This is not a coat rack.¹

But it is, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be my easel, but right now I use it to hold a couple of jackets. Ergo,  it’s a coat rack. It’s never going to be an easel until I use it to hold a canvas. By applying this level of honesty to the other objects lying around my house, here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Electric guitar and amplifier - Remnants of my time with a band in high school, currently hogger of valuable cabinet space.
• Baseball bat - Object that gives me fake courage and confidence to ward off burglars when I’m alone at night. (Not guaranteed to fight off actual burglars.)
• Old analog v8 video camera - Also hogger of space.

Now, applying this to myself: I am not a painter. Unless I’m actually painting every single day, making it my work, then I am not a painter. I’m just some hobbyist who paints if/when time/money/desire allows it. I know this, that’s why I never call myself a painter.² I do call myself a cartoonist because I doodle almost every day and most of my doodles are cartoons or comics. Also, with full confidence, I can tell you I’m a writer.

Many people find labels limiting, but I actually take comfort in them. They remind me of who I am. At the same time, though, I don’t grab a label I like and call myself that. It works the other way around. I go about my day doing the things I want to do. At the end of the day I look at what I’ve spent my time and energy on and that’s who I am. That’s what I do. Almost every time, the answer is the same - it’s writing. Drawing cartoons comes a close second.³

I am a writer. I also draw cartoons.

But surely labeling yourself is superficial… we are not our jobs!

If we’re not what we do, what we think, and what we say, then who are we? These labels are not imposed limits, they merely reflect what you’re already doing. Owning up to that and trying to compare what we think we do to what we actually do helps get rid of the delusions.

How many people say things like “I’m not really an accountant.⁴ That’s just my day job. My real passion is writing.” Out of those people how many of them actually spend time on their “real passion”? If you spend 10 hours a day doing accounting work, and 15 minutes facing a blank screen because of your “writer’s block”, then you’re really just an accountant with delusions of writing. If you want to be a writer, write goddammit.

Yes, I’m being harsh. But in case you haven’t noticed (the number of comments are a hint), this blog is really just me talking to myself. I have to keep myself in check and own up to what I spend my time on, own up to who I really am.

I am a writer. I also draw cartoons.

Thank goodness for that. Now, to fine-tune this a bit, I’d like to add the word “fiction” before the word “writer”. And there’s only one way to do that without deluding myself.

Write more fiction.

1. With apologies to Réne Magritte.
2. In some cultures, a painter is someone who paints houses and the like. If that’s the case then I am a painter once in a while.
3. I didn’t know this yet when I wrote this post. Now that I’m more ruthless with cutting out procrastination, the truth emerges.
4. With apologies to accountants who love their job.

There are two types of productivity apps: those that block out distractions from work and those that encourage work. Examples of the former are web site blockers (such as Leechblock) and application blockers (such as DoNotDisturb). As for the apps that encourage work, they’re the tools that allow you to work faster and better. For me that includes Texter and Google Docs. In the past years that I’ve been experimenting with almost every productivity app ever released, I’ve realized one thing - the distraction blockers don’t work in the long run.

Let me clarify: if an app blocks out things you can’t control such as noisy neighbors and needy cats, then it’s useful. But if it’s blocking out something that’s within your control like, say, checking your email or looking at Facebook updates for the umpteenth time, then the app is nothing more than a cosmetic. It’s like sticking a Band-Aid on your melanoma and telling yourself that it’s cured.

Apps can be disabled, programmed, and uninstalled. The same goes with the manual tweaks you do to “block” distractions, such as tinkering with the hosts file and whatnot.

“Oh, but they make it difficult for you to disable Leechblock.”

Yeah, but would you really want a solution that is dependent only on the fact that someone pressed the “Enable” button? What if you’re working on somebody else’s computer? What if you’re so desperate to check your email yet again that you find a way to disable your site blockers “just this one time”? Then you realize that you’ve done it so many times that your “productivity tool” is actually making you unproductive at being unproductive.

Hey, I’m not judging. I used to do that a lot. And now I feel stupid about it.

Painting the Office

In the past month, we’ve been redecorating our home office. We were already overwhelmed with work and rarely had a spare moment to attend to this project. Ergo, it was slow. When I told my partner that I’d been fiddling with Adsense, Facebook, and message boards during my workday, she gave me a scolding simple solution. “When you catch yourself doing that, why don’t you just paint the office?”

Good point.

Now that the office is done, I see myself growing into the habit of channeling my energies to other important tasks. They can range from sorting the laundry to writing my novel. It doesn’t matter what I do, as long as it’s not Spider Solitaire or Adsense or Facebook. True, it’s still procrastination, but at least something’s getting done. And you know what? I’m also having a lot of genuine fun. Not the mindless drone-like buzz I get from checking Facebook, Adsense, and Google Analytics yet again.

Also, here’s the key thing: every time I feel like opening another tab, I ask myself a very important question.

Why?

Why do that? What am I going to get from doing this? If I really take the time to answer that question, what I get is really painful:

• I’m going to play Spider Solitaire or look at Facebook because I’m too lazy/afraid to do my real work.
• I’m going to check Adsense to see if I earned a measly $0.01.

These answers are embarrassing and pathetic. I didn’t want to be that person anymore, and the only way to do that was to admit that I think these things and find a way to just deal with it. And to actually spend more time doing the gorram work than “dealing with it”.

The Results

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but by accepting the full responsibility of my own productivity and being more conscious about falling into distractions, I actually got a lot of stuff done. Here’s what I accomplished so far:

• Made significant progress with my Spanish. I’ve been taking in a lot of new material, and it’s just a blast realizing how much I understand now.
• I started and finished a 7-page short story and submitted it to an anthology. My first short story in five years.
• I spend less time feeling guilty about not being productive enough, and more time actually doing the work. Any work, as long as it’s something I’m passionate about.

At the same time, though, I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve got it perfect. That I’ve got my shit together. I still fall into the occasional digital fiddling trap. But you know what? There’s less of it. And I know that if I keep getting better at dealing with this every single day, it’s going to happen less and less until it’s barely happening anymore.

It wasn’t as simple as enabling an app. This act of being a productive person rather than a productivity person is going to be a lifelong process. It’s going to take a solid daily commitment. And I guess that’s why it works.

I had nowhere else to put them and they’re related (kinda) to the other ideas I post here. They were intended for a more personal audience, so there might be some inside jokes many of you won’t get (sorry about that). But the other journal strips I made - the ones about loooove and stuff - no way am I putting them anywhere public.

These were all done while I was still in college. Weird to see the evolution of drawing style (and themes) on just one page.