Sitting down to write this morning is a joy. Flanked by a coffee and croissant, northern sunlight coming in through the windows. It feels like play and that is precisely the reason I do it.
On other days, I can’t harness the energy to write and focus becomes a rare commodity. Those days tend to produce a disparate lashing of words and ideas into different drafts or, worse, no writing at all. Unfortunately, such days are the majority.
The result is an infrequency of posts. This gives me pause to contemplate what sort of hobby writer I want to be. Will mine be a fair-weather or all-weather approach?
I recently encountered a Twitter thread that cited a conception of freedom held by philosopher-couple Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: freedom is nothing if not the freedom to develop projects, and often to develop them against our own inclinations.
That is, the freedom to act on one’s will and interest. A project to one person might be gardening, to another the renovation of a house, the study of mathematics or the penning of poems.
The thread proposed that meaningful and lasting engagement with any endeavour is premised on discipline and habit formation. Why? Because even if it’s fun, it won’t be easy.
It follows that a creative project is reliant on the exercise of discipline, like any other form of work.
This challenged my idea of creativity. Almost by definition I have thought of it as an expression of whim, borne out of natural inclination and frictionless effort. Moments of inspiration.
It takes less than a second’s thought to realise how dumb that is. No lasting creative artefact could have been made without persistence and the active overcoming of resistance. David didn’t spring from marble unimpeded; the Sistine Chapel wasn’t painted in a stream of consciousness.1
The expectation that writing should be easy for me adds an unnecessary layer of challenge atop the craft. A barrier to starting.
Given I care about this little corner of the internet and wish to cultivate my writing as an ongoing creative project, I will need to be disciplined in my efforts if they are to be sustained.
Discipline?
Discipline is the bridge between a dream and reality. Without it, we don’t expend the energy trying to get there. Our dreams remain untouchable and untested; safe from the risk of failure.
Sometimes I feel dizzied by the projects I wish to embark on in my life: learning to sail, roll Brazilian Jiujitsu, rock climb and ruck; making olive oil; study the Odyssey in Greek, Byzantine history, Biblical Aramaic; and - of course - to write.
All of these I intend to do as an amateur (recall: for the love of it). But love alone isn’t going to get me to competency… neither is it likely to sustain me through fluctuations in motivation. I might be delusional. These on top of making a living and supporting a family!? I might need several lifetimes to properly attend to any of them.
With the one life I have, time is the most sacred and finite resource. A reverence for that fact coupled with a desire to sustain any one project leads to the conclusion that the determining factor in how well engaged I will become in any of these is discipline. Only with discipline can I wrangle my attention and efforts towards one end for a sufficient amount of my finite time to get anywhere meaningful on it.
If you break down the hours required to develop basic skill competency in any of these domains, they should be very much achievable in one lifetime. Discipline is necessary in showing up for the first 20 hours of practice, when the gap between our capacity and our intention is unbearable.
Of course, my natural inclination to commence and continue any of these things will wane. Habit formation and routine are the structures that can sustain an endeavour through those fluctuations. Each is reliant on discipline.
Two other essential components to structure: lifestyle and companionship. A lifestyle that aids the pursuit of projects (affords freedom) and companions with which to enjoy the journey and be held accountable. Among the three, I consider discipline the binding agent.
D-word
Discipline has become a dirty word.
Associated with old-school coaches, used punitively by angry paternal figures and as the foundation for monotonous morning routines, and co-opted by the manosphere — pitched as a binary alternative to joy.
Little wonder I’ve spent a long time distancing myself from its grip.
I studied like a metronome in Year 12. In direct response to that I found the minimum threshold at which I could reasonably get by through university.2 I strayed above and below that mark only irregularly.
That choice (conscious or unconscious) was borne out of fatigue. The form of discipline I knew was immature. A practice un-coupled with self-awareness or reverence for rest. I was not in balance.
Discipline became synonymous with enduring difficult experiences or engaging in activities I didn’t enjoy.
My well-developed capacity to do things I don’t like has a shadow side. I have a mal-evolved connection to things I actually like doing and when I can’t access the reservoir of effort required to grit my teeth through displeasure, nothing gets done.
The result of this is a fluctuating energetic state. Ups and downs: a constant state of flux between exertion and exhaustion.
My past decade has been a pattern of boom and bust: Fitness → fatigue; strength → injury; hyper-activity → boredom; routine → vagabonding.
There’s been pleasure in this. A flagrant disregard for my limits. What is life if not change and motion? The astute reader will recall my advocacy for a life containing the full spectrum of experience. But what are the costs?
Recent circumstances have given me pause to look back and think about the times I have been ill, injured and infected. Those have been many. I recall an ear infection while living in the damp hull of a pirate ship off Kilwa Masoko,3 which persisted throughout my time glittered and dancing in the Karu desert. Gastro in Coffee Bay at the conclusion of a hike along the Transkei, rigors upon returning to Darwin’s build-up from the mountains of East Timor and conjunctivitis picked up playing footy in the Territorian monsoon. I brush these off as the costs of a life lived with a sprinkling of spontaneity.
Would I forgo these experiences for the mild suffering they caused? No.
But there is something unique about this juncture of my life. Perhaps for the first time in a decade I am becoming aware of and drawn toward the essential need for persistence, repetition and routine. My avoidance of monotony is giving way to the realisation that discipline lines the path to mastery and works of beauty.4
Productive tension
Back in 2018 I went on a law school tour of US institutions with a professor of military and humanitarian law (not a contradiction in terms). He was fantastic. He ran us through an exercise regimen each morning and drilled us as though we were a platoon under his charge. Roll call in suit and tie in the motel lobby prior to a tour of the pentagon and other such places,5 while trying to hold down a gurgling of Coors and Philly cheese-steak from not much earlier that morning.
