On Protocols, Wagons, and Associated Acrobatics

Years ago, maybe a decade even, I fell in love with this software called Scrivener. I could never justify buying it because I didn’t actually write. But having that software would represent a little bit of the identity I would like to have, a writer. The Fourth of July long weekend gave me a running start. The plan was to write every day for a month. If I did, I would buy Scrivener. This was going quite well, then I couldn’t write for two days.

I had fallen off the wagon. But hey, I have a wagon. Writing for twenty days isn’t nothing. Like David Allen says, getting back on the wagon is what it’s all about. Falling off happens because life happens. And life, happens to everybody. So, hey I’m back.

I almost wasn’t. I almost said oh well. Then I watched the Summer of Protocols (SoP) town hall talk by Robert Peake: The Infinite Game of Poetry – Protocols for Living, Listening, and Transcending the Rules. The infinite game of poetry is the infinite game of writing. The important bit is to keep playing*.

Being that this is part of the SoP, the question is of course what is the protocol? Robert goes much deeper than just the protocol of writing poetry and being a poet. He gives two equations for doing your life’s work and to build the self. I won’t reproduce those equations here, you should watch the talk.
Here’s the gist of the poeting/writing protocol though:

• To be a poet is observing the change in self: even when you are not writing you are noticing your inner environment, your outer environment and what you have read.
• When you start to write, the change in self produces the writing, synthesis.
• The writing is now part of the change in the self.
• Sum of all noticing and synthesis is your life’s work
• The self is is constructed, Robert says on the last day but I think its constructed continuously, through all the iterations of work.

Tyler Cowen, who if nothing else, is a prolific wrote a similar, though not as compact, set in 2019.

Zooming out, this applies to all work not just writing. Showing up and getting back on the wagon is where it all coalesces. But where am I going? To me, building wagons is as important as going somewhere with potential for something new, even if the path is uncertain. Pointing in the direction of maximal interestingness .

This need for exploration and the support from constancy is captured well in the song Life in a Wind :
“One foot in front of the other, all you gotta do, brother
[…]
Live life in the wind, take flight on a whim”

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* The Scrivener team seems to understand this well. Their trial isn’t a consecutive thirty days, but thirty days of use 🙂