I was sat there staring at a blank text box, no idea what to write, just as in yesteryear. So I found myself scouring the internet for topics, just as in yesteryear. And I did what I always do; I thought "these things aren't what you want to write about. What you're doing here is searching for a topic that can be steered back to whatever it is you actually want to write but for some reason daren't." Very true, so next I thought, "ok, but what is it that I want to write but daren't?" No idea. So then I remembered that time when I had had a beer and suddenly you couldn't stop me writing, but what I was writing was drivel (even moreso than usual). And then I thought, "what beer have we got in?" Probably just bitter (bleurgh) and anyway, is it worth cracking a tinnie every time you get writer's block? That way alcoholism lies, or - at the rate and severity I experience writer's block - that way severe liver failure within three months lies. Many great writers have found inspiration in a bottle, but they were great writers first, probably. Either way, I don't even like beer that much and drinking myself silly over my dying dreams seems much more a 36-years-old thing to do than a 26-years-old thing. And then I thought the biggest question(s) of them all: "Why is this even your dream anyway? Can you identify the moment you realised it was? What led to it? Which childhood experiences steered you this way? How come it's such a big deal to you? And since it apparently is why are you too crippled with (totally justified) fear of your own inadequacy to do a damn thing about it? Isn't this more likely to be an expression of some deep seated longing for something else you can't define?" Probably. And then I remembered how I hated writing as a kid. I may not be totally made up of that kid any more, and he may have never experienced life the same way I do, but surely we share some things basic to us that have to inform our wants and tastes? Apparently no, the only thing we know for sure about kid me that corresponds to present me is that we both remember bits of even younger kid me's life (kid me remembers more than me me does, of course). So who are we to each other? We might as well be two completely random people who have never met but have been implanted with similar memories. It's part of the society that I live in that you have to be all about your work (even when you hate it), so it follows that which job I want must be a big part of my personality. How can a desire so fundamental to me be to do something I used to hate doing? Why do I love something I'm shit at? Why do I feel an unabating need to not be shit at it and yet an almost physically intense fear of trying to get better?
My next thought was, "why am I writing this down?" Unclear. My next action was to have been a positive one but time's passage had sapped my energy and so I simply added a conclusion, posted the gargantuan, unstructured mess of a paragraph on the internet and got back to anxiety and despair, my only true talents.
Saturday, 17 September 2016
Monday, 12 September 2016
Success Feels a Lot Like Just More Socially-Acceptible Failure. Or, why natural selection suggests that I am a Gorilla trying to swim the Atlantic.
So, tomorrow sees the start of the next phase of my life. Employment! I've had jobs before of course but in this bullshit post-2008-global-crash world getting a job that I can stick to has proved tough for me. Actually, I'm starting yet another temporary job tomorrow it's just that for once there's a permanent position at the end of it (hopefully!). A lot of the difficulty I've had has been self-inflicted of course; I left university 4 years ago with no idea what I wanted to do next (and if I really think back properly I reckon I might have been depressed as well, which didn't help) and with no plan (and even no goal to plan towards) it's hard to really get anything done. Being a pathological procrastinator really did not make this situation any better, either.
Anyway, this hopefully momentous occasion in my life seems a good time to just blog a little. Well, sort of: Mostly, I just wanted to write and with no imagination to fall back on, this is all I've got to talk about and if a horrendous sleeping pattern and a big event tomorrow mean anything it's that I'm not going to be wasting any time tonight on anything like snoring or dreaming so I might as well write. Also, writing might help me work through whatever it is that usually keeps me up at times like this.
In the usual format of this blog I've started typing general updates about me with no clear idea of what the hell I'm going to be writing about. By the time I'm two paragraphs in I usually have a thread I can pull at for a few more paragraphs and somewhere in there a topic can be teased out in the edit (although - again - procrastinator, so editing's never that likely and what usually gets teased out is a title that I can sort of pretend gives the whole thing a theme). Anyway, tonight I'm two and a half paragraphs in and all I can think is that I've been watching too many YouTube videos the last couple of days because as I type the words are kind of echoing in my head as though read in the voice of John Green. Which is just weird. Also I notice my sentence structure and syntax and stuff seems to have changed to become more like that of someone giving a kind of informal speech rather than my usual style of ... me; pompously pontificating about some crap.
So, I guess I should just keep talking about this whole job thing. I said earlier that I had no plan for after university and that is not entirely accurate. I had a plan, it just kind of died. I had all sorts of ambitions that I was never going to follow through on and I had a fall-back which was become a teacher. Let's face it, teacher is the best fall-back; you get great holidays and if you can get work as a supply teacher rather than a regular, fixed member of staff you get a lot less of the extra work that normal teachers get. Of course, you bring out the worst in the students and there's a lot of stress that comes with that. Whatever, I had an epiphany at some point where I realised I sometimes unintentionally come to regard some people who don't know things that I know as idiots and also I dislike idiots. This makes me sound terrible, and probably I am, but just so you know it works both ways. If someone knows something I don't know I try to admire their knowledge but what I end up doing is thinking I'm an idiot. So in my worldview, apparently everyone is an idiot. This is a bad attitude to have in life, never mind in teaching, but at some point it has become ingrained in my psyche and I can't seem to get rid of it. If I really like someone or I can be bothered to put in the effort I will do my best to overlook my perception of them as an idiot because I know it's stupid but mostly it's hard to do that and that's no way for a teacher to behave (actually, it's kind of exactly how a lot of my teachers behaved, but it's no way for a good teacher to behave). Anyway, that was that plan out of the window and I very quickly discovered that what I'd been told about Religious Studies degrees helping you get a job was a lie so I took like two years to go: so... retail?
I'm not going to name the company who have hired me here because they have a strict social media policy and until I get the training on Tuesday I don't know exactly what it is so better safe than sorry.
What I will say is I have a month and a half of training to look forward to and this shouldn't really lead to blog-inducing anxiety because at least a portion of it is classroom-based and the classroom is where I excel. If I'm honest I think I was almost too good, academically, at least until GCSE level, possibly further, because it was never a struggle for me to understand stuff I wanted to understand. Trying to understand stuff I didn't care about was usually easy too but I didn't care so it didn't matter how easy it was, I would show that I had grasped enough to make the teacher think I'd pass the exam so they'd focus on helping someone else and then I'd coast. Anyway, this might sound like it shouldn't have harmed my development but because I never had to try in school, I was not prepared for how tough real life is. Honestly, I'm still not. Also, it's really hard to learn stuff now. Partially this is because a 20-something brain is less capable of absorbing stuff than a younger brain but mostly it's because whenever I try to learn about a thing, I will learn enough to know that if I wanted to, I could be pretty good at the thing and once I've proved that much to myself, instead of proving it to everyone else by actually getting good at it, I simply abandon the thing.
I guess this is why I'm nervous about tomorrow (I think I'm nervous, anyway, I haven't really examined my feelings but I'm fairly confident I won't be sleeping tonight and that what I'll be doing instead is thinking about how I need to get to sleep so I'm ready for tomorrow, so I'll go ahead and call that nervous). Point is, am I going to listen to just enough about the social media policy to know that I will easily understand the social media policy and then switch off and as a result fail to actually learn the policy? And that wouldn't be too bad, I can just never talk work on the internet, but what if I do the same with a more pertinent aspect of the training? It's not like I can avoid doing parts of the job to hide the fact that I coasted through training, is it? Also, as previously discussed I struggle to learn stuff nowadays and anyway I start to regard myself as an idiot if I need, want or try to learn stuff, which doesn't fill you with confidence for your upcoming month and a half of learning.
In truth the training will probably all go fine but could that be even worse? What if I get all the stuff they're trying to teach me with a little bit of effort? That would suggest that rather than being stunted by a lack of challenge early in life I am simply not as smart as I think I am or not as smart as I used to be, either of which is terrifying because my life's goal is to use my brain, which I've always considered to be slightly awesome, to do something slightly awesome, like get a job doing something creative or at least learn a few languages or something to justify a slight sense of awe at my capabilities. You could argue that the difference between school, my goal of inspiring brain-awe and training for a retail warehouse role are all so different that aptitude in one has no significance for ability in the others (like that meme that purports that Einstein said we're all geniuses but you can't judge fish on their tree-climbing ability - it probably wasn't Einstein who said this, by the way). But I think that being challenged by this training but eventually grasping it would not make me a pseudo-Einsteinian proto-amphibian learning through struggle to climb a tree, it would make be an ape that has been disabused of his deluded dreams of swimming 'round the world and living amongst the coral.
And that's the worst thing in the world isn't it? (Well, no, but you know what I mean.) To have, or believe yourself to have, a little bit of talent for something, just enough so that you want to be better, and yearn to use this talent in some way but then finding out that actually you're probably kind of useless at the thing you want to do and there's actually more chance of a guppy mounting the summit of a giant sequoia than you contributing anything to society would crush your soul. I don't think the consolation of meeting fellow apes in the high branches would help much either.
Wow, that got maudlin, again. It's kind of a good job no-one reads this or they'd think I was insane. Anyway, thanks for letting me spout nonsense at you again, blogger. See you next time I can't sleep.
Anyway, this hopefully momentous occasion in my life seems a good time to just blog a little. Well, sort of: Mostly, I just wanted to write and with no imagination to fall back on, this is all I've got to talk about and if a horrendous sleeping pattern and a big event tomorrow mean anything it's that I'm not going to be wasting any time tonight on anything like snoring or dreaming so I might as well write. Also, writing might help me work through whatever it is that usually keeps me up at times like this.
