How to Deal With All of It
Vol. 2, Issue 22
In 2014, when I began to court investors for my media startup, I bought a bunch of go-getter books by the likes of Eric Ries, Mark Cuban, and, most regrettably, Peter Thiel. I thought that if I was to make a transition from dopey blog editor to Big Deal Media Founder, I needed to change what most free thinkers and post-modern economic philosophers refer to as my own personal value system.
My pitch for a new version of online alt-weeklies in major cities actually interested a handful of investors, but I knew if I was gonna make it happen I needed to become an entirely different person than I was.
The problem was I never read any of those books. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I read ten whole books between 2009 and 2015, and by whole books, it’s more like a prologue and one or two chapters. My brain was so drug-addled and internet-fried that books filled with lots of words on paper were mainly shelf ornaments, or more accurately, stacked on the floor in some corner of my bedroom next to a pile of wet clothes.
But because I was such a delusional dickhead, I decided I would create my own 30-day plan to personal betterment. Each day I’d write down a lengthy to-do list of rigorous mental and physical tasks I wanted to achieve, and each day I’d fail–no miles run, no whole books read, no bed made, no vision boards constructed.
I thought my brain wasn’t stimulated enough, so I decided the best path to success for a unicorn like me was to develop an eccentric batch of new skills. Here’s what I came up with: jumping rope and solving the Rubik’s cube (yes, I was pretty high during most of this period, why do you ask?). I couldn’t tell you right now why I thought either one of those things would help me run a startup, but after completing just 56 consecutive jump ropes and only two sides of the Rubik’s cube, I gave up.
The startup actually happened, though. Then it failed soon after the Hogan trial, along with most everything else in my professional life. Zero to zero, just like that.
It took sobriety and a year of virtual unemployment to finally develop a routine that stuck, but even with a clearer head, it wasn’t easy. Initially, I began my morning routine because it was part of 12 Step literature–I awoke early, I got on my knees and prayed, and read some of the prescribed daily readers, and tried to meditate.
I took what I needed from some books on Stoicism, philosophy, mixed in some 12-step, added a lot of meditation, and eventually started to develop my own morning routine, which I’ve stuck with for more than two years.
What you’ll find in the feature section below is an expanded version of my weekly Recovery Roundup Log that’s available in The Wrecking Club. This is a more thorough version than usual–it's what we in the internet publishing world used to call an “Explainer.”
Since many people are posting their quarantine-inspired work-from-home to-do lists, this is as good a time as any to share mine. It won’t make your company be 10x, make you more powerful or confident or help you do 1,000 burpees, but it may make these long days feel less barren and wasted, more tolerable. It did that for me, especially when I felt like crap and had nothing to do. Maybe some of it’ll work for you. And in the spirit of true douchebag solipsism let’s call this feature...
How To Deal
– AJD
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How To Deal
By A.J. Daulerio
Reformed slug
INTRO:
When I began to do this consistently in 2017, the original routine was very 12-step inspired and began the minute I awoke each morning. Then, I had two kids, but now with a third, there’s just never a day when I’m awake long enough to complete this before one of them pops up and wants a waffle and orange juice. Sometimes I do wake up at 4 a.m. and knock this stuff out, but a more realistic day begins at 6, and I’ll run through my morning prayers while getting kicked in the face by my daughter’s chubby little foot.
Sometimes I can sneak away for a ten minute meditation, but the journaling rarely ever gets done before our sitter arrives.
I won’t bore you with the details of how I pray every day (that’s at the Patreon), so let’s focus on…
MEDITATION:
Again, ideally this is done first thing in the morning–before you pick up your phone, before you brush your teeth, before you start to get overwhelmed by your work duties–you find a place to go where you can shut the door and sit down. I like to sit on a cushion on the floor, but you can stack a couple of throw pillows up against a wall or even use a chair if that works better. Then comes the hard part. Ready? Just sit there. Yep, all those thoughts are gonna continue to happen. I know you want to get up. I know you can’t turn your brain off and distraction rules. But don’t get up. Yes, it is stupid. I know. I get it.
Just let all your thoughts run their course and see how long you can go. The easiest way I learned how to do it was to think of all my thoughts as one big kite string that I’d let completely unspool until my kite just floats away. You do eventually run out of thoughts–as long as you sit through it.
