Social misfit

Two caveats here: One, I’m going to be very frank in writing this, because I’m trying to hash some stuff out. Two, I’m writing from a place of mild frustration, so I’m probably making some sort of a mistake. I feel it sorta the way I felt it when years and years ago, I admitted that I lived by comparison. That’s nothing new–I think most who know me know that I like it when people tell me I’m good or do something good, or whatnot. It’s a big part of the reason that I post photos, music and writing to the internet at all. And I am so not alone. It’s arguable that the whole Facebook status update thing is all about that. I like positive feedback because it makes me feel good in much the same way a shot of heroin does, although not as strong. The problem happens when I dig deeper into my social realities and discover some truths that may not be considered nice. For instance, I admitted years ago that perhaps part of the reason I hung out with some of the people I did was because, by comparison, in my own likely errant estimation of all things, it felt like I was doing better than they were. That is, I was more successful, or healthier, or smarter, or wiser, or whatnot. In a subtle way, by comparison, the external feedback that I was getting was that I was good, I was okay.

Obviously, and rightfully, this didn’t go over well with my friends at the time. The thought that I was looking at them and thinking “well, at least I’m not you” and feeling better about that somehow made them feel worse, of course. Thing is, that’s never how I consciously operated. I honestly hung out with the people I did because they made me feel good, full stop. I really didn’t stop to analyze much beyond that. I believed they were good people, with fine hearts. I liked that I laughed when I was around them. I liked when we had good discussions, and I felt valuable when they listened to me, and I loved to listen to them, and help out if I could when they had problems or issues. To me, that’s sort of a lot of what friendship is about. This other thing, this realization that I sometimes looked at them and was thankful for my lot, really bugged me at the time. It made me feel almost parasidic, and I didn’t like that. I got over it eventually by the realization that pretty much everyone does this whether they like it or not, and in some cases, should do this. Hell, moms all over the Western World are telling kids to eat thier dinners because little children are starving in the Third World. There’s fellow human beings out there who are living in utterly deplorable conditions, and we here in the west have the gall to complain about our lives all the time. This whole comparison thing is used in spades by humanitarian organizations to raise money: show people with some cash the people who have none. The idea is that they’ll subconsciously compare themselves and then take pity. This idea of social comparison is pretty common… people just don’t usually apply it to their own social circles psychologically and take a good, honest look at the results. This sort of comparison makes one thankful, and also in its best incarnation, provides one with a level of empathy for fellow humans. It’s only when one focuses on the worst incarnation, the “I’m better than you!” nonsense, that one gets into the thick of things.

All that though isn’t really what’s on my mind today, although it is the stepping stone. A number of uncluttering/minimalist blogs I read have, in the past, taken on the shakey topic of uncluttering relationships. Take a look at your Facebook friends and ask if you really need 300+ people there. Are they really your friends? Are they adding to your life, and you to thiers? Take a look at the people you hang out with. Are you mutually benefitting from the relationship? What’s going on there? Perhaps it’s time to be honest and ask what these relationships are about, and if they don’t serve you, why are you in them? I happened upon a quote once that resonated with me. I know I’ve shared it already, but let me highlight:

“A bore, Travis, is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.” – John D. McDonald

That’s a really interesting phrase. I have in a very limited sense started to look around at my relationships based a little on this. Am I getting companionship out of my relations? What does that mean? It’s a damned slippery thing to define. Seriously, what is companionship? Surely, it’s got to be more than just being together, or sharing interests. There has to be some kind of positive feeling that goes with it. Some sort of gravity that pulls individuals together in a desired sort of way. Perhaps also an openness that alleviates the fear of such a pull–a kind of love. It’s a damned tall order. I’m not sure there’s more than four or five people in my life who have that sort of connection with me. If that’s true, who are these other people?

If they aren’t ‘companions’ then at the very least, do we have a mutually beneficial connection with one another that makes a positive, desired impact on our lives? Maybe that’s what I’m driving at. I know I tread on delicate ground here, reducing feeling human beings to simple value propositions, and I’m trying to tread lightly. So, let me take this from my own angle. No idea if this’ll make any sense:

I am someone who has in the past suffered from extreme anxiety issues. Agoraphobia, they call it. At my worst, I was unable to walk my girlfriend to the bus stop in the evening, because it involved leaving the basement of my parent’s house. It was necessary for me to drop out of high school in grade 12 because I was no longer able to sit in class. I made all sorts of excuses for not doing things with my friends. I backed out of plans at the last minute. I avoided discussions that required any kind of commitment from me, and validated it all to myself through the fact of my illness. Hell, I still do this a little but I try like the devil not to.

As far as my social interactions went, I had very, very few friends. These were the people who somehow managed to tolerate this sickness of mine, and work around it. They came to my house so I wouldn’t ever have to go to theirs. They knew that I had all sorts of strange nervous habits like playing with my hair, clearing my throat, not paying attention well, being very inwardly focused, talking quickly, and leaving any given situation without warning. They knew I wasn’t about to go to the movies with them, or attend events, or come to parties, or drink. I’m 100% positive that reason I had so few friends was because there were only a handful of people who fell into two categories: The first were people who loved me for me, and damn the torpedoes. These people, I still don’t get them. I aspire to be as they are. Outside my family, there are only two. They are the great blessings of my life; they are companions. I hope with all my heart that I can hold my side of the relationship with as much grace as they do. The second category are people who were just as fucked up as I was. Like attracts like, and if you’re a social misfit who is completely whacked, then you’ll attract other whacked, social misfits. I guess it’s how the misfits feel they belong. And why not? That’s how the ‘normal’ people get on too. People hang with people who have the same sensibilities, or the same neuroses. Take your pick. It’s partly why monks live in monestaries, the military fucntions the way it does, and whackjob organizations like the Westboro Baptists continue to exist. For better or worse, we all live somewhat in our own little self-validating ecosystems.