In the usual format of this blog I've started typing general updates about me with no clear idea of what the hell I'm going to be writing about. By the time I'm two paragraphs in I usually have a thread I can pull at for a few more paragraphs and somewhere in there a topic can be teased out in the edit (although - again - procrastinator, so editing's never that likely and what usually gets teased out is a title that I can sort of pretend gives the whole thing a theme). Anyway, tonight I'm two and a half paragraphs in and all I can think is that I've been watching too many YouTube videos the last couple of days because as I type the words are kind of echoing in my head as though read in the voice of John Green. Which is just weird. Also I notice my sentence structure and syntax and stuff seems to have changed to become more like that of someone giving a kind of informal speech rather than my usual style of ... me; pompously pontificating about some crap.
So, I guess I should just keep talking about this whole job thing. I said earlier that I had no plan for after university and that is not entirely accurate. I had a plan, it just kind of died. I had all sorts of ambitions that I was never going to follow through on and I had a fall-back which was become a teacher. Let's face it, teacher is the best fall-back; you get great holidays and if you can get work as a supply teacher rather than a regular, fixed member of staff you get a lot less of the extra work that normal teachers get. Of course, you bring out the worst in the students and there's a lot of stress that comes with that. Whatever, I had an epiphany at some point where I realised I sometimes unintentionally come to regard some people who don't know things that I know as idiots and also I dislike idiots. This makes me sound terrible, and probably I am, but just so you know it works both ways. If someone knows something I don't know I try to admire their knowledge but what I end up doing is thinking I'm an idiot. So in my worldview, apparently everyone is an idiot. This is a bad attitude to have in life, never mind in teaching, but at some point it has become ingrained in my psyche and I can't seem to get rid of it. If I really like someone or I can be bothered to put in the effort I will do my best to overlook my perception of them as an idiot because I know it's stupid but mostly it's hard to do that and that's no way for a teacher to behave (actually, it's kind of exactly how a lot of my teachers behaved, but it's no way for a good teacher to behave). Anyway, that was that plan out of the window and I very quickly discovered that what I'd been told about Religious Studies degrees helping you get a job was a lie so I took like two years to go: so... retail?
I'm not going to name the company who have hired me here because they have a strict social media policy and until I get the training on Tuesday I don't know exactly what it is so better safe than sorry.
What I will say is I have a month and a half of training to look forward to and this shouldn't really lead to blog-inducing anxiety because at least a portion of it is classroom-based and the classroom is where I excel. If I'm honest I think I was almost too good, academically, at least until GCSE level, possibly further, because it was never a struggle for me to understand stuff I wanted to understand. Trying to understand stuff I didn't care about was usually easy too but I didn't care so it didn't matter how easy it was, I would show that I had grasped enough to make the teacher think I'd pass the exam so they'd focus on helping someone else and then I'd coast. Anyway, this might sound like it shouldn't have harmed my development but because I never had to try in school, I was not prepared for how tough real life is. Honestly, I'm still not. Also, it's really hard to learn stuff now. Partially this is because a 20-something brain is less capable of absorbing stuff than a younger brain but mostly it's because whenever I try to learn about a thing, I will learn enough to know that if I wanted to, I could be pretty good at the thing and once I've proved that much to myself, instead of proving it to everyone else by actually getting good at it, I simply abandon the thing.
I guess this is why I'm nervous about tomorrow (I think I'm nervous, anyway, I haven't really examined my feelings but I'm fairly confident I won't be sleeping tonight and that what I'll be doing instead is thinking about how I need to get to sleep so I'm ready for tomorrow, so I'll go ahead and call that nervous). Point is, am I going to listen to just enough about the social media policy to know that I will easily understand the social media policy and then switch off and as a result fail to actually learn the policy? And that wouldn't be too bad, I can just never talk work on the internet, but what if I do the same with a more pertinent aspect of the training? It's not like I can avoid doing parts of the job to hide the fact that I coasted through training, is it? Also, as previously discussed I struggle to learn stuff nowadays and anyway I start to regard myself as an idiot if I need, want or try to learn stuff, which doesn't fill you with confidence for your upcoming month and a half of learning.
In truth the training will probably all go fine but could that be even worse? What if I get all the stuff they're trying to teach me with a little bit of effort? That would suggest that rather than being stunted by a lack of challenge early in life I am simply not as smart as I think I am or not as smart as I used to be, either of which is terrifying because my life's goal is to use my brain, which I've always considered to be slightly awesome, to do something slightly awesome, like get a job doing something creative or at least learn a few languages or something to justify a slight sense of awe at my capabilities. You could argue that the difference between school, my goal of inspiring brain-awe and training for a retail warehouse role are all so different that aptitude in one has no significance for ability in the others (like that meme that purports that Einstein said we're all geniuses but you can't judge fish on their tree-climbing ability - it probably wasn't Einstein who said this, by the way). But I think that being challenged by this training but eventually grasping it would not make me a pseudo-Einsteinian proto-amphibian learning through struggle to climb a tree, it would make be an ape that has been disabused of his deluded dreams of swimming 'round the world and living amongst the coral.
And that's the worst thing in the world isn't it? (Well, no, but you know what I mean.) To have, or believe yourself to have, a little bit of talent for something, just enough so that you want to be better, and yearn to use this talent in some way but then finding out that actually you're probably kind of useless at the thing you want to do and there's actually more chance of a guppy mounting the summit of a giant sequoia than you contributing anything to society would crush your soul. I don't think the consolation of meeting fellow apes in the high branches would help much either.
Wow, that got maudlin, again. It's kind of a good job no-one reads this or they'd think I was insane. Anyway, thanks for letting me spout nonsense at you again, blogger. See you next time I can't sleep.
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
The rantiest rant I ever ranted. Or, how Brexit made my blood boil.
OK, you want to know something? I am a sore loser. I mean, not generally: mostly I accept defeat when it occurs (this is not often as I'm just not a confrontational person, so generally I'm never in a position to lose, but anyway). On this specific occasion though, I did lose and I am incredibly sore; like, "I was already prone to a case of the chafey thighs and I just did the Tour de France. Twice." sore. But is it any wonder? Because what have I lost and who did I lose it to, really? I didn't lose to you, person who just called me and my fellows sore losers. Oh no, you didn't beat me, you lost too, you just think that what you lost was worth it. No I - we, you and I, all of us - lost to Nigel Farage, a man whose politics and rhetoric are so vile and divisive that he was ostracised from the official campaign in the political event that he pretty much single-handedly brought about and had to form a splitter movement. Which is fitting, I think we can all agree, given his ultimate aim in life.
Anyway, what did we lose? The full extent won't become clear for some time but in the short term we all lost some money (which I fully accept we may make back), some of us lost our heads and I genuinely believe we lost the right to say we are proud to be British, which is ironic given that that right is more important to the people that have revoked it than to pretty much anyone. I've never understood patriotism at the best of times anyway. What, I'm supposed to feel good about being born on a particular side of an arbitrary border drawn by long dead war-mongers? Or on one particular side of some river or other natural boundary? Get away with you; the people on the other side of those lines are as good as you or I, their country is as good as ours, their lives as blighted and lighted by the finger of fate as ours is. We have so much in common but we set up these ridiculous systems of differentiation. At any rate, the events surrounding our recent referendum have stripped any vestige of justifiable pride from our lives. If you'd allow me to elucidate, I'll give you the reasons why I think that is so.
I know a lot has been said about the racial tensions which have become heightened in the wake of the result but this is the main reason why we can't be proud to be British. Say what you like about this not being what leavers voted for (you're wrong, by the way - it might not be what you wanted or what you thought was on offer but it sure as shit is what you voted for) but you can't deny that the result of the referendum has had an emboldening effect on xenophobes. That should be shaming enough for anyone. We did this. As a nation we signed a racists' charter, some willingly, some not, some knowingly, some not, some even gleefully, though most not.
Apparently, anyone that points this out is “just as bad” as the racists on our streets. Yeah, OK then, I drew a link between cause and effect and that's like telling people they're vermin. Now, I know what you're saying. I can hear it now, the cries of "but not all leave voters..." Yeah, absolutely, not all leave voters are racists, no-one has said that they are - at least as far as I know. The most I have read or heard anyone say is that a leave vote has emboldened racists. I think at this point this is established fact yet still I have been accused of “discrimination” against leave voters based on the actions of a few for trying to highlight this point. I tried to point out that what the person was trying to accuse me of was actually called stereotyping rather than discrimination and that I hadn't even done that but my application of logic just got my comment deleted.
Even if you don't think that the current troubles are the fault of the vote (they are), or that they are but it's nothing to do with you (it is) then you must agree that a nation so divided that half the country won't even listen to rational argument from the other half is not one to be proud of. You can take that any way you want, by the way, you can imagine the "la-la-la, I'm not listening" barrier between leavers and remainers, blaming whichever side you see fit, but the truth is it doesn't split that way. There are probably remainers who won't listen to the "not all leavers" argument just as there are leavers who won't own that their preferred result has caused trouble.
Now I'd like to go further. I'd like to explain that not only has the vote had massive negative impact, but why it's not been worth it. Please bear with me. Even if you don't agree, hear me out as I have heard out every leave supporter I have crossed paths with. I welcome debate. If you don't agree with what I'm writing here I will gladly listen to your arguments. It is the least we owe each other now. Listening to each other's points of view is the only way to start to heal the divisions that this vote has caused.
In my opinion, the result of the referendum was wrong. It has categorically been shown that both sides of this debate have made claims that they did not believe or want to stick to. It's very easy to find a picture of Boris Johnson stood next to a sign saying "let's give the NHS £350m a week" (not the vague battle-bus pledge, no, a sign that says what I just quoted, verbatim) but this was never going to happen. Everyone remembers the chancellor's warnings of an emergency budget, but let's face it, that was always an extreme worst-case scenario. The list goes on - on both sides. From my point of view, Leave participated in "project fear" and Remain took "project infinitely-unlikely-but-very-concerning-worst-case-scenario".
