"I want to build a tool that captures content sentiment and filters accordingly from my  feed."

"You aren't going to like this...but edgy cynics don't get gigs."

I was heeding this advice from a strategist friend after getting into a brief twitter conversation with Anil Dash regarding his article on the Pax Dickinson / Business Insider blow-up.

Find yours. Do not wait for someone to show you the way. That person does not exist. The "way" does not exist. Find ways to break rules. You are navigating a shitstorm on rough, uncharted water in a makeshift 12' sailboat.*** 

And someone once told me that girls can't sail, but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, too.

∆, Brookman

* And not to single him out, either, because he's just playing the game as he knows how to play it. 

** Whenever someone is punished into relative obscurity from the industry they usually "atone," either by building something remarkable on their own, or by finding some executive who quietly shares their outlook. These execs exist. I have worked for them. Luckily, many of them are aging rapidly, due to side effects of all of that internalized bigotry and what not.

*** This may or may not be a pep talk. To myself. 

THE ONE: HOW TO BE A SLAVE (James Altucher).

In case you were wondering when we'd hit the terminal stage of our present brand of capitalism, welcome! 

This month, we have the dubious honor of being on the receiving end of quantitative easing. If you're not sure what this means, go to your dictionary and look up the word 'sodomy' and then imagine Ben Bernanke doing this to you while lighting piles of american currency on fire.

Now. You may be saying "But Jess, the unemployment rate shrank to 7.3% this month. You are correct, genius. However, the unemployment rate considers the number of people actively looking for a job. It does not account for the sheer droves of people who've decided to becomes the Ivy League's preeminent stripper. I mean entertainer. I mean, those who've dropped out of the labor force. 

The labor force participation rate has dropped to the lowest rate since May 1978. I wasn't alive in 1980, but I hear it was a bad time for some of you. So, in case you are wondering whether you should stick it out in that job you hate or start building up your side hustle into something more substantial, now would be a good time. 

But you don't have to believe me. What do i know (I'm just a stripper*, right?) Read James Altucher's post on wage slavery instead.  

THE GAME: Ambitious Women Face More Obstacles Than Just Work Live Balance (Harvard Business Review)

In case it wasn't obvious, I am not the type of woman who apologizes for speaking every time I open my mouth. This can be a problem if you're working in an environment dedicated to artificial hierarchies (and/or inefficiency and obedience-relationships to compensate for other, more visceral inefficiencies, but I digress). 

This article is a brief overview of some of the peripheral factors beyond work-life balance that women face. What I do not understand is that, given how admittedly terrible it is for most women, why they continue to subject (or shall I say "submit") themselves to it in the first place? Read it and weep. 

THE #LONGREAD: The Life & Times of a Remarkable Misfit (AJ Leon)

You may consider AJ Leon my older internet-brother. He's *also* a finance dropout currently on a trip around the world talking about being a self-employed, world-changing misfit. This is his manifesto. It is ~60 pages but full of graphics and quotes. You might find something that you like. 

THE ART: Follow the Leaders: A Corporate City in Ruins by Isaac Cordal (Colossal)

It's only an artistic metaphor until it happens. Who's been to Detroit lately? Anyone? Didn't think so. You can visit Isaac's website here. 

THE SOUND: Nine Inch Nails - Come Back Haunted

First single from the upcoming album "Hesitation Marks," out 9.03.13. Pre-order the album and download "Came Back Haunted" from nin.com: http://store.nin.com or iTunes: http://ninein.ch/itunesdlx

Trent Reznor, singing about killing himself. You know. For balance.  

Happy Monday, 
BROOKMAN

* PS - I'm not a stripper. I'm just a really good dancer. 

FACT: Practice is like being in a dominant/submissive relationship. With your superego. 

In this house, there will be order. Despite what certain misleading literary trilogies would have you believe on the matter, the cornerstone of a solid D/s* relationship is faith in and through obedience. 

