Category: Philosophy

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Philosophy Vague Direction Book

11 Lessons From Writing A Book

“Writing is hard for every last one of us… Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Cheryl Strayed

[dropcap]The[/dropcap] Vague Direction book is finally available. It’s called… drumroll… Vague Direction: A 12,000 mile bicycle ride, and the meaning of life. [It’s available here: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com]

It’s been a difficult creative process to figure out. There’s been plenty of ups and downs involved, but it’s turned into something I’m pleased with, simply because it was very tempting at times to stop and not see it through. The jury’s out on whether it’s actually any good, mind, as I honestly have no clue anymore. But hopefully it’s something that some people who read this blog may enjoy.

As this is my first book, and the long-form writing process was something new to me, inevitably some tidbits from the trenches have been picked up along the way. So, to any of you out there who’re wanting to write a book, hopefully these lessons come in handy. They’re not for everyone, but maybe they are for you?

  1. Don’t tell anyone you’re writing a book

    Not until you’re really close to having it finished, at least. I wish I’d never told anyone until the final three months. Two things can happen when you speak too soon. 1) People gloss over and don’t believe you, because pretty much everyone is “working on a book.” And 2) talking about it too early will drive you crazy, because there’s hundreds or thousands of hours still to go, and thinking of the end goal prematurely will throw all sorts of motivational spanners in the works. When it becomes easier to talk about writing a book, instead of actually writing it, something is wrong, and that’s why 95% of people who say they’ll write one, never do. Keep quiet, put your head down, and get on with the work. I wish I’d known this earlier.     

  2. It will take far, far longer than you originally think

    “Two months. I’m going to rent the cheapest AirBnB imaginable, start writing, and in two months I’ll come back with the book done.” A complete idiot said this once. I won’t tell you who, other than to say he fully believed it at the time. Writing a book is not quick, not if you want to produce something that you think might be half-decent, and certainly not if it isn’t your full-time gig. Books take massive amounts of time to create. Even ones you think are bad have taken someone, somewhere, a desperate amount of time. Count on the process taking far longer than you think it will, and be okay with that. 

  3. At times you’ll hate it, and yourself

    You absolutely will be hit by wave upon wave of self-doubt. These are the moments in which people give up and never finish their project. You think what you’re doing is pointless. You think it’s no good and your story is rubbish. You think no-one will care and no-one will read it. You remember that you could be using this time to have a life instead of staring at a computer creating something that might not even generate any money or opportunities. These are all reasonable doubts, sensible even, and it is completely rational to act on them by giving up. But if you want it enough, you have to be fiercely stubborn by getting to the end at all costs.

  4. Avoid critical blows 

    Some people aren’t good for your project. They might mean well. They might not even realise that what they say has a long-term effect. But someone who gives you criticism when your book is at a vulnerable stage can destroy it. The world is full of different personality types, and some people are wired to give spontaneous criticism. You should ignore these people, for your own sanity. Remember – they don’t make stuff, they just take petty delight in knocking the work of others. Your first book will always be at a vulnerable stage, so do everything you can to not let these people affect you. Do not show them your work. And if you do get metaphorically punched in the balls by anyone early on, brush it off, tell them to jog on, and don’t take it to heart for too long.

  5. Stay active or the process will destroy you

    Here’s a dirty secret. At the end of the Vague Direction bike trip, I was physically fitter than I’d been in about 6 years. In contrast to that, at the end of writing the book, I was (am) really unfit. With Proper Work™, plus the writing, I spent pretty much a year sat behind a computer for hours upon hours almost every day. This is NOT a good way of doing things, and I will never do it again. Please, don’t do what I did! Build exercise and time off into your everyday schedule. 

  6. Don’t be a hermit

    Here’s another dirty secret. I messed up. Writing a book did not play nicely with having much of a life. I didn’t make much time for anything other than staring at a computer, and would make excuses to not see people because being ‘in the zone’ was something I wasn’t willing to lose. The flow is important to the outcome of the project, but remember to have perspective, and if in doubt, make more time for hanging out and leisure. Don’t be a fool. Time is something we never get back. 