In any event, it's pretty obvious that not many people actually knew what they were voting on. A lot of people wanted to give the establishment a kicking and in so doing have paved the way for those ordinary working class blokes Boris and Gove to take control. Many people voted to curb immigration but even members of the government who were in the official leave campaign have said that it's unlikely to change. Quite a few people will have voted on so-called sovereignty or independence and here we may have a genuine issue, although to label it with sovereignty is dubious, in my opinion. Yes, some laws are made in Europe which affect Britain, but in the main these are laws like those which protect workers and consumers and the disabled and the LGBT+ community and minorities and your human rights and so on. Would you like these policy areas to be under the control of a conservative government? If so, I can only imagine you are an enemy of all of the people affected, for some reason.
Tied up in all this we have the lies over the figures. How important these were in deciding the result I'm not sure, but the numbers were everywhere you looked. For me money was never the issue. Only about 1% of the tax you pay goes to Europe and a lot of it comes back. Not all, of course, but we reap the benefits in other ways. With the slash-happy governance we've recently had, how do you think arts and sciences have managed to maintain their funding? Guess what, it's the EU. If you really believe that the money we've saved by leaving will now go to these things, or the NHS or the education system for that matter, you are dreaming. Michael Gove will have a big say in the next government and he wrote a book on how to dismantle the NHS. If he can think that is a good idea then is there anything that will be saved? If this destructive man is allowed in to any kind of power then we will have nothing left.
And why is it that you think the NHS or the education system need funding? Is it because of an explosion of immigration or a dearth of funding from the "democratically elected" UK government? The narrative of the leave camp was the former, but look me in the eye and tell me the latter wasn't at least ¾ of the problem, I dare you.
But at least the decision was democratic, right? I mean, sure there were lies by the campaigns and people voted based on little more than the flip of a coin, a lot of leavers regret voting leave and the country's being rent in two because a slim majority has made a no-going-back decision that totally ignores the will of the 48%. That's good and democratic, right? Right?
Democracy has been another interesting buzzword in the campaign and aftermath of the result. Apparently, those laws that are made in Europe are not made by democratically elected leaders. Bull. We elect the members of the European Parliament and on our behalf they elect members of the European Commission in a similar way to how we elect MPs who elect a PM on our behalf. The commission has a say in what happens but it is the directly elected MEPs which make the actual decisions, along with the council of ministers who are representatives of the democratically elected governments of the member nations. Allegedly, the difference between the EU and Westminster is that we can't vote out EU lawmakers, which is just not true because the main forces in law-making are our elected MEPs and our own government (through the council of ministers). But while we're on the subject of who we can't vote out, we can't vote out members of the House of Lords or the Monarchy but they have arguably as much influence over UK law as the commission and the council do over EU law (though, of course the Queen does not exercise her power).
And what's more, after all the dust has settled we will probably end up with an agreement which means we are still subject to many EU laws but we will no longer have a say in making them. Now there's democracy for you.
So amid all this there have been calls for a second referendum, which is also undemocratic, apparently. Except, is it? It would be the same process for the decision being made, except that people now might be better informed of what they are voting for and turnout might be even higher. More people making the decision on the basis of better information is less democratic, is it? OK, then.
Oh, and that petition that was supposedly riddled with non-British signatories? Only 77,000 signatures were removed for coming from “non-British residents or citizens” which is a staggeringly low number, given how this result concerns the fate of half a billion people.
The anger engendered by this result in the young has led to some pretty harsh things being said about old people. Let me take this opportunity to say that those views are as representative of remain voters as the racists are of leave voters. However, it can't be denied that, as with every vote, older voters swung this decision which, as with every vote, they are much less likely to have to live with the consequences of. It's perhaps cruel to say so but it is statistically accurate.
The most popular counter-argument I have heard to this is that the current older generation fought against the Nazis “for democracy” (there it is again, more on that later) and so we should be grateful to them for the chance to vote in democratic processes like these. Of course, no-one wishes to under-value the contribution of that generation to the world but is it those Nazi-fighters that are getting the blame from young people? I would argue it is not. Anyone fighting or contributing materially to WWII would have been at least 18 by 1945 at the latest, yes? So they were born no later than 1927 (give or take those who, like my Grandad, lied about their age to get in to the Army) so they'd be at least 89 now. How many 89+ year-olds do you think contributed to this vote? Life expectancy is well short of that age, and you are very lucky if you retain mental competency that far into your life. No, the "old people" who made this decision are the baby boomers; our grandparents, not our great-grandparents. In my opinion the current older generation spit on what our war heroes did with this vote. They fought the Nazis, and now we have emboldened our own Neo-Nazis.
Our great-grandparents didn't fight for democracy, by the way: Hitler had taken dictatorial control of Germany by early 1933 but war didn't start until late 1939. That wasn't a war for democracy, that was at best a war against fascism and the far right. At the most realistic it was a war against a rival empire in the making.
I like to think of it as the former, as a war against hate, against the very thing that brexit has unleashed on our streets. But that's overly optimistic. My grandad joined up at about 16 because his home life was shit and even the horror of war seemed preferable. He didn't join up to fight for democracy or the downfall of fascism or even really for the empire, he joined up because he didn't have a choice. There was a war on and everyone was going to have to fight eventually and it was better that than sleeping on the floor at the mercy of an abusive step-father. But my grandad made it back and, though I never knew him, I've always liked to think that he was proud of the peace that the body which became the EU brought upon the continent.
[Author's note: I know I said it was our great-grandparents rather than grand-parents who fought the war and then go on to tell my grandad's war story. He was quite old when my dad was born and was actually the same age as my great-grandparents on the other side of my family, just one of those family anomolies.]
On a personal note, I've been forced to look at a few friends differently recently. I still count them as friends but they are not the people I thought they were, just like I no longer live in the same country that I did on Thursday even though I haven't moved so much as a mile. I've never had a problem with people believing different things to me, that is the point of a free country. But when my views are shouted down because of “democracy”, I have to take a minute to wonder if I am being afforded the same respect. When my views are derided for being stupid I can't help but question if these people have ever counted me a friend.
Let me give an example. Among the absolute avalanche of memes doing the rounds on social media I saw one particular meme that derided the views of my personal favourite politician as “stupid.” It had been “liked” by a good friend of mine and probably her boyfriend too, who is also a friend. A few years ago, in just 2009, she and I were part of a three-man team of what seemed like really close friends, though we drifted slightly not long after. I couldn't respond to this slight by a mate because the original poster's privacy settings forbade it so you'll forgive me if I'm going to take my chance now.
There is nothing stupid about Scotland wanting independence from the United Kingdom and wanting membership of the EU. At the most basic level, even if membership of the EU was constitutionally the same as membership of the UK, the Scottish people have voted in favour of remaining in the EU by a far larger margin than the UK voted to leave but now they are forced against their will to accept leaving. This is undemocratic even if the European Union was an equivalent to the Union of the Crowns.
But it goes further. As I have hopefully shown, membership of the EU is not the equivalent to the Act of Union. The UK is definitely undemocratic for the Scottish people but the EU is in my opinion undemocratic for no-one if you understand it properly.
My final point (rejoice, the uber-rant has nearly ended!) is that we have made a grave error of moral judgement. However much you personally feel that leaving the EU benefits Britain politically or economically, it clearly has the potential to cause massive damage to the EU and its remaining members, either because of the rise of far-right political narratives or through the loss of a valued partner (i.e. us) causing economic troubles. Even if leaving the EU guaranteed us everything the leave campaign promised, how on Earth could it be right to destabilise a whole continent for our own selfish gain? I don't know about you but I was raised to be selfless, generous and co-operative, not to do what benefits me to the detriment of others. I can't be proud of a country that would make such a decision. Even if the money we will save does go into the NHS and science and arts funding, even if my fears over the far-right in this country are proved wrong, even if my fears for Europe are unfounded, we did not at the time of voting (and do not even now) know what we have done to our friends and allies on the continent and I can not be proud of a nation that carelessly risks the peace and prosperity of its closest neighbours for its own gain.
This is why I'm sore over our loss, because whatever we gain we have lost ourselves.
Anyway, what did we lose? The full extent won't become clear for some time but in the short term we all lost some money (which I fully accept we may make back), some of us lost our heads and I genuinely believe we lost the right to say we are proud to be British, which is ironic given that that right is more important to the people that have revoked it than to pretty much anyone. I've never understood patriotism at the best of times anyway. What, I'm supposed to feel good about being born on a particular side of an arbitrary border drawn by long dead war-mongers? Or on one particular side of some river or other natural boundary? Get away with you; the people on the other side of those lines are as good as you or I, their country is as good as ours, their lives as blighted and lighted by the finger of fate as ours is. We have so much in common but we set up these ridiculous systems of differentiation. At any rate, the events surrounding our recent referendum have stripped any vestige of justifiable pride from our lives. If you'd allow me to elucidate, I'll give you the reasons why I think that is so.
I know a lot has been said about the racial tensions which have become heightened in the wake of the result but this is the main reason why we can't be proud to be British. Say what you like about this not being what leavers voted for (you're wrong, by the way - it might not be what you wanted or what you thought was on offer but it sure as shit is what you voted for) but you can't deny that the result of the referendum has had an emboldening effect on xenophobes. That should be shaming enough for anyone. We did this. As a nation we signed a racists' charter, some willingly, some not, some knowingly, some not, some even gleefully, though most not.
Apparently, anyone that points this out is “just as bad” as the racists on our streets. Yeah, OK then, I drew a link between cause and effect and that's like telling people they're vermin. Now, I know what you're saying. I can hear it now, the cries of "but not all leave voters..." Yeah, absolutely, not all leave voters are racists, no-one has said that they are - at least as far as I know. The most I have read or heard anyone say is that a leave vote has emboldened racists. I think at this point this is established fact yet still I have been accused of “discrimination” against leave voters based on the actions of a few for trying to highlight this point. I tried to point out that what the person was trying to accuse me of was actually called stereotyping rather than discrimination and that I hadn't even done that but my application of logic just got my comment deleted.