I began doing a minute at a time using the Headspace-guided meditation app–the one with the British fella narrating it–then eventually worked my way up to ten minutes a day, every day. Last year I switched over to Calm, and shifted from guided to unguided meditation with bells ringing at two minute intervals. I usually do one each day, anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes (my personal record is 26 minutes), and a nighttime one at that length as well. Both Calm and Headspace have expensive annual fees, but if you want a good free guided app, use Insight Timer. I use this one for nighttime and it has thousands of free guided and unguided options, plus it has better bell and bowl sound options than Calm or Headspace. Kangse is my shit.
Since I began my meditation practice these are the most tangible results:
* I barely honk my car horn;
* I don’t get overly-stressed about my professional life at all;
* I sleep a million times better;
* I have three extra seconds to process my actions before I do something impulsive or possibly destructive;
* I listen to other people better;
* I'm no longer afraid of death.
All that from just sitting on a cushion every day. And when I don’t meditate enough? I walk around like an asshole with an airhorn. Thankfully, I haven’t missed many days in three years so I’ve had minimal freakouts.
See Also:
Meditation: It's Supposed To Be Unbearable
Next up is...
JOURNALING:
I do four journals per day–one major one, and then three mini-ones for each of my children. The main one consists of the following:
I wake up and read a poem. I usually have a shit-ton of compilations lying around, so I focus on one of those per week and just skim and land on something that seems interesting. Guess what? Ninety percent of the time they’re boring. (I’m not a huge poetry fan, either, but hang in with me here.) The thing is, on the days I find something I do like, it’s consistently the best day of the month. It’s even better when I read a poem before I start scrolling through my phone, so sometimes I’ll leave a book on the nightstand and leave the devil downstairs. After I read it, it’s the first thing that goes into my journal: name of poem, then author. My best discovery so far is Denver Butson. Check him out.
After that I move on to my first daily reader book. Recent selections have been “Seneca Epistles 66-92”; “The Practicing Stoic”; and “Words of My Perfect Teacher.” But the best one, hands down, is easily “A Calendar of Wisdom” by Leo Tolstoy. It’s got four to five little passages from Tolstoy’s all-time favorite spiritual texts that he painstakingly pulled together and organized during the last decade of his life. I read through them, underline my favorite one, and put it as my second journal entry underneath the poem. After that, I move on to my third daily reader of the morning, which is usually a shorter compilation guide by an individual author. Recent entries include portions of “How To Fight” by Thich Nhat Hanh and “Tao Te Ching.” Currently, I’m on “The Pocket Pema Chodron” which is great as hell. Same deal–I find a passage that jumps out at me, underline it, and put it in the journal. After that I move on to writing out my Fears List. This is like a Gratitude List (which comes next), but instead I write down whatever I’m most afraid of that very second. It changes every single day and is usually something like “I’m disorganized” or “Anger percolating” or “I’m unkind,” which then becomes instantly neutralized by doing the Gratitude List immediately after it. There’s nothing special at all about my Gratitude List. I just bullet-point things I’m thankful for that day. Yes, I write down how beautiful colorful sunrises are (that they are, even).
That’s the end of my first journal.
Then I move on to the mini-journals for each of my three children. I usually try to incorporate whatever I've learned from my morning readings into personalized lessons/messages to them, finished off with an “I Love You!” and “Love, Papa xoxoxo.” I’d like to think this will be a wonderful sentimental artifact for them to look at when they’re older, but my handwriting is atrocious because I’m usually trying to squeeze this in before they all come downstairs and start jumping on me. Maybe they’ll make handsome coasters for their living rooms one day.
And finally…
MISCELLANY:
Once each day, I try to add in some form of physical exercise, either running, Crossfit, boxing, free weights or even goddamn yoga. Whatever works. In addition, I’m learning Portuguese on Duolingo. Eu falo pequeno Portuguese! And then there’s my new REALLY HARD BOOK challenge wherein I, the dummy who didn’t read a whole book for seven years, attempts to finish one that’s not “The Dirt” by Motley Crue. I did attempt Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” recently and it only took me about three months. Shut up! I finished it. And I hated it.
And that’s it. This helps me stay sober and sane even when life provides me seemingly unbearable opportunities to slip up. Now is one of those times, but having this in place has been helpful the past few days of quarantine and chaos.
