{"id":233,"date":"2020-02-24T19:38:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T19:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/?p=233"},"modified":"2020-02-24T19:38:58","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T19:38:58","slug":"recollections-of-internal-observations-of-mental-preoccupations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/recollections-of-internal-observations-of-mental-preoccupations\/","title":{"rendered":"Recollections of Internal Observations of Mental Preoccupations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877-1024x872.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-234\" width=\"416\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877-1024x872.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877-300x255.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877-768x654.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877-1536x1308.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/SARS-CoV-2_49531042877.jpg 1899w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px\" \/><figcaption>Whoever thought a global pandemic could look so delicious? <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>There are definitely times<\/strong> when I am aware that the guys who say we have no free will definitely have an argument, even if I don&#8217;t think they express themselves quite accurately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Case in point, most of the no-free-will guys (I&#8217;m looking at you Scott Adams) have made quite a pretty penny selling self-help books which depend quite a lot on people&#8217;s capacity to evaluate choices and select courses of action based on perceived and understood criteria, and if my consciousness isn&#8217;t the thing in actual control of that, if I&#8217;m <em>perceiving <\/em>this process after that fact, then that&#8217;s fine. If I&#8217;m a robot, that&#8217;s fine. There are robots that do things to preserve themselves too. I&#8217;m just a very advanced robot with self-modifying biological code. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of this to say: I spent the weekend doing fuckall and I know I probably shouldn&#8217;t have. But I sat there and kind of observed myself doing fuckall, and I knew I wasn&#8217;t going to do anything <em>but<\/em> fuckall, and when I was done with the weekend, and done with fuckall, I knew that today, I would shape myself up somehow, which I did, and the fuckall would end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trouble is, doing fuckall has left me a bit behind in some personally tracked metrics, ranging from my weight to my job hunt, and even to that time I posted a response to James Altucher who challenged me to write a book in thirty days, and then I posted what I thought was a clever response, saying &#8220;Challenge Accepted&#8221; and then did absolutely&#8230;well, fuckall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hmm. I wasn&#8217;t going to drop any more f-bombs in here while I&#8217;m looking for a job. Then again, nobody <em>quite<\/em> knows this thing exists, and\/or who writes it, which is me, but if you don&#8217;t know who I am, that&#8217;s fine, and it&#8217;s more likely that these bizarre run-on sentences are more of a turn off than the occasional fuck or kneebiter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re still in the universe where &#8220;kneebiter&#8221; is  the ultimate bad word right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What? C-Word? THAT? Oh man. I better check my simulation. This sounds like the SARS nCov-2 universe, and that place is nuts nuts nuts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway. I guess what I&#8217;m saying is, it&#8217;s interesting to watch what I do and don&#8217;t do and it&#8217;s interesting sometimes that I just can&#8217;t get up the wherewithal to do the things I have to do. Even though I know I have to do these things. What part if me does the knowing? What part of me does the doing? Should they be connected? Is it possible that they&#8217;re disconnected? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is this all nothing more than my perceptions perceiving themselves and creating a strange loop of endlessness that eventually just gets tired out and wants to lie on the couch watching YouTube and eating three-month-old peppermint bark and candy canes, all the while thinking <em>damn I should try carnivore<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You thought there was gonna be more? Nah. Still kinda waitin&#8217; for that fuckall biome to clear out so I can get back on track. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s entry will better. It will also be&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&#8230;Later!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are definitely times when I am aware that the guys who say we have no free will definitely have an argument, even if I don&#8217;t think they express themselves quite accurately. Case in point, most of the no-free-will guys (I&#8217;m looking at you Scott Adams) have made quite a pretty penny selling self-help books &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/recollections-of-internal-observations-of-mental-preoccupations\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Recollections of Internal Observations of Mental Preoccupations&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.vectrocom.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}