The Importance of Focus

I've put in 8 hours since my last update (I know, it's been a week--I've been busy). 

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I've been thinking a lot about focus lately. I suppose around my junior or senior year of college I began bringing my laptop to class, and I honestly believe that is when my ability to focus intensely on one particular item at a time started degrade. I suddenly had every piece of information I could ever need in front of me, as well as all my idiot friends posting all the time (unless you've bought my book, then you're smart as a whip). It was virtually a foregone conclusion that I would stop paying attention. My grades didn't suffer, but my learning did.

This has transferred itself to every piece of my life now. I constantly zone out, check my phone, check my tablet, check my email, check facebook, check twitter, check my book stats. I check everything all the goddamn time AS IF IT MATTERS. 

It doesn't. None of it does. It's counterproductive. 

I had been writing two hours per day, with all those interruptions (and don't even get me started when someone starts posting politics on Facebook, that can take away HOURS of my time while writing). I cut it in half and now have a strict rule that only my Work In Progress can be on my screen. The results?

I'm getting through more of End Times (my next book) than I was at 2 hours a day. 

I'm trying to import focus into the rest of my life, and I think it would be smart for you to as well. Stop checking your phone when you're at work, talking with someone, or reading. Focus on what's at hand--THAT is what is important, not anything else. 

When Einstein theorized, he used a single notepad, and a pencil. It didn't matter where he was at. Literally, he could be in a crowded room with people talking all around him, and his focus was so intense that he kept right on going. Get that kind of focus, and success is the only thing that is going to be able to interrupt you.

Where has PhilaLawyer Gone?

This is an angry, pissed off letter to a man I do not know, nor will ever know, and morally have no right to be mad at. In fact, my moral compass says I have no place to tell him what to do at all, and am an asshole for doing this. What's more, I'm poking a stick at a lion, someone that could wipe me up with his shoes if he wanted. But Fuck It. He's slacked for too goddamn long.

A few times in life you come across someone's writing that means something. Someone that has something to say, and can say it so powerfully, it should be criminal for his words not to be forced into everyone's hands. That's not enough though. He has to come around at a time when he is needed. When society is ripe and ready to hear his words, to take them to heart, to change.

I thought I had found this man with PhilaLawyer. He writes an anonymity because of his scouring remarks on the legal profession, and as far as I know, there aren't even any pictures of him. I read his blog around 2006/7ish. Got his book in 2008. Based LIFE-FUCKING-DECISIONS off his book. Don't regret them in the slightest; the words he wrote were able to steer me through some decisions and I would never be where I am right now without having read Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World's Worst Profession. If you haven't read that book yet, do it. Order it now (hence the link). It will change your life, or it should--and if it doesn't, you have some serious work to do.

So this guy writes a good amount on his blog. Puts out a book that deeply impacted a good number of people.

Then...he's put out about 29 blog posts since 2010.

A good many of them are humor pieces--such as The Bush Deficit.While this is more clever than most comics on Comedy Central; it is, in the end, somewhat a waste of his time. I wouldn't even give a shit, honestly, if he was producing material that was changing the world--as he is certainly capable of doing. He could talk about anything he fucking wanted as long as he put a book out more than once a decade. I might even let the man sleep with my future wife.

PhilaLawyer has a purpose here, and while I don't know this man's personal schedule, nor the constraints on his time--I do know that in no way should it take someone that has his gift of words this long to string together 70,000 of them. This is a time where we need thinkers, leaders, and people that get it to fucking step up and begin demanding that someone notice.

I'm an ideologue, and PhilaLawyer would most likely say something to the tune of: "wanting the perfect keeps us from ever even getting to the good." Fine. Fine. Fine. Then help us get to the goddamn good. Help us do something besides your once a month posts on a law website. 

Wherever this guy is, and whatever he's doing: HE NEEDS TO PICK IT THE FUCK UP. Start writing. Start changing things. Whatever is making you wait, put it aside, so that you can help this shitty place move forward.

Fear...Not?

Put in six hours since our last talk.

Settled on my cover designer. He's really into minimalist designs, as am I--so I think creatively we should see eye to eye.

I think that I have a high propensity of fear. Blame it on a troubled child hood or a rough neighborhood, it doesn't really matter why. It's there though. The fear normally takes the form of failure--that something isn't going to work, or that I'm not going to live up to my own expectations. 

Some say fear is healthy, and by some, probably everyone. I'm not sure I believe that, at least not the fear that I feel. Fear makes you want to stop. Writing, working, exercising, dieting, growing--in general, it makes you want to stop trying. 

Sure, fear of death is good. It makes you stop trying stupid shit like fucking texting while driving--no one does that anymore, right? But fear of life, not death, is detrimental. I cannot fathom a way that fear of life would not be harmful. 

Everyone has fears: my significant other will leave me, they'll find out I don't know what I'm talking about, my work experience isn't enough for this job, I need an education to get a fucking job but don't have the money for school, my dick is too small. I mean this list could go on and on forever. Everyone of those fears those is something that your mind throws in the way to stop you from trying. I heard a quote a long time ago, one of those cliche things people throw around and never really live by, that said: What would you do if you knew you couldn't be stopped? 

If you think about that statement, just really let it sink into your bones--the power of it wipes out all doubts and fears and lets you see what is really important to you. I'm not sure how much luck plays into this life we live, but I'm really beginning to believe the main thing stopping any of us from doing what we want is that twinkle of fear that pops up whenever we care about something. That fear that makes us think, not me--I'm not made for this, something is going to fuck this all up. 

If you get rid of that, all that's left is the entire world. If we can start thinking success is guaranteed; that there is no such thing as failure--how would we change? Every action we make in every day would be different because everything we did would be building onto our legacy, onto our fucking empire, because there'd be nothing to stop us. We should start living by that little mantra, and realize success is our birthright.

Finding Leaders

Been a week since I've last posted. Been busy with a wedding and drinking on the 4th of July--no reason not to lament the destruction of our ideals on the day we were birthed, right? Anyways, put in about 8 hours since the last time we spoke.

Ever since I got into the writing racket, about 5-6 years ago, I've actively searched out the greatest in the field. I've read Stephen King's On Writing three times. I've researched how everyone from Anthony Trollope to Dean Koontz writes their books. I've read blogs until my eyes have bled ink on things from plot to character building. I have had amazing authors completely destroy two of my novels, break me down until I'm a crying child. I read fucking Moby Dick. Have you read Moby Dick? No, probably not, because it was written like two hundred years ago and has no connection to anything now. Wanna know why I read that long ass, ultimately boring novel? Because Herman Melville was a goddamn genius.

I've researched these people because to ever attempt what they've done, I have to know what they've done.

I know a guy who does a lot of work on websites. I mean, the cat is constantly talking about the 11-12 hour days he works. His websites look a shit ton better than anything I could design (notice why I'm using Google's Blogger?), but I'm not sure he's growing as a creator. I can go back and look at something he put out 3 years ago and compare it to today, and the similarities are so striking that it makes me think no growth has occurred. I don't know, I could be completely fucking wrong about it--I'm only going off what the eye sees, but in the end, isn't that all that matters?

I'm finding leaders now in another realm: marketing. Everything in life, whether it's the shoes you put on your feet or the job interview you're wearing them to, is all about marketing. I'm shit at marketing right now--outside of the academic sense of the word, I know nothing. So that's what I'm doing, I'm studying those that came before me: the writers that are millionaires, the bloggers who have massive followings, anyone who can teach me anything about getting this book into the hands of people.

Prolly six people read this site. Six and a half if you count midgets as people, but I don't, so just six. Do any of you six have any leaders? If so, who? If not, why?