Philosophistry

Initial Thoughts on Flow

Ah. To wake up without an alarm clock and look forward to the work that I'm about to do. To sit atop a Sunday evening and see a week of opportunity and enjoyment. To feel content with the subject of my life.

These are things I don't have, but yearn to have.

I've picked up this book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chicks-sent-me-high") titled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. By understanding flow, perhaps I can understand the ingredients of a rich work-narrative. One suggested ingredient is the structure of a game: rules, feedback, goals, rewards, and control.

Another suggested ingredient is personal growth. I found this chart helpful:

(Csikszentmihalyi 74)

Anxiety is evidence of an over-challenging task. Boredom is evidence of something that's too easy. If you glide the sweet spot of balance between challenges and skills, then you are more likely to flow.

I interpret this to mean that work-flow comes when you frequently feel personal improvement. In addition, my personal addendum is that you should care where the improvement goes. For example, sure I can improve my skills at playing chess, but at the end of the day who cares?

Three sources have led me to stumble upon this book:
1. I was in the dorms, bored, and asked a random student for a book, perhaps one on psychology—he handed me Flow.
2. Blog buddy Bob Ryskamp has referred to the book a couple of times. Check out his An Autotelic New Year and my own comments.
3. Marty Seligman in Authentic Happiness glows about Mihaly and his work.
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Love versus Infatuation; and developing a purpose in life

Some definitions are in order:

infatuation - A foolish, unreasoning, or extravagant passion or attraction

love - A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude

(phil's usage of) angst - A feeling of anxiety or apprehension based on an intense desire to do something.

my personal story

I was lying on the floor, frustrated, and pestering myself with the question, "what am I going to do with myself? why should I work? why should I do anything?" This was the beginning of last week, but I've been in that floor-angst zone many times. There are three cases that I want to cover here: once in April of last year, once this past July after I graduated, and once at the beginning of this week.

At the beginning of last year, I could have sworn I was going to be a painter. I had painted intensly thirty or so abstract acrylics. Since the act of creating each painting energized my spirits, I figured I was "pursuing my passions." To me, this is what I was meant to do.

My motivaiton for painting came to a halt when I considered exhibiting my work. I started out aggressive. On one day, I met about 20 gallery owners, and then the next day I started making brochures of my paintings. But after a week, something started chewing at me. I kept asking myself, "is this what I really want to do?" and "do I really care about painting?" I was so stressed by this confusion and all the effort I was putting into marketing that I caught a cold. I then gave up and started looking for other things to do.

A few months later, I then thought I was going to be a writer! How did I go from painting to writing? Well, my logic was that maybe painting wasn't my true passion. So, I asked my heart, "what moves you," and it drew me into blogging and writing essays. Boom, I went all aggressive into writing like I did with painting and put out maybe 300 articles. Writing did to me what painting did, which was send me to energetic highs. My emotions were so intense that I thought, "yes, this MUST be what I want to do, look how it moves me, look how it engages me!"

So I decided to become a professional writer. I had an idea for a short-story and a novel, and I started brainstorming. After a few days though, all my energy fell flat. I felt similar to how I felt with trying to exhbit my paintings. When it came to doing my art for reasons other than a personal high, my angst would return and my motivation would evaporate.

This last week, I was hit again with a similar impasse, but this time I took a different approach. I analyzed myself and came to the idea that maybe the "pursuit of passion" may not be enough to satisfy my angst. Maybe, in addition to me enjoying a project, the project needs to create a sense of meaning in me. So, for example, while I enjoy being in the throes of creative inspiration while painting or writing, I don't really care about painting in general. I enjoy paintings in museums, sure, but I don't walk up to them and think to myself, "yes, this matters." So my understanding is that painting and writing are purely infatuations to me. They can give me all the symptoms of love without truly setting me "in love." And the difference between being in love and having an infatuation is that love combines passion with solicitude or a caring. When you love something, it not only inspires and moves you, but it compells you to give and nurture.

So, if you are trying to find meaningful projects by simply pursuing what turns you on, you may not find yourself deeply satisfied and fulfilled. Meaning or purpose in life can only come when you have someting you love.

Theory behind this

Purpose and meaning in life are emotions that indicate that we are needed for tomorrow. When you love something or someone and you care about how it or they fare in the future, then you automatically take on a role where you are needed.

PS

What is it that I care about? Well, I'm still pinning that down. I have a project I'm working on, and I want to see if it can sustain a sense of purpose in me.
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The Ludic Life

Sauntering back to the Cowper House, I have three items in my hands. A triangle of life in my clasps, grasped.

