One of my favourite songs and it has this line:
“I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are, you make it hard.”
And then after the switchup in timing:
“I’ve got an answer, I’m going to fly away. What have I got to lose?”
And then a trippy guitar solo.
Magic.
Some options for how to approach a situation that is not working out as you planned:
A scorched-earth policy brutally removes resources from the game – starving the competition (and any bystanders) as you flee the battle ground.
Offensive moves take the conflict to the ‘enemy’. The aim here is to destroy the enemy’s resources to make them easier targets for domination.
A third option is to not compete for resources at all – instead put in the groundwork to build a network that encourages flexibility and stability during volatile times.
All three are valid, but you can only do one at a time.
I think I have found it.
If you are a struggling artist, you might be able to get funding/support for your work, Kickstarter-style at Drip (https://d.rip/discover)
The site is owned by Kickstarter and it just re-launched – it aims to support people (rather than projects ala Kickstarter) with a focus on creatives.
Right now it is in an invite only launch phase, but when this opens up to the public, it will be awesome. I encourage the dedicated writers and creatives out there to try and get support through Drip one day.
Drinking is good if you can stop after a couple.
Listening to podcasts is good if you have set a time and a place for regularly listening to them.
Technology is good if you use it, rather than it using you.
Exercise is good if you have had enough sleep and food to carry you through.
Relationships are good if you can look after yourself.
The internet is good if you create as well as consume.
As an experiment, try and find the habits in your daily life that are driven by pleasure – you know the ones i mean – those things you do when you’re a little bit bored which give you that nice little buzz and dopamine hit.
It is difficult. It forces you to reflect on your actions and life, and it eventually forces you to recognise that pleasurable things are not the most fulfilling things, precisely because they are temporary and external. In this way, pleasure is different to happiness.
Pleasure is a momentary feeling that comes from something external — a good meal, a message notification, making love and so on. Pleasurable experiences can give us momentary feelings of satisfaction, but this feeling does not last long because it is dependent upon external events and experiences. Try and locate the pleasurable (not happy, remember) activity in your life and try to stop doing it for a whole day – I’m almost certain you’ll find it hard to do.
But pleasure is not wrong in and of itself – so why stop? Because we need to know how we feel without the constant pleasure seeking. Are we doing all these things because we are sad without them? And if we are in fact sad about something, shouldn’t we find a more permanent solution?
The trouble comes when we ascribe the pleasurable activities in our lives more value and power than we should. A drug addict gives heroine priority over everything else – she sees it as the source of her happiness and of her power in life. Similarly a bulimic ascribes power to food and the control thereof. In actual fact, drugs and throwing up give us but a temporary pleasure – not a true satisfaction. They are not the answer to any sadness that is felt.
Once we see the things we are deriving pleasure from, a useful next step is to reflect on how we feel when we do not have access to these things – are we happy or sad without them? If we are happy without them, then there is no real problem. Carry on living.
If we are sad without them, and furthermore if we rely on the activity more than we should – then something needs to change for the sadness to lift.
I am reading Russel Brand’s new book Recovery and I am struck by a few things already:
It has given me food for thought and for writing. It has already made me want to change my life.
There is a local vinyl fair coming up this weekend. This got me thinking extermination. As in ‘flog all the vinyl I own’ extermination.
But then, what would I obsess over?
At the moment I have a total of 4 WordPress blogs including this one. Two I have temporarily disabled, one is supposed to be for studying – tracking my CFA progress but it isn’t really working – and this one is for everything else.
I am realising that the fracturing of my own attention does not work – I cannot possibly maintain all of those blogs, so I will have to consolidate. I will maintain this blog alone.
It is a liberating thought to think I will only have this one to think about and focus on.
Every now and then you will run into conflict. At work, at home, or inside your head. These moments are normally due to expectations that have not been met. They’re best treated as an opportunity to set or reset expectations around the topic.
Almost any destructive behaviour I can think of is the result of expectations not being met. A missed deadline is a missed expectation. An angry spouse is likely a missed expectation. A compulsive obsession is a missed expectation.
Be clear about what you expect of yourself and others. It matters perhaps more than anything else.
Life gets in the way of our goals and dreams on a daily basis. As we get older what was once a clear freeway in front of us is now littered with obstacles to manage – a child to feed, a wife to care for, an illness to recover from. In fact, once adulthood gives way to middle age, life resembles a motocross track. It’s all jumps, bumps, woops, berms, ruts and corners to manage.
So how to fit in writing amidst the chaos? A couple of thoughts:
Of course this is not an extensive list. To juggle responsibilities successfully is the end goal – when its done well a busy life can feel like launching a scrambler into the air on a tabletop jump, rather than coming short and tasting dirt through your helmet!
Chimpwithcans 