Even if you don't think that the current troubles are the fault of the vote (they are), or that they are but it's nothing to do with you (it is) then you must agree that a nation so divided that half the country won't even listen to rational argument from the other half is not one to be proud of. You can take that any way you want, by the way, you can imagine the "la-la-la, I'm not listening" barrier between leavers and remainers, blaming whichever side you see fit, but the truth is it doesn't split that way. There are probably remainers who won't listen to the "not all leavers" argument just as there are leavers who won't own that their preferred result has caused trouble.
Now I'd like to go further. I'd like to explain that not only has the vote had massive negative impact, but why it's not been worth it. Please bear with me. Even if you don't agree, hear me out as I have heard out every leave supporter I have crossed paths with. I welcome debate. If you don't agree with what I'm writing here I will gladly listen to your arguments. It is the least we owe each other now. Listening to each other's points of view is the only way to start to heal the divisions that this vote has caused.
In my opinion, the result of the referendum was wrong. It has categorically been shown that both sides of this debate have made claims that they did not believe or want to stick to. It's very easy to find a picture of Boris Johnson stood next to a sign saying "let's give the NHS £350m a week" (not the vague battle-bus pledge, no, a sign that says what I just quoted, verbatim) but this was never going to happen. Everyone remembers the chancellor's warnings of an emergency budget, but let's face it, that was always an extreme worst-case scenario. The list goes on - on both sides. From my point of view, Leave participated in "project fear" and Remain took "project infinitely-unlikely-but-very-concerning-worst-case-scenario".
In any event, it's pretty obvious that not many people actually knew what they were voting on. A lot of people wanted to give the establishment a kicking and in so doing have paved the way for those ordinary working class blokes Boris and Gove to take control. Many people voted to curb immigration but even members of the government who were in the official leave campaign have said that it's unlikely to change. Quite a few people will have voted on so-called sovereignty or independence and here we may have a genuine issue, although to label it with sovereignty is dubious, in my opinion. Yes, some laws are made in Europe which affect Britain, but in the main these are laws like those which protect workers and consumers and the disabled and the LGBT+ community and minorities and your human rights and so on. Would you like these policy areas to be under the control of a conservative government? If so, I can only imagine you are an enemy of all of the people affected, for some reason.
Tied up in all this we have the lies over the figures. How important these were in deciding the result I'm not sure, but the numbers were everywhere you looked. For me money was never the issue. Only about 1% of the tax you pay goes to Europe and a lot of it comes back. Not all, of course, but we reap the benefits in other ways. With the slash-happy governance we've recently had, how do you think arts and sciences have managed to maintain their funding? Guess what, it's the EU. If you really believe that the money we've saved by leaving will now go to these things, or the NHS or the education system for that matter, you are dreaming. Michael Gove will have a big say in the next government and he wrote a book on how to dismantle the NHS. If he can think that is a good idea then is there anything that will be saved? If this destructive man is allowed in to any kind of power then we will have nothing left.
And why is it that you think the NHS or the education system need funding? Is it because of an explosion of immigration or a dearth of funding from the "democratically elected" UK government? The narrative of the leave camp was the former, but look me in the eye and tell me the latter wasn't at least ¾ of the problem, I dare you.
But at least the decision was democratic, right? I mean, sure there were lies by the campaigns and people voted based on little more than the flip of a coin, a lot of leavers regret voting leave and the country's being rent in two because a slim majority has made a no-going-back decision that totally ignores the will of the 48%. That's good and democratic, right? Right?
Democracy has been another interesting buzzword in the campaign and aftermath of the result. Apparently, those laws that are made in Europe are not made by democratically elected leaders. Bull. We elect the members of the European Parliament and on our behalf they elect members of the European Commission in a similar way to how we elect MPs who elect a PM on our behalf. The commission has a say in what happens but it is the directly elected MEPs which make the actual decisions, along with the council of ministers who are representatives of the democratically elected governments of the member nations. Allegedly, the difference between the EU and Westminster is that we can't vote out EU lawmakers, which is just not true because the main forces in law-making are our elected MEPs and our own government (through the council of ministers). But while we're on the subject of who we can't vote out, we can't vote out members of the House of Lords or the Monarchy but they have arguably as much influence over UK law as the commission and the council do over EU law (though, of course the Queen does not exercise her power).
And what's more, after all the dust has settled we will probably end up with an agreement which means we are still subject to many EU laws but we will no longer have a say in making them. Now there's democracy for you.
So amid all this there have been calls for a second referendum, which is also undemocratic, apparently. Except, is it? It would be the same process for the decision being made, except that people now might be better informed of what they are voting for and turnout might be even higher. More people making the decision on the basis of better information is less democratic, is it? OK, then.
Oh, and that petition that was supposedly riddled with non-British signatories? Only 77,000 signatures were removed for coming from “non-British residents or citizens” which is a staggeringly low number, given how this result concerns the fate of half a billion people.
The anger engendered by this result in the young has led to some pretty harsh things being said about old people. Let me take this opportunity to say that those views are as representative of remain voters as the racists are of leave voters. However, it can't be denied that, as with every vote, older voters swung this decision which, as with every vote, they are much less likely to have to live with the consequences of. It's perhaps cruel to say so but it is statistically accurate.
The most popular counter-argument I have heard to this is that the current older generation fought against the Nazis “for democracy” (there it is again, more on that later) and so we should be grateful to them for the chance to vote in democratic processes like these. Of course, no-one wishes to under-value the contribution of that generation to the world but is it those Nazi-fighters that are getting the blame from young people? I would argue it is not. Anyone fighting or contributing materially to WWII would have been at least 18 by 1945 at the latest, yes? So they were born no later than 1927 (give or take those who, like my Grandad, lied about their age to get in to the Army) so they'd be at least 89 now. How many 89+ year-olds do you think contributed to this vote? Life expectancy is well short of that age, and you are very lucky if you retain mental competency that far into your life. No, the "old people" who made this decision are the baby boomers; our grandparents, not our great-grandparents. In my opinion the current older generation spit on what our war heroes did with this vote. They fought the Nazis, and now we have emboldened our own Neo-Nazis.
Our great-grandparents didn't fight for democracy, by the way: Hitler had taken dictatorial control of Germany by early 1933 but war didn't start until late 1939. That wasn't a war for democracy, that was at best a war against fascism and the far right. At the most realistic it was a war against a rival empire in the making.
I like to think of it as the former, as a war against hate, against the very thing that brexit has unleashed on our streets. But that's overly optimistic. My grandad joined up at about 16 because his home life was shit and even the horror of war seemed preferable. He didn't join up to fight for democracy or the downfall of fascism or even really for the empire, he joined up because he didn't have a choice. There was a war on and everyone was going to have to fight eventually and it was better that than sleeping on the floor at the mercy of an abusive step-father. But my grandad made it back and, though I never knew him, I've always liked to think that he was proud of the peace that the body which became the EU brought upon the continent.
[Author's note: I know I said it was our great-grandparents rather than grand-parents who fought the war and then go on to tell my grandad's war story. He was quite old when my dad was born and was actually the same age as my great-grandparents on the other side of my family, just one of those family anomolies.]
On a personal note, I've been forced to look at a few friends differently recently. I still count them as friends but they are not the people I thought they were, just like I no longer live in the same country that I did on Thursday even though I haven't moved so much as a mile. I've never had a problem with people believing different things to me, that is the point of a free country. But when my views are shouted down because of “democracy”, I have to take a minute to wonder if I am being afforded the same respect. When my views are derided for being stupid I can't help but question if these people have ever counted me a friend.
Let me give an example. Among the absolute avalanche of memes doing the rounds on social media I saw one particular meme that derided the views of my personal favourite politician as “stupid.” It had been “liked” by a good friend of mine and probably her boyfriend too, who is also a friend. A few years ago, in just 2009, she and I were part of a three-man team of what seemed like really close friends, though we drifted slightly not long after. I couldn't respond to this slight by a mate because the original poster's privacy settings forbade it so you'll forgive me if I'm going to take my chance now.
There is nothing stupid about Scotland wanting independence from the United Kingdom and wanting membership of the EU. At the most basic level, even if membership of the EU was constitutionally the same as membership of the UK, the Scottish people have voted in favour of remaining in the EU by a far larger margin than the UK voted to leave but now they are forced against their will to accept leaving. This is undemocratic even if the European Union was an equivalent to the Union of the Crowns.
But it goes further. As I have hopefully shown, membership of the EU is not the equivalent to the Act of Union. The UK is definitely undemocratic for the Scottish people but the EU is in my opinion undemocratic for no-one if you understand it properly.
My final point (rejoice, the uber-rant has nearly ended!) is that we have made a grave error of moral judgement. However much you personally feel that leaving the EU benefits Britain politically or economically, it clearly has the potential to cause massive damage to the EU and its remaining members, either because of the rise of far-right political narratives or through the loss of a valued partner (i.e. us) causing economic troubles. Even if leaving the EU guaranteed us everything the leave campaign promised, how on Earth could it be right to destabilise a whole continent for our own selfish gain? I don't know about you but I was raised to be selfless, generous and co-operative, not to do what benefits me to the detriment of others. I can't be proud of a country that would make such a decision. Even if the money we will save does go into the NHS and science and arts funding, even if my fears over the far-right in this country are proved wrong, even if my fears for Europe are unfounded, we did not at the time of voting (and do not even now) know what we have done to our friends and allies on the continent and I can not be proud of a nation that carelessly risks the peace and prosperity of its closest neighbours for its own gain.
