TOTW: Endings

I end projects--as does everyone. I might let one fade away, with nary an update, until it has long been forgotten, or they will kind of sputter on for a couple years, while I kind of wish someone else would pick (one of) them up, or that some thing would give it a gust of air and bring it back to life. The Anvil was like that. How do you keep a totally worthwhile project going when you are kind of tapped out on it?

This TOTW is about endings, how to do them right, examples of doing them wrong, and how does one tell the difference?

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Stopping & Giving Up are a couple of my favorite aesthetics.

i would wear a teeshirt that said that. i would also throw rotten fruit at a teeshirt that said that.
full feedback cycle.

i'd writhe in the rotting fruit in orgiastic pleasure

Coffee saved me from living in a snow cave with early stages frostbite!

I dunno... it seems to me that when projects don't pay off more or equal than what you put in (or you feel as such), they're a failed project. The ideal would be the equivalent of sitting down at a desk and having people throwing all kinds of goodies at ya. Some homeless people achieve that, tho not very healthy living tho. I wouldn't say they're in some ideal situation neither.

your zero/sum mindset sucks and your ROI expectations are unrealistic

but sometimes (all the time?) there are mixes of feelings/"pay offs" and not only that but they change over time. after a minute, like anon points to, there's the "i've invested enough in this to keep doing it even though it hurts", which can be bad, but doesn't have to be (although usually it means that someone's gotten bored/uncreative, which usually means that not much good can come out of it, but again, doesn't have to!). my point is that it's frequently not clear whether something has stopped being worth the effort or not. i went to a reading group because i wanted to read different things and talk about them. i stopped doing the readings (even though that meant i didn't get as much out of the group), but i learned a lot about people and how to talk. unforeseen consequences, right?
i dunno either.

Coffee dragged me away from my sustainable hunter/gatherer existence chaining myself to trees to being an entrepreneurial paleo diet franchise owner driving a porsche.

No, but seriously I believe the existing dominant mindset of modern consumerism which is a vanity-based type of "inadequancy compensation reflex", a " look at me, I've got a big clean dick (not really, just a big shiny car and boat covered with a silk cloth). As the first comment allured to, an aesthetic related to "giving up things" or being unattached, what zen pursues, live in the moment etc, see the beauty in doing nothing to pollute the essential beingness naked and pure in joy. This inadequancy compensation reflex, ICR in short, is what capitalism preys upon. Its about giving up, which is the yoga aesthetic!

Cocaine turned me into a raving jackass on a bicycle and a preening pouting fool upon the dance floor!

Everything ends; a given.
How to do endings right?
That would discount all the endings we don’t do, but rather do us or just happen.
So only deliberate endings (unintentional vs deliberate endings).

Diminishing returns, founder’s syndrome, and sequelitis.
Sunk costs fallacy. Quitting while you’re ahead (Mentioning things that come to mind without elaborating).

Folding early vs going all in: you can loose big doing both, but only win big doing the latter, though the first might keep you in the game around for next turn when cards favor you.

So there’s generally speaking 2 ways to end something: abruptly vs tapering off.

But there’s also the type of ambiguous endings that are just lulls or pauses...

With relationships, two things cone to mind: ghosting, burning bridges vs growing apart.

Variety (Breadth)implies many things, each for a short duration of your attention. Depth (Monography, monotony) implies fewer things under longer duration of attention.

Pistols drawn was a cool project too.

“How do you keep a totally worthwhile project going when you are kind of tapped out on it?”

The passive nihilist understands that their participation is unnecessary for the world to keep spinning.

I usually find other people elsewhere (in other places or times) are doing or have done things I wanted to do with varying degrees of quality/success.

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to live with or without doing it.

“This TOTW is about endings, how to do them right, examples of doing them wrong, and how does one tell the difference?”

idunno, someone quote TVTropes

One can have preferences in endings in narrative or music, or in conflict.

zen would say there are no wrong feelings and no endings (?)

Think of la ZAD or

Would you make a final stand “with your feet nailed to the ground” or flee before the crackdown?

So sometimes one is uncomfortable with the unease of change and ambiguity and transitions and one wants to make things clear-cut and delimit endings and beginnings, periods, categories etc.

If we let things run their course without stamping out possibilities we might get surprised by what comes out.
Instead of saying “it’s definitely over” and turning your back to it you could think “it looks like it’s over” and ease your attention from it without loosing it out of your sight/periphery or awareness. You might notice it come back in strange ways. You might notice its continuity in the life cycles of the different beings within the living environment its nested in.

Wandering off is to show a kind of practiced incompetence in writing, in thinking — towards the thesis, at least. And much of what is classed as incompetence is in fact a sophisticated and indirect resistance. It could be called nonvoluntary. The thought “in my incompetence I resist” is a more precise instance of the realization “I am already revolting” invoked above. The incompetence in question is something like an unconscious or semi-conscious sabotage of the performance of competence: the dreadful seriousness of willful intervention, force, self-assertion. Someone willfully incompetent finds joy in shame and embarrassment and is well positioned to discover what is glorious in failure. She dwells in the brightness of her symptomatic actions, and could go on to discover in herself the intelligence of a thousand conflicting drives, the multiplicity of passions that does not mirror the supposed totality of the world but consumes it and shatters it, as it is consumed and shattered by it.

relevant quote from https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alejandro-de-acosta-wandering-of...

waddayknow speaking of The Anvil Review

damn. hadn't heard this before. fuggin heavy. \m/

This also seems to be (partly) a question about burnout which is a dead horse that I don't wish to beat (vegan). If there's anything (somewhat) original I can say about this it's that sometimes things just can't be kept alive? Especially under the dissociation of the internet even popular things (need to) die, and are occasionally easy to kill. And as I dislike the logic of iterative progress I believe in the potential of different growth (i.e death and rebirth). (XOXO) ()

All the King's Horses are dead and forgotten.
Dépaysement of the internet serves to keep unoriginality alive, popular dead things are recuperation.
Things are kept alive and degraded as mockery by repetition (memes).

Memes are classic détournement, tho. Just usually not very tasteful or well-inspired... several being outright idiocy. And funny at that, but maybe also... worrying?

my comment was a forced attempt to shoehorn in situ references, gratuitously and vacuously.
this was meant as a comment on the TOTW regarding endings.
the I.S. supposedly disbanded before it could be recuperated.
now their ideas circulate as maldigested regurgitated soundbites and memes.
so their forceful end did not prevent their recuperated afterlife. or something like that. there was no profound statement to be made. i just saw horses and thought of that.

you may enjoy your memes without remorse.
tasty morsels of alienated labor/leisure.
chuckle smugly at them while you poop during work hours. say “thank god there’s memes or else my life would suck! what a bore it would be!”

Ending is just a word to describe an opinion. For example, the end of the skiing in Switzerland does not end but simulated on computer screens. Nothing really ends in the eternally recurring existent.

Non-anthropocentric ending is in approximately 4 billion years, just sayin' ;)

NO ENDINGS FOREVER! MASTER GILLIS HAS FOUND A WORMHOLE WHICH LOOPS BACK TO THE START. HOORAH BRAVE GILLIS!!!

Good question, worker. Ending projects properly feels important, even just as way to honour the work that had been put in. Being consistent is not in itself worthwhile, but its absence is almost always a problem. so assessing if what you're doing still feels valuable, being a bit ruthless while still being commited...

Its a bit like relationships, because we get given this story that what doesn't continue forever fails, that taking space or reducing energy are signs of problems. But I'd say its more about how things are done.

Doesn't sound like a worthwhile project to you since you have found it grating and boring.

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