Not many people who know me today would have any appreciation for just how badly agoraphobic I was back in my teens. There’s a reason for that. As I climbed out of the quagmire, a lot of my already small social circle fell away. I didn’t have as much in common with them. When I got my ass into University it was a quantum leap. The people that I hung out with there were, in a lot of ways, a reflection of how far I’d come with regard to mastering my own fears. I was able to go to class, to go to movies, to attend events, to have discussions. The people I hung out with were intellectuals. They were a different sort of people than those I hung out with when I was sick. And, unsurprizingly, they were incompatible with those people. My circle of friends in my mid-20′s contained exactly no one from my teens, except my companions, and even they only from a distance. I had changed. I was incompatible with the circle of my teens.

So every now and again I have to wonder about some of the compatibility issues I have right now. I have to ask if those people in my social circle are there because we mutually benefit from the association, or because one or the other of us is falling into ‘bore’ territory. The reason it’s important, for me anyway, is that social circles have a gravity to them. If I were to start to hang out with a bunch of depressed people as I once did, I would certainly become more depressed, and therefore more likely to keep hanging in the circle where I feel I have something in common. Conversely, hanging around my University friends helped to buoy me out of that mind set. Instead of doing my usual excuses and backing out, I was compelled to make myself more compatible with them. And it was to my extreme benefit to do so.

It’s a hard pill to swallow that people you consider friends might be the very weights that keep you down as a result of having negative qualities in common. It’s also why I now understand how I lost or never had many friends while I was phobic, depressed, and negative all the time. Who in the hell wants to hang out with such people except those who are equally as miserable, or those who are true companions? The people who left, the ones I considered bad friends or quitters? They were probably just incompatible with my mindset, and they were practicing a sort of self-defense in their own interest. It probably wasn’t personal, although that’s how I took it.

There’s something to be said for social circles who help one another climb out of a mutual handicap. I guess that’s what support groups are all about. But a friendship, I think, needs to be more than just a support group. How does one find people who are kindreds, but also who are nourishing in the friendship? I dunno. Maybe my negativity is still rearing its ugly head, and preventing me from making positive acquaintances. Maybe I’m missing my companions. I’m not sure. Either way, I got upset today thinking about this, and I needed to get some of it out.

Digitally captured firing neurons, indeed.

…and a spring water chaser

So I wanted to post a little follow up based on a discussion I read this morning on one of the blogs I frequent. I thought I could try to suss this out for myself. Just to give you some context, back in March, I wrote an article about how depressing it can be to read self help blogs. At the time, I wrote:

I think the reason I find this irksome is that nothing would please me more than to ‘follow my passion’ but there’s all sorts of reasons why it can’t be done, and I find this incredibly depressing. Much as these online gurus state time and again that yes, it can be done “Just look at me!” and then cite everything from fear to lack of direction as reasons why people still think that they can’t follow their dreams, I think that it’s just a cold hard fact that not everyone can. In fact, I wager the vast majority can’t. There’s a ton of reasons why people can’t do this from financial to disability to psychological. Some people sure can, but my god, they are few and far between.

The thing that was eating at me was reading about people who “follow their passions” and do things like write a blog for a living and somehow make enough money and they profess how happy they are and oh, look–you can do it too! I’m not saying I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I do. I still think it’s an issue that the current so-called “A-list bloggers” are mostly there to say, “look at me and what I’m doing and you can do it too! Digest this slowly and change your life!” Pish. In fact, it’s dangerous, in that it may serve to depress people more. These folks are taking risks with a detached readership they cannot know. It’s often not a good thing. What I was failing to see is that it’s a two way street. Depending upon how the ears of the receiver are tuned, the depression can come from taking the advice as affront, and I am guilty of that.

To illustrate, I’ll point to recent events over at Get Rich Slowly, one of the blogs I frequent. Yesterday, JD, our blogger, posted a link to a calculator of sorts that’ll calculate how much you can save if you bike, verses if you drive a car. Reading it, I thought it was pretty cool. I used the calculator to the best of my ability (accounting for having to convert and modify everything from US to Canadian–why can’t someone in Canada do these cool things? Sigh.) I learned that I could save something like $200,000 over the course of my life assuming I bike rather than walk. It was an interesting exercise, and yeah, it got me thinking about my bike more.

Apparently though, a lot of other readers took umbrage at the whole thing. There were concerned comments pointing out that people felt judged, and that not everyone can bike, and it’s unrealistic, and yadda yadda. Basically, it’s a facet of the very thing that was vexing me back in March. So much so, that JD today posted a follow up to address the fact that he wasn’t making a judgement call, but rather putting a piece of information out there for people to do with what they will. For the whole unfolding drama, I’ll just point you to the post and let you suss it out if you’d like to go in depth.

For me, the point wasn’t at all about biking or people’s ability to do this. For me, the thing that hit me was that I never really consciously put together that these sites are ones I read for ideas rather than gospel. I tend to get these things confused, and the confusion results in the depression. I can’t be the only one. Let me see if I can unpack that a little. Say I go to some site with some guru who’s somehow gone from being an overweight, unhappy, cubicle worker with a heavy debt load to some fit, loving, attentive individual, who is self-employed with all the money in the bank his new, minimalist, environmentally aware lifestyle needs and living the good life doing exactly what his passion calls him to do. Wow, I see he was just like me! Wow, I see he’s climbed out of it! Wow, he’s even telling me how he did it! This man is a bona fide messiah. Living proof that a poor schmuck like me can rise to the great happy individual I’d always wanted to be, and I will be great–god knows, he is. “Success leaves clues”–so say the self help former self-loathing bathtub dish washers.

So I read all the words and somehow start to take all this as a blueprint more than a suggestion. I overlay the jogging, the car-free culture, the vegetarian diet, the quitting of the job and all that rot onto my well-established lifestyle and I see the plans don’t fit. Well, that’s okay, say the gurus. You do things slowly. You form habits. You work with what you’ve got to get to where you want to be. You buy x sometimes, other times you do y or use z or go read this other wannabe blogger who was kind enough to guest author a post with how they do things. The thing is, these things don’t work for me. I can’t bike to work because it’s too far (well you should have moved closer), I can’t afford to move closer because it’ll negatively impact my income and therefore what I can do (well you need to re-think what’s important to you and adjust your life), I can’t adjust my life because I have a family who depends on things (well you need to bring the family on board–I did it). So on, ad nauseaum.