And this works on both ends (i.e. not just for the submissive). You actively define your roles which creates a series of default behaviors. This eliminates power struggle and drama. You have effectively defined your vision for the expression of yourselves in the relationship and contractually obligated each other to fulfilling that vision.

The alpha-point in D/s is identity within a vision.The omega-point is surrender of identity to the order of that vision.** 

Kinky shit aside, personal practices ideally have the same alpha and omega.

When I say "practice," I am referring to any set of rituals and heuristics we use to feel more like ourselves. Very much like the terms of a contract between a dominant and a submissive, practice defines our experience. When our experience feels in-line with who we are, it is easy and freeing. When we are deviating, we are punished. I mean, it feels rough. I mean we feel like slaves to ourselves. I mean...

Fuck. Here's how to have a practice...

Developing a personal practice is essentially a dominant/submissive relationship between the person you would like to be and the person you are now. It's acting in faith with your vision for yourself.

What your vision looks like is up to you. But here are the basics: 

1. Know what you want. 
   When you decide to have a defined power dynamic with another person, you define at the outset what is desired and not desired. Now both parties are responsible for respecting the boundaries and requirements of their roles. They are also free to enjoy the things that they desire. 
   
   The same applies in your practice. You are always progressing towards something whether you know it or not. If you do not intentionally select your direction at each step, you are progressing aimlessly towards entropy and old-age. Entropy feels...bad. It is disorder. If you'd like to have order, your only chance is to know what you want and to ask for it. Otherwise you'll get whatever the fuck finds you in space and time. 
   
   
2. Know why you want it. 
   This is crucial. In D/s, it's easy. The reason you want it is because you like it and someone else likes giving it to you.
   
   In your practice, it's a little more complicated. If you do not acknowledge the reason that you want something, it will be much more difficult to get it. The reason you want something actually dictates how you have to behave in order to move towards it. Which brings me to my third point, 
   
   
3. Fucking behave yourself. 
    Once you know what you want and why you want it, you are now free to bring your behavior in line with the experience you want. If you do not behave in line with your best interests, there will be consequences.
   
   The consequence in practice mean that you will feel out-of-line with who you want to be. In D/s, if you are out of line...well...I'm not saying I own a whip, but let's just say I know how to use one. The point is, the more like the vision you behave, the less struggle there will be.
   

Luckily, since you know what you want and why you want it, behavioral decisions become easier. From this approach, every choice boils down to the same question: 

"Would I like to feel MORE or LESS like myself at this moment?"***

Now. I have intentionally avoided telling you about my practice, specifically. Mainly because we all have different lives and goals and therefore need to do different things to live them out. I can write about it if there is interest.

Anyway, I tend to ascribe to the Flaubertian notion of life/work. It's pretty mundane shit, actually. 

Mostly, I started tinkering with living intentionally after dropping out of medical school and then the corporate world in rapid succession. I hadn't been feeling like myself and I was tired of feeling like a slave to what other people wanted for me so I went off to find out who I was so I could serve that being (and hopefully some other fuckers in the process).  

And it's an ongoing process.  It frees me to focus on things that I can directly influence (and keeps me from giving a fuck about things that I cannot). It holds me accountable to myself. It frees me to progress towards things that I desire regardless of what's going on around me. That is, I am faithful and obedient to my vision of myself as much as possible on a moment-to-moment basis. Occasionally I still get whipped, but I am getting better at it every day. 

After all,  freedom is being your own dominatrix. 

Do you have any rituals? Tell me. 
Δ, Brookman. 

*I am specifically using D/s -- as opposed to a more inclusive bdsm designation -- in this application since it's about a relationship with yourself. My sincere hope is that you are not going to self-flagellate after reading this. I mean, you can; it's up to you. But it's probably not necessary. 

** This end is actually the purpose of all "god" seeking traditions of the world. It has been long-lost to religions that segregate and shame people. Do I think that religion itself is the antichrist? Maybe. But I digress. 