  7. Do it your way

    There’s so much noise online about “best routines” and how you’re most creative first thing in the morning, or how any writer worth their salt has three and a quarter cups of organic Hima-frickin-layan grown coffee before writing, or yadda yadda. Here’s the thing – what works for some doesn’t work for others. Ultimately, you need to do whatever you need to do to get the damn thing written. Routine absolutely is important, but it’s your routine, not anyone else’s. I did all my best work late at night, often from 10pm onwards. So (and I’m aware of the happy irony here) ignore the advice, and do what works for you. 

  8. Cut the shiitake

    I mean this in two ways. 1) Don’t be a pretentious jerkmuffin when you write. A good rule of thumb is – if in doubt be short and snappy, not long and drawn out. 2) Cut more than you think you should. No, not mushrooms. Words. When you get on a roll, you’ll fly, and your word count will go up and up. You’ll probably do about 100,000 words before you consider the book close to being done. That’s a solid place to start, but a book this length is long. It’s hard to bin words that have taken toil to create, but you should. Aim to do your first draft and then, through iteration, lose 30-50% of your word count to make it tight. 

  9. Don’t fear the procrastinator 

    You sit down to write, and suddenly, BANG, three hours have gone by, there are still no words on the page, and you’ve just watched three back to back episodes of a HBO drama. It happens. Obviously there’s a point where procrastination becomes laziness, but a little bit of non-focus every now and then is okay. Sometimes, you can’t force it, and procrastination has actually been proven to help you synthesize your thoughts. Then, like magic, and completely out of the blue, BANG. You’re just casually watching a documentary about labour camps in North Korea, when you’re suddenly hit with a great idea or a solution to a problem.

  10. Take drugs

    Don’t do anything stupid like take Speed to write faster, LSD to be more creative, or Nootropics to stay focused. That’s silly, probably illegal and your work will be sloppy. Plus the film Limitless is only fiction. However, certain drugs can help – caffeine, I mean. Placebo or not, the most productive sessions I had in front of blank pages were powered by it. Warning: will ruin your body clock. 

  11. Typos stick like glue

    Whn “you’re done”, you’re not done at all. Whoever you are, and however reliable you think you’ve been, your final draft will be full of typos. Even if you’re J.K. Flippin’ Rowling. Read it through with a big red marker pen, marking all the errors. Then do it again, and again, and again. Seriously, go through your book 5 times. Then give it to a copy editor and have them go through it a few times. Then go through their version 5 more times. Only then can you be confident your book isn’t full of typos. And even then, some will probably slip through.

That’s everything that comes to mind. I hope this helps someone out there.

For some people, writing is easy. Maybe for them, this list seems ridiculous. Maybe they can bash a bestseller out every few months, don’t require a slice of pizza and two doughnuts before every typing session, and remain baffled about why people keep talking about something called “procrastination.” But for the rest of us, I wholeheartedly promise you, that if a bozo like me can do it, so can you.

You don’t gotta know about grammar, or the difference between verbs and nouns. You don’t have to use fancy words to sound smart. You just have to want it enough, try to believe in your story as much as you can, and stay in the fucking game until it’s finished.

There’s probably a sleazy and explicit metaphor somewhere in there too.

“Nothing any good isn’t hard.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Categories
Interviews Philosophy Vague Direction Book

Creative projects, iteration & doubt

Here’s another video. (Last one for a while, promise!) Following on from the last post, where Visual Collective and I teamed up, this time around we had a quirky conversation about:

  • The battles of a long-term creative project
  • Knowing or not knowing when a project is done
  • The fear that comes with knowing something you’ve made will be set free

Check out the video on YouTube here

Categories
Philosophy

Mr Yamaguchi

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]sutomu Yamaguchi had a cushty job. He worked for Mitsubishi, in Japan, where he was an engineer in the shipbuilding division, designing oil tankers.

It was World War Two.

He was away on business when it happened, stepping off a tram, before heading to a shipyard that nestled among flat potato fields on either side. It was the final day of a three month work trip, the day before he was due to go back home, back to his wife and new born kid.

