You’re caught up in the sexiness of self-sabotage. That someone could purposefully rig the game against themselves is the most beautiful idea you’ve ever seen. You look at the world and ask for punishment.

Taking the route of permanent failure over temporary successes.

Always ups and downs, but never the speed bump ups and downs of everyone else. Only the glacier sized ups and downs, the kind that constantly melt and sink into the edge. Where the up is always coming back down with speed. And when coming back down is a deep sinking.

Other people dream, and you wonder what it is they see from those dreams. Is it you?

We live in the future, we travel to outer space and send a million text messages a second. All to let each other know the same dull shit.

We have the same dull lives.

Living in front of computers, living in constant response to constant streams of constant media. The everything age, really the everything shoved in your face age, so much coming at us all at once.

No room left for silence, no space left for privacy. Just constant pressure to keep up, to produce, to be unique, to be the smartest in an age of everyone knowing a million things at once.

So we can hold the attention of the millions for only a split second. While they’re microwaving dinner and watching tv and listening to music from their new phones.

So we are all the new kings and queens of nothing. Nobody bows before anybody else, nobody respects anyone else, because anything could be anything with enough time and information.

An endless labyrinth of media surrounds us all, wasting our time, wasting our lives with more stupidity piled on top of the old. But we can’t look away. The world is falling apart as we stare into our screens.

This isn’t good for you, you shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be so obsessed with celebrity, we are dying spiritually, our culture is rotting away from the inside out. We are nothing, we are the generation who will lose it all. Our self absorbed posting and checking, our ADD attention spans. We have no such thing as long term plans, the world changes every night as we sleep.

So it’s coming, so we can’t stop it, we we can only watch with a hundred open windows.

Right birthdate, right social class, 10,000 hours of practice, and right culture.

His book seeks to explain why some people are so spectacularly successful. And he concludes success is little more than a roll of the dice. The lucky few, born smart enough, and at the right time to the right parents, inevitably become greatly successful.

The book conveniently leaves out any inner dialog the incredibly successful may have. By looking at the raw statistics about where a person was born, and his family, he supposes he can tell whether a person will be successful or not.

He is wrong.

People do not become wealthy, do not practice for 10,000 hours because of their social environments. People practice and stick with it because they have two things aligned within in their minds:

Desire and Justification

It takes an incredible psychology to stay motivated through 10,000 hours of routine. The small problems and worries of life continually ask for our attention. These so called Outliers weren’t just blessed with the right family and the right culture. They were also blessed with the mindset that allows them to believe in impossibilities.

I don’t buy that our lives are over by the age of eighteen, that if we don’t have the right amount of practice before then we are doomed. At any point within our lives, we can decide to change. It must be so.

I am so obsessed with the topic of success because its one of the fundamentals of American society. We believe in the impossible, in our ability to become greater through hard work and intelligence. Malcom’s book is dangerous, because it says things like genes and birthdates and economic status determine our true potential.

And it is complete bullshit. The Outliers I know from within my life have come from many different social and economic places. Their birthdates are all over the place. Their intelligence level is all over the place. The thing that matters most, the one thing all the Outliers I know have is this:

An irrational belief in impossibilities.

Success is all about mindset and motivation, regardless of which socio-economic spectrum you come from, or how smart you are.

Of course Bill Gates became successful because he was incredibly lucky. He was born on the right date to get into personal computing, he was blessed to be programming when there simply wasn’t an opportunity for anyone else to be programming. But Bill Gates had something much greater than all of that.

He had a reason to be successful. He had a reason to work so hard at programming. I don’t know what his family situation was like, but I guarantee that programming was more important to him than anything else. We can idealize the right upbringing for him, but we cannot escape this vital fact:

His psychology allowed him to dominate his field.

It is so incredibly dangerous to write his success off as Malcom does in his book. To say Bill Gates became so successful because he was born in the right place with the right genes and the right parents and the right environment. Because as soon as we do, we begin to make excuses for ourselves. We are not successful, we will not ever be successful, because we weren’t born with the lucky roll of the dice.

Even if it is impossible for poor people to lift themselves out of poverty, we meet people every day who do it anyways. Living in Florida, I saw Mexican immigrants working to send money back to their families; starting their own businesses. They’re here illegally, they’re getting paid horrible wages, they don’t speak the language. It’s supposed to be too impossible, they have too little education. But they do it, continue to do it, against all those statistics you read about in Malcom’s book.

The way I see it, you have two choices in life: you can believe in what you see presented as fact; or you can believe in what everyone else believes as impossible.

I choose to believe in the impossible. I think it is the most important choice a person can make.