What I’m trying to say here is that it seems that there’s two problems. I think the first is the way this information is delivered, and the second is the way it’s consumed.

Let’s take on delivery. Any “A-list” blogger will tell you they never set themselves up as a gold standard this-is-how-you-do-it, I-have-all-the-answers kind of enterprise. All of them either come from a place where they want to help people because ‘helping people is their passion’, or from a place where they are simply keeping a record of their own journey, and somehow the blogosphere has latched on. I imagine there’s crossover, where people start writing what they’re living, and then when they get a following and more importantly an income stream, they then become the ‘helping people’ sort. Honestly, the blogs with the most value to me are the ones that chronicle a journey–just an honest assessment of what’s going on. The best ones will deliver this message in such a way that it’s never, ever unclear that this is their life. This is what’s happening with them, and that they do not, nor can they, give any more of a shit about their readership’s lives than exactly what’s printed there. The problem happens when the whole thing gets commodified. When you’re a brand, and you become an example. Cue Uncle Ben wisely stating “with great power comes great responsibility”. Bloggers who put themselves out there as examples are then a “what to do” class, and those folks will be the ones the readership compare themselves to and get depressed. Leading us to…

Consuming information. People are strange, unpredictable, and above all else, unique things. I’m not going to go into a psychological diatribe about personalities and need states and all that. But I will say, people want to feel like they’re doing their best, and they want to feel like they’re OK. Whether that’s OK by their own definition or OK by some idea of what they think OK should be. The thing that gets lost is that no one’s life is anyone else’s life. “Be yourself–everyone else is taken.” People don’t get that. Shit, I don’t get that depending upon my mood on any given day. That’s why people get upset when the mold doesn’t fit. No blogger anywhere can help anyone by helping them help themself. These folks simply are not close enough, the internet being what it is. People will take things in through their own filters.

That last bit is both the most important part, and something that no blogger has any control over. I guess I just want the “A list” group to know that once you’re a brand, you’re not going to help anyone by putting things out there as “yes, you can do it–look at me”. It’s bullshit.

We as readers, on the other hand, have to know that what’s out there is for us only in as much as we can use it as a tool to jig what we already have, from where we already are, and only if we truly can and want to. That’s a leap most people can’t make all the time. JD hit it on the head:

When you read what other folks do to save money, don’t feel judged. In real life, listen to what others are thinking or saying, but don’t let their notions bring you down. They’re not you. They aren’t living your life. They have their own strengths and weaknesses, just as you have yours. Make the most of what you have. Do what works for you. Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare your Present Self to your Past Self. Your goal is to constantly improve your own life, if only in little ways.

I say you can replace the “to save money” with “to lose weight”, “to declutter”, “to be a better person”, or any of that other good stuff just as easy. Be OK with you. You’re a work in progress, and that’s OK. I think that above paragraph should be plastered on all the “A-list” bloggers sites. It still won’t help the masses who truly want to ignore it or don’t get it, but it’s a good step.

Words from other sources

For many moons, I’ve been a compulsive internet user and also a seeker. In my travels on the internet, as well as all over scholarly texts and who knows what, every now and again, I happen upon a few words that seem to strike a chord with me. For whatever reason, the words hit deeper than common language, and speak to the centre of me. Normally, I can’t even pinpoint entirely why. I guess I use these as a sort of compass to get to know myself a little better, and often to remind myself of what’s important to me. I try to read the list every other week or so, and it always takes me on quite the roller coaster.

As I was looking through them, I thought why not share? So, here’s the list as of the end of May 2011. I’m no longer sure how long I’ve kept this list, but it’s an ongoing project. Wherever I know, I’ve credited the speaker. If you happen to know any I don’t, or can correct any I’ve gotten wrong, do let me know. I hope I don’t reveal too much of myself using these people’s words.

• Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.-Roger Ebert (review for the film “Tree of Life”)
• “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” -C. S. Lewis
• “There’s an alternative. There’s always a third way, and it’s not a combination of the other two ways. It’s a different way.” – David Carradine
• “Doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” – Annie Lamont
• “In the world to come, each of us will be called to account for all the good things god put in the world that we never bothered to enjoy.” – Talmudic teaching.
• “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.” -Epicurus, 341 BCE.
• “There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.” – Jackie French Koller.
• “We are all a little weird, and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it ‘love’.” – Dr. Suess
• “The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”~Epictetus
• “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” — Dr. Seuss (Oh, the Places You’ll Go!)
• The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. – CS Lewis
• “Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you -– all of the expectations, all of the beliefs -– and becoming who you are.”~Rachel Naomi Remen
• The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. – Machiavelli
• “The presence of fear is a sure sign you’re trusting in your own strength.”~A Course in Miracles
• “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “My memory of you is better than you.” – Lao Tzu
• “Sometimes my life seems to be a never-ending succession of unhappy women” – Nietzsche
• “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.” – Pema Chodron
• “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “An internet user and his leisure time are soon parted.” – Author Unknown
• “Don’t think you’re on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path.” – Author Unknown
• “And the day came where the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”- Anais Nin
• People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough; Give the world your best anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never about them anyway.
• “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”-Dr. Seuss
• “Tension is who you think you should be, Relaxation is who you are” -Chinese Proverb
• “Nature always follows the path of least resistance.”
• “Finish every day and be done with it…You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it…serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• “Make a “career” of living a happy life rather than trying to find work that will produce enough income that you can do things with your money that will then make you happy.” -Abraham-Hicks
• “…and forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
• When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. ~Chinese Proverb
• To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.~Emily Dickinson
• Be Patient. You will write many more failures than successes. Say to yourself, I accept failure as the condition of this life, this work. I freely accept it as my destiny. Then go on and do the work. You never ask yourself anything beyond “Did I work today?”
• “I can give you the shirt off my back…I can get another one. I can give you the money in my pocket…I can get some more. Yet when I give you my time, you know how much I really love you…because, you see, it’s the only thing I can’t get more of.”– Shep Lampkin
• “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
• “You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”- Mark Epstein Thoughts Without a Thinker
• Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
• It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• “Don’t cry because it’s over. smile because it happened.” -Dr. Seuss
• “A thousand candles may be lit by a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – The Buddha
• I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
• I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. -Mark Twain
• “The early bird may get the worm, but the late mouse gets the cheese.” -Steven Wright
• Why should I be worried about dying? It’s not going to happen in my lifetime.” -Raymond Smullyan
• Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another. -George Bernard Shaw
• Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.~ Eleanor Roosevelt
• When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.~ Lao Tzu
• Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
• All misery derives from the inability to sit in a quiet room alone.
• Happiness for a reason is a form of misery because the reason can be taken away from you at any time. To be happy for no reason is the happiness you want to experience.
• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.~ Mahatma Gandhi
• Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “Holy shit, what a ride!”~ Mavis Leyrer
• If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~ Meister Eckhart
• Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually’, just do it and correct course along the way. ~ Tim Ferriss
• “Normal” is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. ~ Ellen Goodman
• The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~ Elbert Hubbard
• Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.~ Steve Jobs
• If we don’t take charge of life’s direction, our life will be controlled by the outside to serve the purpose of some other agency. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• May you live every day of your life. ~ Jonathan Swift
• Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today, I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it. ~ Groucho Marx
• The things you own end up owning you. – Tyler Durden
• Television connects viewers to nothing except the assumption of being connected to something. – Michael Arlen, TV Critic
• “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.” – Richard Dawkins
• Alice asked the Chesire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know”, Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?” -Alice in Wonderland, LEWIS CARROLL
• “Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box.” – Italian Proverb
• I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. -Sagan
• the infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. the sheer number of experiences i could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live in trapped loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation of the last, every moment smoothly following the the gentle curves of societal norms. we act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.and no, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn’t involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. it doesn’t involve tempering my life to better fit someone’s expectations. It doesn’t involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up. This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit. –xkcd
• “Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.” -Salvador Dali
• “It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” -Chuck Palahniuk
• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -Oscar Wilde
• “Everything will be alright in the end, if it´s not alright, its not the end.”
• Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson
• “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” – Michael J. Fox
• I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the sidewalk. It’s so fuckin’ heroic.– George Carlin
• “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde
• All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France
• It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not. ~ James Gordon
• After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.  ~Alfred Edward Perlman
• When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? -John Wooden
• A bore, Travis, is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship. – John D. McDonald
• “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” ~African proverb
• Be still, and know that I am God. – Psalm 46:10

In other news…

This has been a strange week. The reason being that I’m feeling a little… exposed, and I can’t decide if it’s good.

The internet is a weird place for someone like me. I’m one of those quiet, introverted nerds who is pretty much invisible in the world he inhabits. Sure, I’ve got people who know me and care about me, and I hope that overall, I don’t run through this world causing too much strife. That’s not the problem I have though. The problem is that there’s something about my makeup with regard to my accomplishments that first off prefers the negative (i.e., believing my accomplishments or works are useless, irrelevant, or worse–damaging) and second, is traditionally measured through external validation.

To be clear, I get a lot of ego mileage out of people telling me they like me or my work, in no small part because I can then point to something that says, “yeah, see you dork? Your stuff really is okay, in spite of your negative internal dialogue!” It’s part of the reason I love to put stuff up on Flickr. I like to get those comments that say “hey, great work”. It’s also part of the reason I was on the air on CKMS for a decade. I liked getting callers who requested songs, or who called us up to tell us that we were entertaining. I guess maybe that in itself isn’t all that unusual, either. Perhaps the only slightly unusual thing is that having the internet out there to put my various thoughts and accomplishments up is great for me because I wouldn’t otherwise have any mechanism for this external validation thingee. Or, at least, not one so broad-reaching.

So it’s been a good ego week from that perspective:

• One of my photos was used on the mnn (which I discovered entirely by fluke off of Google’s “health” pages. Yep–that’s my hand after a cold winter shoot, if I recall correctly. I really need to drink more water).
• I was named in a complementary article about my radio work in the local papers.
• Roger Ebert saw fit to acknowledge a comment I left on his blog (although I honestly don’t know what he meant by his single word response–I just like to think that out of nearly 400 comments, he chose to at least say something on mine which is no small thing).

All these things are way cool, and I don’t mind them being out there. I have no issue with any of it. The whole thing got me thinking about just how out there I really am. It had been a while since I googled myself. I was sorta shocked at how much stuff comes up now that wasn’t ever there before. Where you used to just get a couple old STC articles and photography works, now you get my google profile, my linkedIn profile, my Lulu store front, my twitter feed, info about my short stint drumming, and probably most disturbingly, this blog.

I was always a little leery of posting my full name on this blog. It isn’t because I didn’t want people to read it. If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t post stuff. I have a paper and ink journal for all my thoughts that I don’t want available to literally the world. It’s more because I’m concerned of what some select people might think upon reading it. Like, what if my mom ever learned to google me? How about anyone who was considering me for a volunteer position, or maybe even a ‘real’ job? I know there’s nothing all that risqué going on here, but it’s giving someone information to form an opinion about me without meeting me, and some folks mistakenly and automatically take a person’s online persona as the sum total of their makeup–particularly, I fear, with blogs like this one where I often write what I think in a balls-hanging-out sort of way. I could easily be considered too opinionated or too negative and be discarded outright when in fact that writing was just what I was feeling at the time.

