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I would suggest you install in your mind what I call an obsessive thought shunt. Its simple to do, but simplicity is rarely coupled to easiness.
First focus in one single endeavor (yeah, big secret revealed). You say you want to be a writer and an artist, so I take there is some story lurking in your mind that wishes to get into paper. Simply sit down and start it, or go take a walk, or make the research you need, or turn on the TV, or go to Barbelith.
Second, that's where the shunt comes in. If you have already secured food and a living place for yourself, then the third and only thing you have to do is write the story, and everything is somehow linked to it, from memories, thoughts, phone calls, other things you want ot do, Barbelith, whatever. It either nurtures it or not. Check how much you read from Barbelith that actually nurture it or not. Every time you find yourself out of this track and thinking about doing other stories and things, you consciously shunt yourself back to "The" story and check how, if the case is, whatever got you out of it fits into the story or at least nurtures it. If it doesn't, no problem. Just think, shit, I am shunting back to the story, sorry, other time maybe, get outta Barbelith, switch off the TV, get back home. This might be the word in your brain: "shunt back".
You mention you want to "open the door in the side of the puzzle box and letting all the terribly wonderful things I have in there out into actualization.". It is prescisely by shunting back to a single thing, which is in a way closing the door to all the others, that a dramatic pressure and intensity of awareness is created. Such intensity gets to dance right out there in front of your eyes, as ideas, desires hopes and expectations are backsided in favor of a single story. They will scream to somehow get there, as long as you continue to shunt back. By the way, don't get sick, remind yourself what you are doing: you are not killing other projects, ideals, hopes, expectations. You are shunting back from them and their own backsided obsessiveness is nurturing other, heating it up by the very friction they make.
Be aware that at some point you will have to shunt back from things out there, and this somewhat distinguishes the obsessiveness at work because someone will ask you "are you mad at me?". Keep cool, you are switching on the obsessiveness, so politely say you have other things to toy in your mind for the moment.
Do it playfully, the idea is you get to ride on those screams and that pressure. You have to be sort of a mediator of "what" gets and what doesn't "get" into nurturing the story. Sorry if many of you don't, but I already have food and home, and also check how this obsessiveness is actually opening doors and perceptions that feedback into this story. By the way, I've always believed successful writers and artists have this obsessive thought shunt already self installed, with a better or worse degree of control. Hang with some if you can, or better read any biography or correspondence and you'll see how they kept shunting back to what they had in hands at the moment, without forgeting to eat. If you do read a biography, shunt back from it and check what fits into the story or somehow facilitates it. Do a lot of research.
Shunt back. |
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