Themeattics

Frustration

Thomas Keaten

May 29, 2021

It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal.
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

It’s been one of those weeks.

You know the kind. Sunday night you go to bed ready for the morning, head full of plans and the energy to hit the day running. You wake up just as ready, just as able, and run headlong into a brick wall. The things you wanted to move don’t budge, the plans you made do their best impression of Lot’s wife, and that energy winds up nothing more than lightning in a bottle with no outlet to vent it.

Anecdotal, of course, but I think there’s little worse for a creative person than to spend hours attempting to create and making nothing of value. Who knows how many thousands of words I churned out for this new book’s outline only to toss them. Nothing is sticking, nothing is flowing. Nothing is inspired.

Maybe that’s what I get for talking shit about the Muses. Or maybe, just maybe, this is something I should have expected. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m not an outliner when it comes to my writing. This process is new and, now that I’m eyeing something far grander than my current novel, I’m finding it hard to stop my mind from crawling out across all the threads. The book starts at X time, but the history of the continent goes all the way back to Y and the continent has pockets that trace their lineage and culture back to Z. Regions, peoples, cultures – building these sorts of worlds is like solving linear algebra with no defined variable.

So, what do I do with that? Well, I can tell you what I’m not doing. I’m not backing out of the outlining process. If it’s shown me anything it’s that I don’t know nearly enough about the world I’m trying to build or the characters that live in it. That’s no way to write, not if I’m trying to make anything worth reading. I’ve been treating this as if it’s some sort of chicken-and-egg problem – I can’t build this character because I don’t know about the place he’s from, but I can’t visualize the place without conceptualizing the character, so which do I do first? I don’t know about the places around that place either or the history of the region or blah blah blah. Circular reasoning all around and I’ve gone nowhere. The answer itself is pretty clear, the issue is forcing myself to do it.

I need to choose, and let me tell you, I am horrible at making decisions with no restriction. It’s a problem, particularly when the choices are near limitless. Most of the time I try to pawn those kinds of things off. I hate picking where or what to eat, what to watch with others, what to do with unscheduled time. Hell, I can barely pick my own characters in fighting games, just ask a few of my friends who I spam choices to all the time. It’s bad.

Honestly, until that last paragraph I hadn’t really pinpointed the source of my frustration, but I think that might be it. Inaction. I’m always on my soapbox about the need for discipline, but what is discipline without action? They’re parts of a whole, which makes this past week an exercise in poor discipline. No wonder I’ve been grumpy.

Action, then. Choosing. Stop chasing my tail and focus. Let the conceptualizing of one part breed ideas for the rest, note them, but do not chase. Not yet. Not until I can look at this one item and say, yes, this make sense. This not only fits in a world, but its presence lends character to that world. This gives color and shape to the story influences the things around it.

Worldbuilding is hard. Then again, so is everything worth doing.

A New Approach

Thomas Keaten

3 comments

May 22, 2021

You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche.
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

This past week – and possibly the next couple – have been the strangest in my writing “career.” Unlike past completed drafts, I’ve now spent a fair bit of time researching the refinement process that a work should go through prior to reaching out to agents, which has led me to complete a quick, high-level read, make a couple small updates, and pass it off to the person who has been along with me on this journey since the beginning for him to do the same. And that’s where things are now. He has the draft and is reading it, which means I’m waiting to hear back. Waiting and… waiting.

Naturally, I can’t do that. The idea of sitting still letting the time go by is anathema, so with that story ruminating I’ve started thinking about the next one. Normally, this would concern me. I’d fear that my shift in focus would make me lose interest in the draft and hop on to the Next Thing. Chasing the Muse, as it were. While I’d like to be flippant and say I’m past that, the real reason I’m less worried this time is that, unlike the past couple of decades of writing, I’ve decided to take a new approach with the next project.

The authoring world recognizes two types of writers – Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters do just that – they take their time to map out the story they intend to write before they start scribbling on the pages. Pantsers, on the other hand, got their name from “flying by the seat of their pants.” They get an idea and run with it, damn the torpedoes, we’ll fix it in post. Considering what this site is, it’s no surprise I’m in the latter camp. I’ll have a couple of pages of notes for a hundred-plus thousand word novel, and that will be by the end – it’s lucky if I’ve for a few paragraphs before I start. I’ve always liked to let the mood take me and have felt that allowing that freedom has led to some of my better moments. In the past, I’ve struggled to keep to a plan when I’ve tried it. Forcing my work along a path has led to more times of falling off the writing wagon than I’d like to admit.

