“But what is the nature of this true self that the daring man seeks? Nietzsche believed that what this man will find deep inside is not very pretty. He wrote that if I am diligent, in my depths I will discover my “madman,” “immoralist,” “buffoon,” and “criminal.” Only then, Nietzsche said, will I finally tune in on something of value.”

– Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

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“Deep inside you, there’s an undeniable force driving your actions, the part of you that refuses to be ordinary, the piece that stays raw and untamed. Not just instinct, but killer instinct. The kind you keep in the dark, where you crave things you don’t talk about. And you don’t care how it comes across to others because you know this is who you are, and you wouldn’t change if you could.”

– Tim S. Grover, Relentless

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My writing barely hints at a dark side. Of course it lurks. We all cast a shadow.

I am not powered by darkness. I do not battle with fiends as I write. But I am wary enough to check for leaks.

I have moments I have lived that still possess a bitter punch. I think as I get older and look at the darkness, I can be honest with myself: I can take it. But what good does oversharing do?

My shadow self may one day come to the surface, but only if I allow it. By keeping it in harness, I can use the energy to help move me forward through the world.

We all carry a burden. I’m interested in it’s ergonomics: how best to carry it.

My writing explores ideas that can be pieced roughly together to provide support for the day to day.

I’m not so interested in sharing what they support.

It’s good to have a little mystery, right?

“The world is like a classroom of children with their heads down on their desks being obedient. When you raise your head you discover there is no teacher. All those rules, all those people to please, all that conformity and similarity that society requires of you. You suddenly come to realize that it is yourself requiring this kind of behavior. When you decide to go your own way and create a life that suits who you are, you find that no one notices or cares or if they do you don’t even notice it.”

– David Leddick, I’m Not for Everyone. Neither Are You

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“The world is always looking to reward conformity. Every age has its official line on what is real, what is good, and what is bad. A dish made up of dishonesty, ignorance, and cowardice served every evening with a serious mien and an air of highest integrity by the TV news is the ideal. Literature, too, is expected to go along with that. Your tribe is always trying to reform you and teach you manners. The poet is that kid who, standing in the corner with his back turned to his schoolmates, thinks he is in paradise.”

– Charles Simic, The Life of Images

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Conformity means adapting yourself to someone else’s mould. You twist and stoop and squeeze to fit in. No problem in the sort term. You can make it into a game. But long term all that twisting and folding will leave you crooked.

I am a quiet nonconformist. This is the art of doing as you please but not making a big fuss about it. I do not draw attention to myself: I do not expect the world to fold and adapt to my wishes.

When I was younger, I resisted my nature. I thought I wanted to be the person being written about rather than the writer. That was bullshit. I’m a born observer. I’m always hesitant to engage with the world, except from a distance and with a pen in my hand.

You can be in a meeting, or watching a presentation, and be working on your own project in your head.

A notepad is an essential tool for the passive nonconformist. You appear to be diligently taking notes, but you’re actually writing down your own thoughts, off in another world of the imagination.

The goal is not to stand up and yell, “I am not doing this!!”, but rather to blend in and get on with your own project.

If you don’t draw attention to yourself then you can get away with a lot.

Omission rather than confrontation.

It is wonderful never having to think what someone else wants you to.

No one can read our thoughts. Our minds offer the ultimate privacy away from the demands and busyness of the day. My mind is a personal refuge.

It’s nonconformity, but it’s not belligerent. I am not interested in arguing or making a scene.

I simply want to spend time in the paradise of my own mind.

“Before each one of my fights, I make a point of saluting my opponent. I salute the other fighter out of respect, even though he is trying to take something away from me. Not many people understand why I do this, but it’s simple: without the other guy, there is no me. That’s why I pray for the both of us, and not just myself. By stepping into the octagon, my adversary completes me. He makes my life possible. He becomes a part of my existence. To disrespect him is to disrespect myself. Thanks to him, I become a better man. Thanks to his presence, I am a true martial artist. Thanks to his willingness to face me, my life takes shape and moves forward, my path evolves and my life goal nears.”

