Working long hours, sometimes in a job you don’t enjoy, just so you can save up for a bigger house, that, if you were being honest with yourself, you don’t really need.
What’s the alternative?
Well, one option I’ve discovered is spending your money on experiences, such as holidays. Seeing more of the world, rather than saving up for a very tiny piece of it. Having adventures. Experiencing different cultures. Visiting the ancient and modern wonders.
Gaining memories rather than property.
Thoughts?
Category: life
The never ending to do list
My to do list was becoming more of an endless scroll. I had some time off coming up so I relished making a dent in the list. Each day I selected tasks that I would complete that day. After the first week I realised I was being overambitious in estimating what I could complete in a day. I refined my selections and after two weeks I reviewed my list. It was the same size. How? As I crossed off each completed task new ones were being added by both members of my family and myself. As I worked on a task I would notice something else that needed doing, so I would add it. In some instances I would remove one only to add two or three more.
Nature abhors a vacuum and it appears that so do task lists. As you try to make them shrink they only grow bigger!
After the realisation that my to do list is never ending, I switched tactics. I arranged the tasks in order of priority targeting the highest first. This meant that the urgent tasks would get done sooner avoiding my usual ploy of procrastination by doing the smaller less important tasks first. I also added demarcation lines with anything under the last one being of little importance but nice to get done if I had the time. A sort of low priority backlog. I can even colour them differently so that the more urgent tasks when cleared gives me some sort of feeling of accomplishment even if the overall to do list never reaches empty.
Life is a game
Life is a game. It’s my new mantra. I say it to myself when the unexpected happens. Unforeseen bills, emergencies, things breaking down, idiots to deal with, things not going to plan. The stuff that can induce anxiety and stress if you let it. Like losing your job then encountering sudden house or car repairs, medical bills, and price increases. All magnified by the lack of income coming in, all outgoing.
Before, this would all stress me out, but if I think of life as a big game of monopoly, it becomes more manageable. Some days you win, you receive a refund, a free coffee, a discount, a paid day off. Other days you encounter idiots that try to ruin your day, something breaks and is expensive to fix, or agreed contracts suddenly have fee increases. No passing go and collecting your free money today, it’s off to anxiety jail for you.
That’s life though. The more you are responsible for, the more opportunities for things to go wrong. So now I just roll with it. When today’s card is not a good one, play it and move on. Life is a game.
The art of letting go
There is an art to letting go.
I don’t mean in relation to people. I mean to ideas, goals, investments, and businesses that are just no longer working for you, or are making you unhappy, or are no longer providing or serving your original want.
As an example I created a web site some years ago as part of a business idea. I invested a lot of time and effort in it, but it became a chore. I held onto it thinking that it will do well soon, but it started costing me lots of time and money. Eventually I realised that my heart wasn’t in it any more. I’d lost interest and the drive to make it into something had gone. So I let it go. I shut it down and let the domain expire.
Another time I had this company that I started from scratch and built up into a fun business. Then circumstances changed and I made it dormant, effectively parking it for a while. But then a while became more than a year and I still had to pay fees and insurances even though it was not bringing in any money. I finally decided to let it go. I closed it down. It was both sad and freeing.
It has taken me a lot of practice but learning when to let something go is a useful skill. It’s not quitting, it’s knowing when something has come to an end and it is time to let it go.
The here and now
I had a conversation recently with someone that knew they did not have long left. They had already beat the odds and now, in their early 90s, they were saying that any day that you get to wake up is a good day.
We were discussing a book author whose work we both enjoyed. Their next book won’t be out until next year and the chances of my conversation partner being around to read it were slim. What was interesting was his attitude. It didn’t bother him. He went on to explain that he had made peace with the end being near long ago and it was very liberating. “I’m not worried about being able to finish a book, a movie, TV series, whatever. I just enjoy it for what it is as long as it lasts now. If I never get to find out what happens in the end then that’s ok. That’s life. We never find out what happens in the end so just enjoy the present”.
It was a very sobering point. Putting life’s FOMO in its place. You are only missing out if you are not enjoying the here and now.
Traffic shapers
I’ve found myself stuck in traffic recently, and each time I noticed a type of driver that I like to refer to as the traffic shaper.
You arrive at what appears to be a traffic jam, only to get through it and find absolutely no reason for it having occured. Whatever caused the original traffic jam has long gone but its affect was long lasting. The wave of traffic slowing to a crawl, travelling in first gear for some distance, them speeding up again takes time to smooth out back to a normal traffic flow.
Traffic shapers are people that try to speed-up the smoothing process by slowing down early, keeping a large gap between them and the vehicle in front, and then aiming to keep moving at a slow pace but never stopping if they can help it. The aim is to smooth out the traffic to avoid the waves of stopping and starting to try and remove the traffic pulses.
