Shit the point I wanted to make before I began that circle–it’s always circles with me, interlocking, connecting, going God only knows where–was that Stable Fear Patterns (SFP’s, although I’m not going to be the sadist who starts recurring to that) underlie a large amount of behavior we see out there, and that means that much of what people do is driven. They are not, in other words, the primary drivers. Some part of their nervous system hits the gas, and their only choice is how to direct that nervous energy. Many people learn to direct it very productively, and they become the elites in everything. But take, say, Tom Brady. It may be that he is, even now, driven by fear of failure. In his particular case, though, I would say, as he has said, that it has become fun. But early on that was likely a large factor. This is true for many greats in all fields: medicine, architecture, business, etc.
Being a driver does not mean you cannot accomplish a lot. But it means you do not NEED to, and that when a pause of some sort is needed, you can take it. While granting I do not know much about his life, it is my understanding that in the middle of his career, while he was doing very well, Wagner just stopped for a period of years. He wanted to be sure he was really doing what he wanted to do. So he just stopped, and relative to his usual work output, sat on his hands for several years, maybe more.
From the outside, without more data, that would seem to be a genuinely creative personality. There are times when the work flows into you, and you have to allow it to flow out, but in these cases, there is structure, there is content. True, there is relief, but it not a constant driving tension, and it can be expressed, and released, creating a positive feeling.
I myself exist in an uneasy crossfire between what are most likely multiple SFP’s and a corresponding counter-reaction asking me to do nothing, to tell those SFPs to fuck themselves, because I’m getting drunk and fucking up all their plans. But of course they don’t have plans. All they do is give me fear, and if I had a place where fear was constructive, like the military or law enforcement, I would be able to rationalize it as necessary and appropriate. But I don’t.
So I continue to sit back and watch these fields interacting with one another, trying to learn to massage them into more reasonable, more palatable, more constructive shapes. This is Nye, as I understand the concept.