– Georges St-Pierre, The Way of the Fight

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“Be honest. Your own life experiences have been far from ideal. But what you have experienced is what is real, not what you would like to experience. In short, the nature of reality is this: Life includes pain and adversity. The future is uncertain. Accomplishment of any kind requires discipline. You are not special. No matter what you do, you cannot avoid these aspects of life. This will never change. There is love, joy, surprise, transcendence, and creativity as well, but these never occur separately from the above five points.”

– Phil Stutz, Lessons for Living

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My problems at the moment are the twin tyrants of Time and Energy. I seem to be in constant battle with these wily adversaries. They give very little quarter, always on the attack. I can only strike back in very short bursts before they overwhelm me.

I am forced to create in snatches of time using reserve energy. It’s not easy publishing a post here every day.

Yet I do it. Haven’t missed a day all year.

Time and Energy have not beaten me, though I realise they also cannot be vanquished.

I have accepted that I will never have ‘enough time’ or ‘enough energy’ to write for long stretches. But do I need that? Haven’t I proven that I can write under these adverse conditions? If I have done so for six months, surely I can continue indefinitely.

I’ve had plenty of wide open days in my life. Hours to myself. Wasted hours on the whole. I’ve never created anything with all the free time I’ve had. It’s only when I realised I had to write that I started. Nothing changed to provide me with extra resources to accomplish this except the inner resource of desire. I found the time, still do. I have energy enough to continue.

Nothing is perfect, except the refusal to wait for perfect conditions.

“Rick Nelson had a song late in his career called “Garden Party.” The lyrics included the following: See, you can’t please everyone So you got to please yourself. I know exactly how he feels. It’s impossible to please everyone, and all you end up doing is spinning your wheels and wearing yourself out. In that case it’s better to stand up for yourself and do what makes you happy, what you really want to do, the way you want to do it. Do that, and even if your reputation isn’t so great, if your books don’t sell well, you can tell yourself, “It’s okay. At least I enjoyed myself.” You’ll be convinced it was all worthwhile.”

Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

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“But I wanted to become more than a slightly better version of somebody else. I WANTED TO APPLY MY CREATIVITY TO EVERYTHING I DID I wanted others to see me as I saw myself. Fear of failure? Why would I have any? I didn’t know where my dreams would lead. I had dreams, but I didn’t have all the pictures, because they didn’t exist. So I could push ahead with my eyes wide open, take in whatever happened, and move on. I wasn’t limited by someone else’s view of how my dreams should look, or whether they were reasonable or not.”

– Michael Jordan, Driven From Within

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I am not someone else, I am myself. But sometimes I feel far away from that person.

That distance is caused by trying to adapt myself for others. But I can never become another person, so why do I spend so much time trying to get there?

Better to take a deep breath. In through the nose. Pause. Out slowly through the mouth.

A reminder that all I have is the here and now. I can only breathe for myself. I can only think for myself.

So why persist in attempts to process the thoughts of others?

Why is it so hard to proclaim what makes me happy? To say, even in a tiny whisper, what I want to do?

I want to write. I don’t create these missives for anyone else. There is no gain or striving to be had. I write and publish here purely for my own satisfaction. This is a 100% selfish act.

With each day’s writing I move closer to myself.

“In short, start small. Start with just the smallest version of your idea and a way to make it happen. Instead of waiting (sometimes for years) for bigger wins to happen, you can use small wins to propel you.”

– Paul Jarvis, Company of One

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“I’m a little pea
I love the sky and the trees
I’m a teeny tiny little ant
Checking out this and that
And I am nothing
Ah, so you have nothing to hide
And I’m a pacifist
So I can fuck your shit up

Oh yeah, I’m small
Oh yeah, I’m small.”

– Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pea

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Small starts sooner, is quicker off the line, requires fewer resources.

Small is stealthy, is quiet and unassuming.

Small stays under the radar, infiltrates unseen.

Small is invisible to most everyone.

Small is impulsive and brave.

