Tag: blogging

A day off from dopamine consumption

When your phone is glued to your hand come rain or shine – there is a problem.

The constant refreshing of a few apps over and over and over – like a mad man expecting different results but doing the exact same thing. And it’s all for consumption – for keeping up to date and for dopamine. Not for creation.

This blog is for creation though. These words were not here before i put them on the page. No newsfeed. No reading. Just my own words.

Take that, social media. Because sometimes you really suck.

 

Quest love

I asked the owl in the woods how to lead a good life. He turned his head sideways, looked hard at my face and then said to find myself a quest. But what sort of quest? I asked. He held up seven feathers to me as he said this:

Overcome a monster. Pull the dragon out of the cave and stick your sword through its rotten heart.

Spin yourself some gold and grow your riches. Pull the levers of wealth in your favour to grow from nothing to luxuries beyond your dreams.

Discover a lost land. Leave your home and find another one somewhere far where the sky is a different colour.

Return a prodigal son. Come back home from the journey of a lifetime and see it with different eyes to the ones you left with.

Make people laugh. “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come”.

Make people cry. “To weep is to make less the depth of grief”.

Die a thousand times over and come back stronger than ever.

 

 

Emotional labour – extremes

Emotional labour is hard because we don’t feel like doing it. Put yourself in the shoes of another on purpose. It takes effort. By doing this you can make things easier for them to understand and to enjoy your company. They are more likely to listen to you.

At its easiest this process is smooth – Showing your child the stars and the moon. Explaining something to someone you already love. Maybe this doesn’t even count as labour, but it is rewarding – it gives as much as it takes – I saw the Milky Way with fresh eyes after taking it for granted for so long. I was proud and confident to sell our night skies to her.

At the business end of the spectrum emotional labour is often incredibly difficult and the crux of any transaction. To understand what drives another person – what will affect their status and their emotions? And to convince them of your ability to add value – that is work indeed. Marketing at its core. Do they need you? What are they thinking?

I market the galaxy to my daughter and it’s simple. I market a service to a bank and it’s brutally hard.

Gestures

For most of his life women would watch him pass by. A little smile guaranteed a positive response. He would practice his gestures to attract their glance. Moving his mouth, stretching his back and arms and turning his head just so. He could give watching women some hope.

One day he found this no longer worked. It seemed to happen in an instant. Celestial youth moved away from him. What was once a thick brown mop had thinned out and turned grey. His hairline was now a replica of his father’s. Teeth which were once white and shining were now stained and chipped. A ragged smile.

This forced in him nothing less than a reckoning with the universe.

Trying to start a streak

Fred Wilson blogs on the power of streaks (link)

This is something I have not been able to generate in my life lately. Life with two tiny children is challenging, fun, tiring, amazing and, above all, interrupted! There is not a minute goes by where the parent is not needed for something – especially true when both parents are working from home as we are. Starting a streak in ANYTHING is tough.

Things in which I could start a streak, even with two little demanding limpets attached to my leg all day:

  • this blog – post every day until it’s a shame to not keep it up (keeping limpets off the keyboard)
  • listen to a new album every day (at night, when limpets sometimes fall asleep)
  • get a new customer in business every month (limpet-permitting)
  • going to the gym (dropping limpets at the limpetcare centre)
  • greeting my wife kindly each day (limpets actually help with this one)
  • eating right (not too hard – helps if limpets sleep, and then I sleep, and then sugar cravings subside)

etc. etc.

Streaks are the result of habits, and habits change your world…..limpets-permitting.

Chip away at the stone

It’s an old Aerosmith song – I’m pretty sure Steven Tyler is referring to wearing down a woman’s rebuttals, but I am using the phrase to refer to creativity and making something good.

There is no such thing as a fully formed masterpiece. It has to be worked on day in and day out over time. Some examples:

You can’t reap the true benefits from a healthy diet by merely throwing up after eating a Macdonalds. Or even by cutting down on the bad stuff for a week. It needs to be a sustained, long term effort to have any impact.

The Beatles honed their craft in Berlin for years before releasing a hit record.

