“Something that you may have seen just once, but with your own eyes, is always more forceful than a thousand newspaper reports and pamphlets.”

– Stefan Zweig and Anthea Bell, The World of Yesterday

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“Nothing vicariously exposes you to more mistakes committed by others than reading.”

– Charlie Munger, quoted in Charlie Munger: the Complete Investor by Tren Griffin

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The experiences we have help shape us. The shocks and triumphs show like the rings of a tree stump. We don’t know exactly what the impact has been until the end, when we look back, the mighty trunk felled.

Books can’t shape us in the same way. They provide inspiration, wisdom, escape and recognition but there is no risk involved in reading.

The book is a physically passive thing. It sits there waiting to be opened. It will not shout at you or hit you if you choose not to do so.

But within the pages of the book we can learn of how others have experienced their lives, what they wish to share. I can transform their experience into knowledge and inspiration for me.

I have control when I read. I can stop at any time. Can we say that about our real world experiences? There is always negotiation, compromise and risk involved IRL. With a book, I am safe.

However, I can be curious about different ways of life and different experiences and not want to go through them first hand.

I am not brave or adventurous. But I have the means to spend time with those who are.

A book is a holiday from my own life. A click of the fingers and I am transported, no passport or visa needed.

“To listen is to search for new opportunities, to seek fresh challenges. The most important book you can read is the one about yourself. It is open. I’ve started to understand why I was so fascinated as a small boy by the snail who carries his house on his back. We can also carry our houses—everything that we have—within us.”

– Erling Kagge, Silence

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“The life of man is like going a long distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not.”

– Iyéyasu, quoted in Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitabe

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We never know when our individual journeys will be over.

After 40 years on this planet I am aware that the purpose is not to slip through the days as smoothly as possible. The rough patches are what give us energy – friction creates heat.

But I have often, as a safety mechanism, sought a friction free life. Free of conflict or notable events, just a focus on racing for home, for solitude, oblivion.

There’s danger in seeking out those frictionless days which lead nowhere. If too many are stacked up in succession then life becomes a meaningless blur.

Tackling the challenges of the day to day, every day brings a retrospective satisfaction. I might not always have enjoyed the doing, but I like the having overcoming the obstacles.

I like to think of a day wells spent as one that is travelled at walking pace. I move forward using my own momentum, placing one foot in front of the other, rather than allowing gravity to slide me to the end of the day.

One of the ways to move as a pedestrian is to write. It’s a daily curative for those of us who have a tendency to seek the path of least resistance. If I have written, the day automatically has meaning.

By writing and publishing daily I lighten my load slightly. My head is clear, less distracted, I’m better able to navigate the journey.

If we rush, we risk spilling the load that we are obliged to carry.

I’m still figuring out how to carry myself through this one life.

Some days I might slip, but I try not to slide.

“By our definition, creativity only becomes innovation when ideas become useful. In the business world, that means when a new product or service is launched, or starts to make money. Creativity is a behaviour; innovation is a process.”

– Dave Allan et al, Sticky Wisdom

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“I mean, one thing that I did from early on because of the nature of my relationship with equipment, was my loyalty was to the best thing. So I wouldn’t, just because my dad was making me a board, if somebody else comes along with a better board, that’s what I’m riding.

The equipment would never be a limitation. Never right? I’m not going to be compromised because of my loyalty to a brand or loyalty to my dad, because that’s the tool. Yeah. So if the tool can allow you to do a better job, yeah. Or do it the way you need to do it or want to do it. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, it was better. It was better. And so, I think that allowed me to kind of bounce along, too.

But whoever made the best one, this is the tool that I use to do this thing that I do. And I’m sorry, I’m using whatever I get.”

– Laird Hamilton, Tetragrammaton Podcast, 10th April 2024

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What is the process of improvement?

We can have an ideal, imagine the best way of doing something. That is exciting- to run the movie in our minds of who we wish to be.

We have two hands. What are we doing with them today? What tools are we currently using?

The best ideas are the ones in action. Not chin scratching theories. It’s easy to be an armchair expert. What happens when we raise ourselves up from the comfort of theory into the uncertainty of practice is what counts.

The only way to know what works is to try. And inevitably most of what we try will not be perfect. But we always have the option of putting down the tool that doesn’t work and picking up another to see if that does the job.

This is a lifetime process. What I don’t want to be heard to say is that I have all the answers and nothing I do needs improving.

Loyalty to myself is not attachment to how I’ve done things in the past, it’s a commitment to self improvement and the simple maxim: to keep moving forward as an eternal student.

I am always on the lookout for better ways of doing, and because we are what we do, it’s the constant search for a better way of being.

“I’m an outsider by choice, but not truly. It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out. I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from: being forced to choose to stay outside. My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.”

– George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

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“These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is prison all the same. And the Outsider? He is in prison too: nearly every Outsider in this book has told us so in a different language; but he knows it. His desire is to escape. But a prison-break is not an easy matter; you must know all about your prison, otherwise you might spend years in tunnelling, like the Abbé in The Count of Monte Cristo, and only find yourself in the next cell.”