I’m a big boy, and I know the dangers of posting to the net. I probably wouldn’t post at all if I didn’t have that external validation thingee going on. The net is dangerous because it doesn’t ever seem to forget, and google is getting better and better at finding, indexing, and CACHEING friggin’ everything. Heck, the wayback machine’s got some stuff that even *I* forgot was up here.

I’m sort of on the fence. To post, or not to post. And if I do, what to post? What’s safe? I used to think I knew, but when I look back at some of the things I thought were safe, I’m not sure that I could honestly say that it was okay with me for EVERYONE to be able to see it.

That’s the trouble with me and my internet content. I think I’m pretty unimportant, and I can bounce around all I like with my hair on fire, and no one will care. So, I often do, just because I find being silly or opinionated suits me at the time. Then I’m astounded when someone actually DOES lift the blind and look in.

Heh. Perhaps I’m just a fool after all, and always will be. Take me or leave me.

Old and wise

Today I saw a picture on Flickr that went on to talk about the photographer’s grandfather. There was nothing particularly unique about the writeup, just that he was kind, joyful, and made others joyful too. It’s probably not all that uncommon to think of one’s elders, particularly one’s grandparents, in such a light. I know I do.

The only grandparent I ever knew was my mom’s mom, and when I was younger, she was ‘all that’ to me. I remember her as a consummate altruist, a teller of tales, a maker of warm beverages on cold winter days. One of those iron German ladies that were built to last, and did. She was something else, and I remember her fondly.

I also remember my dad fondly. That might seem a little more strange if you knew my history. Dad and I locked horns a whole heck of a lot in my teens. I don’t think I understood him, and I know he didn’t understand me. It isn’t that we had any sort of antagonistic or animosity-laden relationship. In fact, I think for the most part we had an arm’s length relationship. My mom seemed to have more to do with me growing up than my dad, and I seemed to like it that way. Not exactly a recipe for fond memories, but not one for bad either. I was surprized in my early 20′s when dad actually became a person to me, rather than an authority figure. We did have some decent talks, and I think toward the end of his life, we connected more. I felt like I had a better understanding of him, and through this, formed a better opinion that has gotten ever rosier in the years since his death. Dad’s been gone, what, 15 years now… wow.

Thing is, with me, retrospect seems to cure a lot of ills. That’s the first part. When I look back at those days, I don’t really remember the bad times we locked horns; they don’t seem as important (and honestly, now that I’m older, I can truly see why he’d have had cause to be upset with me on a lot of levels). It makes me wonder if I have some spark of retroactive optimism somewhere in me. I remember him as a quiet, dedicated family man more than anything. He had his fears, doubts, challenges. But he lived such that he had a house, a family, and a little money in the bank. Pretty good guy with a pretty good outcome, given what he went through when he was young.

The second part is something I’ll preface with this: I can only really speak for myself here, so if you disagree, that’s way cool. I think that as people age, they become more seasoned. That is, in general, they’re more mindful, less prone to whimsical flights of fancy, more thorough in their assessments, more rational and realistic about the circumstances that surround them. The price is a loss of idealism perhaps; a sort of resignation that you can see if you look closely. They’re also more financially stable, having learned to live with what they have (I know, there’s people who never learn this, but again, I’m speaking in general).

I think these two things equal a happier human being in general. A more stable kind of person. The reason that grandparents or elders seem so damned great a lot of the time is because the kids of today never saw them when they weren’t that way. They only know the awesome old happy dude who could make anyone smile. They weren’t alive when the flailing poor bastard with bad judgement and huge stressors was walking around, yet to morph into the lovable dude.

It’s kind of a self-driven ecosystem–that of the happy dude. I mean, if he was a total bomb at life and never found his way through all the crap, then he wouldn’t have had kids, or would have had them, but raised them badly or maybe the kids think of him as a crotchety old bastard they hate.

I dunno. I guess what I’m tossing around in my head with all this is that you never really stop growing as long as you’re alive. If you can get to the point where younger people think of you as cool or happy or lovable, then that’s a win–not just for them but you you. I hope I get there someday.

Digging in the dirt

I guess I can now finally say with certainty that spring has sprug. It took a long, long while. This winter seemed to just never end, right up to the point where there was a dusting of snow on the car on the morning of my birthday. Thankfully, that’s the last I ever saw of it. For the record, I recall birthdays where we were in shorts on lawn chairs in the back yard. This year was certainly not one of those.

But this past weekend, we did manage to get out a lot. I biked, and there was solid sun all weekend. The trees have swollen buds that seem to be just aching to burst out and reach for the light. God knows, my eyes and sinuses have told me in no subtle tones that the pollen, it is flying.

Out at Woodcock Pocket, Suzanne has been madly tapping her toes waiting to get out back and start her garden. This past weekend, the soil out back was starting to dry. While the part of the back yard near the house was still pretty much marsh land, the farther back part was dry enough to plant. Suz went out and availed herself of a special at some greenhouses in the area, offering discounts on indigenous plants. She did some research and decided on two types of elderberry bushes and a serviceberry bush. All of these generate edible berries, grow about 7′ high, and offer up pretty flowers and foliage. I’m sure the birds will love us ever more as the bushes start to take and bear fruit. They say it’ll be another two seasons before we see anything at all from them, so I guess the waiting game begins. I will be happy if they find purchase in the clay back there. I imagine it can’t be easy for green things to grow in such challenging soil. But, we shall see.

In other bird-related news, our feeder has totally become a hot spot for the neighbourhood feathery creatures. We get all kinds, including a mated pair of cardinals. We’ve got several varieties of finches, and more robins than you can shake a stick at. I think it may be time to hang up a nice feeder full of niger seed to attract the goldfinches. They’re pretty. Suz also wants to see if we can attract hummingbirds. I haven’t seen any of those as yet, nor have I seen any blue jays. But, the season is young.

