Ritual Practice

Here are some things that I do that are conceptually related, I swear:

• I don’t ship unfinished work. This means you’re never going to see a public work in progress from me, and when I update something I very much want you to discard the old form of it. This also means that if I do ship something, I consider it “done.” But also, I’m known for buying first editions of my books on second-hand sites and recycling them.
• For big things, I tend to roll out slowly. My first book was originally a 24-page zine that I printed 48 copies of, mailed to a bunch of people, and asked for feedback. The zine stands on its own, but it was also a lower-risk way of gathering feedback & shaping the idea.
• In worky-work stuff, I often conscript people as guinea pigs for free or very cheap when creating a new offering. They give me brutal, unflinching feedback in return. This helps shape the offering before launch.
• Before I start writing something big, I do a literature review of the topic. This involves me getting a bunch of books, reading through them, and taking notes. Days are literally spent at the library. This often takes months.
• The night before a big launch, I always tweet a pair of scissors cutting a dotted line: ✄ — — — — — — — —. And then when I launch something, I begin the announcement with a ☞. The scissors have become so popular – my “one more thing,” if you want to go there – that they are usually my most-liked posts.
• Every year, I teleport to another metro area and work on the business for a few days. This allows me to plan content for the following year, set intentions, rework the website, handle major features that require deep concentration, etc.

These are all different forms of ritual, and I view them as deeply important to the practice. I never really came up with them deliberately, but now that they’re part of the work I’m extremely grateful for them.

I keep trying to seek other ways to bring ritual into the practice, but maybe all of this is enough? I don’t want to be stifled by what I think I need to do at any point. I want to get rid of all of the psychic cruft that exists between myself and the work, and then I want to work.