The Best Advice May Be: Don't Take It

I"m not sure how I feel about self-help books. I've read my fair share. Giving advice is a billion dollar industry and the Internet has made it that much easier for marketing the "how-to" book.  I like reading them. As a writer and artist, the books, web sites, blogs, YouTube videos and social networks provide a lot of information to help me do what I like to do: write screenplays and paint pictures. 

But I can only take so much. What am I really learning?

Alexander Woo, writer and co-executive producer of HBO's True Blood (2008), who is currently working on a series for AMC, suggests "throwing away the book." Maybe he's right.

Sometimes I feel overburdened by advice-givers.

The danger is watching all of those YouTube videos and reading all those blogs is that we might become burdened with a lot of baggage. Our minds may become saddled with systems, techniques, and methodologies like a donkey dragging a cart full of goat dung. I mean really, do we need all the advice?

Naturally, I'm giving advice here: watch out how much advice you take. The hazards of advice-taking are enormous.

The reality is we are unique. I am not like you. I am not like Picasso or Stephen King. I am me. I have my own ways of getting the job done. You do, too! Sometimes we might need to just toss out the self-help book.  Why not watch El Capo on Netflix instead of a YouTube video on "painting like the masters?"

I like what Alex told me, "Instead of seeking out what works in the minds of others, find out what works best for you." We all need motivation. We need to learn new skills and study our craft. However, no one knows me better than me. Right? I like writing and drawing in a journal, for example. That's one way I like to organize my thoughts. You may be different. You might hate the idea of journaling. We have to find our own path. 

We are encrusted by years of advice. Like lumps of clay stuck to our brains, we have been told how to do things right. It's time to free ourselves from the burdens of others telling us the best way to achieve success. No best way exists. It's a myth. 

What matters is my way, my methods, my work ethic. I have to discover for myself the best way to achieve a level of success that is right for me. If I have any advice to give, it's this:  take whatever I write or say with a huge grain of salt. Find your own way.

I Had a Doozy of a Dream Last Night

Dreams can be very strange, as you know. My dreams have overtly weird the last few weeks. I usually don't remember details, but lately I taste them, feel them, live them for a few moments after I wake up. It's odd. I'm not a person who normally remembers his dreams.

The reason may be my diet. I began a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet on June 1. It's a vegetarian diet with dairy products and eggs allowed (I like my cereal and omelets). For the last forty one days I've eliminated meats and sweets form my daily meals and I'm starting to take notice. My sleeping has deepened, my dreams becoming more intense.

I had a doozy of a dream last night. The details were noted in my iPad immediately just after waking up. I didn't want to forget it. These are my notes, just as I wrote them:

white van
blocked path bikes
lawn chairs to the right too narrow , branches left took the right path, cleared the debri
house...can't get the van through the house won't throughbthe kitchen garage door too narrow
we are st u.k.
what to do finally hit me...either go back the way we came, walk out and abandon the van or blast our way through...we can rebuild the house later we were going.
to tear a door down but a mechanical device working the garage door was in the way so we saw it wouldn't work
we did all three, some were sent back, some walked out, i decided to blast my way through
we were preparing to blow the house when i woke"

The dream-narrative went something like this. I was in a white van with a group of men and women. I was with a woman, someone familiar, we were a couple. I remember flirting, touching, arguing. Other couples were with us. The middle of the road ahead was blocked by foliage, thick brush and trees. To the right side, the path was blocked by a bicycle and stacks of lawn chairs. To the left, the path was open but too narrow for the van to pass. Tree branches were hanging down and blocking the way. I tried to drive through the narrow path but the van began to scrape the sides.

(I told you this was a doozy.)

We cleared the right path of the bicycle and debri and continued on. Instantly we were inside the garage of a house and the van was going nowhere. We tried to figure out how to drive the van on through the house. I saw the kitchen and asked, "Will it fit? Can we go that way?" "Not possible," the woman said. "The door is to narrow."

In my dream, my last decision was to blast my way through the house.

Then, one of the men was going to tear down the garage door to allow the van to move on. But I told him it would not work. I showed him the black piping and mechanical works of a gear system attached to the garage door. Tearing the door down won't help.

We were stuck.

At this point I remember thinking, "But we really aren't stuck. We have options. We can either go back the way we came, or abandon the van and walk out of the house and move ahead, or we can blast our way out." Since this was my dream, and I was the one making the decisions, I told the group we were going to do all three things at once. "Some of you head back the way we came. Some of you start walking ahead. I'll blast our way out."

That's when I woke up.

I'm going to state the obvious lesson here, and the reason I wanted to take note of this dream. Whenever we see our path blocked, and we feel stuck, there are options:  we can go back the way came, move ahead by abandoning our current method of travel, or we can blast our way through.