Honestly, if I knew how to motivate myself, there wouldn’t be a bucket of cleaning chemicals sitting next to the shower for the past two months, as if I had a passive-aggressive wife trying to leave me a hint. No, if I had the secret to motivation, I’d be sipping champagne in my penthouse as my manservant, Crisp, took care of all that before he gave me my nightly flossing. On the other hand, if I’m so unmotivated, why am I paid to sit around and wait for other people to do their part of a project that I sent them two weeks ago? Okay, let’s face it, if I don’t want to do it, it’s not going to get done. If I have to do it, it will get done. If it’s possible to do it so badly that you never ask me to do it again, it will get done that way, with gusto, baby.
Since this blog is ostensibly about my experience as an amateur writer, let’s just go there. As previously stated, I’m not in a hurry to get published. I know I’ll never be able to make as much as a writer as I do at my current day job (though I am open to moonlighting as a writer for a decet pizza or spicy curry). Also, I am fairly convinced that if and when I turn this into a money-making profession with agents, publishers, deadlines, paperwork, and other aspects I’m not yet aware of, then I’ll probably hate it just as much as my day job; probably more, because the current plan is to be a cranky old man at that point. So, what motivates me to even entertain this path? Well, I’ve narrowed it down to three things.
1. The Creative Process
Not necessarily creativity, though it would help if I had more of that, but the act of creating something. Back when the first tablets came out I was that gadget nerd chomping at the bit to get one, but then John C. Dvorak, my technoculture Yoda, blasted the entire concept as being nothing more than a new “content consumption device.” Real tech nerds would hate it because, unlike a proper computer, they couldn’t “make” anything with it. He was spot on, and it changed the way I looked at my job.
I started out as really good, but terminally bored, business major. This now makes perfect sense, it’s was just rinse and repeat addition and subtraction. I switched to computer science and loved it. I had a blast my first few years in the field designing educational software, building something. Then, I switched to a much better-paying job at the hospital, but suddenly dreaded going to work every day. I was in operations, keeping something running. Oh, how exciting to get up every morning and fix whatever got broken the night before. I probably would have made a crappy doctor in this regard.
Same with music. I loved being in bands. I loved going to rehearsal. I loved going to the studio and making albums. We were creating. I hated booking gigs, begging my friends to come out to see our gigs, and most of all, I hated playing gigs. Okay, that last one also has to do with terminal stage fright, but you see the pattern: if I’m creating something new and injecting a bit of myself into it, I’m alive. If I’m keeping something working, I’m half-checked out at best.
2. Randomness and Chaos
I’m fairly certain I mentioned in another post how I enjoy injecting randomness and chaos into my life. I always carry a lottery ticket in my pocket. I know, I’ll never win, and it’s a tax on stupid people. For me, it’s about when I get up in the morning and say, “Ugh, just another day like all the others,” but there’s that buck I spent that lets me think, “Weeeeelllll, there’s a .000000917% chance I’ll be a billionaire before bedtime.” As my birthday is always around the Indy 500 weekend, I always find the list of celebrities that are in town for the race and make sure to invite them to my birthday cookout. Yeah, they won’t show up, but there’s maaaaaaybe .00000000432% chance one might look me up, mistake me for a popular radio personality, and drop by out of courtesy.
I discussed in a previous post how, when writing, I never really get “writer’s block” or lack motivation because I don’t write things in the order they are read. I write whatever scene or chapter is speaking to me. The result is chaotic … half-finished sequels to books that don’t exist, major plot points explained in footnotes, a hard drive that is basically a half-completed jigsaw puzzle that spawns other jigsaw puzzles. When nothing shouts at me? I tinker with a pure-chaos pantser novel. It’s just random scenes from unwritten books: “What if Character A met Character B? Let’s find out…” I think of it as practice, but sometimes I steal it and put it back in the real novels, even if it forces a major rewrite, because chaos has no respect for plans, and that’s the fun.
3. Newness / Novelty
Not to say that I don’t have my regular drink order at my regular watering hole, despite my occasional attempts to order something else, but I do enjoy changing things up. I often switch out new places, new girlfriends, new hobbies, even whole new cuisines when I can find them. I mean, who knew I’d become an arepa addict when just last week I was a naan guy for life? I can’t even drive to and from work the same way every day, which, believe me, has led to cruising through some recently demilitarized neighborhoods dressed like an FBI agent just in the name of breaking up my own boredom
Hobbies? Don’t even get me started. Since COVID killed my pirate radio station, I’ve cycled through HAM radio, model rocketry, home winemaking, RC planes, gourmet cooking, antiquing, absurd pamphleteering, chess, and novel writing. Only chess and writing have stuck, because they offer endless new rabbit holes to tumble down while the rest are more like “learn these basics, and after that, your enjoyment scales directly with how much money you set on fire.” Because I’ve made this connection, I can’t wait to take up the saxophone this winter. Nothing says “middle-aged chaos agent” like scaring your daughter with Careless Whisper at 2 a.m.
So there you have it: What motivates me? Creating, chaos, novelty. Not deadlines, not obligations, and certainly not buckets of bathroom cleaner glaring at me from the corner. So, if you need me, I’ll be avoiding the shower and waiting for Crisp to finish my pedicure.