Colin Wilson, The Outsider

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Is the idea of being an outsider self-indulgent?

Surely there is always more we could do to fit in with everyone else.

But that would require the action of compromise.

And sometimes compromise can be the hardest thing to do because it requires the bypassing of the ego.

A compromise, at its best, is a win-win situation.

“I will compromise to accommodate your needs because in the long run, I benefit too.”

The colorary is, “I’m not going to do that because it makes me look weak.”

Some of us like to exist slightly on the periphery. Happy to not be in the group. The term outsider is a bit strong. It suggests discontent.

I am not an outsider, more of a dreamer. I am happy to be in and amongst others but there is a good chance my mind will drift elsewhere.

I like to spend time roaming in the hinterlands of my curiosity. In my own mind I can be totally alone. But I don’t seek to be lonely.

I can tunnel outside of the world that has been constructed all around me. The expectations of others close and far can be a sort of prison.

I can return in a jiffy.

If I am an outsider it is because I reject the rote conclusions of popular media and society.

Not in a misanthropic way. I am not walking around grumbling, building walls to keep others out.

It’s more of a quiet rejection, that is a movement towards the things I like and the ideas that interest me.

If I get that time away to myself, I am happy to yield to the world. Until it’s time go for a walk, learn and explore again.

“So, why read? Read because short of meeting and communing with them (and perhaps, because of this, writing about them), reading about diverse modes of being and consciousness is the best way we have of entering into them and abiding. To enter the flow-state of reading is to swim into other psyches with great ease, whatever their age, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, class or ethnicity.”

– Will Self, Why Read

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“Keep Reading. Keep watching movies and TV. Keep studying stuff that works. Study how Hemingway did it, or Tolstoy or Toni Morrison. That’s work. That counts as work. Books I love, I’ve read ten times. I’ve underlined them. I’ve scrawled notes in the margins. I’ve mangled their pages so badly I can barely close the covers. Movies? I’ve seen The Wild Bunch and Lawrence of Arabia so many times I can quote them from FADE IN to END CREDITS. I’ve watched Seven Samurai in so many translations I can cite the differing subtitles and tell you which versions I like best. That’s not getting into the weeds. That’s studying your craft.”

– Steven Pressfield, The Daily Pressfield

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We all operate with a radar of curiosity, a scanning device.

Each of our systems work at slightly different frequencies.

We pick up different objects. Most things in the wider world, we just don’t register. There’s no blip on our radar. They’re not interesting. We’re not curious about them. We’re not scanning for them.

But there are certain things that come up. For me, it’s books. I’m always on the lookout for new books, especially books about creativity, about writing, and I get so excited if I see one that sets these little alarms off in my head.

And then I get to read the book! What joy. I never stop. I never will. Reading is a bodily function for me. I need to read to survive.

It’s comforting to come to the realisation that I know what I like. I’m not seeking someone else’s hand holding. I have developed my own reading tastes. I don’t need to be part of the Zeitgeist. I am content with my own personal radar.

This seems to be the consolation of middle age.

“I understood part of teaching is being a vampire. You draw on your students’ energies, and you learn just as much as you teach.”

– Hua Hsu, Stay True

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“Because Hollywood was just an option instead of teaching, which I simply couldn’t do temperamentally. All your energy being sucked out. You’re a walking blood bank for students, which you understand and respect, but for writing you have to save up for yourself and silence until the right time to release it.”

– Jim Harrison, “A Conversation with Jim Harrison” in Northwest Review, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1995, pp. 106-18.

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Any situation can be experienced in multiple ways.

With teaching it’s often either/or.

You’re either energised by the students, or they completely drain you.

Either you are the vampire, feeding off of their vitality or they are the ghouls sent to feast on you.

Some days you’re the one receiving a transfusion from the energy, enthusiasm and spontaneity of your youthful students. Other days, it feels like they’re out to bleed you dry.

It’s a simple switch: from one to zero; on or off; a valve that allows one way passage of blood.

The determining factor in which way it is switched is my attitude.

If I’m feeling vulnerable, tired and reticent to be there, then I’ve switched the switch. I’ve given the students power over me. They sense my weakness.

My blood is drained because of my own self pity.

But if I walk in there with excitement and gratitude, then I receive nourishment.

Because at its best, teaching is improv. I Perform for an hour. I take that energy, like a performer on the stage. Adrenaline kicks in, I’m energised and when I stop, I feel like I could do it all over again.

I get to be Count Dracula. Term time only.

“In our silence, in what is unsaid, what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves because communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else’s life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.”

– Harold Pinter, quoted in Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer, by J. Michael Straczynski

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“Don’t speak, I know just what you’re sayin’
So please stop explainin’
Don’t tell me ’cause it hurts, no, no, no
Don’t speak, I know what you’re thinkin’
And I don’t need your reasons
Don’t tell me ’cause it hurts.”

– No Doubt, Don’t Speak

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Sometimes writing can be diplomacy: we have the chance to negotiate with ourselves before we speak our thoughts out loud to the world.

If we feel angry or frustrated, the page offers a place to write it down, to yell at the page rather than to yell in the face of another.