Within each of us there is the seed of a great person. We must plant the seed, continue to cultivate it, even as it doesn’t seem to grow. There is a certain level of belief inherent in creating anything. You plant your seeds, water, fertilize, pull weeds, and you wait. You work in anticipation, in belief that the plants will grow and produce. But you start from trust and belief.

Maybe our inner greatness won’t reach the level of Bill Gate’s financial success. But we certainly shouldn’t buy in and give up on the pursuit of greatness. Yes, everyone else may seem to have been given greater gifts of education, money, and genes, but we all cultivate the gifts we are given. We all grow our own seeds of greatness into the plant we become, the plant we are continually becoming.

Greatness and happiness is not a roll of the dice. It is a mindset and a set of values acted upon daily.

This is why religion, mythology, and philosophy are so important. As human beings born into an indifferent world, we need models that tell us the world rewards those who seek and live justly. Seek first wisdom, seek first the kingdom of heaven, seek first the eightfold path, and leave on your own Illiad.

Some cultures have the vision quest, orthers have the passage to adulthood, but the net result is the breakdown of your culture’s values. The elimination of imposed standards and ideas, and a seeking for another set to replace them. What is right, and what is wrong. How life should be lived, and how it shouldn’t.

Such dry books on success worry me. Success does not come from statistics and analysis. It comes from a belief in the impossible, an ability to trust your gut, and a level of commitment unattainable by cold calculation.

But this book appeals to a certain type of mind. Who likes to believe everything is calculatable, who likes to know there’s no reason to believe in impossiblities, or ideas without numbers behind them.

And those types of people will never be successful, will never be totally satisfied. There is no such thing as absolutes, it is all an artificial concept placed on top of reality. But true success, true happiness requires a strong belief in irrational things, in things that do not yet exist, and in things everyone else says are wrong.

Those types of people write off religion as gross and perverse, as ways of controlling and manipulating people. They point to the Crusades and say:

“Look at what belief in imaginary ideas produces.”

But Jesus does not teach to kill everyone who disagrees with you. Instead, he talks about being peaceful, being kind, and believing god will reward those who love and care for their neighbors.

Is that a dirty, horrible belief? Is that a lie, is that an ugly impossibility?

That the universe could have its own reward system for those who look after others?

It’s this belief that motivates people to become weathly, so they can become responsible stewards of the world and humanity’s wealth. Improving the world and the lives of those around them as they grow wealthier.

Which is the one true proof of success I have ever seen.

And it is the same with the Buddhists, the Muslims, and the Hindus, and everyone else.

Make your life mean more than yourself, and you are granted infinite wealth and happiness. Heaven. Enlightenment.

It is easy to get caught up in the ego. The great impossibility is that we forget this and give of ourselves freely every day. Can we do so if we’re bitter about those born with more? Or if we’re busy studying numbers that prove our own success impossible? No.

(Image from Prague Daily Photo)

The people I know living full lives, lives full of power, they choose to believe in impossibilites.

My friend the internet marketer, who started out from nothing. Making a few hundred dollars a month. He got stuck here, for a year. Finally, he chose to believe he could make $10,000 a month with his tiny business. Within a few months, he made that $10,000 in one month. He believed in another impossibility, and he now makes that in a day.

My friend who is riding is bicycle across America. He started out a frustrated liquor store clerk who could barely pay rent. He choose to believe he could ride his bicycle across America. Now he is on his way towards becoming another philosopher king, another source of great power and goodness in the world. And he’s more than half-way done in his ride across America.

My friends who believed they could have a band, that they could become famous and successful without compromising their artistic integrity. Their label bailed out on them at the last moment, and they had to borrow money to make their latest record. Now their record is doing incredibly well, a much better label bought it, and they’re touring the world. They are living the impossible dream.

You see, rational dreams have no gravity behind them. Nobody wants to help out that liquor store clerk who just wants to pay his bills on time. We must get incredibly bold and daring dreams, in order to live life fully. Everybody wants to help out the young man attempting to ride his bike across america, or the young band who doesn’t compromise their integrity.

The universe and god want people who grab the impossible with two hands. It does not want people who settle for less, because that is what’s more rational.

What is your impossibility? What incredible dreams do you keep hidden from the world?

So don’t dream small dreams. Don’t dream rational plans. Build your world in the sky. The whole universe will be behind you.

First you’re young, you’re cute, the world works for you.

Then you’re older, you’re uglier, and you work for the world.

When we’re older we all play these little tricks on each other, to see who can get away with not working for a while. It falls apart.