On the other hand, winging it has made for sloppy payoffs, loose threads, and a lot – a LOT – of time reworking and rewriting. I’m man enough to admit when I’ve been going about things poorly, even when I’ve been doing it bullheadedly for, again, decades. I also understand that these two camps, like most things in life, aren’t all-or-nothing propositions. So, while my draft is off getting a once-over elsewhere, I thought it made for a perfect time shuffle a little closer toward that Plotter camp and see what advice that end of the spectrum could offer.

Now, I struggle doing things in moderation, so after reading through several articles on how to use outlining to prevent plot holes and shore up loose ends before they even appear (The best of which were here: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/), I couldn’t help but notice how many times Scrivener was mentioned. And, well, if it’s good enough for people who do this sort of thing all the time, it’s certainly good enough for me.

I activated the trial yesterday, and let me just say, as someone who has been hard in the paint on winging it, this thing is a foreign language. It’s an absolute beast of a program, but with that comes the ability to customize the experience to your heart’s content. Intimidated? You bet I am. I’m also excited to try out life on over on this side. Residuum is the sort of novel I can confidently say didn’t need much in the way of planning. The story flows easily as it’s small and focused on a single character. My next project, a reimagining of my first, is far grander. I expect I’ll need just this sort of thing to avoid the pitfalls of wandering aimlessly through the world. I’ve done that before, and I don’t care to repeat it.

Expect a One Month Retrospective on Scrivener as I did with Beeminder. Hopefully, it helps me detail things just as well as Beeminder helps me keep on task.

Residuum – A Call for Editors

Thomas Keaten

no comments

May 15, 2021

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

As I mentioned last week, the first draft of my “first” novel, Residuum, is a wrap. This week I’ve been doing a read-over of the whole thing since, true to form, I took more than a few long breaks in the middle of writing and needed to be sure the structure at least made sense. I’ll be finished with that today and start the next step, which is a personal editing pass or three wherein I’ll iron out rough patches, make some obviously needed changes, and try and catch grammar problems. Not commas, though. I’m miserable with commas.

All this to say, soon I’ll be in a place to share the book with people willing to provide feedback. To those of you new or entirely unfamiliar with this process (myself included), this involves seeking out what are known as “beta readers” and “critique partners”. I’ll detail the both of these below – if you’re interested in taking a role in my move toward publishing as one of these, please do let me know either by reaching out directly, through the site, on my social media, or commenting on this article. Thanks in advance!

What is a beta reader? Well, to put it simply, it’s someone willing to put in the time reading an unrefined manuscript with the goal of providing feedback to the writer. Beta readers and critique partners are the second line of refinement in the editing process, the first being the authors own updates, and will typically engage in several rounds of back and forth with reading, providing feedback, receiving and updated product with those refinements, and repeating the process. There’s nothing contractually obligating in this process, it’s just an open partnership between the reader and the author. Both are free to back out whenever they please. For the author, this is a wonderful chance to get feedback from the market and gauge reactions. For the reader, they get to read something for free and make critiques which can shape a story.

Don’t be intimidated by the amount of work involved, either. When beta readers and critique partners set up reviews, they first come to an agreement with the author as to how much they want to review and for how long. Only want to see the first 10 pages and have 3 weeks to review? That’s fine. Want 2 miscellaneous chapters from 2/3 of the way through and get all the feedback in a day? Sounds great. Whatever you’d feel comfortable with, let me know and we’ll get it set up.

As for critique partners, take everything I’ve said about beta readers and add an exchange to it. Critique partners are other authors who are at roughly the same stage of the writing process and seeking edits – that writer and I would exchange a certain amount of our manuscript for reviews and suggestions, agree to an amount of time, and return the work. This case is a bit more equitable than the beta reader in that we’re both getting to progress toward our goal of editing, but in no way is this any more or less valuable to the author than engagement with beta readers. We need anyone and everyone willing to give our work the time of day.

