The very fact that I am writing this post right now is a testament to how much I have grown and changed as a person in 2020, and how that growth has directly influenced the way I interact with the world around me.
One of the biggest changes I wanted to make in 2021 (not to be confused with a “New Year’s Resolution”, which I don’t believe in for a number of reasons) was to become a writer. Not just someone who writes sometimes, but an actual writer. As in “one who writes”, as opposed to what I’ve been for much of my adult life, “one who does a lot of things and sometimes writes, sloppily.”
There was a part of me that wanted to do what nearly every writer advises - to write every single day. This is a problem I’ve always had with absolutes when it comes to goals - once I don’t hit the initial “marker”, it becomes easy for me to just shrug my shoulders and say “ah well, maybe next year.” For this reason, I didn’t set a goal or a resolution to “write twenty minutes every day” or to “write three posts per week.” Ultimately these would be arbitrary markers that would be more likely to knock me off track of my ultimate goal as opposed to keeping me on it.
If this was January 2020 instead of January 2021, you probably wouldn’t even be reading this. I would have already abandoned the idea, having failed to start writing on the 1st (heck, it was the day after New Years!), or the 2nd (I mean, who doesn’t need a couple free days to start the year), the 3rd (ok well I may as well just take the week at this point….) and so on.
To affirm the title of this newsletter, I’m going to give you a peak into Marc Clair’s mind today. My mind is nearly always racing. And I do mean racing. I have the equivalent of a full motor speedway going on in my head, with cars (ideas, tasks, worries) flying around the track at super sonic speeds. Only in this metaphor there are no teams of race crews attending to each vehicle, carefully and quickly replacing their parts and getting them back on the track. Rather, there is just one guy - we can call him Marc’s conscience, or just “Steve” if that’s easier - running around trying to fix every car while he’s also on the radio with every driver, all while he is actually the referee in this very same race, a race that never ends, and which is constantly adding new cars to the track before most of them have even done a lap. This is my mind in what you might call it’s natural state.
I am the kind of person who is always starting three new tasks while I’m already in the middle of one. I will literally start washing dishes, then remember I have to send an email. I’ll then start that email while still doing dishes and also remembering “oh shit I forgot to stop at the store for the one thing I needed to make the meal I was washing these very dishes in order to clean up the kitchen to make” and oh by the way I just had an amazing idea and….hey, wasn’t I washing dishes?
Chaos.
That’s the best way to describe Marc Clair’s Mind for the first oh, forty years or so of my life. When I step outside of myself and take a look back from afar, it’s astonishing that I’ve ever gotten anything done. For every project I manage to get off the ground like the 7-years-and-running Lions of Liberty, there are dozens of half-backed ideas and half-completed tasks just laying all over this now-extremely-treacherous-raceway in my brain.
Even during the writing of this very post, I have found myself unconsciously stopping to respond to an email or perform some other menial task that I remembered I had to do and just could not wait to finish this other important task to do it. This is the nature of my mind, and the biggest step for me to take this year was to realize that it’s okay.
It’s okay for my mind to race, it’s ok to have thoughts constantly flow in and out, and most importantly within this realization is the higher level realization that I can control this.
You can imagine how somebody like me would shudder in horror at the mere thought of meditation. The idea that I could sit still for even thirty seconds without a million ideas flushing in and out of my brain always seemed preposterous. And every time I would “try” (it’s so obvious now I wasn’t really trying) to meditate in the past, I would become so frustrated by the constant speed cars flying through my mind that I would inevitably give up and think “this just isn’t for me.”
The biggest revelation for me regarding meditation was, that, again, “it’s ok…and I can control this.”
In the past year I have incorporated into my life some practices that have drastically changed the way my mind operates, and that have allowed me to find an inner calm amid the speedway of chaos in my mind. Instead of racing around trying to fix every car and direct every driver to the finish line, I am now able to more calmly guide in each vehicle and focus on that car’s specific troubles while letting the other drivers just do their thing out there on the track.
How did I develop these newly found superpowers?
Well that’s a subject for future posts, and what we call a “teaser” here in the writing biz.
For now, I’ll leave you with the short version of just one word: Patience.
This also also gives me the excuse to embed one of my favorite Guns and Roses songs ever.
Don’t forget to check out the other projects I’m involved with:
Lions of Liberty, where I facilitate inspiring conversations about the ideas of liberty.
Second Print Comics podcast, where myself and Remso Martinez take a weekly look at the comic book characters, storylines and events that shaped our fanhood.
The Expat Money Show - this isn’t my project per se, but I’m thrilled that I’ve gotten to work directly with my friend Mikkel Thorup to help grow this show over the past few months. I believe greatly in what Mikkel is doing - helping others to achieve greater liberty in their lives by living and investing abroad - and helping grow this program has been a true joy. I also get to help moderate The Expat Money Forum on Facebook - check it out!
Love this, Marc! My husband and I almost danced to Chris Cornell's cover of this song at our wedding.