There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.
Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.
It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.
Category: life
The town centre
It’s nice to have a change of scenery once in a while, especially when writing. Looking at the same surroundings day after day can become somewhat dull after a while. To shake things up I like to hop on a bus and travel to a high street in any nearby town, find a coffee shop or bar, find a seat by a window, unpack my mobile office from my go bag, and start writing.
Over the past few years I’ve noticed a real change in the high streets I visit: less big chains, more empty shops, and more of a diverse specific set of shops.
It may be different where you live but I’m seeing more vape shops, nail and hair salons, foreign supermarkets, tattoo parlors, phone and gadget accessory shops, betting shops, and cheap shops (known as pound shops in the UK).
Supply and demand would indicate that there is a need for these stores if they are thriving. I believe that these are not new shops, just new to the high street. Maybe they were once down a side street or high street adjacent.
With the big chains going into administration or reducing the number of stores they operate, we are seeing more space opening up on the high street, and nature abhors a vacuum, or at least commercial landlords do. Rents are negotiated downwards, government initiatives are introduced around business rates to encourage entrepreneurs to take up the opportunity, and voila! We have shops that usually occupy an off high street location being relocated on it side-by-side with the few remaining big chains.
Don’t get me wrong, I think change is good. I’m all for a diverse high street meeting the needs of the people. I’m just curious to see how it evolves further.
What are your thoughts? Do you still visit your local high street? Do you think the high street has a future in our evolving culture?
Dead zones
I like to write when I’m out and about. Cafes, bars, anywhere with a table and seat. Somewhere that I can unfurl my bluetooth keyboard and just start typing, downloading my thoughts into the cloud.
Occasionally you come across dead zones. Places where there is no phone signal or wifi. Your device cannot talk to the cloud. Sure you can type, but you can’t do any online research and you can’t save to the cloud.
Dead zones can be peaceful. Just you and your thoughts and your unconnected device. You can still write. You also have the added advantage that no one can reach you!
In some places there may be no phone signal but there may be wifi, but do you trust it? When I find a comfy spot that is in a dead zone I sometimes move to an area with signal and download everything I need then return to the dead zone to work, free from distractions. Bliss!
The loneliness of contracting
You probably don’t think of contracting as a lonely profession. The truth is you can be lonely even when surrounded by people. Lots of people, day in and day out. From the moment you leave your home to the moment you return.
I’ve contracted for the best part of three decades, and while it has been a profitable and rewarding experience, you make friends with loneliness. With each new contract comes a new location, building, and people. You say hi, maybe chat by the water cooler or coffee point. No conversation is too deep and no friendship too real. Eventually you will move on. Your contract has an end date.
After a while you get used to it. With each new contract comes a new location and new people. You start spotting personality types, management styles, office politics. You spot patterns. It becomes a game. You find the best places to eat or get coffee, and for a while you become a regular and are recognised. But it’s fleeting. Eventually you move on to the next contract and your face is forgotten.
Maybe you’ll return to a previous role on the recommendation of someone and the people there may even recall your name and ask how you’ve been. Sometimes you return to find the only constant is you. Same building, same office, same desk, different project, different manager, different team. It’s a strange feeling but after a while you can get used to anything. Like ending up working on every floor of a particular building over a ten year period, working for different companies on different floors. It felt like I’d completed a weird goal when I was hired by a company occupying the only floor I had yet to work on. Reward unlocked! Set complete!
Contracting can be a lonely profession. You leave your home, commute to a location, put in the hours, commute home, and repeat. The location changes often so even the people you see on your daily commute change. Variety can be fun and you are certainly never bored. But you rarely make any real connections.
Conversations with the dead
The older you get the more conversations you can recall with the dead. I’m not being morbid here, I’m just remembering conversations I’ve had with people that are no longer here.
I can recall being sat at a table with four other people discussing the latest mobile phone screen technology, demonstrating a video of waves hitting a beach playing smoothly in the palm of my hand. Yet I am the only one of the five present for that conversation as the others have all since passed.
I can remember conversations with friends and colleagues over the years where I’m the only one still around to recall it. Like a failing RAID server with my mind the last media in the array, still holding onto the data, those memories.
It’s both a sad and happy thought at the same time. It’s sad that the others are no longer with us, but happy that I have those memories of them.
Occasionally my mind will trigger such a memory and I’ll recall conversations with people that are no longer here. No one else has those memories but me. The older I get the more such memories I share alone.
Friends come and go
I’ve been let down by a few ‘friends’ recently and it got me thinking (again) about friendship. Friends come and go but family is life as they say, and this is generally true. As a freelancer I’ve worked many contracts where I’ve met some great people. We’ve sat next to each other five days a week for months on end, gone to lunch and for a drink or two together. We’ve talked about everything and consider each other friends. Then something happens. The work comes to an end, they move away or onto something else, and you never hear from them again.
It’s sad but it’s best not to dwell and to move on yourself. Friends will come and go. Don’t take it personally, it’s just life.