Small doesn’t wait for consensus, or get distracted lining up ducks.

Small is immediate, now, reflexive.

Small is tough, stubborn and lasting.

Small is saying yes and getting started.

Small is easily handled every day, a load that is not overbearing.

Small is walking not running.

Small is completing not competing, is easily satisfied and comes back for more.

Small is me, here, every day, making it up as I go along.

Small is 184 days and counting of this blog.

Small is 368 quotations, small thoughts from big people.

Small is doing it again tomorrow.

Small has momentum, is just enough to provide satisfaction.

Small, like atoms, which is everything.

I am small, making it happen, by checking out this and that.

“I suspect that at its best your education’s main motive is to fuel your curiosity and teach you how to find out things for yourself. This is adequately simpleminded to cover the situation. Nothing much is remembered without the emotion of curiosity. Even your dogs and cats are full of it. You are unlikely to feel emotion for material unless your teacher has it. The educationists seem to think in terms of methodical steps but a teacher brimming with passion for the subject is what actually works.”

– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side: A Memoir

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“We have to entertain in order to educate, because the other way round doesn’t work.”

– Walt Disney, quoted in The Power of Ignorance by Dave Trott

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What is entertainment but a way to keep us interested enough to see what comes next?

Learning only takes place if we are curious to know the answer to a question. And we are most curious to answer our own questions.

What a wonderful state to experience, this entertaining ourselves by self education.

Autodidact means a self taught person. And anything we truly want to learn or master has to be experienced and deemed worthy of knowing for it to be retained by by our selfs.

Formal education is a type of game. I realised this quite early on. You can move the pieces around, wear the mask and achieve reasonable results, as measured by the powers that be.

What is most important though, is to find out what truly interests me. If we are lucky, a teacher can set us on a course of curioisity based on their own enthusiasm. But most of the time we have to seek it out for ourselves.

It is encouraging to realise that curiosity requires minimal equipment. I don’t need an IMAX screen and Dolby Surround Sound to keep me engaged.

I have the best entertainment system that money cannot buy: a curious mind, attached to eyes and ears that provide me with the full reality experience of self-education ergo self entertainment.

I’ll check the listings to see what’s showing next.

It’s whatever I want it to be.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

– John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

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“So the equation works like this: the more I learn, the less I know. Yes, more is less. That’s the way it works in my mind. And it applies to all of us, not just me. For me, that’s the secret to a big part of my life and how I became who I am.”

– Georges St Pierre, The Way of the Fight

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The more I read, the more I know, but the less certain I am about what I know.

Like stripping paint: the satisfaction of taking off a layer of ignorance, only to be confronted by a hidden layer. When you strip that, another layer is revealed. The infinite layers of ignorance.

And you also learn that everything is connected, that knowledge in isolation is pretty much worthless. What you know needs to adapt to the demands of the real world which are random and limitless.

The only time knowledge thrives in isolation is during school when we are assessed on individual subjects which never interact. But life is not subject specific. It is rich and interconnected.

My ignorance reveals itself in layers. That is why I try to avoid declarative statements. How can I say something is true, or the best, when it is likely there is information yet to be revealed to me that would have me change my mind.

It’s a nice personal philosophy: to be openly ignorant, counterbalanced with being openly curious.

The only problem is, there’s no end to my ignorance. I cannot set a goal of being fully informed.

The only choice is to keep an open mind and keep moving forward.

“Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. Here’s your choice: Fess up to experiencing shame or admit that you’re a sociopath. Quick note: This is the only time that shame seems like a good option. We’re all afraid to talk about shame. The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.”

– Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

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You’re gonna walk on home 
You’re gonna walk alone 
You’re gonna walk so far 
You’re gonna wonder who you are 

Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Shame
Shame

Love is good and love is kind 
Love is good and love is blind 
Love is good and love is mine 
Love is good all the time

Hello, goodbye
You know you made us cry…”

– Smashing Pumpkins, Shame

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I thought I’d sent a reply: It remains in my drafts. I feel too ashamed to admit to my mistake, although the alternative is garden variety rudeness.

