Tag: Reflections

It seems like no time since I was looking forward to the summer. The holiday in Singapore was months away, Pedal for Scotland was a spot in the distance and ohhh yes I was gonna get so much done.

In the past I think I’d now be sitting here saying “Christ, it’s almost November, what have I achieved?!” but these days things are different. Yes I could’ve done more but I’m more focussed on being happy than being productive (even though the two are inextricably linked), on getting the balance right between the stuff I want to do and the stuff I have to do, and generally I find myself calmer, more rational and more aware.

The darker nights bring a different focus, of course, and now is the time to be exploring new hobbies, creating new routines into which I can add a few more notches of self-improvement to my belt.

But there is no rush, no hurry. Not today.

I’ve given out this piece of advice a few times in the past few years, and I realise it’s something I’m more and more keen to make sure is part of my day. It can take mere seconds, but without it the world can seem a horrid and dark place.

So, today, stop and appreciate a moment of beauty. Whether it’s watching the raindrops race down a window, the elegant swoop of a gull on the breeze, or admiring the hazy moon at night there is so much more to life than the constant strive for everything now, faster, better, more.

Step outside all of that for a second, breath deeply and be content in the moment. Today is only today for a short while.

Like many people, I like to ponder self-improvement, how I will read more books, learn to play the guitar, exercise more and invest in myself more than I have.

However it seems that deep down I’m actually not that bothered, that I must be happy enough with where I am in my life at the moment. I know this because I keep on booking events, planning nights out and trips, and leaving myself with little free time to do much of anything.

OK, this is a bit of an excuse, I’m sure I COULD spend my free time NOT sitting on the sofa but rest is important too, right?

This is a bit of theme with me, all of a sudden I’ll realise I’m massively busy and overcommitted, that doesn’t seem to change but my attitude towards it certainly has. What I am finding, as I mentioned before, is that I’m putting more and more onus on how I spend my free time, making sure I get the most value from it, regardless of what it is I’m doing.

Looking ahead at my calendar for the next few months has me:
– in Birmingham this coming weekend
– in London at the end of November
– in Manchester at the start of December
– attending two comedy shows; Scott Capuro and Ada Vidal
– attending five gigs; Coheed and Cambria, Band of Horses, Band of Skulls, Simian Mobile Disco and Elbow – and it would’ve been six (Grizzly Bear and The Villagers) but we double booked the trip to Birmingham
– attending two ISTC events (one is in London, hence the trip)
– attending a few (five) other events

And that takes us to the second week in December.

Still, I’m managing to fit in a weekly game of basketball, work on the ISTC website, and so far I’ve managed to do a little more writing than I’ve managed all year so it’s not that I’m not getting things done!

Importantly I do feel like my work/life balance (and my life/love balance) is back on track, I’m enjoying being me!

I cannot believe I’ve not written about my trip to Singapore!

And I’m not going to, as I’ve yet to post my photos to Flickr so I’ll wait until I’ve done that.

That said, I’ve been busy since I got back, spending a few days in Newcastle at a conference, and the rest of the time trying not to be ill (and failing).

So it’s only really the past couple of days I’ve finally felt back to my usual self and started to get things back on track. It feels a bit odd, as I approach my 39th year on this planet, that I’m still ‘finding’ myself (and that sounds a bit new age wank but it is what it is!) but it’s true.

The past few years have been wonderful, horrible, amazing, and sad but the past is in the past so I’m looking forward more and more these days, mostly because I feel that I can now.

Where does that future take me? I’ve no idea. Professionally I’ll be assessing things come April next year, personally… well here are a couple of links which cover two areas I’m taking an increasing interest in:

• Poly Means Many – There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers – ALBJ, An Open Book, Delightfully Queer, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin – will write about their views on one of them. This project is called Poly Means Many, a name which was inspired by our varied views and also the definition of the word polyamory.
• Buddhism A-Z – will consist of 26 posts (listed below) proceeding alphabetically through some of the things that Buddhism means to me and the ways I feel it speaks as acutely as ever to modern life. It will not be comprehensive. I couldn’t possibly, and won’t even try, to do more than scratch the surface.

Yes, the two topics are somewhat linked (by the fact that one person is involved with both projects, and because there are parallels between the two that I’ve drawn in my head) and, along with my continued efforts to improve my health and wellbeing, I find myself at the point of redefining who am I.