About the feedback itself – this goes without saying, but be as specific as possible. The goal is to sculpt the work into something with a strong direction and voice. “I don’t like this part,” while true, isn’t going to be much help reaching that goal. “The protagonist feels like they lack agency during this portion” is great feedback. It tells me there’s a problem and what that problem is. If you’d like to add what you think should be done about it, that’s great as well.

Oh, and, not that I’m looking for pats on the back, but positive feedback is also helpful. It’s good to know when things hit home.

So, like I said – if you’re interested in being one of the whetstones for my work, or know someone who might be, please get in touch. I’m ready to get this thing seen and start grinding.

Beeminder – A One Month Retrospective

Thomas Keaten

2 comments

May 7, 2021

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
Gretchen Rubin

It’s been a month since I first discussed using Beeminder to apply a strong schedule of negative reinforcement. Those of you that missed that article can find it here: https://themeattics.com/2021/04/03/money-meet-mouth/. I talked a big game about it then and in the follow-up https://themeattics.com/2021/04/09/carrots-and-sticks/, so after all that talk, how have things fared? Is it as driving a force as I remembered and played it up to be?

Well, I guess I spoiled it with the header image, but long story short, yes. Unequivocally yes.

A month in and I’ve climbed up the tiers of leeway, going through weeks of emergency days where Beeminder was consistently sending me emails and push notifications that, should midnight arrive without putting in my time, I would be charged for the failure, to now enjoying a string of green days where I have 3 or more days of buffer due to the extra time I’ve put in.

I’m someone that works well under pressure, so while the red days were frustrating to deal with on days where work had been difficult or there were challenges at home, that threat of losing cash for failure kept me pressing forward. Maybe you can relate to this, but even before I set this goal, I knew I’d be at my best on red days. I wasn’t worried about those.

What I was worried about were the next ones. The yellows and the blues. Those are the days when I had a day or two of buffer, respectively, and the days when I knew that I could allow myself to coast. Coasting is my nemesis. I’ve got serious inertia problems, and the last time I set up a Beeminder I failed for specifically that reason. I got far enough ahead that I could allow myself some grace, then my non-writing life took a significant hit and I let myself back away. Then I couldn’t get back, and I not only had to pay up but it ended up with a writing drought that lasted nearly 6 months. I allowed myself an out, and being the weak person that I am, I latched onto it.

Needless to say, that was and remains a concern of mine. Now that I’m in the green, I have reached the top-tier of leeway. That’s a dangerous spot for me. I’d like to say it’s different this time, that I haven’t had that same struggle, and while that’s true, it has only been a month. My last run went for around five before it failed. I felt good about my start then as well, so there’s always that nagging comparison that rears its head.

But, hey, enough with the negativity. This is a review of what is, not what might be somewhere down the line, and I can say without hesitation that this has been a phenomenal month. I decided it was time to stop failing, so I did. Despite splitting that goal of 60 minutes a day across 3 different projects, I managed not only to maintain my goal of an article on this site per week, not only to deliver on all my contracted work for the unannounced game that I’ve been helping build the story for, but as of this week, I have finished the first draft of my novel and am currently involved in the first thousand-mile edit. Would I have done all this without the pressure from Beeminder? It’s possible, yes, but it was part of the toolkit I needed to ensure success. I wanted a stick, and it was there to deliver.

As for the future challenges that may arise from coasting, I’ve found a surprising motivator. Turns out I really, really like the green of Beeminder’s widget on my phone home screen. Something about it just screams success, and the couple times I’ve dipped back to blue felt like personal failings. I think I’ll cling to that, and cling further to the notion that each minute I put toward satisfying these buzzing bastards is a minute closer to achieving a goal I’ve had since I was a kid.

I’ll see myself on a store bookshelf. And when I do, I’ll have decades’ worth of people to thank. And, if I’m being fair, maybe a little-known app as well.

The Queen of Hearts

Thomas Keaten

no comments

May 1, 2021

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
Sophocles, Antigone

At this point, you’ve likely noticed a trend in these posts. Yes, they’re all about means of self-improvement and traps we fall into, but they have all been ancillary. There’s a core concept I’ve been tip-toeing around, and I realized I’m doing all of these other articles a disservice by avoiding it. Since there’s no time like the present, here we are.