The world wants six pack abs and diet drinks and pills you can swallow that make your dick bigger.

Are you ready to give it to them?

If you could, you’d fix it right, hold a mirror up to it so it could see itself in all its glory, right?

Say:

See, you are ugly and old.

I have the fix. Just one more pill and one more sale. One day only.

But nothing will change, nothing will ever change. You just pick which side of the team you want to play for, the hypnotists or the hypnotised. Those people looking for that final fix out there, or those people pushing another fix, with just one more little twist.

People want nothing more than little distorted universes to live in. We want an up and we want a down. We want that yardstick so we can see:

Who am I better than?

And somebody is waiting with a grin to sell that yardstick. It’s holiness here, it’s money there. It is power here, it is talent there. It’s six pack abs here, it’s a lover there.

It is an endless circle that eats itself.

I have a thing I want to sell you. It enlarges your dick while giving you six pack abs and making you shit hundred dollar bills.

Would you be interested in it?

We have gone so far from an honest economy. Where we could all tell who was getting fucked and who was doing the fucking. Now, nobody has any idea what’s going on. It seems like everyone is getting fucked from all sides, except those people who “speak internet”.

Whatever that means. My ab-roller ab-twister ab-toweller ab-donker broke on the second workout. I’d ask for my money back, but I can’t find the receipt.

If you look closely enough you’ll notice, there’s no market research, there is no focus groups, there is no money back offer. You’ve gotten very little, but you got it and you paid well for it.

If there’s something better than free it’s freedom.

The freedom to be fucked, and the freedom to do the fucking.

There is no inherent goodness in living a tragic life. The world doesn’t care you decided good people can’t become successful.

It merely asks, who will be in charge, who will lead humanity into the future?

Why should it be the ones with the least morality? Why not us?

There is a disease going around that says, the more you suffer the more of a hero you are. Suffering for a cause, suffering for an idea, that’s what makes a human whole.

Stop.

Suffering does not make us better. Suffering merely gets us caught up with ourselves. We become so self-involved we forget everything else going on in the world.

Good people shouldn’t seek out suffering and pain and sacrafice, they should seek out strength and goodness. Suffering and pain will come no matter what. We might as well have the world in the hands of those most capable of using it justly. Not in the hands of those who would exploit it.

This worried nobody more than Nietzsche. Even though he loved the man Jesus was, he hated the moral code his followers created for themselves.

He called this victimized Christian morality a slave morality, because it sets people up to be dominated by the evil of the day.

Imagine a Christian Saint were stuck in the cave with the Cyclops instead of Odysseus.

What would happen then? Would he not curl up into a ball and be eaten, for fear of violence?

There are things within our modern world that could take the place of the Cyclops. Things ugly and unjust and born only of violence.

How should we treat them?

Should we willingly submit ourselves to them in peace, or keep them in check with a million strong people?

Though Jesus himself became a martyr, he did not believe all who followed him should become martyrs too.

He said so himself:

“I died so that you may have life.”

We should train ourselves constantly to love strength and goodness, to become strength and goodness itself. We must in order to defeat the Cyclopses of our world.

Let’s all seek to become heroes, not martyrs. Let’s all become kings for the first time in history.

Let’s make the good the strong once again. Let’s love life and live it fully. Strapped to the mast like Odysseus, hearing that siren’s song even though it kills us.

Photos from trip to the Bahamas, and photos from home.
Not available online. Ask me in person, I’ll show you why.
Yes, that is me on the cover.

Buy it online only.

Fiction, photos, and poems.
A big mess, you’re welcome to it.

Click the photo above to download free in web-friendly PDF format. Or click below to buy a physical copy.

All prints are made on traditional black and white chemistry. All zines are printed on thick, quality paper, signed, and dated.

Suburban Mystic

Zine Only $6.00 Zine w/ Print $20.00 Zine w/ Wall Mounted Print $50.00

Release date: August 24, 2009

Can we ever move away or closer to our inner selves?

I left home at 18 on a vision quest. I wanted to find, I wanted to seek, I wanted to experience adventure and come back with something real. I searched for the answers to the great questions:

Who am I, what is the nature of this world, what is the nature of this self?

I left, I traveled, I gave, I lost, I changed. And I failed.

No immediate wisdom came from the journey, no inner transformations and no wisdom grew closer. Just a little less sure the nature of things, and caught in the same cycles of self-doubt and insecurities.

Sitting on benches still, unsure about the progress within. Or even, if there is such a thing.

I still worry about everything I see. I forget about lessons learned, about trust and journeys and divine interventions. That every walk could prove fruitful, if only I paid attention. That everything worth doing takes great effort, but that great effort is really nothing at all.

