Ten Ways To Distort Your Day

Alter Your Reality and Remix Your Mind

Take Steps to Change your Worldview

The world is a messy, messy place. Life is weighty so have some fun. Skew your perspective on the world by interacting with it in a new way. Just embrace surreality.

Ten Ideas to Distort Your Day

1. Adopt a new handwriting style.

One of my favorite inspirations for writing is a great book on graffiti lettering.  Flip the Script by Christian P. Acker

2. Don a flight cap & scarf.

Hop in your sopwith, take a flight and get in a dog fight with the Red Baron.

3. Make a pillow fort. 

Get some chairs, a big pile of pillows and your music. Hide from the world for a little while.

4. Put sprinkles in your salt shaker.

I like the rainbow ones.

5. Reconnect with your imaginary friend.

Just set some time aside. Maybe have a tea party.

6. Read an article on a different religion than your own.

It could change your world and your life. At the very least, you will be exposed to a different view of the world. 

7. Believe in an impossible thing.

Really work at it. Convince yourself. As the Queen said to Alice, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." 

8. Start a project.

Take photos for a photobook. Make mandalas out of candy, paint pictures, experiment. Take all the pictures and put it all together into your own unique book. The project will stretch you, change you and give you a chance to create something to be proud of. You'll have a mission. When you hold that book in your hands, remember that you did the work.

9. Take a long walk.

Do something completely ordinary and completely out of the ordinary for you. It's especially good if it's something you don't normally take time to do. I am a creature of habit. I like my habits but it is good to break them.

10. Make something new.

Go into your trash but not the gross trash. Take some random junk laying around the house and make a sculpture. I made a Batman with ink, paint, glue, tape, and an old cereal box,  I made a Beemo with plastic, wire, paint, clay and duct tape. I made a dollhouse with a ton of different things.  Choose a subject you like and that holds meaning for you.

What Upset Your Status Quo?

How to Catalyze a Story

The Big Question

Have you ever been sitting at your computer beating your head against the table because everything that should be so simple is causing you suffering? I have. But enough about my day at work. 

Constantly Moving Goal

I came home to enjoy my favorite past time, writing. I love creating worlds and exploring them. I love getting emotionally invested in characters that I create. My goal with my newest story is to refine my storytelling.

Every story needs a catalyst. It needs a place where the status quo gets upset. The world explodes around the main character.

This is not easy for me because I don't like things going wrong in my life. I like having all the answers and knowing where I'm going. I need to get over my neurotic phobias and write the part that makes my blood pressure sky rocket and my vision blur with tears. Okay, that's ridiculously dramatic. But I think writing should be dramatic even when it's comedy.

The Big Thing

A catalyst is a big moment. It's the Earth shaking event that changes everything. 

What are some good catalysts?

A Few Random Catalysts

1. Contest
2. Alien invasion
3. Burned cake
4. Car crash
5. Birth of a baby
6. Sudden reappearance of a dead man
7. A splinter

The Point

A splinter could be enough to trigger the events of a novel. A splinter can be deadly.

In the film, The Little Prince (2015), there were several life changing events that altered the course of the little girl's life. Her parents presumably divorce, she moves to a new house and she nearly dies. The last event is the most important because she almost dies but also because she meets a friend. The friend changes her. It is the single, nearly tragic moment that changes her forever. She meets the Aviator, he invites her into his world and she accepts the invitation.

Blake Snyder called the big moment the "catalyst" when he wrote Save the Cat!. The Little Prince makes the catalyst clear with the symbolism of her carefully arranged life plan being scattered everywhere. The catalyst doesn't need to be so obviously laid out but it needs to be powerful enough to drive the change in the main character's world.

I Have a Really Big Problem!

I have a really big problem other than the fact that my nephew's love of Peg + Cat means I scarcely make it through a day without hearing one of their voices in my head.

I want to find a unique, strange and perfect catalyst. Maybe it's my obsessive compulsive tendencies or maybe I'm procrastinating or I'm just working myself up for no reason. I do those things. The best way to solve this problem is to pick a catalyst and let the story evolve without worrying whether it's the perfect catalyst.

