Psychology Is Sort of a Hobby of Mine, or Why I’ve Always Been So Interested In Metaphysics

by | Aug 12, 2019 | Articles | 2 comments

I chose the image above for today’s blog post for a couple reasons: first, it’s cool, but second, it’s also kind of all over the place. And isn’t that what metaphysics are all about?

A quick Google search shows the definition of metaphysics as “a field of philosophy that is generally focused on how reality and the universe began. An example of metaphysics is a study of God versus the Big Bang theory.” Now, those are some pretty big questions, so of course it’s not unusual for a writer to contemplate them.

What is unusual is when said writer owns a copy of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Metaphysics, mental health, psychology, spiritualitythey’re all interconnected in my world.

 

All The Way Back To High School

In terms of its beginnings in my life, my interest in the metaphysical probably goes back to my earliest days: a religious upbringing (later abandoned), exposure to the beauty of nature, and a strong education all combined to make me both wonder about, and fear, the “big answers.”

By the time I hit high school, I was reading books as diverse as Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals and the King James Version of The Bible.

Growing up in an alcoholic home, though, I had another slant on all these things: I guessed at what “normal” is, and swung wildly between spiritual ecstasy and abject despair. And I developed my own problem with chemical dependency—psychedelics and “spirits” as the pathways to so-called enlightenment.

 

A Lifelong Pursuit

Skip ahead a few years, and we find a portrait of the artist as an increasingly elder man. Decades of sobriety have brought a certain balance and good health through my adult life, but issues remain. My sense of wonder has been tempered, but my sense of self is stronger than it was as a youngster or adolescent.

And books have been there all the way. From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, a source of mystery and wisdom, to Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, which brings together Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, and Western individualism, books concerned with metaphysics have often dominated my reading list.

Of course, some stand out more than others—like The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “a moral allegory and spiritual autobiography,” according to Goodreads, or the early books of Carlos Castaneda, which I briefly mention in my own recent novel, Whizzers.

These and countless other books have informed and shaped my thinking, but, I must admit, left me with few answers. Perhaps that’s the most compelling reason of all for a lifelong interest in the metaphysical: there’s no sure answer to life’s big questions. Yet we all keep on searching.

announcing

Announcing The Whizzers Launch Team!

This weekend, I got my edited copy of Whizzers back from editing and sent out my monthly newsletter announcing the formation of the Whizzers Launch Team. Stuff is a-happening! As Mike Ehrmantraut once said to Jessie Pinkman, "Big doings today." Of course, that...
IngramSpark KDP

Using IngramSpark and KDP Print For Your Paperbacks

This week's post is about using two different companies for Print-On-Demand publishing—IngramSpark and KDP. Ever since Amazon began offering services to authors, there's been a question in the indie author community: should I use them? My answer, initially, was a...
catholic school

I Survived Catholic School

This post isn’t meant to be provocative, though I understand my readers who also happen to be good Catholics might see it that way. No, it’s something else altogether.Years ago, it wasn’t unusual to hear someone talking about how the nuns hit their knuckles with...
editor

Need A Writer? An Editor? A Proofreader? How About All Of The Above?

Late last week I got a call from a husband and wife asking about vanity publishers. Yes, such predatory companies are still out there, preying on the hopeful. These nice folks asked me if it sounded legit when a "publisher" offered to put the wife's book out for a...

Short Story Contest Part II

Last week, I launched a short story contest here on my blog as part of a major national promotion. To recap: this is not a call for submissions; I'm serializing a short story in anticipation of my upcoming release of a short collection. Here's how it works: read it...
break

You Deserve A Break Today

The last few weeks’ worth of blog posts have been downers, and I appreciate everyone who has read them, sent me messages, and in general been encouraging. This week needs to be lighter. A lot lighter. So I’m going back to one of my favorite topics: writing. I’m on a...
ledge

Nightmare On Acid Street

In my mind, I flash back to a time years ago, and the image strikes me with peculiar clarity—the dismal boarding house where I lived when I was newly sober, the shattering acid flashback with its neon cockroaches skittering across the dirty ceiling. Then, further back...
run

The End of a Good Run

I’ve had a pretty good run the last five or six weeks: last week’s blog post, entitled What Books Cost Their Authors: A Tale of Blood, Sweat & Tears, had the best “headline quality score” I’ve ever attained (yes, I run my headlines through an analyzer for SEO, to...
book launch

Book Launch Time: The Biggest Day In A Writer’s Life

Over the past few weeks, I've been posting ideas with the intention of providing a service to my fellow authors—in particular, those new to the publishing game. Anyone familiar with my work most likely knows about my most recent novel, Whizzers, and for a couple...
self-promotion

What’s The Problem With Shameless Self-Promotion?

While I still find it somewhat hard to believe, I've been on Twitter for almost eight years. I know this not only because Twitter shows Joined March 2015 on my profile but also because, even if they eliminate that feature, I use a tracker called Who Unfollowed Me? If...
MLK

MLK Day 2023

Here’s wishing everyone a safe, sane Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For many of us, today is always something of a day of mourning: not only mourning the loss of a great civil rights leader, but also mourning the turn our great nation seemed to take in recent years....

Twitter Tips for Authors in 2023

If you follow my blog, you probably connected with me via Twitter, whether you’re a fellow author or not. In 2020, I wrote a post about Twitter for fellow writers that got a good response. Three years later, the landscape has changed, but some Twitter best practices...
rails

Going Off The Rails (But Not On A Crazy Train)

Last April, I wrote a blog post called Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress. Part of that post was to talk about the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser” (and to describe myself as a hybrid of the two, a “plantser”). Another, less obvious motive, was to...
French

Those Tricky French Authors and Their Obsessions

Today’s blog post was originally going to be Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. III. However, after seeing parts I and II lined up, I decided to call an audible and make it something less repetitive. Somehow the SEO gods have gotten into my head. As I’ve mentioned...
scared

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. II

In last week’s post, I mentioned a pretty well-known author who has publicly reported his publisher “wouldn’t touch” a new release, in part because a character in his novel referred to herself as “fat.” I heard this story on a podcast, and I remember thinking, “Wait...
censorship

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want

I’ve been stewing on this for a while. It’s been brewing for quite a while. I could probably write a song about it (how about a rap?), but I don’t think I will. This is more of a blog post topic, and it might even deserve a series. And that’s the title and topic of...
gratitude

Should Every Month Be Gratitude Month?

When I was a kid, I loved Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. I read it daily and collected nearly every paperback volume of the cartoon, so I could see what I’d missed since the comic strip’s inception in 1950.  Certain things stuck: quotes like “happiness is a warm puppy”...
robot

More Thoughts On Robot Writers and The Tech Dystopia

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post here called When Will the Robot Overlords Replace Us? Apparently, I’m fairly obsessed with this stuff, because every time I come here and empty my brain, it seems to come up again. Today is no different. Part of the reason,...