Getting angry with the world
It’s so easy to get angry with the world. Everywhere you look there seems to be things going wrong. Public transport is late so you miss your appointment. Contractors not turning up to do a job you agreed and booked in advance. Products being delivered that are incorrect, damaged, or not delivered at all. Service that is sub-par and over priced. Financial organisations making errors causing you to lose out on deals, be fined for late payments, or over charging. You can’t get an in-person GP appointment. Long hospital appointment waiting lists. Your car breaks down after you drive it off the garage forecourt. Your new computer, games console, TV, cooker, breaks down after only a few days or weeks of use, and getting the seller or manufacturer to rectify the problem proves tricky. It’s like you need a degree in consumer law! Just reaching a human to air your grievance to appears to be a challenge.
All this can weigh you down and you end up carrying so much anger inside of you. Trust me, it’s not worth it. It will only cause you stress and further health problems. Just let it go.
Obviously I’m not saying forget the issues that are causing you to be frustrated. I’m just saying let the worry, annoyance, and stress go. Go make a cup of coffee or tea and take a time out. Meditate, relax, read a book. Then, when calm, consider your options. How urgent is the problem? How best to approach it? There’s no such thing as fast great service anymore, so be prepared for a resolution to take some time and be ok with that. Learn to have backups and to factor them into future planning.
It will take time and practice but you’ll get there.
There’s no sense in getting angry with the world. Instead be at peace with it. We all live in this world with all the challenges that modern civilization brings. Learn to guide yourself through the wild rain of life. Build a better umbrella.
Digital Minimalism
There’s an almost OCD quality around the art of minimalism. Owning only the fewest of items necessary to deliver the quality and experiences you desire from life. Everything in its place and position. Feng shui’d to perfection if you will. A tidy desk / room / office / house is a tidy mind as they say.
I’ve been thinking about minimalism recently, but in terms of the digital world. I hate clutter. I mean I really hate it. Things have to be tidy and in their place, and this goes for my devices. My laptop and tablet desktops need to be organised and de-cluttered. The amount of apps installed must not be excessive. The amount of data on my hard drives should not be more than is necessary to allow me to complete my work and to entertain me. Anything else should be backed-up to secure storage.
Many years ago when working for a large corporation, one of my tasks was OS-hardening. This involved taking a working solution and performing a deep-dive into the operating system of each server with a view to reducing its footprint. By that I mean reducing the amount of hard drive space needed in order for the system to perform the required tasks to the agreed requirements, securely. That meant removing all unnecessary applications and files, streamlining the OS down to the bare minimum, thus reducing its footprint. This reduced the need for large storage media, sped up install and backup times, and reduced the attack surface.
Although I no longer perform OS-hardening these days, I still have this almost OCD compulsion to continue to optimise all my devices, reducing the amount of apps installed to just enough to perform the required tasks, and to keep the data on the devices to a minimum. It can be very cathartic at times, and it keeps my devices from running out of storage space and from draining the battery too quickly.
I call it digital minimalism.
Road rage and wing mirrors
I enjoy driving. Especially out on country roads away from the major roads, towns and people. Lately though I’ve been encountering aggressive drivers. People driving angry, not realising that they are taking their anger out on other road users, using their vehicles to intimidate and cause accidents.
On one occasion a young lad tried overtaking me illegally but didn’t make the overtake and got real angry as if I had somehow slighted his manhood. He followed me home aggressively driving, mimicking trying to swerve into me or rear-end me to try to make me crash. I slowed but he refused to overtake. I had a forward-facing dash cam but not rear and I think he knew that.
He became really dangerous and the police became involved but it was my word against his as the police will do nothing without dash cam footage as proof. How have we got to the point where people can use their car as a weapon and unless you have video footage nothing will happen to them?
On another occasion an oncoming driver in my lane took out my wing mirror but it was night time and my dash cam only caught their headlights. I learned the hard way that in such circumstances insurance companies will claim against you. Even though it was not your fault, insurance companies need someone to claim against so they penalise you for making a claim. They will repair the damage but they will class it as a fault on your insurance history and will increase your future premiums.
It seems that the only way to combat these scenarios is to fit 360 degree dash cams with night-vision and anti-glare technology. Either that or take public transport.
Journaling
I was introduced to journaling many years ago and just kept doing it out of habit. You can write anything, it doesn’t have to have structure or purpose. Just write down random thoughts and musings (like I do here). It can have a therapeutic effect. I find it relaxing and a way of decluttering my mind. As I empty my thoughts onto the page I find that I feel much better afterwards. My brain generally works non-stop thinking about things and coming up with ideas and if I don’t do something with them it becomes cluttered and I find it hard to think about anything else. By emptying these thoughts out onto the page it frees up my brain to think about new things.
Although journaling does not need to be productive, sometimes it can be as a side-effect. For instance some of the things that have come out of my journaling are:
1. Jobs / tasks I need to add to my to-do list.
2. Article ideas.
3. Ideas for talks or events.
4. Subjects I’d like to learn more about.
5. People I haven’t thought about in a while that I should really reach out to.
6. Books I want to read, TV shows I want to catch up on, movies I’d like to watch.
7. Places I’d like to visit.
And the list goes on. Journaling can be both cathartic and a way of being productive at the same time. Why not give it a try?