I want a catalyst that I will enjoy writing. After all, I am my primary audience. If I don't like writing it, I'm going to stop writing and wander off to find something better to do. My favorite stories feature protagonists whose lives are altered by their choice, not by external forces. So I'm going to let my main character make a choice and live with the outcome of that choice.

Three Lessons in Storytelling from Westerns

Cowboys, Cactuses and Horses, Oh My

I don't love westerns. Why am I writing this if I don't love westerns? I'm not thinking of writing a western. I had an idea and it made me want to know more about westerns. That's what triggered a research binge.

Modern Box Office Poison

Genres change over time.

The contemporary wisdom has been that westerns are box office poison. This isn't true anymore. But it was true for a time with Jonah Hex and Cowboys & Aliens coming to mind.

Maybe many contemporary writers and directors have trouble understanding the qualities that a western needs to engage an audience. Quentin Tarantino doesn't have trouble. He's created two very successful westerns, The Hateful Eight and Django Unchained. Leonardo DiCaprio's recent film The Revenant is nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Longmire is coming back for a fifth season on Netflix.

Modern westerns are no more like classic westerns than modern comedies are like the screwball comedies of the 1920s. Modern westerns are gritty and violent with complex characters struggling to survive. Triumph isn't triumphant. They are not necessarily realistic and not very fantastic. It's the brutality of existence on the edge of society with people pushed to the limits of humanity. They evoke a feeling and an idea of what it was like to be there.

Earlier westerns were based around black and white morality. Often, literally black hats against white hats. They had exciting heroes on horseback. Not much reality and so much fantasy. In the past, westerns told a version of history from one specific perspective with the Motion Picture Production Code dictating acceptable content. It was wholesome entertainment. Not everyone's worried about wholesome nowadays.

Tropetastic

Every trope starts somewhere.

Tropes and stock characters from westerns are a part of our storytelling culture and our history. I see no point in writing about them in detail when I can just say go to tvtropes but only if you don't have any plans for the next three hours.

I'm most interested in the stories behind the cameras. The feeling and ideas associated with cowboy films. Locations like Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, the Old Tuscon Movie Studio and Iverson Movie Ranch were used so many times that they become the mental sound stage for western fantasies for some people. The image of a cowboy riding alone surrounded by endless expanses of desert with Saguaro Cactuses and tumbleweeds despite the fact that Saguaros are only found in Arizona and part of Mexico.

Truth

The legend of the west started in the wild west and it's been growing ever since.

I don't know if I believe in the existence of absolute truth but my continued existential sufferings on that subject are mostly covered in my previous post. I do believe in emotional truths. Western films were the truths of the people creating those films. I can't learn much about the wild west by watching the Lone Ranger (not that Johnny Depp catastrophe, the original) but I can learn about what the film makers thought and what the kids watching that show in their living room in the 1950s learned about the west.

William McCarty lived the reality but even then, the wild west was a bunch of facts mixed up in stories. Billy the Kid is a legend and a young man who was shot to death at the age of 21. He was a lie long before he died.

"I don’t blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories but then I don’t know, as anyone would believe anything good of me anyway."

12/27/1880, Interview with The Las Vegas Gazette

From About Billy the Kid

Our perception of history is biased by the fact that none of us lived it and the records were written by the people with the loudest voices. The loudest voice isn't necessarily the right voice.

15 Fun Facts About Pufferfish

Fugu, I Hardly Know You

I have created a list of pufferfish facts because they are cute and I was considering including them in a story I'm writing. 

Most of my knowledge about pufferfish came from the 1991 Simpsons episode One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish. I thought I should expand my knowledge before I wrote about them (also because it was kind of sad that most of my knowledge came from a half hour cartoon show).

