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MOTIVATIONAL_SLOG

                                                    April 4, 2022

The motivational slogan is an interesting genre:
evaluating them is nothing like evaluating a
claim about whether something is true, it's
an entirely a matter of whether it *works*.

And obviously, different slogans may work for
different people, at certain times, but not
necessarily for others.
                                              EST
    Werner Earhardt would say things like
    "If not you, who?  If not now, when?"           Lifted from Hillel the
                                                    Elder, apparently.
    From one point of view, that's pretty
    inane: "somebody else", and "later",              https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/if-not-now-when-a-recent-history-of-hillels-misattributed-maxim-from-ivanka-trump-to-ronald-reagan
    right?  And why are you asking me?
                                                        (Funny, I was thinking
    But if you hear that and walk out of the            maybe Golda Meir. Still
    lecture feeling inspired and thinking               wrong, though closer
    "That's right, I *can* do it!" then the             than Ivanka, but I
    slogan works-- and it works particularly            don't find that an
    well if you inspire some other sucker to            inspiring thought.)
    pay to hear it next time.


For myself, the space of                                         
effective motivational slogans     There are slogans associated       
feels tremendously depleted,       with British nannys like           
many of them have been mined       "begin as you mean to              
out already, leaving them          continue", and "well begun is     (Picked up
contaminated by negative           half done".  These are            on from
associations ("Just do it!").      contaminated for me because       a Modesty
                                   I'm aware *other* people find     Blaise
                                   them stale and uncool.            novel.)
                                                                      
                                                  Easy enough to do  
Worse, I've contrived a lot of                    a contrarian flip
them myself over the years, and                   of that, no?
there's nothing more depressing
than a motivational slogan that      METHOD
didn't work last time.
                                               EMPTY_OATHS
Making one's "old excuses
sound new" may be difficult,
but far worse is dusting off                Jim Carroll
an old motivational slogan.                 "The City Drops
                                            into the Night"


I stumbled across this old
page from over ten years ago:

     MOVING_MOUNTAINS

And it seems like an interesting approach...
However, I don't know how well it *worked*
exactly: far from being a "daily prayer" I'd
dropped it completely after several months,
and thereafter forgot the page even existed
for a decade.


What's going on there is I was at the height of           STEINS_GATE
my worship of the Jcult, and was doing something
much like the main character of "Steins;Gate"--
repurposing random phrases from popular fiction,
using them in a very oblique way, hovering
between dada nonsense and deep poetic expression--

And not incidently, dodging the stale and contaminated.

                                                 
     It could be I should try something like this again...     
                                                               
         I've been thinking it might be important             
         to have symbolic resets, to generate a
         sense of beginning again, just to avoid
         any feeling that you're completely stuck.

         Half the battle is to keep the battle
         from feeling useless.
                                                     
             Something simple and memorable       
             that won't necessarily mean much     The Green              
             anything to anyone else-- and        Lantern incantation
             maybe shouldn't mean anything.                
                                                                       
                  Maybe just:                   "Ooltramahn Zed!"      
                                                                   
                  "Reset. Restart"                
                                                  
                                              There was a time I
                                              remember when I was
                                              frantically busy, but I
                                              would periodically stop
                                              and close my eyes, and
                                              think "*Just a moment.
                                              Just a second.*"




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