Let’s talk about pride.

Saint Thomas Aquinas believed pride to be “the beginning of all sin” (Q162, A7). In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis expanded on this claim: “…the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

And what is pride? Boiled down, it’s nothing more than the belief that we are the most important thing at any moment. On its face, we recognize this as a flawed idea. Still, elevating it to the Prime Fault might seem a bit of a stretch at first glance. With everything going on out there – all the murder, hate, lack of empathy, and schadenfreude – feeling that you’re better than someone else doesn’t seem all that bad, does it? In fact, it feels pretty natural. True, even.

Already, you’re in it.

And to be fair, you’re not wrong. Most of the residual effects of pride come with worse direct outcomes. However, they all originate there. Lust, greed, and envy, the Cerberus of sins, are variations on the idea that what someone else has would be best served in our own interests. Sloth, that our time be used only in service to making ourselves feel good at the moment. Gluttony, that all things are made to serve our desires. Wrath, that another person might dare put their wants, or even needs, above our own. All of them point inward. All of them scream, “me.”

So here we find ourselves, mid-year 2021, awash in pride. As a society, we celebrate it. Far from the ultimate vice, we seek it out. Glorify it. We do what we can to plaster it anywhere anyone can see. We want the recognition. We want to be admired. Revered. To be important. The Original Sin of humanity, that pride that led to the fall of man, is still going strong. It always will be.

I don’t want this article to sound accusatory – believe me, it isn’t. I’m no better than anyone else here, and likely a lot worse than some. I like to pretend I don’t want those things, but that hasn’t stopped me from sharing these articles on Facebook and checking every so often to see if they get any traction. That was never the goal, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? That little bit of recognition, the thought that something I say might have some influence. That it might help build a legacy, get some people interested in my work, and ultimately help publish my novels. I’m only human, after all.

Far from accusatory, I want to help us all understand. Pride is a prime motivator. It drives most of society as we experience it, and there is only one way to combat it. The most bitter pill. Humility.

Humility also gets a bad rap, but not from people trashing the idea so much as entirely misunderstanding it. These days it is mostly interchangeable with modesty, but the two vastly differ. Modesty can be part of humility, of course, but it can just as easily be a case of pride – feigning humility for the sake of hearing more praise. No, the humility that fights pride is much harder than basic outward signs. It is understanding the fact that pride drives humanity and actively seeking to silence it in our own life. It is forcing oneself to be content with what one has. It is putting our all into service of those around us, no matter the outcome. It is not expecting anything from anyone. Ever.

There is nothing easy about humility. Nothing natural. It seems our every instinct rails against it. Pride is the American way. The Western way. The Earthly way. Right, Left; Capitalist, Communist; Christian, Buddhist, atheist; white, black; everything and everyone; nothing is immune. Ideologies crumble against the unbreakable nature of humanity. If we exercise true humility, we will be taken advantage of, and we will have to accept it. We need only look at the truest example of real humility – Christ himself. He lived this. We killed him for it.

I’ll close with His instruction for us on just this thing. “Or how sayest thou to thy brother: Let me cast the mote out of thy eye; and behold a beam is in thy own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:5. Such is humility – the constant turn inward to purge pride. A turn inward that never ends, and thus never allows us to throw stones at others.

I hope this post finds you well, friends. Let’s keep improving ourselves, together. It would do us all some good.

Four Words

Thomas Keaten

no comments

April 24, 2021

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill, inaugural address delivered before the University of St. Andrews, 1867

I’m a cradle Catholic. For a lot of people, that implies I don’t know much about the Bible. The long-persisting stigma of the Latin church remains, and whether we think that’s a fair stigma or not, it is what it is. I could get start the litany on defending practices, but that’s not what this is about and I’m going to try and stay on task here because I think this is an important matter.

Obviously, a lot of what I’m ending up writing about here are base philosophical ideas. I don’t think that was going to be the case, but looking at my upcoming list I guess that’s the direction I’m going. So, with that list in mind, I thought I’d start here. At the beginning.

Genesis.

We all know the story. God creates the universe, creates life, creates his masterpiece, and his masterpiece is corrupted. It’s the basic rendition of humanity and, I feel, one of the fundamental building blocks of a person’s outlook on the natural order. I know that’s a big claim, but I think most ideologies can be boiled down to one or two fundamental principles, with “can man be perfected” being one.