Some punk in a plane dropped a ruddy Atom bomb on his head.

Mr Yamaguchi had taken a work trip to Hiroshima, and that is where, at 8.15am, on August 6th 1945, the US B-29 Bomber dropped an Atomic Bomb. The bomb had a name – “Little Boy” – what kind of person calls a bomb little boy? It was the first nuclear weapon to ever be used in warfare, killing somewhere between 45,000 and 83,000 people on the first day, with those numbers doubling over time.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was stoic by nature. He was knocked out by the blast. When he regained consciousness, he was met by total devastation, total carnage. People burned, bodies in the river, skin dripping off the walking dead.

He got on the train and went back home the following day, after spending the night in an air raid shelter. Back to his wife and new born kid. When he returned, he even took a couple of days off to let his wounds heal, which seems reasonable.

“Home,” he maybe thought, “home at last.”

nagasaki

On August 9th, he went back to work at Mitsubishi, this time back to his regular office and now swathed in bandages. “No more business trips for a while, after that!” he might’ve muttered, as he arrived at work.

At 11am, Tsutomo was discussing the bombing with his supervisor, when another little punk, from high above again, dropped another ruddy Atom bomb on his head. Because Mr Yamaguchi lived in, worked in, had a family in, and had just returned back to, Nagasaki.

The bomb hit. A 25-kiloton plutonium bomb, called “Fat Man.” It was the second time, in history, that a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. One has never been used since. It killed somewhere between 19,000 and 40,000 people in the first day, and again, as in Hiroshima, that number doubled over time.

Mr Yamaguchi was Atomic Bombed in one place, put on some bandages, went home, and then got Atomic Bombed there too.

Damn.

Is that good luck or bad luck?

navyphotogshiroshima

He lost hearing in one ear, had a fever for a week afterwards, and his bandages were ruined. His wife battled illness from then on, because of the radiation posioning. Most other members of his family too. He also developed radiation side-effects throughout his life and lived much of it, whilst it was long, in agony.

Later in his life, Yamaguchi become an avid proponent of nuclear disarmament, wanting a complete abolition and arguing his case at the UN. “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb,” he said in one interview, “is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings.” When looking back on the two blasts that he’d been part of, he sat on stage in his wheelchair, and said, “I sincerely hope that there will not be a third.”

If in doubt, when it sucks, and when life gives us lemons or atomic bombs – Maybe we shouldn’t make lemonade, maybe we should take a purpose from it and be more like Mr Yamaguchi.

Images courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org

Categories
Philosophy

Plummet

The morning.

Betty Lou Oliver did not wake up that day expecting to plummet 75 stories down the world’s tallest building.

It was foggy outside, on the morning of July 28th, 1945. There was barely any visibility.

A B-25 Bomber became lost in the New York mist and crashed into the side of the Empire State Building, killing all three crew and eleven others in the building.

Betty was in her elevator cart when the impact happened. She was twenty, and this is what she did everyday. She was an elevator attendant who worked on the 80th floor of the Empire State. 

When the plane crashed, it smashed into the lift shaft, cutting the cable that held Betty’s cart. 

She began plummeting towards the ground.

esb

Free falling.

You know that feeling you get when you’re drifting to sleep but then suddenly you experience a free fall sensation and jolt upright in a panicked state?

That twitch is known as a Hypnic Jerk. Scientists still don’t have a solid reason for why it takes place, but one theory is that the brain confuses falling asleep with actual falling, so it signals to our arms and legs to move to an upright position, resulting in the jerking action.

Sharp objects.

In the tent, I didn’t dare fall asleep. But my eyelids fell heavy and I began to drift off, terrified.

Moments later, with all the suddenness in the world, a Hypnic Jerk forcibly awoke me, shocking me back to life.

I was wearing socks because stuffed inside one of them was razor sharp tent peg. Under the pillow, lay a fishing knife. On the floor, a canister of mace. Two sharp objects, and some pepper flavoured deodorant that “might work in theory.” Both within easy reach should a bear decide to come knocking.