1

Fül
Fuel. Energy. A healthy sandwich. Necessary foundation for everything.

2

Tome Wisdome
Wisdom book. An inspiring read of a life overflowing with passion. Basic premise: "You have to lose your mind in order to use your head." If I have the pace to pick a book randomly and casually stroll through it, then everything is okay.

3

Juz de Aesthetico
Aesthetic Juice.
The primate in all of us is drawn to the explosion of hues that fruits and flowers display. Unfortunately, man-made, tangy dyes have made ads, clothing, and everything artificially fruitful(less). If I have the wherewithal to pick up flowers, then I know everything is okay.

this is life. This is happiness. The creative play. The ludic life.

I read in adBusters a letter sort of like this:

Think about when you are out dancing by the lake. Think about when your friends are lying on the couch laughing. Think about when you pick up poetry for fun. When it is over, isn't it annoying how everyone sighs, "well, back to the real world."

Why is the world of work, that socially-constructed, capitalistic, industrial complex considered the "real world??"

"No!" I say. The 'real world' is when you are engaging in play. The unreal world is the one where you are selling your time away for wage. Sighing, "well, back to the real world," is to confuse negative space with positive space. It is in the freedom of ludic moments that true friendships and true vivacity is found.

The ludic life.

Definition of "ludic:" Of or relating to play or playfulness.

Some inspiration derived from The Abolition of Work.

yes.
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Change Stress, Karma Building, Etc.

Good evening sirs and madams, here is your fortune cookie for today:

It was a failure of imagiation on my part. So many calamities, big and small, are: the failure or inability to work out the day-to-day consequences, over a period, of our actions.

...

She was like those people who retire to a place where they have holidayed, and in this holiday place become frantic with boredom and solitude.

This is from V. S. Naipaul's Suckers, a short-story fiction in the June 7th New Yorker

This bit reminds me of my impetuous trip to London. What happened was that I had just finished watching The Hours and by the incessant suggestions of Virgina Woolf, "I must go to London," combined with my self-intoxication of the "pursue your passions from the get-go" meme, and a quick $200 round-trip flight to London, I decided to embark in 2 weeks. Boom. It was suicide. I was there by myself and did nothing for a month. It was on the one hand, everything I wanted: meditating at 4am in front of statues, staring at paintings at museums (free entry), falling asleep on buses and ambling my way back to Picadilly. On the other hand, I was lonely and bored to death. However, that was when I first started Philosophistry, so there's always a silver lining.

Second fortune cookie.

This time a real fortune cookie combined with some advice from a new client of mine: "Keep your eyes on the prize but your feet on the ground." This is important for people who want the HOLY GRAIL (for artists). What is the HOLY GRAIL?

THE HOLY GRAIL IS...

Pursue your passions from the get-go but get paid handsomely at the same time.

My client suggested, and this is confirmed by the fortune cookie and some other stuff I read elsewhere, that it is important to stay at one location and build up an artist's karma. Eventually editors and gallery-owners get intimate with your name as you plant seeds that take 10 years to grow. Eventually you pass a certain threshold and people start respecting your work.

I love Palo Alto so far, and I'm gaining a great rhythm here. I've already built some karma with my hard work invested into Stanford and various relationships that I've maintained.

We shall seeeee.

PS. this is a wild panoramic shot of my room.
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The Pursuit of Passion = Doing things for their own sake

In order to effectively engage in an activity, you have to care about the activity for its own sake.

If you are working to make money, if you are writing a book to become famous, or if you are blogging because you want attention, then you will not truly squeeze the passion out of that process.

I learned this in 1997 when I entered a web design contest just to win. I lost the competition, but I also wasted my time because I didn't learn any new skills nor did I enjoy what I was doing. In 1998, I re-entered the same competition, but this time with the idea that I was doing it to learn and have a good time. By the time I was finished with my project, I already felt satisfied, and because I was so passionate about the process, I ended up winning the contest anyways.

I think Bob Ryskamp referred to this process as "autolectic" or something, whereby you do the activity for "its own sake." auto = self, lectic = like, elect to do something.

I came to this idea when I found myself unable to blog. I realized that I was blogging for many other reasons, such as ego, but not for the activity's primary usage: to journal. If I elect "to journal" as the prime motivation, then blogging will come more fluidly.