But I’ll get to that some other week. This isn’t about the nature of Man, this is about the nature of men. This is about what a small omission can do to a story and what can be conveyed between a pair of commas.

If you happen to have a Bible with you, go ahead and pull it out. Open to Genesis 3:6 and give it a read. Here’s my translation:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Some of you will compare and find little difference. Some of you might not notice the difference, being that it’s only four words, but those four words are a dagger in the heart of someone like me, who’s spent a lifetime trying to be a “good person.” Some of you might realize the missing piece and see the problem.

“Who was with her.”

People use this story as a means to attack the church all the time, saying it breeds misogyny and casts women as the reason for the fall of man. I expect a lot of those same people haven’t read through the Bible or really care whether this is true or not, but those that have may well have read versions that omit this line. This omission does everyone a grave disservice. It is the lynchpin of it all, and as far as I know, it’s the earliest version of my quote at the lead of this post.

You see, it wasn’t just Eve being tempted by the serpent. Yes, it spoke to her directly, but Adam was right there. He witnessed. He listened. He did nothing.

We can ascribe all kinds of motives for this as none are given. Apathy, fear, appeasement, intrigue, desire. In the end, I’m not so sure they matter. What matters is that he was witnessing the first act of betrayal and, by his silence, accepted it. He, who was supposed to be a good man, did nothing.

This one’s just for us guys, right? Just the booooys. When you read those words and realize what they said, did they not set you off? Here’s the woman he’s given to love and protect talking to a snake who’s trying to convince her to turn her back on the one promise each of them needed to uphold. It’s putting her in danger, and he just lets it happen. That’s not the way this is supposed to work. That’s not who we’re supposed to be. But it was then and it has been since.

The first sin, pride.

And now, we live in a world full of it. Full of good men who do nothing because of pride. Pride that makes their tiny foothold in the world more valuable than the direction of society. Pride that keeps us from talking. Pride that invokes fear.

I think I’ll stop there, since I’m bleeding into a couple of other upcoming posts, but before I go I want to make this abundantly clear. I’m guilty of this, too. Probably more so. The niceness that was bred into me has kept me on the sidelines for most of my life. I’m not proud of that fact, but it is a fact. I get the worry and the need to just get along. It’s powerful, the pull of the world. But we can beat it.

We can be better.

Supermassive Black Hole

Thomas Keaten

2 comments

April 17, 2021

She burns like the sun // and I can’t look away // and she’ll burn our horizons // make no mistake.
Muse, Sunburn

Back when I was first mulling the idea of creating this site, this article was the first I conceived and was planned to be the first put one published post-launch. It’s about the dangers of our reliance on motivation over discipline and how easily we fall victim to giving up on what is right for us because we simply don’t feel “in the mood” for the right thing. Now, it turns out, this will be the eighth article on the site. The irony of letting it be usurped by stronger whims seven times is not lost on me, but I do think it will help steer what I have to say and soften the edges a bit. Yes, I let the Muses win. No, doing so did not lead to my failure. Anyway, that’s enough of the long-winded anecdote, let’s get to the actual premise, shall we?

For concepts as universally understood as the Muses, it’s interesting both how little they appear in ancient writings and how varied the references are. Depending on the region, the names and numbers of the Muses varied, as did the story of their origin and their associations. Whether there were three, seven, or nine; whether they were the children of Zeus and Mnemosyne or Harmonia, or Uranus and Gaea, a few common threads bound each rendition. The Muses were powerful influencers of specific actions, and they were terribly vengeful.

It’s no wonder we’ve continued to use them. We have a habit of anthropomorphizing (Spelled it right on the first go, noice) everything from animals to robots to ideas. There’s a kind of comfort in associating humanity to major aspects of our lives – it’s something most of the ancient religions did when assigning specific aspects of society and nature to their own deities. There’s also a comfort in disassociating the idea from ourselves, as though some external force is at work and we’re merely along for the ride – but that’s a topic for another time.