Then a thick mind-cloud of inevitable sleep encroached, and I waited, half-expecting to be mauled to death. Because tiredness leads to irrationality.

Vague Direction 15

Betty vs ground.

“There was no time to think,” Betty said, “no time to even pray. I made myself as small as possible in a corner of the car, helpless, waiting for the shock at the bottom – and death.”

She didn’t die.

A thousand feet of elevator cable, which had moments ago been cut by the crash, fell to the bottom of the lift shaft, creating a spring coil effect. That, combined with the air pressure between the falling elevator car and the ground, was enough to bring Betty’s car to a smooth stop. Just don’t mention the broken back, broken leg, cut eye, bad burns, and terrible concussion.

She lived.

The fear might be worse than the reality.

betty[Image courtesy: 1) Wikimedia & 3) NYDailyNews]

Categories
Philosophy

Think About All The Fucking Possibilities

Believe in your fucking self.
Stay up all fucking night.
Work outside of your fucking habits.
Know when to fucking speak up.
Fucking collaborate.
Don’t fucking procrastinate.
Get over your fucking self.
Keep fucking learning.
Form follows fucking function.
A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad fucking ideas.
Find fucking inspiration everywhere.
Fucking network.
Educate your fucking client.
Trust your fucking gut.
Ask for fucking help.
Make it fucking sustainable.
Question fucking everything.
Have a fucking concept.
Learn to take some fucking criticism.
Make me fucking care.
Use fucking spell check.
Do your fucking research.
Sketch more fucking ideas.
The problem contains the fucking solution.
Think about all the fucking possibilities.

– – – Brian Buirge & Jason Bacher, of Good Fucking Design Advice. 

Sorry about all the swearing, but it’s necessary in this case.

I saw this manifesto (and the superb GFDA site) for the first time yesterday and wanted to post it here for anyone who might need it, and also to refer back to in times of creative crisis. 

Apparently these words adorn many industrial design studio walls, but the universality and sense that is engrained within the expletives mean many of the messages have a place far beyond a singular niche. 

This is a good framework for anyone who uses creativity or boldness in their days – people who build things, write things, carve things, shoot things, draw things. For people who make something from nothing, even if it has every chance of flopping miserably or being torn apart.

Implement whichever points you need, but always remember – even if you have to pick yourself up and clean yourself off – to:

Believe in your fucking self.
Think about all the fucking possibilities.

f_blog

Categories
Philosophy

The Debt Collector & The Heathen

The debt collector was incessant.

He wouldn’t go away. For a week, there he’d be, waiting outside school and becoming increasingly angry. Classic debt collector.

I was 9. He was 10, going on 11.

Adam was his name, and he liked football too. He was in his final year. It was a small school and only a few people played football. Adam was a midfielder and so was I. He wanted to go pro and so did I (either that or a fighter pilot). We were arch rivals and hated each other. 

Today’s game was intense. The score was 0 – 0. Just a moment left.

The whistle went. The end. A tie. Back to class.

“Penalties after school to decide the winner,” Adam said.

We all ran back inside to learn about gravity for the first time. 

Miss asked the class, “so if the earth’s spinning at 465 meters per second, then what holds us to the ground?”

A kid called Michael tentatively put his hand up.

“Yes Michael,” said Miss, “what do you think it is?”

“The carpet?” he answered.

penalty

It was the penalty shoot out. The decider. Adam was up. He scored easily. I was next.

“Bet you miss,” he said.

“Oh yeah? No way.” I snapped.

“£2 says you miss,” Adam snapped back.

“Fine. £2.”

I stared intensely at the goal, decided where to aim, and ran. I struck the ball with all my might and willed it into the back of the net. It was not enough to want it, you had to will it. It flew and flew through the air, soaring calmly and beautifully like an eagle before gravity returned it to Earth. Beckham would’ve been jealous.

And then it went wide. Well wide. A miss.

We’d lost. Adam’s team had won. And now I owed him £2, which is a lot when you’re 9.