In honor of all that is free-flowing and holy on this most auspicious, post-declaration-of-war Labor Day, I wanted to share some editorial brilliance. It arrives in the form of a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, a song about neurosis and denial, and an article from Strike! Magazine  by David Graeber. It's a good day to think about why so many find no meaning in their daily existences and/or secretly hate their jobs. (Hint: the same phenomenon may or may not also explain why so many grown adults have opinions about things like Miley Cyrus these days.)

For this week, I'm writing my experience with practice (ritual) in daily life (like i said i would). More specifically, I'm writing about developing my practice and rituals after opting out on the debt cycle. (think about it) (don't think about it).

Presented with minimal comment, happy labor day:

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.   

On the misuse of your talents and the peer reaction to you insisting on them:

Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does.

And on who's supplying the demand for most bullshit jobs and why artists and intellectuals are being intentionally marginalized:  

There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) 

And, it maybe it takes an acid trip to figure out why this is happening. So in that case: 

Enjoy your day & Think about things. 
Brookman. 

I Already Forgot Everything You Said // The Dig // Midnight Flowers (2012) © 2012 Buffalo Jump Records I Already Forgot Everything You Said // Official Music Video - http://youtu.be/b9zl2wWcfb4 LINKS TO MIDNIGHT FLOWERS The Dig's Website: http://bit.ly/Kwhtu2 (stream + lyrics + liner notes) iTunes: http://bit.ly/MzYjD3 (mp3 download) The Dig's

I was kneeling on a brick sidewalk. I was covered in tea.

"Open your eyes. Stand up."

Nope. Not happening.

"This is taking. for. ever."

My vision flickered on and I caught a snapshot of onlookers. I felt energy move through my core like I was inside of a wave. My body listed downward, onto the ground. 

"Wait -- what's taking forev...oh."

Then-i-was-gone-and-oh-it-is-just-my-brain-having-a-seizure-oh-it-is-almost-over-oh-it-will-be-fine-oh-just-relax-oh-it-is-much-better-out-here-now-right-now. oh!

Then it was over; i was back on the sidewalk. This is a story about being in control. 

When I woke up that day, my thoughts were so cloudy that I couldn't make a single decision. More generally, the preceding weeks had contained a few things that broke poorly for me. I was very preoccupied with some life problems. It was vicious and I was temporarily at a loss. So I decided to do nothing for the morning. I went to the park to meditate.

Walking home, I collapsed to the sidewalk.

I've been having seizures and migraines since I was seven. By the time I decided to go to medical school, I had almost two decades of experience making sense of the human brain progressively and by whatever means were available to me at the time.   

I mention this because I do not want to advocate a particular model for cognition and the mind to understand this experience. There are many and I don't wish to be limited or defined by any single understanding of the (my) mind. 

But after you've appeared to have peed yourself and/or overdosed in public a few times, it focuses your understanding of what's important. Being out of your body is -- literally and for lack of a better phrase -- a perspective shift. 

So for all of you poor souls who have to go through life without the benefit of the divergent perspective provided by spontaneous brain defragmentation or LSD, here's a high-level, seizure-free guide to mental clarity: 

Practice.

Independent Identity.

Express your priorities in thought and action.

Let go of the rest. 

Obviously it's not as simple as a sentence. And it's natural to struggle occasionally. I'll write more about the individual parts of this statement as separate posts over the next month. I struggle with each of them from time to time so I'll be unusually honest wherever I can. 

Sound good? Good.
Brookman

THE ONE: The New  York Times prophetic 1983 warning about the NSA. 

Probably on the actual day i was conceived (whatever), the Times' David Burnham warned of the silent power of the National Security Agency. 

Every day, in almost every area of culture and commerce, systems and procedures are being adopted by private companies and organizations as well as by the nation's security leaders that make it easier for the N.S.A. to dominate American society should it ever decide such action is necessary.