The Muses were, in essence, the personification of the desire to create or improve. Motivation made manifest. A noble concept, but one that came with a caveat. You see, they were fine if you flittered between them, chasing one or another. Where the problems arose was when you attempted to challenge them. To claim yourself free of them – above them. That’s when they ruined you. That aspect carried down most notably to the Sirens, which some mythologies claimed to be their children.

I’ve been a victim of the Muses for as long as I can remember. Inspiration has been a great excuse to avoid becoming too committed to something. After all, if I really poured my focus into one thing that would see it get done, and if it got done then it would necessarily get in the view of other people and, as I’ve established before, that was a horrifying prospect to younger me. So, I struck out on whatever creative fancy I found. I wrote. I designed board games. I coded apps. I coded games. I tried my hand at the cello. I move from diet to diet and exercise program to exercise program. Always, that drive for the new, for the exciting and motivational, pulled me.

Most of them didn’t last long, but they lasted long enough to pull me away from the things I knew were my place. I’m still fighting those battles. There are days where the need to throw down game designs or buy a cello or practice mechanics in fighting games or clear out the garage for woodworking are so strong it takes all I can do to put them off. It doesn’t always work, either, but here’s the thing.

That’s alright.

Maybe it’s because I’m older, but I think I’ve come to understand both the allure and secret of the Muses. Like the mythology, the danger comes from trying to conquer them. We’re free to give in, at least for a little, but we can’t forget where we belong. There’s something inside us that needs to be fed, that needs to create. To act out that aspect of our Creator, upon whose image we were made. That thing – or those things, if you’re lucky and talented enough – doesn’t have the same aspect as the Muses. You need to conquer it, to spend your time on it. It draws you in, fills you up. It will be difficult. There will be days you don’t want to do it. It will grind you down. But each time you burn through, you’ll get that little bit of true joy that comes from fulfilling a small part of your purpose.

Look, this article has been all over the place. Sorry about that, but that’s the danger of going stream-of-consciousness. In the end, I just want to make one appeal. To those of you that know your cause, be it writing, music, design, art, masonry, glass blowing, crocheting, car repair, whatever – find the time. Do it. Don’t let that fire burn out. If it already has, get it back. Force it back. It’s yours, don’t let it trick you into thinking otherwise.

And if you find yourself looking side-eyed at one of the Muses, remember, we’re only human. Take one for a swing, but don’t stay too long. Remember where you belong.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pull up that bookmarked cello page. They really are gorgeous instruments.

Carrots and Sticks

Thomas Keaten

1 comment

April 9, 2021

All theories of akrasia converge where the rubber meets the road.
Daniel Reeves, Beeminder

I promise I didn’t start all this intending to go on a multi-week productivity rant. And yet here I am with the follow-up to last week’s follow-up. This will be the last in this chain for a while, I promise! Once I get around to actually working on making this site presentable, I’ll probably end up shunting these off to their own location to keep things a bit more cohesive. In the meantime, however, you get what you paid for – unfettered, train of thought nothingburgers.

Anyway, last week I took a bit of time to talk up Beeminder. I’ll do that again, don’t worry – did I mention it’s my favorite? – but I want to take a bit to discuss the ideas of positive and negative reinforcement for a bit.

Positive reinforcement is all the rage lately, be it in the gambling dopamine rush of most mobile games or educational courses designed specifically to avoid telling people when they’ve done something wrong. Hell, we barely train dogs with anything but treats these days.

None of this is necessarily bad. Rewards gained from positive behavior are obviously encouraging. That is, to use a phrase I generally hate, common sense. We do this stuff every day, whether we see it or not. Killed it at work? Kick back, grab a bowl of ice cream and watch a show. Our lives are filled with reward systems, which is enough evidence to show how powerful they can be.

And yet.

Real talk, ok? You and me? We’re weasels. Did you kind of coast at work today? Yeah, maybe. But you still felt like you deserved that desert and show, huh? After all, what’s the harm? Life’s hard, sometimes we need a break. And when the next time rolls around, we’ll do the same thing. And again. And again. Eventually our reward becomes the default state, disassociated from whatever it was we were accomplishing because, well, we know we could have done it and that’s enough.

I use this example because that’s been me for years. Not specifically – mine was always hopping on the Playstation or PC to game for an hour or two or four – but the principle was the same. I did great, I deserve this. I did fine, I deserve this. Today was hard, I deserve this. This is my default action. It’s a brutal cycle and one I have fallen into on the regular. So, I did what I had to do to fix it. Put myself in the position where if I didn’t it would hurt.