“Pay up, kid.” Adam shouted, as though he was Jack Nicholson in The Departed.

A deal was a deal. But I didn’t carry around that kind of cash. Are you crazy?

“Gotta go,” I said nervously, just before running away, “I have a swimming lesson.”

There was no such lesson that evening, though. The swimming lesson was an excuse to get out of having to deal with Adam. He was scary. Not someone to mess with. It was okay to mess with him on the pitch but not okay on the playground.

Adam suddenly went from football rival to savvy debt collector. And he wasn’t just a businessman. He was a business, man. Every day not paying Adam incurred an interest rate of 20p per day. Real loan shark rates. I had to think this through.

cowgirl

Misslette The Singing Cowgirl started to tear up, soon after she demonstrated the art of yodelling in a small room in Texas.

“I could’ve taught Heathen 101,” she said, as the memories came flooding back. “I was a shining example of a Heathen. I did all sorts of things that I’m not proud of. But when I was serious, I cried out to God. And I said ‘If you are really God, prove it to me.’”

“And on September 28th 1992, at 7.10 in the morning, I was staring at my ceiling, and just thinking ‘my life is out of control, I can’t quit drinking’. My skin would burn, my nose would burn. I would have to wake up and put liquor in my coffee. I cried out to God and said ‘I need help. If you’re real, help me.’ And that morning, I heard the audible voice of God. And you know what He said to me? ‘DO NOT DRINK TODAY!’, that’s all He said. And it scared me to death.”

Anyone can feel like they’ve hit rock bottom. Whether it’s addiction, work, a debt collector, physical health, not getting picked to go pro, anxiety, depression or any other countless thing that is taboo and doesn’t get talked about.

Clearly those things suck. But when we notice them, even when our days have become bleak, we are presented an opportunity to act, clean up, move on and get better. Because regardless of the specifics or our beliefs, it’s easier to be moved to action from a personal experience, even if it’s a terrible one, than to be moved to action from anything else. So it’s not all bad, it’s just a learning experience.

“People can think I’m crazy all they want,” Misslette half-joked, “but 20 years later I still haven’t had another drink.”

wheelbarrow

It was embarrassing, as a 9 year old, to a) lose at penalties and b) be a target atop a 10 year old’s debt collection list. So I didn’t dare tell anyone about the reason behind starting a very sudden refreshments company.

On the Saturday morning, I filled up a jug of water, then raided the cupboards at home and eventually found some plastic cups, a foldable table, and two bottles of concentrated juice. Throwing it all into a wheelbarrow, I walked to the nearest field.

The field had a footpath through it, which attracted a decent amount of leisurely walkers on a weekend. I unfolded the table, propped up a sign that read ‘Drinks For Walkers – £1 each’ in all capitals, and then sold 6 drinks to some thirsty walkers.

Adam was waiting at school on Monday. I handed him the money, which had gone from £2 to £3 with interest.

“Yeah, whatever loser,” he said, irritated that he wouldn’t be able to keep profiteering, the savvy little shit. “Another penalty shoot out at the park tonight? Double or quits.”

“Can’t. Got a swimming lesson.”

We never spoke again, and then I quit football forever and spent the remaining £3 on stick-on biker tattoos.

Categories
Philosophy

The State of The Monsters

The Waiting Room

I was sat in a train station waiting room yesterday. Everything was cancelled because of a “severe engine failure,” and over the tannoy it was announced that “the wait for those travelling by train will be at least 90 minutes.”

Boo. Hiss. Yeah, yeah.

People complain about travel delays but secretly we all love it. It’s like winning a prize – The Prize Of Unexpected Free Time.

It was cold on the platform, no place for any sane person to stay for long. Almost everyone shuffled through a red door into a small, whitewashed waiting room. We each found a seat on the metal benches that lined the walls, drawn to them like animals to the ark. Except there were apparently 280 animals on the ark and only about 50 of us.

A young woman came in. She was talking about her art foundation degree on the phone. Everyone else in the room found something to quietly occupy themselves with  – from sitting, to listening to music, to tapping away on phones, to reading, to sleeping.