This was a time of perfect tension between discipline and enjoyment. I still felt the two to be pulling me in opposing directions and could hardly keep my resentment for the discipline at bay.
I was reading Oscar Wilde and Jack Kerouac you see, preparing for a pre-mature departure from law school and my best attempt at following in their whimsy-led footsteps and a whole-hearted embrace of Wilde’s famous words: everything in moderation, including moderation.6
This aphorism isn’t just the sentiment of a debauched Victorian playwright. The Greeks got there too, some 2500 years earlier (as is always the way).
παν μέτρον άριστον (pan metron ariston) - everything in moderation.
A word for word translation yields a nicer expression. Pan (all) metron (in good measure) ariston (is best). All in good measure is best. Best here referring to the form of moral excellence sought by philosophers of the day.
I can only accept moderation if it leaves room for variance. Moderation as an aggregated outcome of variation. In all things I believe this to be best.
I have often found myself flung between two extremes: one is a militaristic obedience to routine, the other a flight of fancy.
The former is reflected in my long-standing anal-retentive routines before football. The purpose of pre-match routine is to limit the presence of adverse variables for the supposed psychological consistency (like in set shot goal kicking).
I have been known to arrive at a match fatigued from my Spartan obedience to routine; more self-flagellation than preparation. The denial of Saturday morning croissants presents a particular spiritual difficulty for me - the negligible nutritional effect on my performance far outweighed by the risk of softening my mind to carnal pleasure before battle.
If freedom is the capacity to pursue projects of one’s interest, in my sabbatical I have attempted to do just that.
What I have come up against is the difficulty of sustaining them. It is not that my interest has waned or waivered. Rather that natural inclinations can not be relied upon for consistent effort.
Take this newsletter. The inconsistency with which I have published is a reflection on not having implemented a consistent approach to writing.
My intuition has been that there was no room for discipline in the cultivation of a creative outlet, that one should write when fancy strikes like lightning. I have held the belief that my writing can only take place when the circumstances are fitting and the mood and mental clarity is sufficient.
The creative spirit can’t be anticipated only in times of abundance. If at a time when I have a lot of freedom, I cannot muster more than one session per week where that is the case and the resultant output is unsatisfactory (to me), it indicates that something is missing from the mix.
I have expected the lightning bolt of inspiration to strike my field, open and unobstructed by responsibilities. But it is precisely obstructions (structures) that attract the charge of lightning!
Habits and routine do not arise from the pursuit of natural inclinations. I have been under the long-held belief that in order to enjoy life you can’t over-dampen it with routine. I grimace at a life over rigidified by routine.
I am learning fast that a life without habit and routine is unconducive to sustained effort towards the construction of something beyond myself.
I have spent so long understanding discipline in the absence of flow. All Yang, no Ying. The balance between these is integral to a healthy approach to life. Structure is the boundary within which the spirit of life can flow.
When I first set out to write, I started with a rigid and focused intention (all structure). It strangled the flow of creativity. Since then, I have followed my whimsy and, as enjoyable as that is, find myself producing less writing than I would like (all flow).
The solution might be to show up to the desk every day and write - even when I’m not feeling it. Just a little bit.
Recall that the other half of freedom is to continue to develop [projects] against our own inclinations.
Just as I have learnt over the past decade that exercise should not be reserved for times when we’re feeling it; usually you need it most when you feel like it least.
A similar heuristic is to distrust your impulse to put the book down or avoid the writing desk. Fight the urge to not show up or give up, like you do resistance at the gym.
In this respect disciplined practice is a skill to be learnt, not some inherent trait that we possess or lack. Just as we have learned to sketch, drill or rhyme, we must learn to apply consistent effort toward a craft of our choosing.
Intuition and feeling are not enough alone. A creative only comes into themselves through the discipline of sustained effort and structure of routine. Chaos balanced by Order.
Life can’t be strangled into rigid routine, nor can we wait for lightning to strike. A more sustained approach to getting things done lies at the mean of two extremes. Discipline is the structure through which creativity can flow.
Postscript: if you read this and think that it doesn’t apply to you because you are not creative, I have been there too. A book called The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron dislodged me from the belief that I was not a creative and showed me that creativity is a way of engaging with the world that can be cultivated. With (disciplined) practice!
Jack Kerouac famously wrote On the Road in a stream of consciousness and the entire manuscript can be visited on one continuous roll of butcher’s paper. Impressive, yes. Effortless, no… and almost certainly aided by pyschedelics.
I wasn’t a full blown “P’s get degrees” cowboy. My pass-target was higher than 50%… which didn’t prevent me from hitting that mark on one or two occasions (intermediate micro-economics a stunning 51%, peak tertiary effort efficiency.
I recall sitting on the stern of the ship and playing a Russian game of dice with my fellow crew members (a very pirate-y thing to do). I found the reverence for the die to be superstitious and unnerving but so long as I didn’t come last I would avoid the standing punishment: an underwater dive from starboard to port, below the entire hull. Of course, I did come last and after damning the Russian die lord, pleaded for mercy at the hands of my crew, like a coward crazed by a persistent ringing in the ear.
Works of beauty I define broadly to include all that is good and noble: Kalos
Hot places, cold places, as Ronny once said.
The resulting adventure, some of you will be privy to, bore photographic evidence of me hitting the road looking like a free-wheeling hippy-spec version of Che Guevara. The counter-cultural dream.
Inspiring 🙏