I sent an email to one of my heroes, not the first. There was a brief correspondence a few years ago. It ended, as all my correspondence does, due to my inattention.

It will be a couple of months now, since his gracious reply to me, inviting me to say hello after an event he was running.

I had to respond, regretfully, that I couldn’t make it. Although I could have made it. I wasn’t prepared to make a big enough effort (here comes shame again).

I need to send a quick email. Apologise. Be gracious. No one wants to hear my soul bared and shared. Do the right thing.

It’s just that admitting to a mistake creates acute shame. It’s painful. Leaving the mistake be is merely a part of a low level of chronic shame. I carry that daily: I’m ashamed of not keeping in touch with anyone.

Shame comes up as a topic of conversation with myself when I want to be especially cruel.

Often the topics and triggers for shame are the same.

Is it a legitimate reflection on my shortcomings? Or is something that I subject myself to unfairly by contrasting my actions with an idealised version of myself?

What I do know, from extensive practice is this: shame is not an action emotion. It keeps me rooted in place. Shame is felt as a full stop. It’s not so easy to start a new sentence, when I have sentenced myself to shame.

So, what’s the conclusion to this peek into my shame?

I think it’s obvious. Better to admit to being imperfect, apologise and move on, rather than hold it in so I slowly become intoxicated with shame.

Is that so hard? Well, for me, yes.

At least now, it’s is not a secret shame. It has been spoken in public.

But the work I need to do to move beyond this soul eating emotion commences in private.

It’s a shame I didn’t start earlier…

“People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage. This is why Paul Tillich speaks of courage as ontological—it is essential to our being.”

– Rollo May, The Courage to Create

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“My grandmother instilled in me at an early age the notions of reputation, honor, and dignity. I learned from her, and at school as well, how to distinguish between chakatagir (fate, kismet, or what is written on your forehead) and nkaragir (character, or what is imprinted in you). Over the first, I was told, we had no control, but in the case of nkaragir we were fully responsible and accountable.”

– Vartan Gregorian, The Road to Home: My Life and Times

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Possibly the most important human characteristic.

Dignity.

Dignity allows us to move forward, toward something.

It lets us hold our head high. Not from arrogance but because of something good pushing out from within.

Dignity values our place in the world, and because we do means we can celebrate and encourage others to do the same.

Dignity is not a selfish emotion. It starts with the self but expands to connect us with others.

Dignity is not mysterious. It may feel elusive sometimes, but through actions and practices we can create a dignified self.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

– William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style

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“It’s almost more like I join a band when I produce a record. But, I’m unlike all the other members of the band, who each have their own personal agenda. The bass player is concerned about the bass part; everyone is concerned about their own part. I’m the only member of the band that doesn’t care about any of those particulars. I just care that the whole thing is as good as it can be.”

– Rick Rubin, quoted in Rick Rubin in the Studio by Jake Brown

__________

What do I have to do to make this the best that I can do?

My writing has its own personality: I don’t want to stifle it with harsh editing. I am not interested in perfect grammar. My sentences don’t need perfect pitch to speak.

Perhaps one could type some prompts into Chat GPT to create a daily blog that selects two quotes and some commentary. My creative work could be outsourced. But my source cannot be replicated. All the things I have ingested over my life give my mind it’s unique fingerprint.

I want to convey how I think and feel. What I see. Stream of conscious observation would become pretty tiresome, so I also need to be an editor.

I must focus on making this the best it can be. I need a part of myself who can be objective: only concerned with making the best sentence; not keeping all the seemingly wonderful ideas and turns of phrase that can crowd in.

A goal: to write like I’m climbing a mountain. Tight sentences, like the methodical steps taken to reach the top. But at any time I can pause to take in the view. There must be space around the words. And there is a purpose to this: a summit to lead the reader to.

Can I honestly say this is as good as it gets?

Perhaps it is for today. And that is all that matters.

Whatever I have achieved here, it is good training for tomorrow’s climb.