Fishes (1907)

David Starr Jordan

1. The puffer fish is not a species but a family with around 120 species in it.
2. Not all puffer fish will kill you. Just most.
3. Their adorable inflatability is a punishment for any animal that is foolish enough to eat it. Imagine having your dinner inflating in your throat as you are trying to swallow it.
4. Those cute pictures of inflated fish are actually pictures of fish trying desperately to not die.
5. The pufferfish can inflate using water or air depending on the location.
6. Japanese scientists have breed non-poisonous puffer fish.
7. People aren't quite as interested in eating non-poisonous puffer fish because the chance to get high or die or get high and die is part of the appeal. Go figure. Although properly prepared fugu by a master in Japan is relatively safe because they spend two years training to do it right. Just don't go taste testing a diy filet by a home chef.
8. Puffer fish don't make the poison. Bacteria colonies in the puffer fish do. Mmm...bacteria.
9. Tetrodotoxin won't necessarily kill you. If you survive the paralysis, the drop in blood pressure, the nausea, vomiting, and avoid respiratory failure you'll pull through when it works its way out of your system.
10. Puffer fish can be sweet (and not culinarily). They can be cute and playful. Some people liken their behavior to dogs.
11. They can be the key to a good time for dolphins who may use the little guys get a little high.
12. Males attract mates by making circles on the sea floor. Some puffer fish also make sand castles for shelter.
13. Some puffer fish can change color to match their surroundings.
14. They are toothy. In other words, they have four teeth that continually grow.
15. They could be key to creating a new class of pain killers. Scientists are trying to replicate the effect of tetrodotoxin on nerves to kill pain instead of people.

I now know more about puffer fish (also blowfish and balloonfish). I don't know if they'll fit into the story but at least I have some material to work with if they do.

Just a Little Soul Search

What do I believe in?

Still Spiraling

I do not want another person's future to be dependent on my decision. I would not want another person to decide my future. All other considerations forgotten, I don't want to be a decider. I would lose sleep over the impact of my decision. I would spend hours imagining alternate scenarios. I take life very seriously and I can't put things behind me easily.

This is me. I believe that we all need to do what's morally and ethically right. Sometimes the ethical thing is to not do something. Sometimes we have to go very deep into our feelings to truly understand the origins of those feelings.

The source of my feeling was being obscured by rational considerations like inconvenience. So I searched my heart and my soul. My ideas are changeable but my nature isn't and I don't want to be responsible. 

I am as smart as the next person but I'm emotional and I follow my instincts. I don't always follow logic. I very often follow my heart. 

I trust people but when they talk but I don't always understand what they mean or why they say what they say. I take people at their word. That's why I don't like it when people joke with me. I can't always tell if they mean it or if it's just humor.

I can get angry and annoyed for no reason. I try to hide it because I feel like my problems are my problems and no one should have to suffer my bad mood. 

I'm scared that people judge me. I'm scared that I unfairly judge other people. I'm scared that something I do today will hurt me later. I'm scared that something I don today will hurt someone else.

Everyday, I am a different person. The person I was yesterday is gone. Yesterday's mistakes are in the past. But if my mistake hurt someone, that mistake is on going because they are still hurt. I don't want that. That's why I don't want to be a person in charge of major decisions that determine the course of other people's lives. 

I believe that I don't have the answers.

Be a Better Person

Steps to Self-Improvement

Why?

I will never be satisfied with just good enough. Self improvement is a virtuous act that I wish to practice. It's hard because it requires the admission of flaws but I've never had a hard time finding my own flaws.

Self Evaluation

First step, take a hard look at myself and other people. Determine which qualities I like. I like people who are kind, happy and charitable. I like people who are honest and respectful. I like people who are creative. 

Then consider the qualities I don't like about myself. I suffer from obsessive thoughts. If I don't act fast and deal with them then I will wind up in a cycle of painful thoughts. I don't think about other people half as much as I think about myself. There are times that I understand that this is all in my head but if I'm too deep down the rabbit hole of self loathing, it's harder to believe that and it's even harder to dig myself out. I can be judgmental and make decisions based on emotional impressions, not facts. I can be impulsive.

