Practicing Life #3: Why's This Called That? (And the Benefits of Trying to Take Batman Seriously)
The Name:
Instead of a meditation today I’m going to explain why I called this section “Practicing Life” because I didn’t really do that yet. But also it will be a sort of meditation. I am meditation-prone, in both the sense of thinking too much about things and that I used to be a relatively hardcore Zen Buddhist.
So anyway, the name. As good friend summed up my orientation to life: “Everything is reps.” You can get more highfalutin about it and say that the core of life is discipline. But I don’t mean it in the sense of like whipping yourself to do things. That’s more like ineffectual idiocy (although sometimes a goode olde fashioned kick in the ass is warranted).
Discipline is this: “Something you can do today, that will enable you to do something tomorrow which you cannot do today through direct effort or force of will". Say that ten times fast. In other words everything is PRACTICE.
Weightlifting is a great example of discipline/practice/reps (literally on the the last one) and that’s why my friend said that.
There is a certain amount you can deadlift right now. You cannot try harder or force yourself by power of will to lift much more (or any more) than that physical cap right now. However, you can lift that amount you currently can, today, and then tomorrow (metaphorically, it takes a few days in reality) you can lift more than that. And so on until you reach the best you can possibly do. There is always a limit, for limitation is human, but I betcha that ceiling is much, much higher than you expect at first. In many domains we actually don’t comprehend our potential for greatness very well. But you can’t think about that when you’re putting in the reps, except to have a target you’re aiming at in the background.
So, extrapolate this out to literally everything. I can’t think of a domain where this doesn’t apply and that’s why I’ve called this Journal by the name I hae and it defines my view towards life in general.
I grew up a musician and am formally educated with years of professional experience. These days I am a writer, of novels in particular. But what I learned in music informs all areas of skill acquisition, including writing. Namely, I learned to practice.
Writers do this weird thing where they want to spend a year or more editing a piece thinking it’s going to get better. Not gonna happen. You might even make it worse. Why is this so? Because you can only deadlift (write at a certain quality) what you can deadlift today. What you do is slightly push your edge every time you sit down, keep cranking out NEW material (not reworking old) and eventually you will become so good at it you won’t even recognize the middling old writer that was you. It’s all reps.
It’s all practice.
And I say “practicing life” because again this applies to everything I can think of. When people try to live moral lives, they think they can do it by brute force a lot of the time. Again, not gonna happen. If you get angry in traffic (sorry I’ll stop with the traffic crap soon), or because the line is too long at Starbucks, you’re screwed when something awful happens to you that calls for controlling your reactions. So the little moments of frustration are opportunities to practice proper responses. That’s what yesterday’s post was about.
So at the end of the day, literally, we’re after progress and that comes through practice. We leave aside thoughts of perfection. That comes as a byproduct of the reps (or whatever comes is as close to prefect as we can get over time).
Of course, I’ll talk about this more over the coming months, but now you know where my head is at with the name. And remember when you’re frustrated with where you are today:
Everything is reps. You can get better through practice. And you will, if you show up and do the work.
Viewing:
I started watching The Dark Knight (I say “started” because as a dad with a full-time job there’s no way I’m getting through a 7,000-hour movie in one night) and it’s really good. Not a controversial take I know, but I haven’t seen it since college when it came out and it’s really quite excellent, if…
If you can take Batman seriously as a concept. I don’t really care for superhero stuff in general and though I am in love with old pulp fiction, Batman in particular, especially aesthetically, is kind of silly. Like, Zorro makes sense, the mask and everything. Even Superman, as far as his outfit, while goofy, has a sort of weird logic to it. Batman dresses like an anthropomorphic bat. It’s super dumb. Like that helmet/cowl combo situation looks extremely stupid to me. Nolan tries to dress it up in science-y body armor junk but it’s really hard to take seriously. And why does Bruce talk like he’s in a Swedish melodic death metal band when he’s Batman?
But I digress. The point I’m trying to get to is it’s actually a really good idea to set aside your disbelief in the character and aesthetic and just take it seriously the way Nolan wants you to. The movie is melodramatic to be sure but if you buy into it, you’re in for a great ride. The dialogue is (mostly) excellent, the shots are gorgeous, the set pieces are mind-bogglingly good, especially because it’s got some of the best practical effects I’ve ever seen, a welcome delight in the age of shoddy CGI making half of every modern movie look like a video game cut scene (from the PlayStation 2 era a lot of the time to boot (I’ll rant about that another time)).
I haven’t finished it yet but I’m sure this movie will be in 4.5/5 if not 5-star territory for me. You just have to ignore that the Bat is fundamentally ridiculous. But this is good advice for lots of entertaining stories.
Writing:
I’ve got some short stories coming for you. New ones. Both here at The Write Books and over at
. Stay tuned, something will be up by next week. In the meantime, you can enjoy “Two Moons”, a slightly older one I sent out today.Coming along on the new novel. Less than two weeks, then editing and design. If you choose to subscribe to one of my paid tiers here on Substack, that book will be included in your subscription.
Reading:
Haven’t done much, crazy week. Still on Black Hills.
Ciao:
That’s all folks. Feel free to comment and I’ll see you tomorrow (probably). Have a great Friday.
Exactly this!
"Discipline is this: “Something you can do today, that will enable you to do something tomorrow which you cannot do today through direct effort or force of will"."
Everything is iteration; a little less worse than yesterday, a little better than the day before. Just this. That's it. That's all there is.
Yeah, you're right. You can't edit anything to perfection, no matter how much time you spend on it.
I could have sat on my novella for another ten years, but I decided to just get it done and published.
It's easier to just get it out of the way.