Category: Dubious Advice

Occam’s Toddler

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Occam’s Razor is a simple scientific precept that I probably misunderstand, but I’m going to hijack it anyway.  It states that for any number of given solutions to a problem or any series of explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is probably the best one.  Did I screw that up?  I probably screwed that up.  Anyway, toddlers make this almost impossible to do, and with that in mind, I posit a corollary to the Razor: Occam’s Toddler.  Occam’s Toddler states that for any number of given solutions to a problem or any series of explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is probably the best one; however, if there is a toddler in your charge, it’s dangerous to use razors around toddlers, so put that thing away, and now the toddler is spilling cotton balls and lotion all over the bathroom floor and JESUS GET AWAY FROM THE CURLING IRON —

Ahem.  In short, it’s impossible to wield the Razor if you have a toddler.  So if you have a toddler, I have a smidge of advice for you:

Throw away that piece of crap you’re holding on to.  You know the one.  It’s the appliance or tool or bit of furniture that you know is a little bit wobbly, a little bit crappy, a little bit worthless that you’re hanging onto because you can “get by” with it.Read More »

Momentum

Pavowski4 Comments

Lately I’ve been having the hardest time finding the time to write.  This is problematic for me because as much as that’s true — there are a lot of demands on my time of late — I also feel pretty strongly that that excuse is bullsharknado.

The issue of time is coming to a head because this week, I missed two days of editing my novel.  It might not sound like a big deal, but it’s eating me up inside.  The deadline is purely arbitrary; I’m accountable to nobody but myself, yet I’m furious with myself over it.  Ashamed.  And I’m asking myself why it’s happening.  After all, I didn’t miss a day of writing when I was working on the first draft — not a single day outside of the week my daughter was born.

Back when I started this shindig in March and April, I was turning out ridiculous word count for the time I had.  I’d have days where I’d bang out 2500+ words, between the first draft of the novel and the blog.  I’d carve out swathes of time at work, sneak a few minutes here and there at home, hammer out a few sentences in the morning.  Lately it seems I just don’t have the energy for that.  I drag myself out of bed in the morning and it’s all I can do to make myself exercise.  I feel like the day is too full at work to write even a few sentences.  Then I’m home and into the daddy grind and before I can blink it’s 9:30, time to slog it off to bed.

I have every excuse.  On the one hand, life has never been busier.  My responsibilities at work have changed a little bit: I have more students, more papers to grade, and coming up in a few months, some after-school hours to put in as well, and all that adds up to a pretty significant pull on my time.  There’s a second sprout now, and that means more diapers, more tantrums, more feedings, more outings — and of course, the original sprout is only getting bigger and louder and more demanding.  I love them like crazy, but they are little time-eaters.  I’m trying to put in a solid six days of exercise a week (okay, it’s more like five days on a good week) at thirty minutes a day, and that’s closer to an hour on a run day… and then there’s quality time to be carved out for the wife… Where does one find the time to write amidst all this?

But then I second guess myself.  And this is where I’m frustrated (and yet very happy) with myself for reading the writings of Chuck Wendig and Steve Kamb, achievers whose teachings I am doing my best to absorb in this new chapter of my life.  There’s one nugget they’ve both shared that has stuck with me: You have the same 24 hours in your day as everybody else.  I can’t shake that.  Sure, I have every excuse not to get the writing done.  Sure, it’s hard to blame me for missing a workout now and then.  But I know that for every edit I miss, every workout I skip, there’s another guy out there with all the same demands on his time but he’s getting it done and I’m not.  Now, I’m not strictly competitive by nature, but this eats at my soul like a blood-swollen tick.

The other thing I can’t forget is a thing I’ve learned this year.  Somehow it hit home after 33 years of living on this earth, and now the truth of it is inescapable to me:  Momentum matters.  The things you’ve been doing are the things you will continue doing.  It’s all well and good to make changes in your life: you start exercising, you start dieting, you take up gardening, you begin knitting socks for the gnomes in your garden.  And in the beginning it’s easy to establish new momentum: going for that run or leaving the cookies untouched or pulling the weeds or socking a gnome feels so satisfying because it’s such a sharp departure from the norm.  But you have 34 years of slacker momentum built up, and over time, your old momentum begins to assert itself, and it’s easier to reach for the snooze button than your shoes at 5 AM, it’s easier to reach for the cookies than the celery, easier to just leave the garden unweeded for a few days and easier to let the gnomes go sockless.  Before you know it, you haven’t run in two weeks, and you’re eating cookies by the sleeve, and the garden is one thick knee-high bramble and the gnomes are revolting.