I know that Miley Cyrus is apparently a hot mess right now and someone is dating someone else and someone is cheating on someone else and someone's bag cost a lot of money. But, darlings, it is time to go back to the part of the world where you actually have to pay attention to the things that affect you and not to the things that don't. I KNOW. I am such a buzzkill. But thinking is a generative process. After you do it, you should have an opinion that belongs to you. (Not your school, not your employer, not your church, not your government...etc.) 

Media is a very compelling sedative for precious little brains with empty spaces to fill. And the less you think, more compelling it becomes. I don't mean to be an alarmist, I'm just busy planning my expatriation. Think about it! Love you! 

THE GAME: The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship

Here is something that will make you cry. I am basically unemployable having mish-mashed about 7 different careers before the age of 30. A few years ago, I realized that being independent was the only way to make my life work. However, it has not been so easy -- and mostly because I do not know what I am fucking doing at least 50% of the time. I mean....

We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks. And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair--times when it seemed everything might crumble.

Oh. yes. Now, who wants some ramen? I'll cook.  

THE BEAUTY: Second Skins by Miguel Vallinas

The borderline of cute and creepy is exactly where I hang out most of the time. 

THE SOUND: Song for Zula - Phosphorescent. 

You know, because everything can't be all dark and angsty. This is from the winter. and it's about love. So it's like a pole-reversal from the rest of this post (and life right now). 

Taken from forthcoming album 'Muchacho'

That's all. I'm going to take a nap now. 
△, Brookman

By February, New York is weighted by the cold. Speed resisting slowness. In the tunnels, it was the witching hour. A thinning crowd giving way to a rougher one around me. I was lying facedown on the stairs. 

I picked myself up into a moment of loneliness in the busiest city in America. Standing without meeting the eyes or hand of a single soul,  I ran my fingers over the blood and gravel on my lips.  The measured clanking disappeared into the darkness with my train. Resignation comes with a sigh, stillness. 

I was alone until a man's voice filled the space between the tracks: 

You go to my head
And you linger like a haunting refrain. 

I met him. Midnight on a tuesday.  The human being who sings Billie Holiday to the abandoned subterranean halls of the West Village. When my eyes found his, the blush was instantaneous and mutual. It faded into recognition.

He kept singing. In those few moments, a car never came to take him away. Our song wound down over the noise of my train coming in. On the bell of the closing doors behind me, I found him and cast my silent thanks through the grimy lucite. 

He bowed, turned, and bolted up the stairs. We were on our way again. 

Everyone changes the world.

July, 2008. I was standing behind my block at the olympic trials, on the verge of the last race of a 20-year career. I was thinking about baby shoes.

When I was three, my grandfather died of cancer. But for the last few years of my swimming career, I had relied on him to prepare for my races. He was a marine who survived Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tinian. One of the only memories that I have of him is re-lived as a gaze through the bedroom window of my grandmother’s house, to a pair of tiny white patent leather baby shoes, freshly polished, drying on the step outside. When I go there in my mind, my heart swells with energy and my mind is calm.

This is where you visualize the race. Some athletes refer to this as the zone.  I call it grace.

In those races, I would not feel pain until it was over. That day, I swam faster than I ever thought I could. I did not make the olympics. But I poured myself out on the biggest stage I could reach then. I left nothing of myself there.

--

Relationships of any kind should be synergistic. They should be graceful. 

Once in a while, a series of events arrives in such an order as to question your entire understanding of the world. You may even recognize these moments as a chance to consider your life’s relationship to the development of the world. 

Oh. You’re not interested in your own legacy?

That's unfortunate since you are leaving one regardless of whether you think about it or not. Opting-out, falling in, keeping your head down. These are decisions. You have decided that the choices you are provided with are fine, even if you don’t feel like yourself half the time making them. 

