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‘Hamilton’ Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Rolling Stone Interview | Rolling Stone

‘Hamilton’ Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Rolling Stone Interview | Rolling Stone

Your human-size life

Your human-size life

Seth’s Blog: Read more blogs

Seth’s Blog: Read more blogs

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a letter to his daughter

Automatic

Even now players are out in the yard

Players throw and kick and take and get

Vulnerable to the way the earth spins

Vulnerable to the time we don’t have

Vulnerable to

Feet, one in front of then other

Feet that move me

Feet that stand still

Feet that hold me up

Dreamlike in the corner

Dreamlike visions of future lives

Painted with colors so vivid they seem like reality

Painted with greens and purples

Menu of my desires

Menu of my needs

Menu — off the menu

I wrestle with my want of other

Crap I don’t need

Crap that doesn’t need me

Crap I won’t take

Glass through the looking

Glass half full or half empty

This was formed during a writers workshop I was in yesterday. It’s a process called Automatic Writing. It is designed to spur writing that comes straight from the subconscious — non-sensical, no purpose, just letting the pen go. The instructor opened a book, flipped to a page, and chose a word to call out every thirty seconds or so — all at random. We had to switch and use each word as a prompt as soon as she called it. After it was done, I read what I write and realized I kind of like how mine came out. It is a pretty good poem. A great lesson and reminder that the words are already in you, you just have to learn how to get out of their way.

On Worry

Worry is wasted energy if not converted to action. It serves no purpose other than to drive action. Worry is alleviated in two ways:

  1. Taking action on that which worries you.
  2. Letting it go and redirecting that energy elsewhere.

Worry is born of desire — desire for change. If worry does not drive the action for change, or if there is no action you can take that will strive for or effect change, then what good is your desire?
But, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems with worry is that it makes one believe they are doing something. Especially when there is no action one could take that will affect change. That worry is all you have to do. That if you worry about something enough it will somehow effect change.
Worry is the catalyst between desire and “done” — nothing more. It should not exist outside of that structural tension.
So, if you’re going to worry, at least worry about important things. Things that matter. Things that you can take some action on. Make your worry worth it. Use it to get things done.