This is why I'm sore over our loss, because whatever we gain we have lost ourselves.
Wednesday, 25 May 2016
A soupçon of wibblyness and other nostalgic qualia from 2am
You do not know what you've got 'til it's gone. Not strictly true, I think, but it's weird how you can suddenly realise that someone/something was waaaay more important to you than you previously imagined, especially if you already thought it/they were pretty damn important and it turns out you still underestimated them.
My last post on here was so pessimistic that had I been a reader rather than the writer I think I'd have been referring the author to the Samaritans. I believe it's crucial to point out that I always play a character online (quite often offline too, tbh) so while most of what I write is genuinely what I think, not all of it is of me and none of it is the whole of me. I play up certain characteristics to fit the tone of what I want to say. If I'm feeling shit and want catharsis I will tell you every reason why I feel shit and not mention any lingering optimism I may have (this example is the most frequent) and if I'm feeling good and want to celebrate it I'll probably not mention whatever bad thoughts are going on under the surface. Anyways, if you read that post and you read this one too soon after you'll probably notice such a fierce change of direction that you may get whiplash (the author takes no responsibility for injuries incurred while reading this piece; you have been warned and continue to read at your own risk but if you're so weak as to be genuinely injured by metaphorical events you've done well to get this far through life and I offer my congratulations) but that doesn't mean I'm so bi-polar that I genuinely went from depressed to ecstatic in half an hour (although that might be the case, despite my protestations, idk, I'm pretty fucked up, you know).
See? Wistfulness to whimsy in bugger all time.
Part of the turnaround was that having mentioned last time that blogging had lost its appeal I decided to go back and read stuff from when I used to find it more enjoyable. I occasionally do this. Going back to my old posts gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, like I'm reaching out and touching that past life of mine, like I could almost inhabit that personality once again and enjoy life more fully than I have in some considerable while.
Also, to get back to the point made in my first paragraph, I went to read blogs from other people I know who were writing at the same time as me and rediscovered a true gem. Liv, on the off-chance that you read this, I bloody love you. Not in like a kissy-face way, more kind of like we're cousins who don't see each other often but have had good times in the past when we were closer. I don't think I fully appreciated you back when we were closer acquaintances and I know I was distant, but that's just my personality, it wasn't a reaction to you in any way. I probably still wouldn't be able to say this sort of stuff face-to-face, tbh, but that doesn't make it less true. It's also true of my other blogging buddies, y'all know who you are.
Soo... that was awkward. Moving on...
I read those blogs of mine and others and couldn't stop smiling. Those friends I had were such a part of me and those blogs we wrote were - to me at least - like little letters between truly dear friends. The language, the people and places mentioned, heck just the being up at 1am reading blogs, it all took me right back to the happiest time in my life. I still don't feel good about tomorrow, but I've rediscovered some cracking yesterdays that I can look back on and smile.
That happiness of nostalgia is so weird, it has all the ingredients of sadness, it even has a similar quale to sadness (for me at least) but it fills me with more joy than I can quite contain. I am genuinely getting slightly teary-eyed as I write. I miss those days so much it is a physical sensation; just above my stomach there is a soupçon of wibblyness (I know not how else to articulate the sensation), in my cheeks a slight quiver.
I remember how I connected with the person I came to consider my best friend through this medium, at least partially, though also through real-world contact. Sadly we don't talk that much these days and I am the last one of my contemporaries on this particular coalface of the blogoshpere - still stolidly chipping letters away to form semi-coherent sentences, the lone typer - so this first and best mode of contact is pretty much obsolete.
We - all of us - blogged the right way; we were honest, we talked about ourselves and our lives and we didn't give a fuck if it got read (though I did harbour hopes of having a bigger following, if I'm honest) but mostly we did it because we wanted to, not because we thought we were going to change the world or get rich (again, I wouldn't have objected to either of those things).
I read through some of what remains of our little online community, some of it is lost I fear, taken down for one reason or another (I know a number of my posts were culled through sheer embarrassment and it seems other people's have gone the same way, or have been kidnapped by ghosts in the code) but some still stands and from it you can even imply some of what was there before the various removals. Like a digital stonehenge, declaring that HERE WE WERE and we lived and we loved and laughed and did everyday things and stupid things and amazing things and the odd extraordinary thing.
We worked, you know, we clicked. As a group we fitted. While I despaired of just about everything (mostly I wrote of despair, despaired of my writing, wrote of writing, wrote of despairing at my despairing of my writing, despaired of my despair and wrote of my despair at writing about despair over despairing at writing about despair), others wrote the other side of the coin without making it an argument or contradiction, we agreed on most basic points and we just shared our points of view on each; some were angry, some were exasperated, some were optimistic. When we wrote posts that were on the same subject but totally antithetic in interpretation we still seemed to me to respect, empathise with and totally understand the other point of view. Some even wrote about how people who constantly despair are really bloody annoying and - though I despaired - I could not but nod in agreement.
I was the only one, I think, who seriously wanted to do stuff like this for a living - in a totally different way to this, of course; a personal blog like this could not, would not and should not be a money maker. However, I was easily the least talented (about which I frequently despaired) and the weird thing about that is that I didn't care. Jealousy is probably my overriding trait (except despa- yeah you get it) and I know personally a few (semi-)professional writers who I have a lot of envy towards which has ruined our friendships, but in this little circle of firelight I genuinely revelled in these beautiful people writing their beautiful words.
I needed a pick-me-up tonight and though in the morning I will regret staying up 'til 3am I have to thank those people whose words from the past reached out picked me up from my lowest ebb in a while. I know that if I touched your lives at all it was insignificant and fleeting but once again I have to say how deeply you all have touched mine and how grateful I am to know you. I could go on all night but that last sentence should be my conclusion, I feel. It's hackneyed, cheesy crap, but what did you expect from me?
See? Wistfulness to whimsy in bugger all time.
Part of the turnaround was that having mentioned last time that blogging had lost its appeal I decided to go back and read stuff from when I used to find it more enjoyable. I occasionally do this. Going back to my old posts gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, like I'm reaching out and touching that past life of mine, like I could almost inhabit that personality once again and enjoy life more fully than I have in some considerable while.
Also, to get back to the point made in my first paragraph, I went to read blogs from other people I know who were writing at the same time as me and rediscovered a true gem. Liv, on the off-chance that you read this, I bloody love you. Not in like a kissy-face way, more kind of like we're cousins who don't see each other often but have had good times in the past when we were closer. I don't think I fully appreciated you back when we were closer acquaintances and I know I was distant, but that's just my personality, it wasn't a reaction to you in any way. I probably still wouldn't be able to say this sort of stuff face-to-face, tbh, but that doesn't make it less true. It's also true of my other blogging buddies, y'all know who you are.
Soo... that was awkward. Moving on...
I read those blogs of mine and others and couldn't stop smiling. Those friends I had were such a part of me and those blogs we wrote were - to me at least - like little letters between truly dear friends. The language, the people and places mentioned, heck just the being up at 1am reading blogs, it all took me right back to the happiest time in my life. I still don't feel good about tomorrow, but I've rediscovered some cracking yesterdays that I can look back on and smile.
That happiness of nostalgia is so weird, it has all the ingredients of sadness, it even has a similar quale to sadness (for me at least) but it fills me with more joy than I can quite contain. I am genuinely getting slightly teary-eyed as I write. I miss those days so much it is a physical sensation; just above my stomach there is a soupçon of wibblyness (I know not how else to articulate the sensation), in my cheeks a slight quiver.
I remember how I connected with the person I came to consider my best friend through this medium, at least partially, though also through real-world contact. Sadly we don't talk that much these days and I am the last one of my contemporaries on this particular coalface of the blogoshpere - still stolidly chipping letters away to form semi-coherent sentences, the lone typer - so this first and best mode of contact is pretty much obsolete.
We - all of us - blogged the right way; we were honest, we talked about ourselves and our lives and we didn't give a fuck if it got read (though I did harbour hopes of having a bigger following, if I'm honest) but mostly we did it because we wanted to, not because we thought we were going to change the world or get rich (again, I wouldn't have objected to either of those things).
I read through some of what remains of our little online community, some of it is lost I fear, taken down for one reason or another (I know a number of my posts were culled through sheer embarrassment and it seems other people's have gone the same way, or have been kidnapped by ghosts in the code) but some still stands and from it you can even imply some of what was there before the various removals. Like a digital stonehenge, declaring that HERE WE WERE and we lived and we loved and laughed and did everyday things and stupid things and amazing things and the odd extraordinary thing.
We worked, you know, we clicked. As a group we fitted. While I despaired of just about everything (mostly I wrote of despair, despaired of my writing, wrote of writing, wrote of despairing at my despairing of my writing, despaired of my despair and wrote of my despair at writing about despair over despairing at writing about despair), others wrote the other side of the coin without making it an argument or contradiction, we agreed on most basic points and we just shared our points of view on each; some were angry, some were exasperated, some were optimistic. When we wrote posts that were on the same subject but totally antithetic in interpretation we still seemed to me to respect, empathise with and totally understand the other point of view. Some even wrote about how people who constantly despair are really bloody annoying and - though I despaired - I could not but nod in agreement.
I was the only one, I think, who seriously wanted to do stuff like this for a living - in a totally different way to this, of course; a personal blog like this could not, would not and should not be a money maker. However, I was easily the least talented (about which I frequently despaired) and the weird thing about that is that I didn't care. Jealousy is probably my overriding trait (except despa- yeah you get it) and I know personally a few (semi-)professional writers who I have a lot of envy towards which has ruined our friendships, but in this little circle of firelight I genuinely revelled in these beautiful people writing their beautiful words.