Is what you are doing, autolectic?
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Pursuit of Passion || *.* excuses

I'm re-taking a course this quarter, Math 53 - Differential Equations. I had taken this course this past summer, but at the last minute decided that I didn't want to take the final. Why did I do this?

I came to the conclusion that week that the pursuit of my passions was principly important (and it still is). Part of pursuing those passions involves maximizing the amount of activities that you do that are passionate from the get go. That at every instant, I should be pursuing my passions. I said to myself, well, if I REALLY wanted to prove to myself that this was an important goal, then I wouldn't even take this final coming up. And so I didn't. I proved something, but in retrospect I don't think my reasoning was correct.

Reasoning that "rejecting the dispassionate committed me to the pursit of passion" was a little irrational. I committed the fallacy of denying the antecodent. I took "Doing things I'm passionate about means I care about my passions" to mean also "Doing things I'm not passionate about means I don't care about my passions" Bad Phil Bad Phil.

From an aphorism-like perspective, I could've smelt an excuse and thought about the problem more deeply, or applied some "common sense" algorithm. Further proof that you sould unify both your rational thinking and your emotions.

On the other hand, rejecting things you are dispassionate about gives you more time for things that you are passionate about, so indirectly it helps your passions, but only indirectly.
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what is passion

passion v. habit
passion v. addiction
passion v. social imperative
passion v. entertainment
passion v. idle fru-hah
passion v. programming
passion v. fear
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A Test 4 Passion

I think the way to tell if something you're writing has passion is to see if it has voice. or not just voice, but if it has .... well... I guess... okay, now I'm just rambling on here.
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Soul firehose

Any true soul firehose should be like 9 parts emotional lava and 1 part cerebral. I think the primary insigt I'm rolling over is the idea that I have spent too much of my artistic chalk in my brain. I've been calculating, strategizing, planning, and "managing" this blog and my free-timed parts of my life toward specific goals. But that subordinates anything mysterious, anything worth laying out in the sun for others to appreciate.

well, we'll see. a week can't hurt. I got karma to burn as they say on slashdot and plastic.com
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To put

To put true passion behind my pen. To put out only when there is something within that feels heavy, weighted down with juicy energy, worth sharing.

and then taking that, seeing if there is some pubic component, i.e. "desire to inspire" "desire to invent" and pump that. That = public passion; = way to become a paid artist.
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A Fire Inside (not the band)

That previous post has brougt me back to that first time I quit school in a rush. I think the emotional snowboall came for me when I saw Adaptation. That movie made me think, "what the hell am I wasting my time for, I should be out burning the wax off the candle in my soul. I should be cutting that rapture of pursuing what you love, everyday.

It was such a motivational force, and it ripped apart through my bones, and in a few days, I decided to drop everything.. I moved out of school starting january 1st of this year, and then I threw myself into my minivan and headed into the desert.

Looking back now, that was one of the most invigorating experiences of my life. Everytime I listen to the tracks I kept with me on my trip to the desert, it brings me back to that island of a moment.
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It's like if your life is taking one pace for so long, and then you change it so much that your life forks out into a separate life that is closed off from the rest. Then you can reflect back and see a discontinuous sequence.

blah, I don't know what I'm saying. all I wanted to say primarily was that I have the shivers after the previous post. Everytime I come across a method of thinking that involves some sense of paradigm shifting or re-approaching everything that I have become so used to thinking about, I start to shiver.

I think it's nervousness, maybe it's fear, or it's just some other natural response to change.

Either way, it's hard to type on this zero-force touchstream keyboard that has no buttons, because you have to hover your hands above the keyboard, and since I have shaky hands, it's difficult to type.

The Iskra? The End of Selling Out?

The idea of having a public passion is somehow bearing on me, it's interesting.

I don't know, well my blog is serving a totally different use you know, I'm not purely interested in hits.

but what I'm interested in is tuly making something useful.

Unfortunately, my blog has then ceased to become about being a personal reflection of what it means to be Phil... primarily well, I think that's not what people want.

yeah, theres' something tricky about this perspective.

like, I could go back to the old style, you know, of really throwing myself out there, then it'll be a great release for me.
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well, true "passion" i'm limiting myself to passions that I think are useful to others as well.

if they're useful for others, that doesn't make it a passion, but I need to tap those passions that are public, and it serves my altruism bent.

like the idea of putting my life into my blog, a total slice of my mentality and thinking is interesting and cool to me, but if I saw some one else's, like, I can't focus completely on that person unless I know them, you know. If there was a lot of emotion involved, then I'd check it out.

like I go to agendacide simply because I'm curious, I feel like I'm actually interfacing with the person.