Here’s a shot of one of the mourning doves that comes by to sit under the feeder and clean up after the birds who sit on top and drop seeds. I think between the doves and the little chipmunk that scurries around the yard all hair-trigger the food is all eaten up, and nothing goes to waste. Gotta love nature. I keep thinking it’d be way cool to get to the point where the chickadees and chipmunks come and get seed and peanuts from our hands. I guess we shall see.

Spider biker

So, today was the day. It’s come brutally, brutally late this year thanks to all the bloody snow followed by all the bloody rain, but today was a beautiful, wonderfully sunny day with temperatures that hovered in the pluses all day long.

So, today was my first bike ride in to work this year, and the first ever from our new house. Overall, I’d say it was pretty decent, although I know there has to be a better route than the one I took. Our house seems to be a bit of a dead zone, requiring me to bike through a meandering expanse of subdivision before I can get to anything like a direct route. That’s fine if I’m biking for leisure, but not as nice when I need to get to work. For that ride, I need to be as efficient as possible, and where we are just doesn’t seem to allow for that.

But, I’m hopeful. I don’t know my neighbourhood well enough yet, and there’s every possibility that I’m missing a golden, nearly straight line route someplace. The best route is straight up University, but I don’t want to do that. That particular stretch, especially around the U of W, has become pretty treacherous. One bike rider died last year, and another was hit earlier this year and wound up going over the hood and into the car through an open sunroof. Must have been pretty spectacular to see, but I’m not about to try it. If at all possible, I want to avoid that whole stretch.

So, today’s ride stats:

• Distance: 6.76km, 1.55km more than I rode from our apartment last season
• Trip took: 23 minutes and 14 seconds, I used to be able to make it between 16 and 20 minutes

Overall, I felt better than I recall feeling on my first ride of last season. Last year, I remember I was sweating like nobody’s business, and it took me to noon before I felt like myself again. This year, while there’s no doubt I worked to get to the office, I didn’t feel demolished when I got here, just winded and a little shaky. I was back to normal within an hour or so. I think a lot of things contributed to this. It’s probably warmer than it was last year, I got adequate sleep last night, I have pannier bags now (last year I still had the messenger bag–how did I ever bike with that thing on?), I had the uncommon pleasure of a big, hot breakfast today. I don’t think that I’m any more fit than I was; certainly not after slothing around all winter, but I guess you never know.

But it was nice to feel the wind, to hear the birds, to ride through the campus and see all the geese and look at the buds swelling on the branches. And then there was a spider. I dunno what it is about spiders and my bike. There was one living on my bike last year too, as I recall. This year I found another little one right on my handle bar by the gear shifter. It was amusing to catch glimpses of it as I rode along. The thing was clinging on for dear life most of the way. Sometimes it flapped around on the wind attached to a little web. I did my best to not disturb or crush it in my changing of gears. As far as I know, it arrived here with me shaken, but unscathed–a really well-traveled little insect. Makes me wonder what it’ll do. Maybe it’ll creep off the bike and find a new home kilometers away from where it started–some kind of arachnid pioneer. Hee hee. Small things. The world just never stops moving, and the dynamic nature of how all things ricochet off one another is pretty amazing when you think of it.

Anyway, it was a good day for biking, and I’m glad I did. Here’s the humble start. I guess we’ll see if I can do better distance this year than last. Last year, we were at 632km when I gave it up. This year, maybe I can try for 1000. It’s a blessing to be able to ride, to move my body, and to breathe the air. I love all that, and I’m working on seeing it every day.

Physical media in limbo

I finally got around to unpacking my books this weekend (or rather, most of my books). In my ongoing efforts at uncluttering, I managed to cull quite a few that I came across, mostly old textbooks from my undergrad that I’ll never look at again. I imagine the rest of my stuff is largely paperback fiction, which when I see it will likely go to the book exchange because I’ll be replacing anything worth having around in e-book format. That’ll cut down on a lot of heavy stuff which will lighten my load substantially. While I have come to love the e-book and the reader I have now (I think I’ve read more this year so far than I have the last few years), I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of physical books entirely. I think that what I have on my bookshelf really does say a little about me, and a few of them aren’t available. What I will do is keep only those books that are really ‘me’, and hopefully question more intelligently if they are, in fact, ‘me’.

The hard thing is the dang music. I’m having a hard time with it, and I was reminded again of the hard time I have by a recent post in a blog I read, where our author had created a special shelf to contain all her physical media–books, DVDs, and TV series. I love shelves like that, and I have had a few in my life, across varying places I’ve lived. I adored my little shelf of CDs back in the day before it got all unruly. I used to keep everything alphabetized and scrupulously organized like some kind of ghost of Rob Gordon. I even went so far as to ensure the CDs were all aligned correctly in their jewel cases. My friends mocked me mercilessly for this. But you know, I got a real joy hit out of that wall of music.

I also loved my video cabinet, although it never looked as good, with all the movies I’d recorded off TV or laserdisc (once upon a time, I could actually rent these and a player and copy away, which I did). Those days are long gone, and I don’t even have a reliable VHS player anymore at all. But I have a decent DVD collection, and a blu-ray collection that seems to be growing at about a disc a month or so.

Thing is, when it comes to DVDs and music, I’ve started to move more and more toward digital. I have all of my music in iTunes (although most of it needs to be re-ripped to a decent, lossless bit rate) and the movies are making their way over at a glacial, but steady, rate. That means currently there’s no jewel cases in my space (all the CDs are still packed) and the DVDs are only pseudo-organized. That’s okay from a strictly usability standpoint. That is, everything I want to listen to is easily either on my iPod or streamed through the Apple TV on the big stereo. Any movie or TV I want to see is findable and watchable.

But see, I miss that media wall. And it isn’t just aesthetics and showing off my collection of stuff. Part of it is a feeling that I can’t place that sorta gives me joy to look at it, interact with it, browse it, and know it’s there. Part of it is that as I’ve culled and digitized, I realized that I’ve lost some of my attention.

