Note: I will now try to write something while I am drunk and see where that goes…
So you stretch a rubber band a little bit. What happens? Nothing. You stretch a rubber band a lot, and what? Nothing! You stretch a rubber band even further, and then boom! The damn thing snaps and whacks your forearm and slaps the crap out of you.
What happened? Boring became interesting. A rubber band that does not pop and smack the crap out of you does not make a story. The rubber band that whacks you makes a funny story.
To make a funny story - any story - there must be conflict, and there must be a plot. Things that act as they should are boring. Blowing shit up with dynamite makes a story. Shit happens. Stories are told. Humans are wired for this. Every story has a conflict, or it is not a story. Shit happening is a story. Susie following all the rules is boring as hell. Bob getting married and doing the right thing makes us yawn and go to sleep.
What does this tell us? You have to stretch and break the rules, or break something. Lift that weight you think you cannot lift. Make the call that seems like the most likely to screw with your head. Visit the customer that vowed to shoot you in the head if you ever came back. Tell your boss that shit you need to tell him, even if you think he will fire you. He won’t.
Do shit every day that scares the crap out of you. Then, suddenly people will begin to wonder how you got to where you are. It is simple. You stretched that rubber bank until it popped. You created some conflict, and you created a story, and everyone likes to hear a good story.
Those boring bastards that followed the rules are stuck in their boring lives wondering what the hell happened. You are wondering what is next in the grand adventure. What is next? Do I slit my wrists just to see what will happen? Probably not, but you at least consider it, and perhaps think of something else with more of a chance of getting the fire lit under your ass.
Living on the razor edge - what is this? You stretch the limits without killing yourself. But, you do run the risk of killing yourself. The trick is to not kill your soul. When your soul dies, that is the ultimate living suicide. That is the fucked up person who gave up.
Seth Godin said that artists ship. So, when the Lizard Brain begins to freak out on ship date, what do artists do? Ship the damn thing! You have come to the end of the presentation and it is time to ask for the order. It is time to let the art out to the rest of the world. It is show time. Do you hesitate? Do you grasp the sword and swing, or do you hesitate, and freak out and freeze? The Lizard! He is our worst enemy! He thinks we are still in the jungle and thinks he protects us at all costs, but in reality, he holds us back and makes us freeze like a freaking ice cube on a sunny day in Laredo, Texas on black-top pavement. It is ridiculous!
Oh! The perils of modern man! We are such crazy people freezing and there is nothing out there to eat us alive - at least, not literally. Unless you are in an African National Wildlife Refuge with tigers and lions and other things we have killed off in the civilized world.
What do you do? You fucking jump. Jump and the net will appear!
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