The pen doesn’t make a noise.

You can say the most extreme, vile, vicious things and you don’t have to take them back because they’ve just been absorbed into neutral ground.

The page is a no man’s land between yourself and the rest of the world.

You can choose to share those words or not.

They’re not immediately accessible to others – it is an early warning mechanism, a safety valve, a safe space to let off steam.

At times I read over what has burst out of me: I feel a bit silly; and I’m grateful for the power to destroy my terrible prose.

By writing we realise that life is never so black and white as war or surrender. There’s more nuance to it.

I want to celebrate diplomacy. I want to be a diplomat rather than a general. I want to find compromise with myself, rather than force a confrontation with others.

This is an unusual love letter to a sacred art that does not need to be shared. But those words which are shared and those which are kept tight to our chest, are the same words. The same methods can serve two very different functions.

It’s nice to share the positive and burn the negative.

“[William] Blake called his sense of dedication a firm persuasion. To have a firm persuasion in our work-to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at the exactly same time is one of the great triumphs of human existence.”

– David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea

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“He was for something—win-win negotiation. And he was also against something—life as a zero-sum game, meaning if you win, I lose. Herbie wouldn’t want to live that way even if it were true, but it wasn’t. He came to believe just the opposite: our fates are intertwined; the only way for me to win is for you to win, too.”

Rich Cohen, The Adventures of Herbie Cohen

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Art should satisfy both the creator and the consumer.

It is best to avoid self indulgence. No-one likes to hang out with a show-off.

I care about your time. As a writer, I try to avoid extraneous sentences because, as a reader, I don’t like busy work.

It’s nice when people get to the point. Some have the rare talent for storytelling: they can take us up and around the mountain. We are grateful for the momentary discombobulation if we are in the presence of a wayfinder. They’ll get us home safely.

I possess no such ability. I struggle to tell a joke because of my own impatience to get to the punch-line.

My writing has all the structure of paint by numbers.

I don’t want to get us lost, so I keep it simple.

But if you cast your eye over my paragraphs I hope I’ve avoided the empty spaces – home to dragons and other wild beasts who devour your patience.

I try to create well placed stepping stones for you to traverse.

I care about the quality of our conversations, that’s why I am careful to invite along two others to join us.

They got us started. I’ve allowed myself to interject with some thoughts. I hope you, dear reader, feel the compulsion to respond.

We have travelled together. Not far, certainly, but via a route that neither of us have travelled on before.

Now we are safely on the other side, I hope the trip has been worth it.

Would you like to turn around and have another go?

“Bliss—a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. But ride these waves out and it will feel like finally getting a drink of water after many days in the desert.”

– David Foster Wallace, quoted in Silence by Erling Kagge.

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“Before I could finish my words of caution, Tom [Cruise] grabbed Ken’s shoulder in one hand and mine in the other, and practically shouted in our faces: “DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE GET TO DO TODAY?!!! Ken yelled back without hesitation: WE GET TO MAKE… A… MOVIE!” I couldn’t help but grin. Their childlike joy was unalloyed and infectious.”

– Ed Zwick, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions

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By deciding on our own work, I believe we circumvent boredom.

If I am bored when writing, it means I am not writing what I want to write but what I think I should be writing.

Because I have the freedom and means to write and publish every day I remind myself to share gratitude for the opportunity.

There are other realities I could be forced to live which do not include writing.

Not being free to express myself is the route of boredom.

By writing, I am never excluded from the conversation.

I can blurt out whatever comes to mind. Make up a new game to play. Every day I enter this space of childish things.

I can come back later as a serious adult and correct some my mistakes. But the spirit of the kindergarten remains.

Excitement and joy

Know what I get to do today?!!! I get to make a blog!

And do you know what I get to do tomorrow?!!! I get to make a blog!

And the day after?!!!… you get my drift.

I am grateful for this privileged position.

For writing, my mantra will be: less force, more joy.

Would you like to come along for the ride? It’s more fun together…

“We need always to separate the problem of virtue from the problem of lack of control.”

– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

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“Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing.”

– John McPhee, Draft No. 4

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Manifestos and grand proclamations are best self directed.

Prescriptions are personal and who do we know better than ourselves?

My focus is on creating systems, rather than lofty goals.

It’s a change of habit rather than a change in principles.

If I wish to change a behaviour it’s simpler if I detach from that behaviour any moral judgement.

And how do I know what needs to change?

By writing. The pen doesn’t lie if you use it enough.

By repeatedly asking questions the truth emerges: writing is a gentle self-interrogation.

Eventually I find out what I want, or don’t want.

Along the way I hope to discover who I am. But I acknowledge this is the task of a lifetime, not to be found in a single line.

If I err in my daily systems I am training myself to resist the reaction of blame. Rather it is sensible to recognise that what makes us human is our fallibility.

Perfection is for machines. I am content moving in this organic, haphazard way.

Question and answer. Step and falter. Proud and bowed. Fast and slow. Up and down. Smile and frown.

I put down the plan and create a map instead, by studying my fading steps to the present.

There is no straight line to the self.