She walked into the nearly full waiting room, looked left and right, and then eyed one of the few empty seats, in between two gentlemen in their 70’s. They were both keeping themselves to themselves. It would be quite ridiculous to describe them as monsters.

“Uh, so is anyone sat there then?” she asked one of the men hastily so it wouldn’t interfere with her important call. The man looked up and shook his head, indicating the seat was available.

She sat down and sighed loudly into the handset.

Her phone conversation was loud enough to take over the room. You know how sometimes you can’t help but glance at a car accident when you drive past? Well you couldn’t help but hear her talk.

“Oh shut up! My coursework’s still not done and it’s fucking in tomorrow.”

“I told you, my train’s been terminated.”

“No way. Of course I’d prefer to be with you two instead of sitting in between these two monsters.”

It was that last line that did it.

I’ve been thinking about what monsters are ever since.

waitingroom

Real Monsters

A couple of weeks ago I was in a coffee shop in Manchester as the Charlie Hebdo shooting started to be reported. The breaking news pings started to buzz on my phone. People on laptops began to look shocked. Someone (maybe he was a journalism student) even shouted “are you seeing this?” across the room to his friend at the counter as though he was an EP on CNN. One guy didn’t realise what was going on, until he got up quickly from his computer to go and call a friend who was in Paris.

Most days aren’t like this. Usually they blend into one. We wake up a week from now and nothing seems to have changed.

But every so often, something undeniably sudden and man-made happens. Our lives are hit by a big event, awful news, an attack, something which – even though we may not have been there – means we won’t be the same again.

Wars.
Terrorist attacks.
School and cinema shootings.
Journalists shot dead for satire.
Aid workers decapitated for helping people to eat.

It’s when these things happen in places that are unexpected that we are most effected. Because all of us are guilty of conveniently glossing over incidents in places where ‘it happens all the time.’

Sometimes shocking events happen when we’re young, and there are side-effects. Our worldview hardens, we develop a pessimism and a fear that was never there before. Gone go the days when Roald Dahl stories scare the kid. Their mythical monsters under the bed are replaced by actual monsters in the world.

It’s sad that each of us develop a list of terrible moments that we’ll always remember.

The towers on 9/11.
The bus and tubes on 7/7.
The 2011 Norwegian attack.
Sandy Hook.
Boston Marathon.
Charlie Hebdo.

You name it – the list goes on and we all have one.

What is a real monster? Monsters are responsible for moments like these.

real-monsters

A Brown Leather Bag

Today is a time of 24/7 news. Whenever ‘something happens’, millions of our phones beep with a notification. It’s a sound so frequent that it would be easy to start believing that the world is full of monsters.

It’s not. It’s really not.

Back in the waiting room, the young woman started to rustle around in her rucksack. Her coursework wouldn’t finish itself. But something was missing.

She tapped on her phone, in panic, and lifted it to her ear.

“Mum, it’s me. Can you run upstairs and check my room? Have I left all my art stuff there?”

“All of my pencils?”

“Shit! I’m totally, totally screwed then.”

The man she was sat next to, the monster of moments ago, smiled. ‘That’ll teach her for calling me a monster,’ I imagined him thinking as I caught his gaze.

She hung up the phone, slumped into her uncomfortable metal chair, and looked genuinely distraught. Tears seemed imminent but there wasn’t a strong feeling of sympathy in the air of that small waiting room. She had got what was coming to her.

The man leaned over and reached down into his brown leather bag. He grasped hold of something. Maybe his lunch. Maybe a book.

He pulled out a square metal tin and opened it. It made a pop sound just before he passed it over to the person who’d called him a monster.

The tin was full of pencils. Every pencil a budding artist could ever need.

“Have them,” the monster said,  “I have a room full of them at home.”

pencil

Mostly Passengers

Rarely do we hear about the good stuff in the world. Yet most of us see it happen time and time again with our own eyes.