I established some hellagood momentum back in March and April, not allowing myself to miss a single day of writing outside of the week that my daughter was born.  And it carried me through until the first draft was finished in July.  But my old slacker momentum is reasserting itself, and it is casting into doubt everything I’ve accomplished in the meantime.  I sleep in instead of getting up for my 5AM run, and it doesn’t bother me as much as it did the last time it happened.  I miss a day of editing, and I don’t feel bad about it all night.  Momentum matters, and the sharknadoey momentum I’ve spent my life developing is sucking me in with its immense gravity, despite the positive momentum I’ve spent the last six months cultivating.

But the momentum is just the beginning, because soon the momentum changes form and becomes an insidious mental decay.  I start having thoughts like, “maybe the time just isn’t right for me to pursue this dream right now” or “if I slow down, that’ll be okay too,” and the lure of those thoughts is tempting.  Just like my excuses, they could be entirely valid.  But I also know that accepting those thoughts of slacker momentum are only a short hop away from “maybe I’m just not cut out for it at all.”

And then I’m back to the 24-hour problem again.  Because if I’m having doubts about how I’m spending my time, then maybe I’m not spending it in the right ways.  And if it’s hard for me to make the time, to chip it away from the great grey monoliths of my other obligations, then maybe the sad truth is that I just don’t want it badly enough to make it happen.  If I can’t make my 24 hours work toward making me a writer, then maybe the truth is I just don’t want it at all.

But I’m afraid I’m not ready to swallow that particular bitter pill just yet.  Which is why last night I was up until nearly midnight writing this post, and why when WordPress ate it just before midnight, I vowed that I would go through the turmoil, the harsh truth, the unpleasant task of facing my doughy, slacker-momentum riding Asgard in the mirror AGAIN to write it today.  Because it needs to be said.  And I need to be able to come back here and see it.  And I need to remind myself that writing is a thing that I want, and it is a thing worth making sacrifices for, and it is a thing which deserves to be done, even and especially when it’s difficult to do it.

In a movie that I loved, Grosse Pointe Blank, a hitman having a touch of existential angst over attending his high school reunion was advised by his psychiatrist to stop and take stock of his feelings.  Repeat the mantra, “this is me breathing,” and “I’m at home in the me that is on this adventure.”  A simple idea, intended to ground one in the moment, focus on the little things, and not get swept away by the mad tide of life.  There’s wisdom in that, even if it’s not my goal to kill people with frying pans.

This is me breathing.  This is me writing.  I’m at home in the me that is on this adventure.

 

 

Advice for Finally Getting Around to Writing That Novel You’ve Always Meant to Write

Pavowski9 Comments

Writing a novel is something I’ve told myself for years I would do someday.  In March of this year, I finally decided (for whatever reason) that this was the year, the time was now, and I was going to write the damn thing.  This past week, I finished the first draft. Now, writers of all walks will tell you that this is only the beginning, and they’re right.  But you will also learn very quickly that the world is littered with the corpses of those who wanted to try writing a novel and came up short before they finished their first draft, their first act, their first chapter, their first sentence.  I’m not an expert, but I’ve made it this far.  I picked up a few things along the way, and if you’re thinking of writing a novel, or starting to write a novel, or are bogged down and “blocked” trying to write your novel, maybe some of what I picked up will help you. Note that when I say “novel” I mean whatever your project may happen to be, be it screenplay, novel, poem, limerick, dirty joke.  And when I say “you” I mean “me”.  Let’s be honest, my entire blarg is an exercise in narcissism. Here, then, are 18 points of Dubious Advice (because nice round numbers are way too establishment for me, man) for Writing Your First Draft of Your First Novel.Read More »

Some Unsolicited Advice for Anybody Making a Life Change (a reflection on 100 posts)

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About a month ago I saw a video on YouTube from Numberphile (okay, the secret is out, I’m a nerd and I sometimes watch videos about math on YouTube when I have nothing better to do).  It’s a fascinating little examinaton of the methods we use for counting and it explores what our everyday interactions would be like if we had twelve fingers instead of ten.  (Spoiler alert — counterintuitively, numbers and computations and especially measurements and conversions get simpler by factors of oh-my-god-numbers-hurt-my-brain.)  You can check it out below if you’re so inclined.  They make some fascinating videos if, like me, you’re fascinated withthe way math impacts us even if we’d like to pretend it doesn’t.

But this isn’t a post about math, not really.  It’s just a little reflection.   Now, in the scheme of things, even though one hundred seems like a big deal, it’s an arbitrary number, which becomes incredibly obvious after watching a video like the one I linked above.  Nevertheless, it’s a significant number because we’ve all agreed that it is; we measure years in decades and centuries, we have the metric system (which nobody uses, PFF, SILLY REST OF THE WORLD), and our currency is nothing without hundreds.  Ultimately, however, it’s just one way out of many to count stuff, and as we all know, everything is relative and there is no best anything.

I’m hung up on one hundred today, though, because I recently passed the 100 post mark here at Pavorisms.  I’m pointing it out, not to toot my own horn or to massage my ego, but honestly just so that I can have another landmark to look back at.  Landmarks matter because they show us where we’ve been, but perhaps more importantly, so that we can tell other people where they’re going.  This particular landmark is a pretty monstrous one for me.

