociating, not taking care of things, addictions of any kind?
What you want to do is just observe those patterns without judging them, or judging yourself.
Then, Weil says, you want to “do violence to them.” How does that work? And when should you do it so that it actually leads to something useful?
Here’s where her analogy comes into play: