By July 14, 2014 I had lowered my sleep schedule to about 4 hrs a night. Interestingly enough, my roommates commented several times that they heard me doing stuff in my bedroom during the hours I was sleeping. I’ve slept like a log my entire life so I have to assume there was something “very interesting” going on at that time.
Every morning I looked in the mirror, at first visualizing Tyler and after several days a sort of an idealized version of myself, and said: “You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” I saw this as a great morning motivational speech. I’ve never considered myself a terribly material person, but I think this is a fantastic reminder, and then the last part puts you in your place if you’re getting high and mighty. I did eventually change the “you’re”s to “I’m”s though.
Then there was what I called an NLP-style modeling invocation method: I Watched the movie as often as possible. In all, I’m talking a few hundred times. It was constantly playing if I was at home. One of the reasons for this was to Memorize Tyler’s lines, speech patterns, mannerisms, etc. Not to mention a massive amount of pics, quotes, and essays from varying sources on my facebook page.
I also picked the aphorism “First you’ve gotta know – not fear, know – that someday you’re gonna die.” as a personal mantra and began repeating it as often as possible.
I’d visualize myself as Tyler throughout my daily business, saying “I am Tyler Durden”.
I started experimenting with Minimalism by taking most of my clothing to Goodwill. I also got rid of all the stuff in my room I wasn’t actively using. This would have probably been more shocking for me if I didn’t have roommates and did the entire house, but now I know Tyler was just preparing me for the future.
I went on a very short “Technology fast”. I started working on being more focused (as in “Everywhere we went we were sizing things up”). I started asking myself “Have I been asleep?” at random times throughout the day. This actually turned out to promote lucid dreaming.
Based on the aphorism “No Fear. No Distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.” , I started thinking about my goals, values, beliefs, etc. in short, what truly matters to me. At about the same time, a friend of mine started randomly messaging me “What did you want to be, David J. Clifton?” This wasn’t my idea. He just started doing it. Here’s an example of my mental frame at the time:
(from a July 14, 2014 facebook post)
I mentioned earlier that I like my job. I also mentioned earlier that I honestly feel like I am what I wanted to be, which incidentally has nothing to do with my job. Also, in the past few years, since my divorce, I’ve accomplished goals I sat for myself a decade or more ago. Did you notice I said “since my divorce” right there? I’ve noticed lately the phrase “since my divorce” comes up a lot in conversations I have. Honestly, I’ve dealt with this in a variety of ways. Some of them were even akin to what you’d expect Voldamort to do in a similar situation. I’m not going to go into my personal drama, especially since it’s in the past. What I’ve owned in the past few days is that I’m still having issues with it. I have work to do. Again, Is it a reason to want to, as the movie says, “wake up as someone else.” Fuck No.
At some point over the past week and a half I described myself as an “overweight middle-aged guy” in one of my posts. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is, regardless of everything I like about me, or that I’m proud of, at some point that’s how I view myself. I’m 41 years old. I come from a family of large framed people. I have a serious taste for beer and pizza. Could I benefit from being a little less indulgent? Absolutely. Is it a reason to want to, as the movie says, “wake up as someone else.” Fuck No.
So, looking at Tyler Durden as some sort of “Dark Buddhism Enlightened teacher”, what have I learned in this short time? Tyler doesnt want me to be him. Tyler wants me to quit holding back and be me. Tyler wants me to embrace life and live it, and have experiences I’ve never had.
It was at this point I decided to go ahead with “PHASE 2” of the Working.