It’s unlikely to be a radical change, but as I hinted at in my previous post, more and more I find myself looking for things which will (in my opinion) enhance the ‘me’ I want to be.

I don’t have a fixed image of my future self but it’s slowly taking shape, And even though I know that that process won’t ever stop (it’s part of who I am to want to improve) the process is definitely the important part of my journey.

I’m at a conference, having dinner with some of the attendees. I’ve met them before, know them well enough on a professional basis and talk turns to Twitter and Facebook.

Turns out the three of us are developing very similar relationships with Twitter and Facebook, namely that we now approach each service with a view on how much quality we will get from them.

Twitter is the easiest one to tackle. I have two Twitter accounts, a personal one which is useful (in a limited way) for keeping up to date with the goings-on of a mish-mash of friends and colleagues, and a professional one to which I push interesting articles but in which I don’t spend all that much time. It is becoming increasingly easy to avoid Twitter.

Why? Because it rarely offers me anything of deep quality. From time to time someone will say something I will follow up, or a link will be posted that leads to something interesting but most of the time, and this isn’t a bad thing just the nature of the beast, it is transient.

Facebook for me is slightly different, it is more focused on closer friends and family but fundamentally still has a similar transient feel. If I don’t check it for a couple of days I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

What we realised at dinner last night is that we all crave more from the time we use. Twitter and Facebook can suck hours from your day for scant reward. There is little nourishment there.

I mentioned that I’ve started looking to services such as LongReads and Byliner to get longer things to read, things which have substance and which, after reading, I feel like I’ve learned something or certainly spent an hour or so lost in something interesting. It’s also why I backed the Matter project on kickstarter.

Is it an age thing? As I get older, am I putting more emphasis on ‘me’ time and wanting that to be substantive and meaningful? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it’s just a kick back against the constant stream of information, the overloaded streams that flow into my computer, my phone, demanding my attention.

This blog, at one point, was called “Informationally Overloaded” and I think, these days, it’s becoming more and more true.

I remember, many many years ago, having a chat with a guy I was at school with whilst he walked down the road, swigging from a bottle of red wine. At the time I was solely a beer drinker (with the odd Southern Comfort which is entirely down to Stephen King, yes I was very impressionable at a young age) so I asked him why the hell was he, a 17 18 year old, drinking what I thought was something reserved for the older members of society? Did he actually enjoy the taste?

He, drunkenly, admitted it was more because he liked to challenge the ‘norms’ of society, that he wouldn’t be swayed by peer pressure nor be told what to do. Looking back it was obviously mostly teenage rebellion, but hey it looked really cool! Did I mention that I was impressionable at a young age?

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking once more on the pressures that society can push on us, the unwritten rules we all seem to learn and the presumptions that so many of us make day after day. I’m as guilty of those as the next person, of allowing my conditioned responses to take over but that’s slowly changing and some recent events have brought this to the fore.

As most of you know, Kirsty and I are in an open relationship. In short (for there are many differing terms and definitions for our form of relationship*), we are open to the idea that there may be other people who could be part of our lives (and that could be in a variety of forms) and we are being honest and up front with our thoughts and emotions as we figure out how to be in this new and somewhat alien circumstance. It’s still all very new, and not that easy at times, but if it doesn’t work out we will know why and there won’t be any resentment, just two people happy to be monogamous.

What we’ve realised recently is that what we’d thought in the past were certain irrational thoughts, spiralling up from our own insecurities and fears (the very things which caused both of us to have some dark times in the past) are actually more likely to be, in essence, false guilt. Society teaches us that monogamy is the ‘right’ thing, so even being out on a date with someone else is ‘bad’ even if your partner is aware of it.

I guess it’s only natural that, after spending all of our lives with one set of rules that we’d be struggling at times to learn the new ones. However, we are learning that there are fewer rules than we’d thought and the main two are applicable to monogamy as much as polyamory; honesty and communication. It’s not easy being completely honest, both in saying “this will be really hard for me, but I’m ok with that” and in hearing it and trusting the other person in their honesty.

So, society be damned. Do your own thing, be respectful, honest and thoughtful as you go and never mind the naysayers and their negativity. Be happy.

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* One thing that irks me, and it happens in many different places, across many different social situations, is the need for some people to apply labels. Human beings are complex creatures, no one is the same and we all have a huge range of things that carve and sculpt the way we think.