Hello everyone, welcome back. In the last post, I talked a little bit about how influencing means changing people’s behavior, and I also talked about how I like it. Yes, I very much do. It gives me a sense of interest and investment that somehow because of what I said or what I think in some way, people change the way that they behave. Some people have different terms for this. One of them is “power” – the ability to change things in some way, shape, or form. But, of course, the words that we use shape the way that we interpret these ideas; calling someone a person who has secured power is different from calling them an influencer. In the first case, notions of authoritarianism and control come to the fore. In the latter, the idea of people just being persuaded and swayed like they would be if they were little children listening to the Pied Piper might be as they sway, swagger, and walk along as the flute plays to the musician’s intended destination. I align a little more with the latter in the sense of making people move closer and closer towards something they had always wanted. But the longer and longer I live, the more and more I come to realize that what I’m becoming able to do is to use power in certain ways that maybe not everyone can make use of. It’s a little strange to see or to think about, but that’s just the reality that we’re facing at the moment. Why things ended up this way and why I became able to wield institutional power in some ways is itself, I think, a funny story which I might want to talk about someday. But well, it is what it is. Either way, I know what I want to be in spirit… But things […]

In life, each of us has different things that make us feel like we are truly alive – in the moment. For me, the constellation of these factors come together in an idea that it is better to be seen than not to be. I don’t crave cheap popularity – never have, probably never will; but what I do like is the understanding that what I am saying will reach people, influence them, and change their behavior either slightly or significantly. That is what it truly means to be an ‘influencer’, and that’s what gives me purpose. To be sure, the idea of an ‘influencer’ often gets a bad rap; when we think of ‘influencers’, we often think of things that are trivial, irreverent, irresponsible; we imagine people dancing strange dances, imbibing in childish pranks, capturing aspects of their lives that serve the instrumental purpose of having people will throw money at them, singing songs and hoping people will subscribe or book them for a show, or selling products one after another with comments flying one after another as the universe goes “BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!”. But if you think about it… Isn’t that just a subset of things? There are many other things that influence can get you – and for now, I’ve run out of time, and I’ll have to tell you about that tomorrow. Cheers!

The state of flow. It’s an easy thing to name – less easy to accept, less easy to internalize, less easy to imbibe. Yet sometimes, it comes; unashamed, unyielding, ever-asserting. Do we say that this is a state of flow in execution, words articulating themselves through the moving spirit of a universe pushing through me? It’s tempting to say so – yet I realize that even in these moments, where the words seem to come easily, the urge to edit and go back remains; the old instinct to self-correct and look back at the past while binding the present stays – an abusive partner there to gaslight and to chain, to press down on the ground, never allow to see the Sun. I imagine a state of flow as a time when that bondage is not present – where ideas spring forth in the executions of dawn; where each letter, word, sentence, and thought in formation begin and end in the company of the divine muse that awakes from within, pushing forward each word, sensory impression, idea, as a small forward push in the universe. I imagine it as a time when order arises spontaneously from an ordered mind freed from captivity – constantly breaking the rules yet reposing in perfect knowledge of those rules; a realm where skills are nature and nature is skill, the attainment of which rests in that perfect capture of capacities in the otherwise formless and directionless void. Who are we really, and what are we for? I often wonder – but I imagine that at least part of the answer lies in creating what you saw here and today, each word drawn out in my mind by an animating force that stood beyond my comprehension. The words came from the deep – who provided them, and how they arose, however, is an entirely different story […]

You’re actually kind of part of an experiment right now – an experiment for me to discover what it’s like to write with no inhibitions. Why? Cause I don’t really check the statistics of who visits this site – All I really know is that it’s public, it lets people see what I’m thinking about, and I can more or less yap here with no real consequences. As a result, here I am just casually typing away as part of an experiment or an attempt, if you like, to throw away fear of rejection. After all, even if people don’t read this, do I really care? Do I make less money? Have fewer friends? Does my audience suddenly rise up in outrage and judge me for writing in this space but with no consequence? Not really. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the future or how I’m going to change as a person in terms of my name and what I’m known for – I think that most people if they want can go out there and begin to make their conclusions, and it is starting to be a reasonable assumption that if I go out on the streets and just casually hang out, people are likely to at least know of who I am. Which means that I need to become a lot more thick skinned. Thanks for being part of that process, haha.

The perfectionist within me sits, casually, lazily, warily yet unashamedly; He looks at everything I do, each sentence fixatedly. “This sounds wrong”. “That doesn’t feel right!” “The rhythm is wrong!” That doesn’t even say what you wanted it to say! And before we know it, there goes the rearranging of tiles as the kaleidoscope shifts from one broken iteration into another – before we know it, there the perfectionist is. All cylinders fire, all hands are on deck. The ‘mistakes’ fade, the ‘errors’ are blotted out – the gift of the perfectionist is handed out to its recipients, one after another. But it is not a gentle gift. Harshly it is given, critique after critique, self-assessment after self-assessment; no win, it declares, should be yielded through anything but sacrifice – no victory procured without an act of truth-telling; no satisfaction is earned but through looking clearly at oneself and understanding the answer to a simple question: “Are you good or are you not good?” I wonder about the perfectionist sometimes – whether he was there eternally, or maybe if he suddenly took on that role like Rasputin in the court of Count Nicholas; but whatever it is, there he had appeared one day, pushing me day after day, never brooking weakness, ever seeking greatness in an act of divine cruelty as he called me to go beyond my limits. I began this piece wondering if the perfectionist would die as time would pass and the era might come, with a fixed answer in mind. I leave realizing that he has a greater influence over my life than I knew.

I write insane amounts nowadays – it’s because my brain has started moving so quickly that now writing thoughts down has become a natural occurrence, almost like breathing air or drinking water. Just think about it. Sepupunomics. EnglishFirstLanguage. My YouTube channel. Scripts. Descriptions. Essays. Posts. Everything. How is it possible to handle all of that unless your brain is indeed accelerating insanely? Or maybe, there’s an alternate explanation – maybe I just feel like my brain is moving faster, and the reality is that I just now have a thicker skin and mere human opinions don’t concern me, if we can say that. I suppose that in itself is interesting, because it reshapes human behavior — If you don’t really care that much what people are going to think of you, you’re not likely to be very restrained when it comes to writing, talking, yapping, and feeling yourself through this glorious and strange array of words.  The net result?  You practice, you practice, and you practice far more than other people.  Even as we speak now, I am confident that the sheer number of words that I have written trespasses beyond what is reasonable, normal, or even understandable for most human beings, and I continue to write every single day. How many of these words will actually be read by people? Who’s to say, who’s to know, who’s to care? This is just an expression of who I am – so as water is wet, the Earth rotates, and gravity exists, I will write, and so move forward as who I am, a letter and a keystroke at a time.