It’s important then, in a world where the news seems consistently horrific, to remember our own experiences. Things which we’ve learned and seen and witnessed first hand. That’s the stuff we must hold on to. It’s these experiences which offer hope, even when we’re captured by the darkness that surrounds all the horrible shit on the planet.

There’s bad and evil in the world, but it’s by no means prominent.

Most people are passengers, not monsters.

Categories
Philosophy

Onism

 

Onism – n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

“You are here. You were lost at first, but soon began sketching yourself a map of the world. Plotting the contours of your life. And like the first explorers, sooner or later you have to contend with the blank spaces on the map. All the experiences you’ve never had. The part of you still aching to know what’s out there.

Eventually these questions take on a weight of their own and begin looming over your everyday life.

All the billions of doors you had to close, in order to take a single step forward.
All the things you haven’t done, and may never get around to doing.
All the risks, that may or may not’ve been real.
All the destinations that you didn’t buy a ticket to.
All the lights you see in the distance that you can only wonder about.
All the alternate histories you narrowly avoided.
All the fantasies that stay dormant inside your head.
Everything you’re giving up to be where you are right now.
The questions that you wrongly assume are unanswerable.

It’s strange how little of the universe we actually get to see.
Strange how many assumptions we have to make just to get by, stuck in only one body, in only one place at a time.
Strange how many excuses we’ve invented to explain why so much of life belongs in the background.
Strange that any of us could ever feel at home, in such an alien world.

We sketch monsters on the map because we find their presence comforting. They guard the edges of the abyss, and force us to look away, so we can live comfortably in the known world, at least for a little while. But if someone were to ask you on your deathbed, what it was like to live here on earth, perhaps the only honest answer would be…

“I don’t know. I passed through it once, but I’ve never really been there.””

The voiceover from John Koenig’s latest video, Onism, from his The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows series. Other words include:

  • Sonder – the realisation that everyone has a story
  • Vemödalen – the fear that everything has already been done
  • Avenoir – the desire that memory could flow backwards

blog2

Onism is a funky word but the concept is not a new one.

“The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die – and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.”

We all get it. It’s like an itch, aggressively encouraged by today’s ‘sunsets, travel and sandy beaches’ Zeitgeist that is inescapable to anyone with an internet connection.

I often stare at Google Maps, and my gaze drifts from the arrow of here to somewhere faraway. I wonder what the f*ck I’m doing sitting still, knowing that time’s a finite fuse, ramen is pennies, and the world’s such a big place. Because never in the history of the planet, or the history of the human race, has the world been so small. We can get in a metal tube and literally be on the other side of the Earth in a few hours. We are some of the first people to get this opportunity, so of course it’s appealing.

But sometimes perspective takes a conveniently long time to kick in (or it never does at all). It’s amazing and truly remarkable that the world is now so accessible, but despite this, perhaps the exploration impulse isn’t something to necessarily celebrate or aspire to. Of course it’s valuable and fun and worthwhile and educational to wonder and then to wander, but if it’s always our go-to solution, then something might not be quite right.

Let’s crack out the stoicism. Seneca says this:

“How can novelty of surroundings abroad and becoming acquainted with foreign scenes or cities be of any help? All that dashing about turns out to be quite futile. And if you want to know why all this running away cannot help you, the answer is simply this: you are running away in your own company. You have to lay aside the load on your spirit. Until you do that, nowhere will satisfy you.” [Letter II]

And this:

“You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” [Letter XXVIII]

Now I know you should never listen to just one ancient dude from the Roman Age, but he could be right. Pottering about for pottering about’s sake might be a sign of sickness, or even selfishness. I am sick. Maybe you are too.

Perhaps focusing on the reasons why dashing off seems so appealing, should come before deciding to set sail to somewhere new on the map. Because until we examine our own reasons, there’ll probably consistenly be a prevalent struggle with contentment.

Maybe, as the wise Roman said, we should look at changing our soul rather than changing our climate.

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(This is the only photo in my library of someone looking like a wise Roman)

Categories
Philosophy

Learning To Use Intimidation

A truck approached.

It slowed down rapidly, as though it was a last minute decision from the pedal-heavy driver.

