Hi. Yeah, it has been a while. How are y'all doing? Good, good. How's life as automated text-scanning software treating you? Cool, Yep, any actual people reading this might be a bit confused by now, but I know my audience.
Anyways, the old uni blogging gang seem to be back on the scene and I thought I might as well join in, in my small way. Well, topics are still pretty thin on the ground, the only thing really going on at the moment is my first steps on the long and arduous journey towards being a proper football coach and since a) the human minority among the audience will quickly get bored with minutiae of VAK, STEPS, the LTPD and assorted other details and b) I have a sneaking suspicion that my first steps on the journey will also be my last ones - at least for a good long while - it seems a waste to spend a lot of time going on about it.
I will say this: I have managed to pass one coaching course and look set to scrape by in another despite showing a very low level of competency for the subject (my life in microcosm, if I'm honest: the number of things at which I've been deemed good enough to move on to the next level, only to find the next level to be beyond my limited ability, is simply staggering). Being just good enough at something to know how shit you are is rare. Generally, you're either amazing and so have sufficient appreciation of the skill to notice every microscopic detail (and therefore magnify all your own mistakes) and unjustly believe yourself to be poor OR you're so poor that you fail to understand what good or bad performance would look like and therefore believe yourself to be amazing (case studies: TV "talent" show competitors and at least 80% of management-level workers), how lucky am I to land in the middle of those two sub-sets and have total knowledge of my inadequacy?
Wow, rant over, sorry. On to why I'm actually here.
So, as this blog will attest, I'm a keen writer (though it's another area where I fall into the "I know I'm crap" bracket) and part of that is having to deal with the "bit bucket". Most of you will know what I mean by that. The space in your head where you throw those half-formed ideas that you just know you can work into something later on. It doesn't have to be what you might call traditionally creative, it could be 5 minutes worth of lesson plan, it could be an acronym for the new initiative that they're working on at the office, but generally it's for that one project you intend to get 'round to if only you had the time. Everyone's got that project, it could be a novel, a play, some poetry, a song, it could be a particularly spectacular piece of DIY (up to and including building your own house), it could be as grandiose as a general election manifesto or as modest a witty facebook status. Point is, everyone's got a project and it always starts out formless, no title, no outline, no components, just a thought, not always consciously acknowledged. At first any random inspiration can become part of it, suddenly you think of a bloody brilliant title for an album and even though you've not got a band and you haven't touched your guitar in months, you are always - from that moment on, in small ways - thinking about that album, working out genre, the songs, composition of the band, whatever. Other inspirations strike, they either become part of THE PROJECT, or they go in the bit-bucket, because of course, once THE PROJECT gets out, you'll be on a roll and ready to start on PROJECT TWO: PROJECT FURTHER which may be able to use stuff from the bit-bucket.
(Bloody Hell I'm being wordy tonight, I shouldn't leave it so long between posts, I get all gabbly, sorry folks, trying to swing around to the point, I promise).
I live in my bit bucket, if I'm honest, I'm constantly having thoughts, chucking them in the bucket for later consideration and rootling around for previous ones, trying to assess their merits as the basis for a PROJECT. There are so many thoughts in my bucket that they're actually breeding, some of them are now 4th or 5th generation bucket denizens, never knowing any other life than to swim around their own hopelessly crowded gene-pool, looking for other ideas to merge with, in the hope that the descendants of a cringe-worthy attempt at a song lyric and a desperately one-dimensional dystopian dictator could one day aspire to escape the bucket as a particularly pithy section of a stand-up set.
So, there's all these inspirations around, and everyone's got them and everyone stores them in their buckets or incorporates them into a PROJECT and by now we all pretty much know it and yet people who manage to get their PROJECT to fruition with a bit of success still get asked where they get their inspiration. Less so nowadays but still, it does happen and it's a bugbear of mine. It also sets up my point for today and a micro-rant blog on the subject is one thing that's been in the bucket for a while.
Inspiration is not what separates successful PROJECTeers from everyone else, inspiration of some kind probably strikes each of the planet's 7 billion people at least once a day and what takes it from imagination to the real world is an almost indefinable quality, mostly comprised of having the guts to try, the perseverance to keep trying, the motivation not to think that you'll get 'round to it one day but instead to get on it today and - not least - a degree of skill in the discipline.
So, part of why I'm writing this is I've got many friends managing to take on PROJECTs - a few of them taking on PROJECTs that I am somewhat envious of, in fact - and I wanted to take this opportunity to salute them because that x-factor they've got is absolutely a salute-worthy attribute. I may lack it, and that lack may hinder my every PROJECT and cause my bit bucket to overflow but it doesn't stop me appreciating the skill in others.