“We must each be responsible for changing our habits. This takes great discipline, and indeed discipline can be defined as the correct relationship to time.”

– Phil Stutz, Lessons for Living

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“Time is a headfuck. You can only live in the present. But your head could be ruminating on the past, hoping for the future or wishing the day away. You can have too much time or not enough. You can waste your time or it can slip away.

The medium is the metaphor. Watches and clocks make us think time is a certain way. Since the invention of clocks, our perception has changed. Time is no longer eternal; time is measurable. We used to think of time as seasons and days, and now we think in minutes and hours.

The smartest thing you can do with money is to buy time. There’s enough money to go around, there’s plenty of money but time – time is running out. At some point your perspective will change. Time will become more important than money.

Would you give up all your worldly possessions to be half your age? I think so, yes. I’d fucking love to be twenty-five again. If you think, no thanks, I’d rather keep my stuff and stay closer to the grave, then I don’t think you’re really gettin’ this time thing.

Time is the most precious resource we have. If you don’t believe me yet, go to a hospice and ask around.”

– Jimmy Carr, Before and Laughter

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Time is a ruthless arrow.

You can never go back, but you can fast forward by simple inattention: the days rush past when you are distracted by busy work.

This is entropy by inattention. Things tend to disorder and destruction if we lose sight of what brings us joy.

Daily engagement with the practices that deliver nourishment to the soul help us manipulate our days, as if in bullet-time.

I can dodge the traps and attacks of the mundane by focusing on the fun.

What I value spending my time on will never be identical to another’s. This is another example of the benefits of middle age. The movement away from collective opinion into the boondocks of my very own taste.

By paying attention we slow the ageing process.

After all, ageing isn’t simply a mechanical process, it’s attitudinal too.

“My friend Jack Carr wrote his first bestselling thriller in Starbucks and Peet’s and in alcoves at the public library. But he’s the exception. What made it work for him was his intention was so strong, and his passion and his commitment, that he brought a permanent space with him like his own personal hot spot.”

– Steven Pressfield, The Daily Pressfield

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“When I first started writing Norwegian Wood, I wrote at cafés in various places in Greece, on board ferry boats, in the waiting lobbies of airports, in shady spots in parks, and at desks in cheap hotels. Hauling around oversized, four-hundred-character-per-page Japanese manuscript paper was too much, so in Rome I bought a cheap notebook (the kind we used to call college-ruled notebooks) and wrote the novel down in tiny writing with a disposable Bic pen.

I still had to contend with noisy cafés, wobbly tables that made writing difficult, coffee spilling on the pages, and at night in my hotel room when I’d go over what I’d written, sometimes there would be couples getting all hot and heavy beyond the paper-thin walls separating my room from the room next door…

Wherever a person is when he writes a novel, it’s a closed room, a portable study. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

– Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

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At school, we are forced to write in a formal setting, at a desk, in silence, wearing a uniform.

And we are expected to learn, understand and transform ideas into our own points of view.

But when we’ve moved beyond the formal educational setting, we have the freedom to change our environment.

We can we can write in a busy cafe, we could write in the dead of night. We can write wearing a t-shirt and shorts or a three piece suit if we like.

It’s inspiring to not think of writing as a formal activity: that we must proceed to sit down to create in only one place. Every environment becomes an environment for us to write in.

All the world’s a desk.

No special equipment is required. Words adapt.

“He (David Letterman) said just make sure you fail doing exactly what you want to do.

He told me that and that’s the best advice you can give someone going into this big scary project.

Make sure you fail doing it exactly the way you want it, that you can live with.

When it’s someone else’s idea that kills you, that’s hard to live with.”

– Jerry Seinfeld, Blocks w/ Neal Brennan podcast

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“So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect. So we never dare to ask the universe for it. I’m saying I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it. Please. And if it doesn’t happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order. Party size.

My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

– Jim Carrey, Commencement Speech 2014, Maharishi University of Management,

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This blog is a failure.

No one reads it.

It generates no income.

I am not a professional writer.

No one has asked me to write any of it.

There is zero demand for my work.

Yet, this is the most satisfying and fulfilling project of my life.

I love writing these posts every day.

I love that this blog gives my reading a purpose.

Every book I buy, I can justify as an investment in my writing career.

Can you have a career if no one is aware that it exists?

But if I keep doing what I love, then I daily prove I am not afraid of my ambitions for myself.

I have a body of work.

What would crush me is if I gave up writing. If I tried to justify the return on investment. If I persuaded myself my time was better spent doing something else.

However, in writing these words I reveal my fear. I am afraid to put my writing in front of other people. I am afraid to ask for the attention of others. I am afraid of potential criticism.

I would love to have a career as a writer. I would love to earn some money as a creative professional.

There, I have said it. In my public forum, where no one got the invite.

Because I write these posts for me, publishing my fears makes them real. They are a tangible target for me to face. They are no longer phantoms, but flesh and blood.

The monster you are shown is never as scary as the one you imagine is lurking around the corner.

What do I do now?

I’m not sure, but I’ll be sure to put it in writing.

“Many ideas come to mind when I’m away from my desk.  I can be doing anything—loading the laundry, eating dinner, talking on the phone, gardening, reading the newspaper, watching TV, walking or driving—when all of a sudden an idea will pop into my head. Here’s the thing:  I always make sure to write down the idea or remind myself on my smartphone right away.  If I don’t do it right away, I’ll not only forget the idea, I’ll regret it. For a writer, a pen and paper or smartphone are a must to have at all times, even on your nightstand, because you never know when an idea will come a-knockin’.”

– Joseph Sutton, This Writing Life

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“Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll just make another one.” This openness is what every artist needs. Be ready to receive the inspiration when it comes; be ready to let it go when it vanishes. He believes that if a song “really wants to be written down, it’ll stick in my head. If it wasn’t interesting enough for me to remember it, well, it can just move along and go get in someone else’s song.” “Some songs,” he has learned, “don’t want to be recorded.” You can’t wrestle with them or you’ll only scare them off more. Trying to capture them sometimes “is trying to trap birds.” Fortunately, he says, other songs come easy, like “digging potatoes out of the ground.” Others are sticky and weird, like “gum found under an old table.” Clumsy and uncooperative songs may only be useful “to cut up as bait and use ’em to catch other songs.” Of course, the best songs of all are those that enter you “like dreams taken through a straw.’ In those moments, all you can be, Waits says, is grateful.

– Tom Waits, interviewed by Elizabeth Gilbert, “Play it Like Your Hair’s on Fire,” GQ 2002 (as quoted by Austin Kleon https://austinkleon.com/tag/jerry-seinfeld/)

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Ideas come knocking at anytime.

Can we hear them?

Is there a doorbell?

Ideas don’t need a sacred space in which to bloom.

They are like the 12 hour delivery window.

You are forced to stay at home all day simply for the pleasure of taking delivery of a piece of furniture.

For that day, the new sofa has power over you.

You can choose to spend the day distracted and frustrated, peeking out of the curtain, tutting.

Or you could get on with some housework, do some tidying, get cooking. When you have forgotten all about the delivery, there is a knock on the door.

Ideas are like that. They have power over you if you try to force them into existence.

If I sit down and try to will myself to come up with a compelling subject for a blog post, then I will quickly feel I will never write an original line again.

But if I put the dinner on, drive to work, shower, anything else but sit and think and stare, then those pesky ideas come out to play.

And I am ready.

Once they are captured and recorded, then I have the power.

I can peak into my collection jar and pick out the ideas that resonate.

I am always collecting. but never expectant.

“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.