See, I’ve now gotten into the habit of one-off songs, play lists, and genius mixes. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and their instant nature and ability to make a good mix, but as Rob Gordon would tell you, the making of a mix tape is an art form, and I say, not to be left to the Apple Genius alone. Remember cassette tapes? I do. If a song came on, you couldn’t easily ‘skip’ it. At the very least, it required waiting for the imperfect gap-finding technology to register as the tape spooled back and forth. I think it was that little inconvenience that contributed in a way to actually listening to a work. If it was a pain to get there, it was often better to just sit back and enjoy the painless, time consuming ride. Thing is, that ride was often just great.

Last month, I listened to Def Leppard’s Hysteria CD from front to back for the first time in ages. It was so awesome. I miss listening like that–front to back. “This is the CD I am listening to”, not whatever random thing the computer creates. I’ve taken to doing that more since I realized how much I missed it. To that end, having the CDs out makes some sense. I have perfect quality at home, and I don’t need to re-rip them (iPods and the headphones don’t need lossless really–they can’t exploit it well enough, and even if they could, I’m rarely listening in a place where it matters). And I could get all those jewel cases out of their many boxes and back up on the shelf. I think I’ll do that.

Again, I’m reminded that decluttering isn’t all about getting rid of everything. That’s the ‘me’ equivalent of tossing out the baby with the bath water. A place feels like home to me if I have some of my stuff around, It’s more about keeping the stuff that’s really ‘me’. I should perhaps apply the same philosophy I have to books to CDs and DVDs. Maybe I’ll rip the CDs that aren’t that important and then get rid of them and only keep those I truly want to slot and listen to from time to time and put them on a shelf again. Not a bad idea. Hmm…

Maybe I’ll be building a shelf this weekend.

The value of nothing

I caught myself in a little bit of a mind-fuck this morning. It’s really weird how the more I think of my attachment to stuff, the more stuff like this makes me go, “hmmm”. More on that in a minute.

Last night, I was on the way to the radio show and I realized I’d forgotten my ginger ale at home. I always bring one to the show, and I was cursing myself for forgetting. So, I stopped in at a Timmies and grabbed a bottle of 7-Up, which was a compromise, but okay. It cost me $2.02. I finished half of it, and the other half is waiting to be consumed.

When I got home, I sat down to meditate. Little digression here–for those of you who were wondering what I was up to for Lent this year, I decided to try to double my meditation time over the season–that’ll take me to 40 minutes a day. So far, it’s been okay, although I have slipped a couple times. Still, I’ve now done 25 consecutive days of meditation (most of them with the double time) and I think that’s a record. So anyway, I use a meditation app for my iPod Touch called “Insight Timer” (formerly “Zen Timer”). It’s a decent app that basically times my meditation and lets me have a nice Zen bell sound to indicate start and stop times. I got it mostly because I was looking for a bell sound–something oddly missing from all stock iOS and Android alarms and countdown timers. It’s also got some extra features, like keeping track of stats, which is how I know how many days I’ve done. I’ve been more than happy with the app; it’s free and does what I need it to do. Of course, there’s a paid version of the app too which unlocks functionality that I don’t need at all.

Thing is, I like the app, and some part of me wants to show appreciation to the guy who wrote it. The paid app is, coincidentally, pretty much what I bought the soda for: $1.99. You’d think that I could fork over the two bucks it’d take to keep a useful app that I like going, but I always hedge, thinking, “well, it does what I need it to, and it’s 2 bucks for something I essentially already have, so why would I pay it?”

But then, think about it: I use this app every single day; for Lent, twice a day. It’s served me well for hours and hours of my life as I try to better myself through meditation. It’s helping me to accomplish something that I consider to be good and healthy, with far-reaching positive consequences. And yet I can’t be arsed to give the man who made it 2 bucks, even to say thank you for the useful tool. Yet, I’ll drop 2 bucks without a thought on a whim for essentially water and sugar I could buy for less than it took to manufacture the bottle it came in. The end result is that I take stuff into me that’s decidedly unhealthy, makes me fat, decays my teeth and put me out of getting where I needed to be at the time I wanted to be there. And any ‘benefit’ I derive from this stuff runs its course within the time it takes me to drink it. Seems like a pretty shabby ROI.

There’s something weird there.

So, this morning. This morning, I was sitting at the computer, looking up some reviews for a book that was recommended last night at the radio show. There it was, gets great reviews, story looks like something I’d love to read, I am looking for my next read having finished with Grisham, and there’s a link right there to buy it for my e-reader, a device which I’ve recently lauded and enjoy using. I can buy the book for $9.99. And I hedged.

It’s like, if I spent this 10 bucks, I’d have the book in my e-reader, but it didn’t feel like I’d be buying anything because the volume of physical stuff in my environment wouldn’t go up. There’s another, similar, mind-fuck.

Now that Gen X is no more (I still can’t believe that…sigh), I went to Blockbuster to rent a movie last week. I felt dirty just walking through the doors, but I found the film and was shocked to pay $6.70 to rent it. Jesus! But think about that. My 6 and some-odd bucks bought me about 2 hours of entertainment. A book, electronic or otherwise, provides at least 10 hours of entertainment depending on how long it is. Heck, Something the size of Mists of Avalon can keep me busy for a month if I read every single night and weekends. Assuming I spent the cash to entertain myself for say, 20 hours at Blockbuster, I’d spend something like $135. And that’s extremely conservative. Arguably, the book is a far better way to spend spare time, too, but that’s a debate for another entry.

Yet here I was, sitting there staring at the screen and questioning with an inward snottiness that blows my mind the ‘worth’ of paying 10 bucks for something that some part of me feels I won’t even have, damned collection of 1′s and 0′s that it is.