I am passionate about expressing myself?

not really, I can't do a site on all personal laundry, or insight.

well, I'm just worried, the site is starting to seem less authentic.

I know, lame ass sites would make it just by posting hot links.

am I selling out?

no, not necesessssearliy, like if I genuinely care about making those kind of beats.

like, timbaland, I bet his passion is the actual process, and if he had to make boring beats, that'd suck completely, but I doubt that's what he has to do.

he does what he loves, and I'm sure there's a component in there in loving to really get people moving, at the same time, combined with his love of the art.

yeah, I need to emphasize public passion and private passion.

like, non-publically, what would I like to keep doing.

I'd like to just keep spitting into my blog, all my thoghts, opinons on things, random musings everything.

and it would feel great to me, why do I love that, I love manifesting myself onto the web, I love taking what's in here and putting it out there, it's a good feeling.

I would just keep writing out you know, every little random thing, every musing that came out, you know.

I could run an experiment for a week.

I'm scared about my site though.

you should put passion behind everything though, you know.

yeah, if I post shit I'm dispassionate about that sucks.

it's hard with technology though.

well, I definitely use technology to aid my passions for sure.

yeah, you're being very mathematic as well.

there should be passion behind everything I do.

but what if your passion is to inspire people, then you should feel tat passion in you, you should feel like, you know.

I guess I'm only educated about my personal passions.

technology is not quite the art, you know

well, okay whatever, I'm not ordering my thought properly.

there should be passion behind, at least the final project, you know, in my posts.

I've been writing shit on there that doesn't make sense to me., i mean it does make sense, but doesn't really you know, turn me on.

I mean, if I wanted to be truly passionate, I could put the girl back on there, eh, it's hard personal passion, and public utility, but do I have a desire for public utility.

yeah, I have total access to my personal passions, it's so easy, but it's hard for me to access the subset that is my public passions, you know.

yeah, I need to return back to my "roots"

t's a very tricky process for me.

yeah, okay you hit on a good aspect.

yeah, I'm not reealy putting my passions out there in my blog.

I'm just re-sprouting crap out there.

okay, too much meta thinking.

so, what should I do.

well, Yeah, I'm seeing the limits of y curent "strategize" my blog, how can I get more stuff out there.

you know, I'm calculating.

yeah, I'm definitely throwing my passions with regard of the tech side of things' but okay.

yeah, I think that's a good strategy, why don't you experiment for a week, see how it goes?

yeah, I hear you, you're scared, scared about whether ... you know.

whatever, that's exacly it, you've become dependent now on the dispassionate selling-out stuffisms.

go back to the source, go back to the pure "passion" and not what you may calculate you might be passionate about.

aboost the public passions, or mark it up

you know, but unless you feel inside a true passion, you shouldn't be posting.

yeah.

as a rule, that makes sense with my principles.

like my blogfabric looks like crap lately because I'm not really posting things that feel good to me, or rather, I'm posting from these "drafts" man, screw that.

yeah, I don't like the drafts thing, well I tried it for a little while, it's too mechanical, I'm trying to buy my way into the popularity, that's just like running a business.

My blog is not a business, it's a channel for art, for self-expression, and if I go deeply into a passion, then good things will happen.

I'll just, if I find a passion that I think also has public utility, I should boost that one so that eventually becomes to the forefront.

yeah, no more stabbing in the dark, I shouldn't try to "guess" what my passions are and produce, but just start cutting from the heart.

I think it's worth an experiment, lets' see. ....

I'm nervous, I keep changing my blog.

hah, it reminds me of what I have to do with my life, how I keep changing my system.

anyways..

even a private passion manifest would be good enough, you know that..

think about the odyssey.

yeah, what am I doing, wasting my time.

Why do I paint?

Part of the reason why I paint is because it sharpens my skills in many other areas. What I learned today:
- It's not about decisions it's about feeling
- It's not about direction it's about process
- It's not about plans, it's about influence
- and It's not about projects, it's about loves

Yeah yeah, foofey stuff, but it helps my art and therefore shouldn't hurt in my business.

Test for Passion

The true test of a passion or "love" is to see what happens after an excessive splurge. A real passion can never reach a true excess such that it lost. Maybe that's why it's called making love, not enjoying love. Every time you go at it, you try to tap an excessive spike of carnal passion. If after the man falls asleep, wakes up, and encounters his groggy-eyed partner semi-awake and cuddling, if then, there is still love, then a "true" love has been made.