distraction – From the desk of Adam Thomas

[bctt tweet=”This allows me to engage, moment by moment.”]

Feeling “I don’t know” scares me.

Whenever the work of “I don’t know” creeps in, it isn’t pretty. We used to walk with a guide, a checklist, or a boss handing us things to do, but with creative work, we get ambiguity and it makes us unsettled. We look for another preoccupation to get through it.

I’ve identified two levels of avoidance.

Distraction (Level 1)

Useless pings keep me going.

There is nothing that takes my distraction away better than a ping.

I will, when I am not aware, set my life up to receive these pings. Send out a few text messages, get in an argument on Reddit, click on a hashtag on twitter, or find a new article on the internet to investigate.

All of these things create an environment where people can respond. Once I get the response, now I can keep the conversation going until I lose it. I get to avoid the work ahead of me.

Impostor (Level 2)

You don’t belong here, everyone else does.

Whenever I beat back the distraction (generally through locking myself into a room) I get to the impostor syndrome, which is all about feeling like you don’t belong or not worthy.

If I look for someone who has more “right” to write, I don’t have to look long. The internet is full of people who have a better blog than this. The writing is tighter, the content more shared, and the readership higher.

When this part wins, I settle in and lose the will to work. I see my XBOX and notice how close it is.

[bctt tweet=”with creative work, we get ambiguity and it makes us unsettled. We look for distractions to get through it. “]

Both of these guys lead us into excuses. Those excuses lead to inaction. When dealing with risk and shipping things, I am getting involved with both of these concepts almost every night.

My best defense lately is to recognize them. Engage with them. Ask questions to myself such as:

Why do I want to run?
What don’t I know?
Whats the next action?

This allows me to engage, moment by moment. I don’t always win, but I get closer to honesty – which makes the next step easier.

The jitters are going away when I don’t have my cell phone. Feels embarrassing to say that. But its proof that this cell phone rehab is working.

Sunday mornings seem like they are great for reflection.

I guess that is why most businesses are closed, Christians celebrate religious services, school is out, work slows down, and we all get to sit down and bask in the glory of the day.

Sunday always meant church for me, which meant work, which meant appearances, which means I hated Sundays for most my life. I had to get up, put on a suit, brush my teeth, cross my t’s and dot my i’s to make sure I looked good, because the family would be going to church.

This was a good and bad thing. I learned about appearances, and how important they were to keep. We had to make a show of it, because the people were expecting a show. To not make a show, at least a little bit, was to make you an outcast. There would be gossip, and shunning, even at tiny levels.

The bad was I learned more about human nature. A place that said it was inclusive and forgiving, really wasn’t. The gossip flew – “Did you see what that family wore” even as the Bible said come as you are. People would be judged – “I saw ___ boy at the liquor store” even as the bible said judge lest ye be judged.

I soaked a lot of this in, because I was a quiet observer. Slowly, I let it chip away at my feelings towards religion as a whole. I became an agnostic while spending 3 days a week at a holy building. I knew the bible, but what I saw just wasn’t matching up.

I think back and feel like I shouldn’t have let that happen sometimes. Maybe the key to all of it was forgiveness for your fellow man. Jesus was a strong person, and if a lot of that was true (minus the magic) then he was a great man who had a great capacity for compassion, even if his followers didn’t.

But I also think maybe the lesson was to forge out ahead, and be your own man. Look and see what group think brings to you, look what it makes you. Sometimes, when you are a part of the group you can’t just be honest. The story changes. A charade has to happen because if it doesn’t the whole thing falls apart.

As a comedian I would like to be able to change minds while making people laugh. I think an artists most noble mission is to take shots at the status quo, to show the world how it is, to break the charade – wrapped in a bouquet of beauty.

I want to break that charade without breaking the people behind it. As this Sunday rolls on, it becomes another week where this sits in the back of my mind, and allows me to push forward.

Movie Day is today. I have been picking out Sunday to go to see a film since the beginning of the month, and I think i will stick with this routine.

It is pretty nice to be able to unplug yourself, and surrender to something for 2 hours, without checking your phone, or looking at Twitter, Facebook, or even talking.

Its why I go alone. I want the time to let my brain sit on whatever it is processing at the time. If nothing comes, fine, but I want to train it to have Sunday be a time of silence.

The movie thing also helps because it allows me to see other people’s ideas, good or bad. I get to see show business from the consumers point of view. I can learn more on what makes a good movie, what makes a good story, or even, why did this thing go so wrong. Then I can use what I learned to improve my own work.

I’d like to learn how to tell a story, and this is the first step in making that happen.

I need to fill up my calendar more. It has always been a tool I neglect, even at work, where everyone lives by the calendar. People use it to watch meeting invitations, and the assumption is that you are busy if anything is on your calendar.

I have been taking that opportunity to block out 30 minutes a day in order to go over my comedy sets. It has generally worked. I want to use it now to

1) give myself time on Monday mornings to plan out my week as per 99u’s Managing Your Day to Day.

2) Organize my personal life in order to remember shows and get an idea of how my month is going in terms of comedy.

I don’t quite know where it will lead. Maybe ill be in the same boat in September. But I hope it will give me inspiration to be a better worker at work, and power my comedy. Push me to more markets.

Social media curating is a thing. Its a very important thing. It is something I have failed to do, and as a creative who wants to be a freelance person in the future, it is something I better learn how to do.

I want to pick Sunday as a day to really get into my social media. I need to buffer statuses, build a Facebook following, and update my about.me enthuse linked.in and hoverboard.io pages, and connect everything so they can work as one well oiled machine.

I may even make a brand new comedy twitter handle because I need to separate personal and professional. I need to make everything squeaky clean so when the next step of my career comes, I can be ready.

I can’t just be lazy and try to blame fate. Be the change you want to be.

Distractions are the devil. I tried to read something today while some audio was playing and I lost track of everything I read. Whenever I work with silence, I learn just how much lyrics and talk can distract someone from getting meaningful work done.

I think I will be investing in noise cancellation headphones.

Do: Wrapup Pushups CPAP 3 things
Don’t: Meditation to-do water vegetable juice thank you 16/8