Obligations

It’s 0:48 AM right now. For the past two days I’ve been forced to wake up at 5:30am, a solid three hours before my usual wake-up time, to go hang-gliding with the other fellows. I am beyond tired right now, but I’m going to writing this post because I have to.

I’ve imposed the obligation on myself to pen a new blog post every Monday and every Friday. For the past two iterations of this obligation, I’ve thrown up the posts last minute, due to significant other priorities those days.

Today’s no different. I just came back from our fellow dinner with Peter Thiel, and I haven’t stopped being plugged in all day. There’s nothing more I want to do than sleep right now, and it’s without a shred of uncertainty in my mind that I assert that had I not created the obligation to post today, there would be no way in hell that I wouldn’t be passed out right now and this post would never see the light of the day.

This is even more tricky on Svbtle, where each post actually has a real audience, however small and unadvertised, unlike my previous site which I advertised to no one and as a consequence could write whatever the hell I wanted with impunity, as I knew literally no one would read it.

Ultimately, I just ask myself - is it better to throw up this piece of shit essay as is or never let this post ever come to fruition? And clearly, I go with putting up the shittily written essays. They have interesting themes, just not particularly clear expositions.

This is also an interesting case in point of what exactly sleep deprived writing looks like. I literally have no idea what I’m writing about or if it’s coherent and cohesive at all, as I’m microsleeping and every time I jolt awake again I’m disoriented about exactly where I am in the writing.

So the morals of the story today are 1. Create obligations for yourself. You’ll accomplish far more than you would without obligations, as there are always excuses to be had for eschewing something hard or creative, and 2. Get enough sleep.