I needed a pick-me-up tonight and though in the morning I will regret staying up 'til 3am I have to thank those people whose words from the past reached out picked me up from my lowest ebb in a while. I know that if I touched your lives at all it was insignificant and fleeting but once again I have to say how deeply you all have touched mine and how grateful I am to know you. I could go on all night but that last sentence should be my conclusion, I feel. It's hackneyed, cheesy crap, but what did you expect from me?
Tuesday, 24 May 2016
A Review of my Ten-Year Plan; or, Welp, I think it's about time for a quarter-life crisis.
So, 26 today and how did I celebrate? I went to the job centre. Not because that's how I enjoy a special occasion, it's just something I have to do every couple of weeks. I've never been one for a big Birthday bash, but this was a whole other level of not celebrating.
Anyways, Birthdays are always a time for looking back on the past, certainly for me anyway; it is a marking of the anniversary a past event, after all. So, as I sat in that office this morning I reflected for a period on the last few years of being me (they're never ready to see you when you walk in so you always have time to spend ruminating on something or other). I had been in the vicinity of my old school last night so leaving school ten years ago stuck out as a natural place to start my look back.
The period between my 16th and the end of school was exam time and it was bloody awesome. I never revised but a lot of lessons were cancelled to make way for study sessions, which me and the boys translated to mean "go to the park down the road and kick a football around for four or five hours." (Still aced my exams, btw, at least the ones I cared about.)
If you'd asked me then where I'd be in ten years time I'd have had no idea but I would never have said I'd end that decade sat in a near-deserted office preparing to defend my use of my time this week - they want you to be doing work-search related activity for 35 hours every week, more than some full time jobs for about a quarter of the money - and feeling like shit.
I've said before I don't plan for the future. It's a mistake, I'm aware, but there you are. My somewhat nebulous ideas at that time revolved around working with kids in some capacity (an idea based mainly on my excellent rapport with my younger relatives) and doing something creative in my spare time, hoping for the latter to become professional at some point.
It was five years later that my career "plans" (for desperate want of a better word) were dashed when I unhelpfully realised that I hatekids pretty much all people everywhere and it's only now, ten years on, that I'm beginning to force myself to admit that I lack any talent whatsoever.
In those ten years I've changed a lot, though maybe not as much as I'd have liked and probably not always for the better.
So, what's the solution?
That's the right question to ask: identify the goal, identify what you need to do to get there, do the things, give no fucks if anyone or anything tries to stop you. That's what successful people do. Me on the other hand, I like to identify the goal, identify what I need to do, identify the failings in my character that will stop me doing the things, identify the reasons I can't escape these failings, identify my need for an alcoholic beverage of some kind, remember I don't like alcohol, die a little inside, write a blog post, get angry, suppress my emotions, buy something I don't need, act like a miserable bastard for 3 to 33 days, repeat from step one. Well, when I say I like to do that...
It's worse this time. I've always joked about getting old on my birthday but increasingly I get the sense that time really is running out. Is there too much pressure on the young these days? Probably so. Look at those SATs for five-year-olds or whatever: if that isn't symptomatic of a system that seeks to put everyone on a path to something from as early as possible, I'm the Easter Bunny. But does the fact that our obsession with early achievement is possibly needless change the fact that at 26 I am pretty much beyond hope of ever achieving what I want? No matter how I cast around for any excuse to disbelieve that I have missed the boat on everything I have to conclude that no, it doesn't change it. There is no court of appeal on this stuff either, anyone who accomplishes anything in the modern world has that ten-year plan when they leave school and they may not get all the way through it but they have made plenty of progress by the time they reach my age. Anyone who failed to make plans is left by the wayside. All my competition is from people so much younger than me now that I genuinely look like an old man next to some of them, but without the benefits of age such as experience and wisdom.
Regardless of whether I'm right in what I'm saying here, it has to be a sad state of affairs that a 26 year old can feel like life has passed him by. I take full responsibility for this; it's naught but my own stupidity and lack of foresight that led me here. It's naught but my own stupidity and lack of self-belief that stops me trying seriously to catch up with what I feel I've missed out on.
I keep hoping that one day something inside me will snap and I'll suddenly feel like I can do what I need to do to get where I want to be, but I feel like - if it will ever give at all - whatever it is that has to snap requires weighting down with many more years of dispiritedness and despondency before it will finally yield, meaning I will have to be even further behind before I can start to get my run-up going. I'm terrified of not being able to move forward but it seems the only way I can see to do so is to fall further behind, which - of course - I'm terrified of.
I laughed when I first read the term "quarter-life crisis," partially from the poor-sounding grammar, mostly from the feeling that it was all part of that joke we twenty-somethings do where we pretend to be old. But it is said that all jokes contain the kernel of truth and is there any more fitting term for what I'm going through now?
I could go on like this all night. There's nothing stopping me, really. But what was supposed to be catharsis has only made me feel worse and honestly, I've barely found any joy in this. Secretly, or probably not-so-secretly, this blog has been my favourite thing for a while now. I may be here infrequently, I may be embarrassed about what I end up posting and I may wish I was a million times better at this but the pounding of the keys, the construction of the sentences and paragraphs - however clumsy - and possibly even the knowledge that I've made some contribution to the world, even if it is pointless and unworthy, never fails to lift my spirits. Except tonight.
Tonight I may be finally admitting defeat in the quest to become a decent writer, because tonight I feel like it was early-twenties me who cherished that dream and though he had no better chance of realising it than I do, he had the license to dream that comes from youth. Late-twenties me has no such license, late-twenties me has to grow up and settle into the despair that is the true destiny of humanity, some future me may be able to harness the weight of that despair to some creative end but first I need to be crushed and battered by the world, probably need to actively seek out dejection and heavy-heartedness to break that dam and fire that furnace. Late-twenties me needs to go back to the job centre in two weeks (or preferably get a job, though that currently seems as fanciful as any other dream from my youth) and every week hence until something breaks; either me or that thing within me that is blocking my progress.
Anyways, Birthdays are always a time for looking back on the past, certainly for me anyway; it is a marking of the anniversary a past event, after all. So, as I sat in that office this morning I reflected for a period on the last few years of being me (they're never ready to see you when you walk in so you always have time to spend ruminating on something or other). I had been in the vicinity of my old school last night so leaving school ten years ago stuck out as a natural place to start my look back.
The period between my 16th and the end of school was exam time and it was bloody awesome. I never revised but a lot of lessons were cancelled to make way for study sessions, which me and the boys translated to mean "go to the park down the road and kick a football around for four or five hours." (Still aced my exams, btw, at least the ones I cared about.)
If you'd asked me then where I'd be in ten years time I'd have had no idea but I would never have said I'd end that decade sat in a near-deserted office preparing to defend my use of my time this week - they want you to be doing work-search related activity for 35 hours every week, more than some full time jobs for about a quarter of the money - and feeling like shit.
I've said before I don't plan for the future. It's a mistake, I'm aware, but there you are. My somewhat nebulous ideas at that time revolved around working with kids in some capacity (an idea based mainly on my excellent rapport with my younger relatives) and doing something creative in my spare time, hoping for the latter to become professional at some point.
It was five years later that my career "plans" (for desperate want of a better word) were dashed when I unhelpfully realised that I hate
In those ten years I've changed a lot, though maybe not as much as I'd have liked and probably not always for the better.
So, what's the solution?
That's the right question to ask: identify the goal, identify what you need to do to get there, do the things, give no fucks if anyone or anything tries to stop you. That's what successful people do. Me on the other hand, I like to identify the goal, identify what I need to do, identify the failings in my character that will stop me doing the things, identify the reasons I can't escape these failings, identify my need for an alcoholic beverage of some kind, remember I don't like alcohol, die a little inside, write a blog post, get angry, suppress my emotions, buy something I don't need, act like a miserable bastard for 3 to 33 days, repeat from step one. Well, when I say I like to do that...
It's worse this time. I've always joked about getting old on my birthday but increasingly I get the sense that time really is running out. Is there too much pressure on the young these days? Probably so. Look at those SATs for five-year-olds or whatever: if that isn't symptomatic of a system that seeks to put everyone on a path to something from as early as possible, I'm the Easter Bunny. But does the fact that our obsession with early achievement is possibly needless change the fact that at 26 I am pretty much beyond hope of ever achieving what I want? No matter how I cast around for any excuse to disbelieve that I have missed the boat on everything I have to conclude that no, it doesn't change it. There is no court of appeal on this stuff either, anyone who accomplishes anything in the modern world has that ten-year plan when they leave school and they may not get all the way through it but they have made plenty of progress by the time they reach my age. Anyone who failed to make plans is left by the wayside. All my competition is from people so much younger than me now that I genuinely look like an old man next to some of them, but without the benefits of age such as experience and wisdom.
Regardless of whether I'm right in what I'm saying here, it has to be a sad state of affairs that a 26 year old can feel like life has passed him by. I take full responsibility for this; it's naught but my own stupidity and lack of foresight that led me here. It's naught but my own stupidity and lack of self-belief that stops me trying seriously to catch up with what I feel I've missed out on.
I keep hoping that one day something inside me will snap and I'll suddenly feel like I can do what I need to do to get where I want to be, but I feel like - if it will ever give at all - whatever it is that has to snap requires weighting down with many more years of dispiritedness and despondency before it will finally yield, meaning I will have to be even further behind before I can start to get my run-up going. I'm terrified of not being able to move forward but it seems the only way I can see to do so is to fall further behind, which - of course - I'm terrified of.
I laughed when I first read the term "quarter-life crisis," partially from the poor-sounding grammar, mostly from the feeling that it was all part of that joke we twenty-somethings do where we pretend to be old. But it is said that all jokes contain the kernel of truth and is there any more fitting term for what I'm going through now?