Apple iterates on its software more times than I care to imagine.

 

 

 

Fear and desire

I can’t concentrate.

Irrational fears and desires are pushing at some primordial nerve. At any given time i want to:

  • eat
  • to sleep
  • to play computer games
  • to watch movies
  • to listen to music

But I also want/need to:

  • work
  • study
  • complete chores
  • spend time with my wife and children

How can i get rid of the noise and focus on the right thing at the right time? I have 2 suggestions today.

1 – Understand your personality type. I took a personality questionnaire the other day from understandmyself.com – it delved into my responses to certain questions, assessing me under 5 big personality traits:

  • Agreeableness: Compassion and Politeness
  • Conscientiousness: Industriousness and Orderliness
  • Extraversion: Enthusiasm and Assertiveness
  • Neuroticism: Withdrawal and Volatility
  • Openness to Experience: Openness and Intellect

I have extreme elements which make up my personality (as does anyone) and this makes me want certain things, find some things easier than others and generally behave in certain ways. Of note in my assessment – I am non-assertive, withdrawn, extremely open and agreeable by nature – so I have plenty to work on and my fears and desires stem in some way from my innate nature.

2 – Understand our culture of gratification and pleasure at the expense of long term benefits. The lazy, primal part of our brain is being taken advantage of by the tech in our lives. Structure your life around managing this desire (ie. downtime from the tech), and the signal can more easily be heard among the noise.

Creative piece – Look around

The low hum of air conditioners filled the room. No talking or laughter could be heard. If you closed your eyes, the only sign of life from a room full of people was the click-clacking of fingers on keyboards. The paint on the ceiling and walls was an efficient and completely nondescript colour. Stale coffee smells filled the air.

Garth let out a deep, anxious sigh. He wondered how long it was until lunch. Lifting his head he stretched his neck to peer over the top of his cubicle. Rows of people at desks, wearing collars and pretending to be interested in what was happening on their computer screen. The coffee cups at their sides, a last ditch effort to get a buzz from the day. A corporate drone army.

How did it come to this? What made it even more unbelievable was that Garth knew he wasn’t alone in his disengagement from daily life. In a recent survey the company had found that only four out of ten employees knew what they were selling. And yet they stayed at their desks.

Garth wondered what Mandy was doing. He had noticed her new haircut this morning when she arrived at work. She seemed chuffed to hear his remarks. Or maybe that was annoying for her?

As if prompted by his thoughts, Garth saw a familiar brown hairdo rise from a cubicle at the other side of the room. Mandy was on the move. She walked purposefully down her aisle and then, Holy Cow! She turned down the aisle that Garth was sat in. She was headed straight towards him!

Garth panicked and ducked back down in front of his computer. What to say? Another hair comment? No too much. A joke of some sort? No…..Oh please dear Gods give me something to say to her!

Garth looked up again. As she passed his desk Garth managed to let out a small sound that somewhat reminded him of a stray cat living on his block. Mandy smiled and kept moving. Garth resorted to holding his head in his hands and beating himself up in his mind a million different ways.

Breaking the moment of exasperation, Garth heard quick footsteps coming back towards him, and then a little piece of scrunched up paper landed on his desk in front of his face (which was still in his hands). Garth looked up to see Mandy trotting away, disappearing round the bend.

It’s from her?!! Garth’s heart pounded like he was running a marathon. His palms secreted a layer of fine sweat. Must open it.

Uncrinkling and unfolding the paper, Garth saw her smooth hand writing in green ink. The sweat layer doubled up on his palms.

There in front of his eyes a little message lay: “Let’s leave here now and go get an ice cream…xx M”

 

 

 

Creative piece – Barista

The lady behind the counter was an artist. A barista, she could fashion tiny messages in the cream of the coffee she served. She wrote something to each and every customer.

As a customer, the message depended on what was on the barista’s mind. One man might be told to “have a nice day” by his coffee, another might get a left-leaning political opinion. Another might get a phone number and a small map to the barista’s house.

A cappuccino with a mini-newsfeed.