I started the blarg here the very week I decided I was going to finally get around to writing a novel.  It wasn’t meant to be a major undertaking; just a spot for me to reflect on the writing I was doing on the novel and to stretch my legs on writing some non-level fiction vis-a-vis my short pieces.  It wasn’t a big deal, but I committed to it just like I committed to writing the novel.  Now it’s four months later, and I’ve nearly finished the novel and I have made over a hundred posts here at the blarg.

That’s one hundred times I’ve sat down to write outside of working on the novel.  That’s one hundred times I’ve found something to say even on those days when I started out thinking I didn’t really have anything to say.  (Spoiler alert: I still don’t have much to say, but I do have fun saying it.)  The point is, I found ways to write even when I didn’t think I could.  I kept writing even when I was exhausted from writing.  I kept writing even when I was sick to death from the thought of writing.

My dad told me many, many years ago — and it’s a piece of wisdom that I’ve repeated many times throughout the years to myself and others — that you can do just about anything for a few weeks.  And I’ve found that to be pretty much true.  Anything you end up doing — however unpleasant, taxing, difficult or challenging it might be — you can muscle through it for a few weeks.  You can force yourself to get up at three in the morning for a terrible job and not crash for a few weeks.  You can try out a new diet and not hate it for a few weeks.  You can give up beer, chocolate, sex, or whatever other guilty pleasure you might have for a few weeks.  But there comes a point beyond which muscling through it cannot carry you.  A point that, for better or worse, you have to find a deeper drive to get past.  You can keep working the job that gets you up at three AM, but you’ll have to give up staying up to watch late night TV.  You can stay on your diet, but you’ll have to find replacements for the food you’re giving up, and make lifestyle adjustments so that you don’t keep craving the old stuff.  You can stay off your vices but you have to really know why you’re staying off — giving them up for Lent isn’t going to keep you clean.

My point is, muscling through can get you to the brink.  It can get you through the salty first days of something and show you what life is like with this new change you’re trying out.  But muscling through won’t get you through the days when you’re so exhausted you can’t bear to think about your three AM job, your diet, or your sudden lack of cigarettes.  What gets you through then?  For me, it’s an eye on the prize.

I tried running three different times in my life.  Twice I did it for a few months and then gave it up — it was too hard.  Two years ago I started it up again (for the last time) because my son had just been born and I wanted to work to stay healthy for him, and I am still going strong two years later, despite some serious setbacks of late.

Now, I’m writing because I have always felt that I could tell a decent story but never tested myself.  Well, I may still be in the muscling through stage, but I have a hundred blarg posts and almost ninety thousand words banked on the novel that say this is a habit I just might be able to stick with.

Jeez.  I start off talking about math and then I get all preachy.  Could I meander any more?  The point is this (and I write this, both for anybody thinking of trying out writing or trying out anything new as well as for myself when I lose gumption somewhere down the line, as I know I will): Making a change is about two major turning points.  The first is when you decide to do the thing.  People think that’s the hard part, but I don’t think so.  Look at the numbers for gym membership sales in January for your evidence: making the commitment is — I don’t want to say easy — not the hard part.  The hard part comes when you’re no longer riding the high of just having started, you no longer have the accolades of people clapping you on the back and saying “good for you.” When you find yourself in the trenches, covered in mud and blood and tears and sweat, clinging to your rifle like it’s the only good thing left in the world and you’re faced with deciding whether to press on through even more mud and blood and heartache and pain or to cash in your chips and go back to the easier life you were leading before.

So pick a milestone.  Shoot for it.  “900 words today.”  And write it.  “Run three miles today.”  And run them.  And then go for a bigger milestone.  “6000 words this week.”  And write it.  “Run twenty miles this week.”  And run them. And grow and evolve and improve and keep changing and don’t get comfortable and keep setting new milestones and enjoy the landmarks as you sail past them and leave them in the rearview.

If I can do it, you can do it.

I’m talking to you, Future Me.

 

Toddler Life, Chapter 171 – Bathroom Steak

Pavowski3 Comments

It’s come to this.

This picture isn't symbolic. It's exactly what it looks like.
This picture isn’t symbolic. It’s exactly what it looks like.  And yeah, my shower curtain has penguins on it.  Represent.

That, indeed, is a picture of my two-year-old in the bathtub and my steak sitting on the counter.  Never mind the clusterfargo of bottles and shampoos and towels on the counter, that’s called sharing a bathroom with a toddler.  I’ll come back to the picture in a moment.

I want to talk right now to those of you reading this blarg who don’t have kids, who are planning to have kids, who don’t have kids yet, or who occupy any other spot on the spectrum between definitely-not-having-kids-ever and having-kids-tomorrow.  I know you’ve read the blogs and websites and books about having a child and the way it will change your life.  It’s all true.  Read More »