I could go on like this all night. There's nothing stopping me, really. But what was supposed to be catharsis has only made me feel worse and honestly, I've barely found any joy in this. Secretly, or probably not-so-secretly, this blog has been my favourite thing for a while now. I may be here infrequently, I may be embarrassed about what I end up posting and I may wish I was a million times better at this but the pounding of the keys, the construction of the sentences and paragraphs - however clumsy - and possibly even the knowledge that I've made some contribution to the world, even if it is pointless and unworthy, never fails to lift my spirits. Except tonight.
Tonight I may be finally admitting defeat in the quest to become a decent writer, because tonight I feel like it was early-twenties me who cherished that dream and though he had no better chance of realising it than I do, he had the license to dream that comes from youth. Late-twenties me has no such license, late-twenties me has to grow up and settle into the despair that is the true destiny of humanity, some future me may be able to harness the weight of that despair to some creative end but first I need to be crushed and battered by the world, probably need to actively seek out dejection and heavy-heartedness to break that dam and fire that furnace. Late-twenties me needs to go back to the job centre in two weeks (or preferably get a job, though that currently seems as fanciful as any other dream from my youth) and every week hence until something breaks; either me or that thing within me that is blocking my progress.
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Straw Men on Slippery Slopes
Right, can I just take a moment to remind you that we are in 2015? That we live in a supposedly enlightened society? OK. That done, can I ask why people are bemoaning the recent US Supreme Court ruling stating that two adult human beings who love each other are allowed to get married? I usually keep quiet about this kind of stuff because I've got a lot of respect for religion and my religious friends and when this debate comes up it is so often centred around religion. But I can't keep schtum any longer
I recently saw a link to an article entitled "40 questions for Christians now waving rainbow flags" on facebook (don't search for it, they'll get money from their advertising space if you click on their page and I couldn't in good conscience allow any more to be contributed to the cause of hate).
Well, I used to be a Christian and I've always waved the rainbow flag so I thought I'd address these questions. I think it's important to mention certain biases here. First, my religion. As I say, I'm not a Christian any more. This is not because I don't believe in God or Jesus but because, despite its other merits, I don't see them present in organised Christianity these days. Second, my sexual orientation. It's a topic for another day perhaps so all I'll say here is that if you insist on labeling me it's probably best to call me straight-ish. Despite these facts, I'm rooted in Christianity and still see myself as a follower of Christ and reverent of the Bible, so I suppose the questions are still aimed at me in some way.
First up, here are the questions:
I recently saw a link to an article entitled "40 questions for Christians now waving rainbow flags" on facebook (don't search for it, they'll get money from their advertising space if you click on their page and I couldn't in good conscience allow any more to be contributed to the cause of hate).
Well, I used to be a Christian and I've always waved the rainbow flag so I thought I'd address these questions. I think it's important to mention certain biases here. First, my religion. As I say, I'm not a Christian any more. This is not because I don't believe in God or Jesus but because, despite its other merits, I don't see them present in organised Christianity these days. Second, my sexual orientation. It's a topic for another day perhaps so all I'll say here is that if you insist on labeling me it's probably best to call me straight-ish. Despite these facts, I'm rooted in Christianity and still see myself as a follower of Christ and reverent of the Bible, so I suppose the questions are still aimed at me in some way.
First up, here are the questions:
- How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated?
- What Bible verses led you to change your mind?
- How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?
- What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church?
- Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship?
- If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman?
- When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding?
- If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?
- Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven?
- What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?
- As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?
- What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?
- Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman?
- Do you think children do best with a mother and a father?
- If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?
- If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad?
- Does the end and purpose of marriage point to something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment?
- How would you define marriage?
- Do you think close family members should be allowed to get married?
- Should marriage be limited to only two people?
- On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting adults of any relation and of any number from getting married?
- Should there be an age requirement in this country for obtaining a marriage license?
- Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage?
- If not, why not?
- Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion?
- Will you speak up for your fellow Christians when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are threatened because of this issue?
- Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and Catholics?
- Since the evangelical church has often failed to take unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles?
- Should gay couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline?
- Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage?
- What will open and affirming churches do to speak prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever they are found?
- If “love wins,” how would you define love?
- What verses would you use to establish that definition?
- How should obedience to God’s commands shape our understanding of love?
- Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make?
- If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has anything else changed in your understanding of faith?
- As an evangelical, how has your support for gay marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent need to evangelize the lost?
- What open and affirming churches would you point to where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being warned of judgment and called to repentance, and missionaries are being sent out to plant churches among unreached peoples?
- Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?
- When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,” what sins do you think he has in mind?
(h/t thegospelcoalition.org)
Now, I could spend the next four years answering each question individually, or I could simply point out the multitude of fallacies within the questions but the former is pointless and the latter's a little childish. Instead, I'll answer the key ones and address the flaws in some of the others. I might miss some out for reasons of not wanting to turn this into a book-length response but I intend to address all the issues raised and shirk nothing.
I must first say that although I'm arguing against this piece, my primary concern is with its poor debating technique rather than its message (though I heartily disagree with the message). If you want to believe same-sex marriage is wrong, fine, but don't try to brainwash others as sure as hell don't try and do it with lame-ass arguments like those above.
I must first say that although I'm arguing against this piece, my primary concern is with its poor debating technique rather than its message (though I heartily disagree with the message). If you want to believe same-sex marriage is wrong, fine, but don't try to brainwash others as sure as hell don't try and do it with lame-ass arguments like those above.
Fallacies first, I think, to save time:
Questions 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 28, 33, 40 are all predicated on the assumption of the absolute truth of every word of the Bible, which is a shaky concept on which to build an argument. Even if you yourself believe it to be the case, you must accept that not all Christians do and that for those Christians, these questions have no meaning. More on this later.
Questions 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 24 are all actually additional parts of other questions. This isn't a fallacy but it rather renders them redundant.
Questions 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 and 36 are examples of two fallacies at once. Straw men on slippery slopes, impressive.
Questions 37, 38, and to an extent 34 and 39, presuppose a universal interpretation of Christianity, which is nonsense.
I deem the following questions irrelevant, for the stated reasons:
Question 1, because it doesn't matter how long you've believed something - is the belief of a recent convert to Christianity less valid than that of a life-long believer? I would argue it's more valid, since they are more likely to have used reason to come to their beliefs rather than simply being brought up into a tradition. So, if recent converts to Christianity are not less valid (we can agree on that at least, can't we?) then question 1 is irrelevant.
Question 7, because the verse in question fairly clearly refers to reasons why divorce is allowed, which has got little to do with support for marriage equality.
Question 13, because the opinions of others and their apparent changes of opinion have no bearing on one's own opinions. Unless the questioner wishes to imply that their audience are no more than lemmings?
Question 35, because my ability to love and disagree with someone has three-fifths of sod all to do with marriage or my opinions thereof. This question was just filler, wasn't it?
Which leaves four questions worth answering. That's right, four. And those are mostly worth answering to demonstrate their absurdity:
Question 5: do I think Jesus would be ok with same-sex marriage? Clearly I, as a rainbow-flag-waving Christian, do. Next.
Question 14: do I think children do best with a mother and a father? That depends entirely on the specific child and the specific parents. Many kids from "traditional" homes have horrible lives, many don't, so clearly the make-up of the household is irrelevant.
Question 18: how do I define marriage? As a legal and/or religious commitment to another person, ideally because you love them. And?
Question 32: How do I define love? I don't, it is subjective and indefinable by its very nature. If this was not the case then most of the major artworks since the beginning of time would not exist.
Well, that's those questions answered or rebutted, am I supposed to feel wrong about supporting equality now? Or to have changed my mind? Or to feel a conflict between my faith and my ethics? Well, I don't and I haven't, and here's why:
Well, that's those questions answered or rebutted, am I supposed to feel wrong about supporting equality now? Or to have changed my mind? Or to feel a conflict between my faith and my ethics? Well, I don't and I haven't, and here's why:
The majority of the "argument" put forth by these questions seems to be "the bible doesn't explicitly state that same-sex marriage is ok, and some parts of it suggest it is wrong."
The weaknesses of this argument are myriad, but here is the important one: The Bible is not the direct word of God. I don't say this to cause offence and I'm really not trying to challenge anyone's faith, merely to put my side of the argument. So sorry if you believe that the Bible is God's word but even the book itself does not claim to be written by God, most parts of the book are named after the people who did allegedly write them (the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul's letter to... etc.). Are those people God? No. They were writing their view of events. Even if they did not embellish, even if they tried to faithfully represent facts, by the very fact of their humanity they were flawed and prone to error. Even if you believe God directly inspired these writings, you still can't completely rule out errors and you can not ignore the many things which were arbitrarily removed or omitted from the Bible by what is now the Catholic church. Who knows what Jesus said in the accounts that have been buried by organised religion?
To call the Bible the word of God is blasphemy. It is the word of long-dead men who know nothing of faith in the modern world, who at worst used the names of God and Jesus to propagate their own world views and at best had the unenviable task of interpreting the inherently ineffable wishes of God through the prism of their own experience. How can you let these men tell you what to do, what to believe, even what to think?
I did say I revere the Bible, and I do, the stories of Jesus are inspirational, but to take anything in the book as absolute truth is to narrow the infinite wisdom of God to something relevant only to ancient man or modern extremists. That is not my God.
Wednesday, 1 July 2015
Inspiration strikes
So, today I started work on my first... hmmm first novel? first short story? First something or other, anyway. I don't know where it's going to go but I'm finally writing something.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Except...
Well, what do you do when you have an idea that you think is really bad but is the only idea you seem likely to have for a while? And when you don't really think you can write well enough to save the bad idea by cocooning it in words that hide the flaws?
Apparently you write it anyway, or that's what I seem to be doing. I foresee great danger here: either I'll hate the end product and be too demotivated to write anything else or I'll be so happy at finishing something that I'll love it too much to admit it's poor.
