High Difficulty

To any visitors from the future who've accidentally found their way into the Slog (not sure how; since no one links here, Google barely indexes the Slog, leaving it essentially invisible), I have a humble request: Please take into account the high difficulty rating.

I write all this without a drop of feedback, and pretty much without readers (I envision a few morbidly curious ex-girlfriends and a small claque of chowhound diehards patiently awaiting errant reports of yum-yums).

These writings might be anywhere between "brilliant" and "demented". Not sure. No one helps with that determination, leaving me at the mercy of my merciless self-skepticism (a few entries which have withstood my withering self-critique are indexed at left; I reread them sometimes to restore my faith that maybe I'm not completely wasting my time).

In installment 4 of my tale of the sale of Chowhound to a big corporation, I note how at my low point of bedraggled impoverished desperation, I was approached by the Macarthur Foundation:

I'd received an email from none other than the Macarthur Foundation - the "genius grant" folks who toss $500,000, with no strings attached, at people doing clever and/or useful things. And they were writing to invite me to, uh, well.....to serve on the nominating committee! You know; to help them find deserving recipients out there! People who could stand to be rewarded with half a million bucks for their fine, outside-the-box work! Do I know anyone like that?

I dutifully sent in a few nominations, including one for the Arepa Lady . And I was happy to do so, though none of my suggestions won. But it felt like someone crawling, thirsty, through a desert being asked to point jolly folks passing in a late model SUV toward parched souls who might like some lemonade.

That's how it goes for me. Utterly confusing surreality. I like to insist that life's sweetest if you opt out of framing yourself as starring in a movie. But it's hard to avoid the impression that I'm starring in a spoof for the amusement of some unseen extreme comedy nerd.

Me, I never got a dinner. But I watch beloved people of letters breathlessly followed by crowds of cognoscenti, their every mild witticism evoking guffaws. I do not yearn for easy guffaws. Receivers of easy guffaws stop trying and start Bob Hoping. Smug gloaters. It's perilously easy to reframe yourself as The Guy Who Does The Thing, rather than as a Thing-Doer. That's when the doing stops being any good.

So I’d make a miserable beloved Bob Hope. I'm here to drive it till it drops, a thing-doer who's 100% crew and 0% "talent". I strongly agree with Albert Camus that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. I am, as I've previously written, an Ant:

I'm like an ant. I'll very contentedly reconstruct a smashed anthill, one grain at a time, even amid multiple re-smashings.

To human beings, I suppose this seems sad. Humans aspire to grander dreams than endless drudging anthill reconstruction. They're taught to rage at the smashing.

But to ants, human beings - who grow ever more crippled and demoralized with every inevitable round of smashings, and who only with great suffering manage to soldier on with reconstruction - are the sad ones.

As always, I've been granted my wish (I'm always granted my wishes). I'm not being pestered, distracted, or flattered away from doing my damndest. And doing my damndest is the goal; not becoming a celebrated figure renowned for doing his damndest.

But here's the thing. To come up with - and explain - credible fresh insights no one's previously come up with is hard (I credit my younger self, who unselfconsciously marinated on various questions through the decades). But to do so in a vacuum is excruciating, much more difficult without feedback, applause...heck, even negative feedback from haters or naysayers. Any calibrating reflection, however wavy. One needs some indication beyond muffled silence; some glimmer beyond the opaque dead ends. Not to improve morale or to elevate pride, but simply to have something to grind against.

I've lived a binary life. Always X and the-opposite-of-X. I'm a schlub and a star. A loser and a winner. Smart and dumb. Kind and assholic. I can simultaneously hold an idea and its opposite in my mind without discomfort, because I'm cursed with enduring sanity and only a depraved kook maintains a lofty self-image in a world consistently offering, ahem, contrasting assessment.

So I'm probably doing what I think I'm doing at the quality level I believe I'm doing it at. But I'm also plying overheated annoying nonsense for no discernible purpose. Both. Always both! And at this point, I'm really too old to be pushed fully one way or the other - though the aforementioned postings in the left margin have, for the first time, solidly beefed up the not-total-nincompoop argument, sparking an unfamiliar sensation that I suspect might be some low-simmering precursor of pride.

I wouldn’t want to hear cries of "Nice job!" People garner hundreds or thousands of social media likes and repostings for stating the obvious, for stroking confirmation bias, and for sharing shots of adorable kittens. I'll opt out, thanks. I do not seek cheap Skinner box rewards. And I recognize that my entire proposition here is the antithesis of confirmation bias. Year after year, I delight in explaining how our assumptions are wrong and our impulses are self-defeating....while goofily expecting readers to welcome this, and revel in it!

Hey, I'm just following the Golden Rule! I'm offering what I like! I love sussing out my wrongness and self-defeating habits. I adore surprise, even when the surprise makes me the joke's butt. Above all, I've been focused on trying to become smart rather than to feel smart. It's a highly eccentric choice, but one can't have it both ways. Becoming smart means feeling perpetually dumb, because that's how learning happens. Most people don't/can't learn because they'd need to presuppose that something's missing…which is unthinkable! I've set myself up to learn, which explains how a shmucky B+ student from the paneled rec room basement zones of 70s suburbia - a child of foosball and Asteroids, who remains utterly unimpressive - managed to cough up numerous credible fresh insights no one's previously come up with. I enjoy the grace of a highly-determined idiot (and keep offering the secret here, hoping someone will take it and run and do way better than I have).

Again, it's just my adherence to the Golden Rule. Like an adoring puppy eagerly offering its owner a stiff, bloody pigeon carcass, I proffer the gift I'd most desire: perspective on your enduring wrong-headed stupidity. And I’m absurdly confused by the utter non-response.

Despite my broad self-awareness (I’ve framed this about four different ways so far, above), the silence still oppresses. Yet I know this is the best possible outcome. Outcomes are always best-possible. The universe unfailingly contrives the necessary circumstance for evolution and learning, even if it's hard to see it. And, having learned this, I can appreciate the perfection while also ruing it. Just because it's so much harder this way.

Working in a vacuum - essentially pulling a Salinger, though hidden in plain sight - is extraordinarily difficult. If I could finally convince myself I was doing something legit great, I might enjoy some helpful tailwind. If crowds hung on every word, I might reframe the enterprise and transcend to better heights. As a devoted karma yogi, my commitment level is permanently pinned to "11", but the latent potential for transcendence is always there. I can scarcely enumerate the eurekas overlooked, or the awkward, wordy explanations that might have been streamlined by some elegant, ingenious turn of phrase springing into my head if I knew it really mattered to people. 

I worry that I'm not reaching my potential because, at some level (i.e. plainly evident reality, at least at the surface) I’m an enfeebled has-been self-indulgently droning on and on in an invisible blog. Such a launching pad is encumbered by especially sticky gravity. High difficulty!

I don't turn my mind often to that self-image. I opt out of drama, which is why I no longer get depressed. But there's a legitimate question: Is that yet another horrific flight of fancy my brain cooks up to bait and hook me? Or is it reality....while the lofty notion that I'm aptly channeling my talent (and fuck 'em all if they don't realize) is the flight of fancy? Am I quietly, honorably building something worthy, or am I a kook compulsively erecting an ugly ramshackle Watts Tower?


It's obvious that, even at this late date, I still sometimes struggle with the dilemma that sparked this Slog's founding insight as I struggled, so many years ago, to decide whether I was experiencing a grim lonely Christmas Eve, or a glorious peak moment of comfort watching a terrific movie on a great big TV from an extraordinarily comfy couch. I’ve grown very clear about that, but not 100% clear. Human beings don’t do 100% anything!