When the Gavel Swings at Nothing

Show Notes

There is a specific kind of mental activity that mimics useful work while producing none. Brian opens this episode at 2 a.m., describing the anxious rehearsal of a problem that has not happened yet and may never happen. The gavel is swinging, but there is nothing there to shape. The level is activating a stress response to a future threat that exists only as projection. This is not laziness or weakness. It is a misapplication of a real capacity, the mind's ability to model future scenarios, running without a concrete object to work on.

Brian draws from Masonic ritual to offer a practical technique: lettering. In lodge work, lettering a password means delivering it in pieces rather than whole. Applied to anxiety, it means breaking a vague, circular fear down into named, specific components. What exactly is the worry? What is the actual downstream consequence? Has this specific outcome happened to someone else in a comparable situation, and did it produce the catastrophe you are rehearsing? Naming the fear precisely interrupts the loop and creates something the mind can actually evaluate. From there, Brian walks through applying additional operative tools: the secretary's apron to sort fact from feeling, the treasurer's apron to ask what the worrying is actually costing.

Brian is clear that he is not trivializing anxiety, having lived with it himself. The point is that a misapplied level aimed at a future that does not exist yet is draining the present moment without producing any useful output, and lettering the problem is a direct, low-effort intervention that changes that.

• Anxious future-projection as a misapplication of the level against non-existent problems
• Why anxiety loops feel productive even when they produce nothing
• Lettering as a ritual-derived technique for naming and breaking down vague fears
• Using the secretary's and treasurer's aprons to evaluate the content and cost of worry
• The difference between genuine risk planning and circular anxious rehearsal
• Protecting present capacity from sacrifice to a future that may never arrive

The lettering technique is simple enough to use at 2 a.m. without a notebook, and Brian's framing makes it feel less like a coping strategy and more like applied operative work, which is exactly what it is.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] So it's 2 a.m.
[00:04] You can't sleep.
[00:07] Your brain is running at super high speed against a whiff of a problem.
[00:20] You're up all night with anxiety.
[00:25] About what might go wrong, about the next thing that could happen, about all of the crazy things that could be.
[00:38] This is a misapplication of the level.
[00:43] When we start planning correctly and start meaningfully identifying obstacles and risks to our plans and designs,
[00:51] we can use this concept, this anxiety or this projection into the future in a productive way.
[01:01] When we don't have a concrete understanding of what's going on, it is a misapplication of that capacity.
[01:12] It is the level activating the gavel.
[01:19] It's like, hey, something's coming.
[01:22] Let's get on it and make sure that we're doing the best thing we can, the best version of ourselves.
[01:28] Taking all of the rough edges off.
[01:31] Except the parts of you that you are projecting into the future here don't exist.
[01:40] So it's like the gavel swinging at air.
[01:44] You are trying to be protective about a problem that doesn't exist.
[01:56] And every time you swing, you hit nothing.
[01:59] You swing again and you swing harder.
[02:02] And you try and find, how am I going to deal with this?
[02:04] How am I going to solve this problem?
[02:05] And the biggest challenge with this as a concept, apart from the fact that it's 2 a.m.
[02:12] and you're depriving yourself of meaningful rest, which is a junior warden's issue,
[02:16] you have this really strong desire to not mess up.
[02:22] And no way to connect that to what's actually fixable.
[02:32] And there's a real reason why this anxious rehearsal feels productive.
[02:38] It mimics the motion of regular problem solving.
[02:41] You're doing the stuff, right?
[02:43] As you go through the anxiety loop where you think about what could happen, you identify
[02:48] that maybe as a way that you could solve it.
[02:50] And then what's next?
[02:51] And then what's next?
[02:52] But there's nothing there.
[02:57] It feels somewhat useful.
[03:03] But again, we'll get into kind of ways we can look at this.
[03:07] In our ritual, we talk about the idea when we're conferring or giving passwords and things
[03:16] like that.
[03:16] How are we going to come to a knowledge of the password?
[03:19] One of the ways that we go to come to a knowledge of a password is lettering it.
[03:22] And lettering it is essentially the equivalent of giving something a name in small bites.
[03:27] So when we letter a problem or when we talk about a problem that we have and give it a name,
[03:36] that is the micro solve for the misapplication of the level against a future problem.
[03:46] Letter it.
[03:48] What is the thing you're worried about?
[03:51] Follow that consequence upstream.
[03:54] Follow it downstream.
[03:55] Hey, I'm worried that this presentation I'm going to give tomorrow at work is going to
[04:01] fall flat.
[04:02] And I think that if I don't get this right, then I'm going to lose my job.
[04:08] And you begin to give those thoughts, which are for most people, rough and ambiguous and
[04:16] circular, real names and consequences.
[04:21] You're lettering that problem down to what is it that's actually my fear and concern.
[04:29] As you go through that process of lettering the problem, you then create something that
[04:36] the mind can actually work with.
[04:38] You start like, hey, let's look at by example.
[04:43] Has anyone else in my workplace flubbed the presentation before?
[04:48] And did they immediately get walked out of the building with a box of their stuff?
[04:53] If that didn't happen, then can my career tolerate a whiff?
[04:58] Okay, cool.
[05:01] So I'm not going to die.
[05:03] I'm not going to lose my job.
[05:05] Great.
[05:06] Start working on building up using your other aprons, using the other capacities you have
[05:11] at your disposal.
[05:12] The secretary's apron.
[05:13] What's true?
[05:13] What's false?
[05:13] What's feelings?
[05:15] The treasurer's apron.
[05:16] What's the ROI here?
[05:17] What does worrying buy me?
[05:18] What does the consequence of my behavior look like?
[05:21] Start bringing in these other perspectives then once you've lettered the problem to help
[05:27] you take some of the sting out of it.
[05:31] I'm not trying to trivialize anxiety.
[05:32] I've had it for my whole life.
[05:35] So I know what it is.
[05:36] I know how it works.
[05:37] But as we talk about this and misapply these kinds of things like the level to the future
[05:42] version of ourselves, we really run risk of sapping our present moment and sacrifice
[05:50] to a future that will never come.
[05:55] We'll talk more tomorrow.