It’s a fine art and can take some practice. You’ll get the odd annoying driver who overtakes you and pulls into the gap you are leaving, messing up your shaping of the traffic. The trick is not to give up. It also breaks up the manotany of being in a traffic jam.
Next time you are stuck in traffic look out for traffic shapers. There are plenty of us around.
The Confession
I listened to a confession once. I was on the island of Phuket off the coast of Thailand. I’d checked out of my hostel and was planning to walk to a nearby bus stop to catch a ride to the airport. The female manager of the hostel offered to make me breakfast at a nearby shack opposite the bus stop. The bus wasn’t due for a while so I readily accepted the offer.
I sensed that she wanted to get something off of her chest. She opened the shack, which featured a small kitchen and bar. I took a seat at the bar looking into the kitchen as she started to fix breakfast. She proceeded to tell me that she’s been working to send money back to her mother who is looking after her daughter. Not only that, but her mother is raising her as her own. The girl thinks that my friend is her sister.
I sat back to take this all in.
I learned that she was unmarried and had had the child when she was young so it was easy to convince both the child when she was old enough, and everyone else that they were sisters, albeit far apart in age.
I couldn’t begin to comprehend what this woman had gone through. Not to be able to hold her child as a parent and to take care of them. The child believing that they are sisters only.
I wanted to know if she planned to tell the girl the truth eventually, but she didn’t know. She wanted to tell someone and we had become friends during my brief stay, and now that I was leaving, probably never to return, I seemed a safe bet.
We hugged and said our goodbyes. She closed the shack and I walked over to the bus stop to await my bus. Did she ever tell the girl that she, her sister, is actually her mother? Maybe she figured it out when she got older. I will never know. All I know for certain is that in telling me she felt some form of relief in telling a complete stranger her confession.
The early days of the internet
I miss the early days of the internet.
Things were less complicated. There was more signal, less noise.
I used to read this blog about a woman that cycled places and took photos. That’s it. She didn’t try and sell you anything, she just enjoyed life and wanted to share her perspective with the world.
There was IRC, Usenet, and the web. We used tools such as FTP and gopher. We read the Whole Earth Catalogue and Boing Boing, maybe we found the odd BBS now online. Aminet was a great resource for Amiga Scene files, and there was the early stages of the Internet Movie Database and places like Ain’t it cool news. Comic strips were a big thing, Dilbert was the XKCD back then.
Don’t get me wrong, I find some aspects of today’s internet useful. It’s just that there’s so much noise to wade through in order to find the occasional nugget. Procrastination soup.
The price of progressI guess.
When your check-in team has a high turnover
I enjoy familiarity, consistency, to see the same faces at each progress check-in.
I dislike turnover.
Whether it’s the dentist, doctor, fitness instructor, or teacher. Seeing the same face at each appointment, eager to learn how you are getting on, have you made progress, what worked and what didn’t, have you been following my suggestions? The praise when you have met targets, the encouragement when you have not. The feeling that this person is also on this journey with you, waiting at each checkpoint to cheer you on.
So when the person is someone new at each appointment it doesn’t feel the same. You don’t have someone on the journey with you egging you on, sharing in your progress. Instead it feels cold, as you watch each new face read your notes, confirm with you what they’ve read, and set the goals between now and your next check-in. Knowing that they won’t be there to celebrate any wins. It will be someone new, a new face, reading your notes, applying a trained algorithm and coldly outlining the route to the next checkpoint.
It’s not the same when your check-in team has a high turnover.
When they are not really there
Technology is meant to improve our lives. Well, that was probably the intention. These days technology is just another avenue to create revenue for someone somewhere. Disposable gadgets, digital procrastination tools, momentary entertainers.
It can be a distraction, a constant pull.
When I arrange a catch-up with a friend over a coffee or beer, my intention is to spend time with them. My devices are silenced. I’m here for them.
It’s not always reciprocal.
Sometimes they are here but not there. They arrived, we ordered our beverages, sat down to have a good old catch-up, then something beeps or vibrates in their pocket or bag. They pick it up and a change comes over their face. They are lost in another conversation somewhere else. No longer here.
You wait. Sometimes they return to you only to be snatched away momentarily or for minutes at a time. When they return they have to remember where they are, a sort of context-switch resestablishment. Ah yes we were talking about X.
This goes on throughout the ‘catch-up’. They being here but not. Dipping in and out of being present with you. Technological rudeness. A virtual ADHD. Context-switch between the here and there. The present and virtual conversations that they are carrying out in parallel. More a disjoined sequential buffering with splintered packet reassembly. Two, or more conversations, not conducted efficiently with full engagement. Our desire to do more with our time waters down the quality. No conversation being truly meaningful or rewarding.
Eventually time is up and they leave, staring down at their phone as they exit, a quick smile and wave back at you, not really seeing you as they look back at their phone heading out.
Were they ever really here?