Specific Steps

The things I like and dislike are abstracts. They are not steps. That makes them useless. To make them useful, I will create steps towards the goal of cultivating the virtues or lessening the flaws.

Kind

Make people feel good by making the small gestures that show they are appreciated.

1. Pay people compliments.
2. Be patient.

Happy

This is the hardest one for me. My brain does not always accommodate happy. So I have to fight harder for it.

1. Appreciate what I have.
2. Embrace the activities I love.

Charitable

I don't think the most important charity is always giving money to other people. Charity is just doing for others and I feel really good when I do good things for the people around me.

1. Make time to be helpful.
2. Do things to help the people around me.

Honest

This one is harder. It feels like there's nothing that people can make me feel worse about than the truth. It's hard to be honest because the truth is not always nice or what people want to here. Honesty is not always right. So maybe it's important to find what honesty to give and what honesty to keep. 

1. Take a hard look at myself and the world.
2. Find the nicer truths about the world.

Creative

I think I am creative. But I don't think I focus my creativity. I need to use it. I need to make use of it.

1. Find creative solutions to everyday problems.

Obsessive Thoughts

This isn't a thing that can be fixed quickly if at all. I've been trying to fix this for a long time. Maybe I can't because perhaps it's just the way my brain works.

One of the obsessions is that I am fearful of the outcome of my actions. I would genuinely hate it if my choice or action made another person suffer for any reason. I wouldn't be able to get past it. This makes me seem thoughtless at times because I really try not to think. I like easy and simple approaches to life. But as I get older, I've started to think that not thinking is just a quick fix. It's scary because the questions I face are getting harder everyday and the answers are getting more difficult. As I think about them, my awareness of the impact of my actions makes me hurt inside. Sometimes I can't give the correct answers no matter how much I want to. I'm just trying not to hurt anyone. I don't always succeed but I really try.  

1. Cut myself some slack.
2. Be mindful.

Judgement

I don't know what to do about this. The deeper I dig into what I don't like about myself, the harder this post is to write. I guess this circles back around to my obsessive thoughts. I don't know how to not judge myself. Maybe I have to keep judging myself but I need to be positive to balance my natural negativity.

1. Practice positive affirmations.

Impulsive

I am not someone that people would describe as impulsive. But they don't have my view. I say things and then I regret them later.

1. Think first, think second, speak third.

So, is this enough?

Is wanting to be a better person enough? I don't know. I will never stop trying to be a better person even if I always feel wanting.

If nothing else, I just hope everyone knows that I am trying. I am always trying to be a good and honorable person. I think that's as much as anyone can ask of me.

"What is truth?"

A Googled Research Experiment

I wonder what truth is. My truth is different from your truth. It's my subjective perspective on the world and my place in it.

Recently the truth has been in my thoughts because everyone is judged on their truth and I think that's why so many people hide their personal truths. 

The only rule to this experiment is the search is "What is truth?"

Google's Result

Result one is the dictionary definition of truth provided by google. Truth is derived from the definition of "true". True is a Boolean result, real, fact, exact, legitimate, genuine, loyal, faithful. The definition of true is practically a thesaurus entry.

The problem is that true changes from moment to moment. It flexes, fades and fails depending on past, present and future situations. My truth today will not be my truth forever. My truth now is not my truth this morning. It's how I feel about the world. I don't like the idea of being bound to my present understanding of reality. I want to be able to grow and expand my reality.

Search Result 1

Result two is an article by one Matt Slick, a minister. It's also the start of a pattern in the results. "What is truth?" is a quote from the bible so 4 out the top 5 results is related to the bible and not my truth.

Search Result 3

Philosophy news is a little more my speed. The fact that it's my speed makes my point. I'm not looking for the biblical truth. I'm looking to understand truth. The first concession of the article is that Truth is hard to define. 

Conclusion?

In looking for the truth with an open mind, I already had a personal bias. I wanted to see a truth I wanted to see. Truth is biased, imaginary, impossible, indefinable without context. 

I think it's necessary to face the truth or never change it. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe everyone's wrong. Maybe I'm overthinking this. I have a habit of that.