{"id":3748,"date":"2014-09-13T23:23:45","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T05:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=3748"},"modified":"2014-09-16T06:51:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T12:51:21","slug":"prairie-lights-a-mind-is-a-terrible-thing-to-motivate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/09\/prairie-lights-a-mind-is-a-terrible-thing-to-motivate\/","title":{"rendered":"A mind is a terrible thing to motivate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Computer\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Sometimes your mind, which is the subject of today’s Prairie Lights column, might tell you that you need something to illustrate your column, and that something like this will work. And you believe him!<\/p><\/div>\n

People often ask, how does the mind of a newspaper columnist \u2014 or that of a digital newspaper columnist \u2014 work?<\/p>\n

The short answer is that it rarely does. Instead, it seeks diversion and distraction and asks to be plied with coffee, or, later in the day, alcohol. Ostensibly, these are stimulants that will help the mind do its work, but in fact they are merely different kinds of diversions and distractions.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/a>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

Why does the mind do this? I\u2019ll tell you.<\/p>\n

We sometimes say of a person that he is \u201cof two minds,\u201d by which we mean that he is torn between two courses of action or cannot choose one option over another.<\/p>\n

In another sense, we are all of two minds all the time. There is one mind that we, the animated carcasses that provide a permanent domicile to our brains, use to process information and perform all those functions that we need to do to get through the day.<\/p>\n

Alongside this mind \u2014 at any rate, this is how I see it, in my mind<\/em> \u2014 is that other mind, that separate part of the brain that we converse with, and attempt, usually in vain, to control.<\/p>\n

This is the mind that the newspaper columnist humbly sidles up to, full of deference and humility, and asks if it could please buckle down, if it isn\u2019t too much trouble, and within a reasonable period of time work with that other part of the mind to produce something worthwhile for his reading public.<\/p>\n

Immediately, this mind, this font of creativity and the cradle of all one\u2019s hopes and aspirations, realizes what an enormous advantage it has over you, its host. You might have fooled yourself into thinking that this mind was primed and ready to work, champing at the bit to do your bidding.<\/p>\n

But once you have made that fatal request, your mind instantly assumes the appearance of a corpulent pasha settling down on a pile of the softest pillows. He begins snapping his fingers, asking for coffee, delectable viands, dancing girls and his hookah.<\/p>\n

Oh, yes, it assures you, it will do its work. All in good time, all in good time. But how to work without all those things it has just begun demanding? So perhaps you give in, throwing open the doors to any number of distractions, telling yourself \u2014 against all the evidence of a lifetime \u2014 that maybe that mind really does need all these things to get the job done.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>And so you wait, and wait, and in the meantime you can\u2019t help noticing that these so-called stimulants have begun to dull your mind, this other mind, and that every diversion is like a piece of wood on a fire, which only grows larger and demands more fuel.<\/p>\n

Or say you have a cold, a wretched head cold that makes thinking almost painful. That other mind, that independent contractor immune to threats that he is going to be fired, latches onto this cold as if it were his oldest friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWork?\u201d it asks. \u201cYou want me to work when this head cold has debilitated all my senses, robbed me of cognition, wit and fluency? What kind of monster are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

You want to argue, but this head cold\u2026<\/p>\n

You try to play nice, telling your mind that it isn\u2019t work, not really, it\u2019s just putting words down on a screen, merely interrupting the constant flow of the words that thoughts are made of and snatching a few of them away, expending a wee bit of labor to line them up in acceptable order.<\/p>\n

Just look at all the things in the world you could pontificate on, you tell it, or perhaps out of which you could milk some humor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumor?\u201d your minds thunders back. \u201cHumor! With a head cold? Of all the presumptuous, heedless, inconsiderate things I\u2019ve ever heard, that takes the cake. It\u2019s humor you want, is it? Well, give me a few minutes and I\u2019m sure I could think of something hilarious to say about Syria. Or maybe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

And then he\u2019s off to the races and you couldn\u2019t shut him up if you tried. His thundering doesn\u2019t really hurt, though, because you realize that this is simply another of his diversions, one of the countless things he finds to do when he is called to work.<\/p>\n

And so it goes. You repeat the process again and again, sometimes introducing a variant on a plea or an argument, sometimes combining several familiar approaches in a new way.<\/p>\n

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that he always gives in in the end because this is your job and he\u2019s got to eat, too. But you never know how long it will take, how exhausting it will be, how fully he will cooperate once he gives in and begins to get something done.<\/p>\n

Sometimes he will surprise you, just as the Muse is said to do, presenting you with something so pleasing and unexpected that you want to hug him and forgive him all his childish tantrums and maddening intransigence.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, of course, he fools you. Having worn you out, he persuades you that what he finally comes up with is brilliant. It is only after a good night\u2019s sleep, by which time you have already put his work out there for all the world to see, that you realize how wretched it really is.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, say when you have that head cold we were talking about, you don\u2019t even care. Just give me something, you will say, anything. And that other mind will answer, arrogant and fully aware of his power over you:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnimated carcass, take a memo: \u2018People often ask\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People often ask, how does the mind of a newspaper columnist \u2014 or that of a digital newspaper columnist \u2014 work? The short answer is that it rarely does. Instead, it seeks diversion and distraction and asks to be plied with coffee, or, later in the day, alcohol. Ostensibly, these are stimulants that will help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1323,1321,1322,1320],"class_list":["post-3748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-head-cold","tag-newspapers","tag-pasha","tag-the-mind","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}