“Scylla. Charybdis,” you’ll say to me in a dark bar one night. “It’s just how the world works.”

If you believe that you are just along for the ride, you’ll consume as you’re told, stay where you’re told. You won’t break any rules. You will stay out of trouble. You will pass. You pick your causes and your candidates. You live in a world that’s binary, and you pick your side. 'They' will handle it from here. 

And they will. They are right now. 

But to believe that your passivity exonerates you from having to consider the larger impact of your choices is a form of socially-sanctioned denial. The world is not binary. There is no separation between "us" and "them." And we do have a relationship to the world and everything in it. 

Moments of grace are a window into the feeling of synergy. They help you find the contours of your relationship to the world and your place within it. 

That, darling, is how the world works.

--

Be graceful. 

Last august, I found myself heading into a hospital in Beverly Hills, California. I walked myself in alone for a small outpatient procedure. Afterwards, I drove myself to the office of one of the startups I was working with at the time. I had an ice-pack on my left breast. and i sat down at my computer, exhausted, ravished by a relationship I held onto for too long, and work schedule that left no room for question. 

I looked around and could no longer make sense of where I was. 

The next day, I rented a cabin in Topanga Canyon and spent the week alone. i was on my way out of LA then, though it took me a year to leave. It was the beginning of a long spiritual detox at the end of a years-long period of exorcising the dead parts of me. That week, I purged them, ran them down the canyon, and washed them off in the ocean.

Shed like summer skin on the tide.

--

Pour yourself out. 

Grace is a gift...the catch is that it's a gift that you can only enjoy while you're offering it--and yourself-- up to the world. Staying close to it is the best chance you've got at synergy. 

It’s taken a year to grow myself back into those dead spots, like gold bonding filling the cracks in a china plate. This is what I know:

• The process is always endergonic. It is not spontaneous.

• Your choices are the catalyst. Your environment provides the substrate.

• The transition states are unstable, times to shed and build.

• There is no end point; there’s just dynamic equilibrium.

• The products of each step are higher free energy, closer to grace.

Summer is breathing its embers into fall again and I’m in transition. My hair is coarse and wild. I am as free as the wind that blows through it. Unlike last August, I don't have hollow places to fill. I know where i am. Now, I'm interested in a partner in crime. I mean, business. I mean everything. 

As I think of where to take myself, I project my options and ideas into time and space. I consider their effect: How will I be changed? How will I change the world?

Where are my baby shoes?

△, Brookman

Some inspiration: Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career. 

Junior - Thank you for sitting in the car with me last night while i thought this out. xo. 

You cannot know the precise position and momentum of an electron simultaneously. It's physics is all. 

Now. If your calculations for position are accurate, you will have a snapshot of the electron, suspended on its trajectory. Just for an instant. 

 "I've got it!" you might say.

But what you're holding is an image. You have no idea where the actual goddamn electron is anymore. And, don't be an idiot, you can't actually hold an electron. By the time you put yourself in that precise place to catch it, it's already off dancing somewhere else. 

** 

So it's time for some more math. Do you want another picture? Or, would you rather understand how it moves? 

"But then I'll never find it!" you might say.  

That's right. But now, you can move with it. And that's as close to holding anything that we're ever going to get while living on a spinning rock in an ever-expanding cloud of molecular dust. 

Put another way: When you're out on a walk and you've got a song in your head, no matter how strange your musical tastes happen to be, the chances are never zero that, somewhere, someone else is listening to that exact song. 

Maybe you should dance with them. 

(now, play this, then close your eyes, and don't think for 90 seconds, k? ok.  )

http://warp.net/records/grizzly-bear The music video for Grizzly Bear's 'Knife', directed by Encyclopedia Pictura, taken from the album Yellow House. Check http://www.grizzly-bear.net/newslive.php and http://www.myspace.com/grizzlybear for more details.

xo, Brookman.

P.S. Read the rest of Sunday Shorts if you like.