I’m cheap. If I were kinder to myself I’d say frugal, but nah. Cheap fits. I don’t go to casinos because I can’t bring myself to lose that money. I rarely buy things in general. I made, manage, and regularly watch the household budget, Scroogeing my way through life wherever possible. The idea of lighting my money on fire for not accomplishing goals I specifically set for myself to handle? Absolutely out of the question.

Beeminder to the rescue. Put air quotes around that last word if you’d like. After I set my hour-a-day average goal, I haven’t failed to do it. I screwed up making the goal and forgot to put a two-day buffer to start it on Monday instead of Saturday, but I resisted the urge to “cheat” and go fill in successful times, so every day I’m scraping that line of failure, but I haven’t gone past. If I do end up failing, sure, it’s only $5, but that $5 is mine, dammit.

Plus, every time you fail the subsequent penalty is tripled. I’d really rather not.

Anyway, this one is short and sweet. I hope the data points and trendlines on that graph give you as many warm fuzzies as they do me, and I hope you get the desire to light a fire under your butt and make a Beeminder account.

Get out there and make something. Be someone. Put your time to use. Let’s be awesome together.

Money, Meet Mouth

Thomas Keaten

1 comment

April 3, 2021

I am a weasel.
Beeminder, Goal Settings

Given that this is Holy Week and I worked 4 10s so that I could be up in Dallas to see my brother, who I haven’t seen in years, this week’s article is going to be a bit shorter. Instead of exploring any new ideas, I want to follow my own tips from last week and I invite you to do the same.

Here’s a quick recap of those tips:

Pick one important thing you want to improve.
Sit down and make a generalized schedule of your current day-to-day.
Set up an accountability group.
Dedicate some of the free time you found in step 2 toward the desired improvement.
Find the things that prevent you and get around them.

There’s a step 6, but that’s not for another few months down the line. Without further ado, here’s my plan:

I need to dedicate more time to writing, full stop.
A very generalized view of my weekdays gives me the following:
2. These are my “immovable” items. Things are obviously different during weekends and during the summer, but this is a great place to start.
For a long time, I’ve had a dispersed bunch of accountability people, but never really anything resembling a group. Now I have you, my readers, who can blast me whenever they so desire. That’s still a bit nebulous, though, so I’m reaching out to a few close friends of mine as soon as I publish this to create a daily goals group. Plus, I’ll be adding something to the site, which I’ll discuss further below.
Holy crap, is that 5 hours of free time? Well, no, not in reality. The time I use for prayers and to hang out with the family isn’t scheduled, so it didn’t end up on the list. Still, there’s a LOT of time that needs to be put to use. Since I’m so rusty, I’ll keep it light to start and make my goal just one hour a day.
This is an ongoing thing, but I know right away that I am easily distracted. I’ve picked up a Surface to do all my writing on just because I know that every time I try and use my desktop, there are too many other things waiting to steal my time.

So, there we have it. An hour a day, every day, starting Monday (4/5). I’ll have my squad to keep me in line, but when that’s not enough, I’ve got one final trick up my sleeve. The ultimate tool for people like me.

Beeminder.

For the uninitiated, Beeminder is a habit tracking app with a kick. It’s got all the things a good habit tracker needs – reminders, charting, external app integration, a lot of math for nerds like myself – with one extra step. If you fall below a range of your goal, you have to pay them. Each time you fail, the penalty goes up. There are other apps that do this, but those let you pick a cause to donate toward and really, where’s the penalty in that?

If one thing really sold Beeminder to me, it was the “I am a weasel” option, which is specifically set if you’re the kind of person who would try and wiggle out of the goal right as you’re about to fail it, pushing cancellation out by several days. Really, I love these people.

Anyway, I’ll be setting this goal – an hour per day – on Beeminder and figuring out how to load the widget to this site for all to see, and using my accountability group as the people who get emailed if I’m faltering. Time to put my money where my mouth is. If you guys have had the chance to think about it, drop a comment about your goals and, if you want help with an accountability group, count me in.