I try my hardest, but can’t remember doing anything difficult or challenging. It all seemed like a walk downstream, in hindsight. I forget the challenge immediately, and only remember the accomplishment. And even that is a ghost.

Is that what we’re chasing here?

Ghosts?

Ghosts of accomplishment, ghosts of advancement, ghosts of value, ghosts of loss. My worst day on earth is still just a ghost of a memory. It spins outward from the center. It has no center. It just spins.

What to grasp, what to hold? That I could sit here and enjoy these trees, enjoy the river. Laugh at the absurdity of the ghost world.

It comes, it goes. No worries, no losses. Just ghosts who know their ghostness, and ghosts who don’t.

A vision quest to wisdom is a vision quest to nowhere. Stay home and fold your laundry, pay your bills.

Truth is, we invented the vision quest because we wanted entertainment and meaning. And depth. But we are never to believe it is real. Or that anything else is, either.

Wind and trees and birds singing again. All so carelessly, all so chaotically. That we could all write like that, a symphony of cacophony.

A bird sings. The leaves change. Do I?

You can’t really write until after your head has been cleansed. Of all that junk, of those insecure worries, of those infomercials. I’m going to show up for that interview tomorrow, I’m going to wake up at six, and I’m going to get that job. I’m going to solve all of my financial worries, and it’s going to allow me to be more creative. The more you try to make things happen, the less they do.

The universe senses a gimmick from a mile a way. It’s intelligent, it can sense when you’re being insencere. It can sense when you’re being lazy, and it can sense when you’re in the zone.

Whatever it is, we are here, commited and producing. For the sake of everyone involved, building a beter universe. So here’s where we’ll meet. We’ll meet in the hallway between your mind and mine.

We can both see it now, there’s no room for us in this free market economy of  Taco Bells and Exxon Mobiles. We have to make believe, we have to pretend, we have to build another world we can live in, until it’s real again.

What is accomplishment, what is worthiness? Is it endless practicing, endless drilling, is it 10,000 hours of practice in a closed room? Are we not all born worthy, with something to say?

Then why do we let experts speak for us?

Ten thousand hours studying, before you crack a stab at being honest.

The trees blow, and we work. What all this empty talk does. It keeps us alive.

Truth and justice always win in our little stories. Evil forever loses, good forever triumphs. Details are lost, we always win.

Why are we working these dead beat jobs, why are we paying these bank fees? Aren’t we the stuff the universe is made of? Shouldn’t we be more?

Young girls and fast cars. We’re sold a song from the day we’re born and it goes like this:

I am special I am a winner. I will win in life, and what I will win is beautiful money. Winning is beautiful luxurious money.

We’re all writing a story together.

What is success, but a thousand thank yous? A million people who can’t afford it, saying thank you, you helped us. That we might all become millionaires, that we might all stay honest. The bets are going out, right time is desceding. 30 more seconds, forty more minutes, and we willl no longer be able to keep the straw line open between our minds. We all have that disease. We forget.

Everybody in his country thought sheep were dumb. But he knew better. Sheep had style, sheep had class, and he was a classy guy.

In school, he had once written a paper, called, “The Cow and the Intellect”, where he proceeded to prove mathematically, cattle to be an inferior species, with an inferior meat, milk, and leather. He spent months on that paper, and that paper was even published in some pamphlet somewhere.

But none of that is relevant, because he lived in a land of cows, where a sheep hadn’t lived for a hundred thousand years. All there was is cows and corn. All he had was cows and corn. All he knew was cows and corn.

Maybe cows and corn doesn’t sound so bad to you, but to Ishmael, cows and corn symbolized a perversity of the highest order. He knew his land was made to support grazers, without work, without toil, but cows and corn required management and intellect and made people feel important and smart. So he secretly hated the cows and what they stood for.

The cows, of course, knew none of this. They just stood around, and talked to each other. They just stood and talked and pooped, and every once in a while, one would say:

“Moo Moo. Moo!”

These cows were just too dumb for smart old Ishmael. In fact, Ishmael had been planning for years, a revolution to upset the cow balance. Today, Ishmael was going to become important. Today, Ishmael was going to become a cow. Today, Ishmael was going to  infect the cow mindset. He was going to become a cow to destroy the cows from the inside out.

Because Ishmael lived in a magical land. A land where anybody could become anything, at their own will. At first these things they became were only dreams, and then they became real. Like everything in this world, they were only dreams, then they became real.

And so Ishmael walked down to the sorcerer, asked to become a cow.