Well, there's only one way to find out I suppose.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Letters from the past, nearly illegible but not nearly illegible enough.
So, I've talked a lot in here about how I like to write. You've probably noticed that the idea of writing professionally is starting to coalesce in my mind once again. Of course this isn't the first time my thoughts have swung that way. I remember a time when I was all about my various notebooks full of scribbled song lyrics (my band was never going to take off but obviously someone would want to buy the shit I'd been writing for their band: it was gold dust!).
Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).
Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Creative Non-fiction
So, I realised I'd nearly forgotten to write something today and was casting around for a topic. I had this in the pipeline but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a while yet. I guess there's no time like the present though and I've got nothing else so it'll have to do.
Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son
I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.
Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.
Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
Well, that's a whole other story.
Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son
I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.
Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.
Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
Well, that's a whole other story.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
=
Well, it's only day three of my write-something-every-day challenge and just 36 hours since I really put the pressure on with a melodramatic outburst on why it's so important that I keep it up and I've only just noticed that I've written nothing today. I'm the king of poor follow-through but this was nearly a dismal failure by even my generous standards.
So, in my haste to fire something out in the 57 minutes remaining of today, I've had to pluck a topic out of nowhere and I'm going for equality. Weighty stuff for midnight on a Saturday but its something I think about a lot. I've always had a passion for justice and fairness, and there's a couple of related stories/events at the moment so I thought I'd talk about one or two.
So first things first, I consider myself a feminist. Yes I'm a man, yes you could just call me an egalitarian if you want, but this is where I'm coming from. I may be quite a bad feminist at times, as I shall recount here, but I am a feminist.
One equality-related thing happening at the moment is the Women's Football World Cup. I've always been a staunch defender of the women's game against a barrage of sexist comments from people I'm slightly ashamed to call acquaintances and friends. Women's football is not the same as men's football but it's no less entertaining. Sometimes it's better to watch, even if you might be able to make a case for the standard being lower. Anyway, there are obvious potential challenges to my claims of feminism here. I often find myself thinking something bad about what I'm seeing. I actually made a mental comparison between women's football and "real" football earlier today and I was not happy with myself about that, I can tell you. Of course, having these thoughts doesn't make me a complete chauvinist arsehole. In fact, acknowledging my own faults and trying to address them probably makes me a better person in the long run but still, I'd rather not be prone to such slips in the first place.
The main problem with trying to be a male feminist women's football fan though is trying not to think very bad thoughts about the endless parade of very aesthetically pleasing women on show. I wrestle them down most of the time but thoughts like these trouble me still. Can I really be fair and equal in my treatment of people with these thoughts in my head? Can I truly be a fan of the game I profess to love? Or am I merely a worthless letch? Fighting myself here proves I'm trying but does the lack of total victory mean I'm not trying hard enough?
Friday, 12 June 2015
Titles are Hard, part 2 of 2.
Part one here
Last
time I mentioned that I'd be trying to write every day, just to see
if I can get any good at it. I'll be honest, that piece went on
longer than I expected and I never managed to wrestle it towards its
intended subject, so I inserted a break at what seemed an appropriate
point and split it in two. I'm undertaking this writing on the advice
of a far better writer than myself, who thought it might help. Unlike the man in question, I haven't the ability to write fiction (now anyway, hopefully it will come with time) so I'm just typing to see where it goes.
Anyway,
the second and third part of Sir Terry's advice concerned becoming a
good writer, which I don't think many people asked for advice
on, more commonly they wanted to know how to make as much money as he
had so these other pieces of advice are less widely published. The
second part was this: read, and read a lot, if you read enough words
they start to overflow and you'll find yourself writing, if you've
read good things and read widely about all sorts of subjects, you'll
have a lot of material to draw on.
This,
I suspect, will be my downfall. Back in my teens I could read two
books in a day and if I'd spent that time broadening my horizons I'd
have probably ended up reading everything in the universe, but I'm a
notorious re-reader so my horizons stay stubbornly narrow. There's a
nice eclectic mix in there but new things are rare and these days
they seem to take months to get through. However,
a glut of new books recently entered my life and hopefully I can take
some good things from the experience.
One
of these was actually written by a family member and I'm
proof-reading it for him. Through a twist in circumstance I'm not
entirely sure he knows I'm proof-reading, it could be he thinks I'm
just reading it, which presents me with the dilemma of what to do
with the points I notice that need or want changing. I've no idea of
the etiquette in this situation and I'm really reticent to give the
book back with my little scribbled notes all over it.
You
see, not only do I not know whether he's expecting any feedback or
not, the feedback I do have is harsh and I've gone far beyond the
remit of the proof-reader, for four reasons. Firstly, because if my
relative is to go from self-published to just published, which I
assume he would like to, he's going to need to get used to harsh
criticism of spellings, punctuation, grammar, syntax and such (this,
incidentally, was Terry Pratchett's third piece of advice: knowing
your commas from your semi-colons is vital). Secondly, I've been
harsh because there's a pretty good story in there but it really
struggles to immerse you thanks to its presentation and making it
easier to read will make it better. Thirdly, I love correct grammar
(though my definition of correct may be looser than some others) and
seeing it misused hurts me almost physically.
The
fourth reason is far less virtuous. Honestly, I'm jealous. I've
always thought myself a writer, even if not a very good one and
suddenly here is someone putting their skill into practice while I
wait for an idea to strike, like some hunk of stone landing on my
doorstep from which I might be able to hew a story of some kind. I've
been wretchedly comparing what I've read in that work to my own
efforts and while I believe myself to have the edge when it comes to
the nuts and bolts of writing, the author of the piece I'm half way
through critiquing has me beat all ends up on imagination and
story-telling. Together we'd make a fearsome team, though I'd never
say it to him. Instead, rightly or wrongly, I'll just tear his first
novel to pieces and try to be as dispassionate as possible so that
what I'm saying comes from the part of me that's trying to help
rather than the green eyed monster who keeps urging me to find any
fault I can purely for its own satisfaction. It's a perilous
tightrope I walk, over a chasm of despair and envy.
On
this high-wire of the soul I have one salvation. Knowing that the
trick of the tightrope walker is to lower their centre of gravity to
a point below the rope, I've fashioned for myself a heavy weight.
This is why I write every day now, to keep me balanced. I've done
nearly 1350 words today (and amazingly still haven't got around to the topic I originally had in mind) and the release I feel is not just down to
the confessional nature of the last few paragraphs, although that
will certainly have helped. I know that this burden, gladly carried,
can save me from becoming the terrible person I've always suspected
myself to be and if between that and improving my own skills I can't
find some motivation to keep on carrying it then I don't deserve to
use this keyboard for anything but facebook and gaming.
You Know What? Titles Are Hard. (Part 1 of 2)
That
has bugger all to do with the topic for today. It's just a comment.
I've come up with some titles I've been pretty happy with over my
career but sometimes I just can't condense what I'm thinking of
writing about into a concise enough sentence.
My
topic for today is in fact pretty much what it always is: my struggle
to express myself through the medium of the typed word. (Yeah, I
know, but there's actually almost a pretty good reason for once).
In
fact, yet again I've had someone tell me I write pretty well. This
happens surprisingly often and I never believe it to be true. It
seems more likely to me that people are humouring their friend. I
don't say this to fish for further compliments, I'm simply stating
the facts of the matter.
Having
said that, I was reading back through some of my favourite posts from
this blog yesterday and thinking to myself that some of them were
half-decent. This is clearly selection bias though: if I'm reading my
favourites, of course I'll like them, I should try reading the ones I
hate or (if it were possible) the ones I've deleted if I fancy
getting a true measure of my ability.
Anyway,
that's why I'm here. Compliments motivate me to try and make myself
worthy of them and practice makes perfect so here I am.
Fair
warning, this piece is about to go off on such a tangent you wouldn't
believe it.
I
was mid-way through my annual re-read of practically everything Terry
Pratchett ever wrote when the great man passed away (naturally this
extended the splurge to include other of his books that I read less
often). Amongst the things I took in this time around were the
anthologies of his non-fiction and shorter fictional works. Between
them, the notes he makes between each piece in those books represent
the closest we'll get to an autobiography, which both gladdens and
saddens me. It's unusual for writers to to autobiographies. Despite
being the only people qualified to do so, they always have something
more interesting to write about. Such was the case with Pratchett and
I wouldn't swap one novel for an autobiography but from those notes
in the anthologies of his work I learned there are scarcely any
people whose own story I'd be more interested to read. It is all
there in his fiction, anyway, once you know where to look.
Writers
are always asked what the secret is and of all the answers I've
heard, Pratchett's is one of my favourites. It comes in three parts
and the essence of the first and most important part is "You
want to be a writer? No-one's stopping you, write something." He
himself wrote at least four hundred words a day when he was starting
out. If he finished a story within one night's session, he'd simply
start on another story. A lot of those innumerable words might never
have made it to print but that wasn't the point.The goal wasn't
necessarily to be published (although I'm sure it was appreciated),
he wanted to write, so he did.
I've
decided to take his advice and try to emulate him, as much as possible.
Not that I expect that by writing a couple of hundred words a day
I'll turn into the next Sir Terry Pratchett, he had certain
advantages over me - such as a skill in the craft - but with any luck
I might at some point become worthy of those compliments I've been
getting.
Thursday, 11 June 2015
My name is Daniel, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I've had a lager.
So, I discovered something today: 25-year-old me can handle significantly less booze than 15-year old me could. I think the first clue was when, after one San Miguel while ostensibly working on a project for a family member. I started slacking off, posting more facebook statuses in an hour than I have done in the previous month and singing Busted songs at the top of my voice. And now I'm blogging about totally random shit and I just can't seem to stop.
I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.
I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.
Monday, 4 May 2015
Twenty-Something Life In The Bit Bucket: So, where do you get your inspiration?
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.
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.
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