I just spent two hours on the phone, talking to an old friend.
I just wanted to bitch about some things, how I have somehow inherited the brown man's burden. So many things and so many people for me to consider, as well as their families. The sword of Damocles, the yoke.
Painting myself as a Buddha the Barbarian. Wearing his crown upon a troubled brow.
It turned - without me even finishing my stories - into quite an interesting feedback from my old friend. I had to swallow most of it. Bitter pill. Good medicine. I guess I am still a bit masochistic, after all these years.
The answers have always been there in the first place. Live in the now. Focus. Hustle. Loyalty. Respect.
People always ask me, how do I do all these things, because it seems a lot. But it's not, really. When you approach things one at a time, at any one moment, you are only facing one thing.
I am also a chronic problem addict. I crave puzzles. When I run out of puzzles, I go crazy. Each task, is a game. A puzzle. And while the rest of the world can go to hell in a teacup, I am still just that little dork with a puzzle, sitting in the corner, trying to make things work.
Thank God I am not cool, and was never cool. Cool people always have to take care of how they look. I am naturally beautiful, so I don't have to worry. And even if I do look like shit sometimes, hey, it adds character. Dimension. Grit. I am so fucking gritty.
The puzzles I have before me, are varied. A thousand million different ones. With billions of moving parts. Juggling chainsaws.
Collectively, I would have died under the sheer weight of it. The collective complexity would have driven me crazy.
But, one by one, it is reduced to its empirical state. Then you start lining them up, one after another. Then you knock them out of the park. Or not. It happens.
The puzzles' job is to confound you. Make sure your brain can't work around anything. But when you do unravel one tiny part of it, the rest snowballs in.
Before you know it, that ball of puzzles has turned into a transforming robot. All it takes is time, and patience. My weakness has always been patience, as time is a constant.
Well, one thing I must never forget - enjoying the puzzle. Appreciating it. Without that, you might as well kill yourself.