I’m hopeful this is the next step in a shift of the way I think of the value of things. When I was younger and computers were just getting to be an interest of mine, I paid for nothing at all after the hardware. Everything from the operating system to the software was pirated, mostly because I couldn’t afford it all. Even after I got a real job and had the cash, I rarely paid for software. Then 5 years ago when I started down the path of Apple, the software wasn’t as readily available and I was pretty much the only person I knew of who had Apple computers. Thankfully, they came with the OS on them, but I found that I also wanted to keep my machine as ‘clean’ as I could, so I bought the stuff I used. Aperture, iLife, iWork, MS Office for Mac. It’s all on my system because I paid for it, and I have the serial numbers to prove it. The benefits are enormous. Updates when they come out, support when it’s needed, no viruses or all the associated bullshit that comes with trying to hunt down all this crap online. I actually like that I have the stuff legally.

I don’t know how I made that leap with desktop software, but I want to make it with apps and books too. I don’t know what it is that makes me think that apps and e-books aren’t ‘worth’ it. It’s a strange thing. They aren’t nothing, much as they take up no physical space. They serve me better in many ways than any stuff I go out and buy without a single thought about questioning its worth to me. Strange thing, that.

For the record, I bought the e-book. Time to start using this reader of mine in the way that I envisioned I would. I’ll buy the app too.

It’s so strange. I spend so much time agonizing over the fact that I don’t know what it is I want. Then when I do find some things, I automatically hedge on getting them due to some incorrect belief about their worth. Maybe I ought to admit that ‘nothing’ is worth a lot. That’s something I’ve been saying for a while now, but it seems to have gotten to the point where I’m feeling it too. I dare to think that may well be a good thing.

Drinkin’ the Kool-Aid

Winter’s getting to me. That last dump of snow we had Saturday evening, even though it’s mostly taken care of now and certainly will be by week’s end (I hope) really got under my skin. It’s for this reason that I know I’m not all that stable at the moment where it comes to emotions. If I’m getting genuinely pissed off at the weather, well that’s a problem.

So, I guess it’s not all that great to be listening to any of my own insights at this time, although sometimes, it feels like maybe I should. Not necessarily the stuff about the weather, or the little annoyances that I’ve gotten pretty good at overlooking. The thing that’s been playing on me lately is the whole “live the life you love” thing.

In case it’s not clear, I’ve become, for better or worse, an avid reader of certain blogs that espouse the sort of life I think that I want. As an entry point, it comes down to minimalism/decluttering, personal finance, and meditation. The reasoning being that if I want peace, I kinda need to start with me, as that is pretty well the only sovereign ground I have. And, if I look critically at it, I’ve met with some success. I meditate every day, and I have better finance habits than most of the people I know. I’m still struggling both on a personal and spousal level with minimalism and decluttering. These things I see as doable, so I’m pretty much still striving, and hopeful that I improve every day a little bit.

The really irksome thing is that a lot of these blogs preach all about living the life you want regardless of responsibilities. The foremost of these is Zen Habits (and ironically, the grand daddy of them all that got me started), which I’ve stopped reading because for reasons I can’t put my finger on, Leo makes me feel worse rather than better, or inspired. Maybe that’s not entirely accurate that they say you can live the good life regardless of responsibilities, as many people do state that you can do it–you just need to re-jig your expectations and your day-to-day spending and then go on diatribes about how to shift one’s focus of what is truly important. Many of them, most recently Joshua of the Minimalists, practice what they preach by quitting their traditional jobs in order to ‘follow their passion’.

I think the reason I find this irksome is that nothing would please me more than to ‘follow my passion’ but there’s all sorts of reasons why it can’t be done, and I find this incredibly depressing. Much as these online gurus state time and again that yes, it can be done “Just look at me!” and then cite everything from fear to lack of direction as reasons why people still think that they can’t follow their dreams, I think that it’s just a cold hard fact that not everyone can. In fact, I wager the vast majority can’t. There’s a ton of reasons why people can’t do this from financial to disability to psychological. Some people sure can, but my god, they are few and far between.

I’m thinking this whole self-improvement racket is a little like a cleaned up version of Cosmopolitan. It’s become pretty clear that the women in these magazines are not real. No one in a regular human body looks like that, and if they do, they’re unhealthy and have external funding. And yet there’s a lot of women who stare longingly at these idols, quietly loathing themselves and dreaming of a life they won’t ever have. That’s what I’ve started to feel like reading a lot of these blogs. Yup, there’s people out there who write for a living, get enough cash to support themselves, maybe even to support their families if they decide to pare down all possessions and give up keeping up with the Joneses.

But dammit, look at the math. There’s what, maybe 100 noted online self-help/improvement guru blogs that anyone cares about. And then there’s hundreds of thousands of people who go there, just looking for a life they’d love to grab but will never grab, no matter what the gurus say, or more importantly, what the people can realistically do.

Being one of these hundreds of thousands can be profoundly depressing. And honestly, my sights aren’t set all that high. And honestly, I do much of the work that they recommend. Do I see results? Sometimes. Are they good? Sure. Are they things that I “Digest slowly that just might change my life”? Christ, no. I once thought so, but holding on to that hope is as stupid as buying a lottery ticket every week. The only thing it does is up the web traffic of the gurus.

Probably the best bit of wisdom I have heard in a while came out of the following TED talk, in which Mike Rowe talks about dirty jobs. The best bit is the middle toward the end from when he says the guy who cleans up the road kill whistles while he works. If you want to skip the first bit (which is worth a listen, but not necessary), go to 10:45:

Maybe the real Zen Habit here, as much as the mere thought of it depresses the hell out of me–no doubt thanks in part to all the life-coach cheerleaders out there telling me I can do what’s not possible–is to learn a certain amount of resignation to temper one’s dreams with. No, we cannot, no matter what the gurus say, all quit our jobs and follow our dreams, no matter how much we pare down and change our focus. That’s just the way it is. Suck it up, sunshine. Better to try to find peace somewhere in what you are required to do to make money and be useful to yourself and family. If the gurus spent more time on that, it might be worth reading again. As it stands, they’re just making everyone who already feels shitty about their lot feel shittier when they realize there’s no changing it.

“Take your time,

think a lot,

why think of everything you’ve got,

for you will still be here tomorrow,

but your dreams may not.”

-Cat Stevens.