I was riding on the hard shoulder, without music because I’d overplayed most songs recently and was bored of Every. Single. Album. For a while, silence, creaky gears and bird noises had most definitely replaced Mos Def.

A few feet away, the passenger window on the smokey and rickety truck began to open. It was probably someone wanting to chat or just shout “where you headed?” That happened sometimes.

An apple whizzed past my head at full pelt. I heard the rush of air whistle past and rattle my ear drum. 

“Haha, you fucker! Get a car, asshole!” a voice shouted from inside the truck, half a second before speeding off.

It’s quite a vivid memory.

The wild intimidation of landing in the snow on Day 1 is another vivid memory. 

On the airy approach, occasionally the clouds would part and I’d see huge amounts of nothingness over North East Canada. Just empty, baron land. That caused doubt, which for a short moment seemed quite crippling. My mind was in overdrive with whirling thoughts. A stirring pot full of equal parts excitement, fear, and apprehension. And when we got close to landing, I saw the deep white powder for the first time. It was a moment of realisation that I was completely underprepared and didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

But then a couple of days were ticked off, and nothing went too badly wrong. And then a week, and a month. And eventually, what to do and how to handle things became clear, and all those worries that had been so strong faded into irrelevance.

Immersion teaches us what we need to know. In this case it was things like where to sleep, how to manage everything, how to avoid apple throwers, how to swear at apple throwers effectively, how to visualize apple throwers getting hit with a dripping wet fish etc. 

To become competent all it takes is diving right in and grasping on to a little bit of confidence, even if there’s not much of it rattling around inside our intimidated minds.

Becoming a brain scientist, riding a bicycle a long way, learning poker or Krav Maga, it’s all the same. When we’re truly immersed, then given time, everything that we need to know becomes intuitive. That is the coolest part about the learning curve.

With most things that seem wildly daunting at first, surface fear is likely all it is.

It’s worth thinking about the things we’re putting off, and asking ourselves the hard question. Why?

If we’re holding ourselves back because of intimidation, then that might be a sign that something’s worth doing.

What seems like fear now probably won’t last long.

Dive in.

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Categories
Philosophy

If You’re Having A Bad Day

There’s a very valid time for quitting and walking away, and there’s a very valid time for sticking to your guns and ploughing on. I think more often than not, ploughing on is probably the best approach.

The right or wrong decision is something that is obvious when you look back and connect the dots, but it never seems as clear as that at the time. So when things go wrong, when mistakes are made, when everything falls through, when you don’t get as far as you wanted to get within the time you set – all this freakin’ messy collateral of mindache can be frustrating and upsetting and annoying, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of discouragement or wallowing or defeatism.

So if or when that happens, and if you’re having a bad day, read this:

“The slaves received the whip with more certainty and regularity than they received their food. It was the incentive to work and the guardian of discipline. But there was no ingenuity that fear or a depraved imagination could devise which was not employed to break their spirit and satisfy the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians – irons on the hands and feet, blocks of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them wherever they went, the tin-plate mask designed to prevent the slaves eating the sugar-cane, the iron collar.

Whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the victim; salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes were poured on the bleeding wounds. Mutilations were common, limbs, ears and sometimes the private parts, to deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense. Their masters poured burning wax on their arms and hands and shoulders, emptied the boiling cane sugar over their heads, burned them alive, roasted them on slow fires, filled them with gunpowder and blew them up with a match; buried them up to the neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the flies might devour them; fastened them near to nests of ants or wasps; made them eat their excrement, drink their urine, and lick the saliva of other slaves. One colonist was known in moments of anger to throw himself on his slaves and stick his teeth into their flesh.”

[An extract from The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James]

Suddenly the little things don’t seem that important, and it’s certainly not worth allowing them to pull us down too far for too long. The chances are slim that someone’s gonna pour burning wax on our arms, or fill us with gunpowder and blow us up with a match. It’s all a game of perspective. Everything is a game of perspective.

Things could be worse. Tomorrow is a new day. We are lucky.

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