A Treatise on Discipline

Thomas Keaten

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March 27, 2021

Calluses and character? They go hand in hand.
Amoila Cesar, 6 Weeks of the Work

Confession time. I have horrible discipline.

“But Tom,” you gasp in abject wonder, “how could that be true if you’re putting up another weekly article? A whole TWO WEEKS IN A ROW!?”

The world is full of enigmas, yes, I know.

In all seriousness, it’s true. I think most of us can say the same. Let’s face it, discipline is hard. It might be one of the most difficult things for those of us awash in First World niceties to master. However, it’s also one of the most important things we can have.

This article was planned to be one about the hazards of following our muses. Then, as I got to thinking about it, it steadily rolled into one about procrastination. Both of those ideas orbit the same core, though, and it seemed strange to hit the side dishes before the meat, so here we are.

What’s the most important thing in your life? Is it God? Your family? Friends, work, leisure? We all have an idea of what we think that thing is, but ask yourself, what’s the thing you make time for? The thing you prioritize, that you set aside parts of your day for, are always aiming to improve? That’s what’s important. When push comes to shove, time is the only resource we truly have. Where and how we spend it tells a great deal about us, whether we choose to listen or not.

Discipline is just that – allocation of our one resource toward the things which are truly important to us. I’ve understood this idea for a long time. Those of you who know me personally know my love of all things goal- and habit-tracking, but pressing that little checkbox for the hit of dopamine isn’t discipline. In fact, I can’t even say how many times I’ve used those To Do lists to pull myself away from the thing which I know I should be doing.

As a people, we’re guilty of trying to find the easy solution. It’s everywhere you look. Reddit posts asking how to quickly learn how to play fighting games, forums on how to pick up and play an instrument right away, an entire industry of magic weight loss pills. Everyone wants the quick way, but the answer always ends up the same. There might be shortcuts, but they shave a mile off a trip to Mars. To master something – to git gud – it takes time and focus. Discipline.

Now, here’s where, if I were editing myself I’d go back and rework some of the stuff before because this is the key. Focus. Almost all of us have time hiding somewhere in our day. We could get up an hour earlier, watch one fewer episode or video, play one less round, take a quicker shower. The time is there, it’s focusing that time. Directing it to create discipline.

I’ve done this successfully maybe only twice in my life. Once, to power through over 1,500 words a day for a spree when writing my current novel, and once to dedicate an hour a day toward exercise. I say maybe because, well, after that writing sprint I fell off the wagon and stopped writing anything for several months and the exercise thing, while it’s been going for a few months, is still new. I’m fickle and have always wanted the impossible – to be good at everything. That’s why the article was going to be about muses. I start succeeding in one goal only to take that as a green light to bring in another. Turns out, even with all this practice I’m still not a juggler and all those goals drop.

So, what, you’re wondering, is the secret to my succeeding those (maybe) two times? Did you not read three paragraphs up? There isn’t one. I just did it. I decided to do it, and did it. They were important to me at the time. I wanted to finish that book ahead of schedule. I didn’t like the way I looked. In both cases – in all cases of chasing goals, I suppose – I wanted to get better. I still do, which is why I made this place to begin with.

If I were to give tips, and believe me, given my track record you should take them with a mountain of salt, they would be these:

Pick one thing to start. Only one.
Sit down and make a schedule of your day as it stands currently. Don’t worry, it’s not to make a rigid schedule going forward, it just to get an understanding of what goes on during those 24 hours. You might be surprised how much unallocated time there is floating around.
Send your goal to a list of friends and keep an accountability group. It helps if they’re along this kind of path, but it’s not necessary so long as they’ll listen. And, if you’re like me, so long as they apply good pressure and remind you of their expectations of you.
Take some of that time and dedicate it toward that one thing. Do it every day. Maybe schedule yourself a day off if you feel it’s necessary, or if you’re following a workout plan rest when it says to rest, but beside that scheduled break, commit.
Find the things that prevent you and get around them. Life hits you with distractions that make you lose focus? Change your sleep schedule to get up a little earlier and do it before that can happen.
After a few months, anywhere from 3 to 6, think about adding another goal. By then you’ll have a better understanding of what you can handle and why.

I think that’s probably enough rambling for one day. Which is good, because I think it’s time I did another review of my own day schedules…