trekleeexplorer

[trekleeexplorer]

The Voice Of Discipline

An addendum to my earlier post about the 40 Hour Famine, I have some thoughts specifically about my choice to go without speaking for the duration of it. The intention was to gain a somewhat allegorical experience of those who live in isolation or without any power or representation.  I must say I experienced some of the intended isolation, but that was somewhat hampered by a small amount of instant messaging during the challenge.  If I do the same again, I will add a technology ban into the mix. The more illuminating part of the experience was somewhat personal.  In my daily life, I am quite a talkative person and I also use speaking alone as a way of ordering my thoughts and keeping myself on task.  Being without that type of human interaction and behavioural crutch proved quite a challenge, but within it I found a surprising sense of calm. Regarding my conversations with others, I recognise that part of my talkative nature is born out of a desire to be heard: to be acknowledged for my thoughts and validated when they are praised or enjoyed.  By taking those elements away for a time, I found my desire shifting towards having worthwhile thoughts regardless of who could or could not hear them. Concerning my style of self-organisation, at first I found it very confusing to be without my self-made audio cues and struggled to know what to do at some points.  As time went on, however, I found that my mind began to have the same level of organisational thought internally, without the need to vocalise it. I find myself very grateful for having the mind that I do and so many opportunities to share my thoughts.  I am determined to be more disciplined in my own thoughts and to speak more for the benefit of others rather than for my own validation.  Most importantly though, I hope to find ways of connecting with those who do not have a voice (physically or otherwise) and using my own voice to help them be heard and understood. May I learn to wield words for good.

[trekleeexplorer]

The Quest To Crush The Spectrum

Wednesday 26 August 2015, 3:47pm Almost at the halfway point in my delayed 40 Hour Famine challenge.  This year I have nominated to give up furniture and talking.  While preparing for it yesterday, though, I went a bit further than that.  I asked myself: Should I not use SMS or IM? Should I not use things like my kettle, toaster and microwave? Should I not use hot running water? Should I not use internal plumbing or power at all? Should I not collect the mail? Should I not use a wheelie bin? Should I walk everywhere? There were dozens of questions like this; to some I opted yes, to others I opted no.  I think that my underlying question has been: How does a life of poverty look and how can I make my life emulate that for a couple of days? It’s a reasonable question, but the short answer is: I can’t.  In my life I am so surrounded by infrastructure, facilities and luxuries that I cannot make my own home life that of a truly poor person.  More to the point, there is no one set of factors that defines a life of poverty.  Poverty itself, even in its extreme, does not take merely one form. Neither, for that matter, does plenitude.  The discrepancy between the two is massive and can make other ways of life seem worlds apart.  I think, at its heart, that is the point of the 40 Hour Famine.  It seeks to highlight the problem and major injustice of that discrepancy and to raise money to make practical improvements to the myriad lives of the poor.  It seeks to make the dreadful and unnecessary gap between those two extremes ever smaller.

I’ve asked myself several times why I particularly am doing this, and for weeks my answer has been “to get into the mindset of those in poverty.”  I realise now how foolish an answer this is.  For starters, there is no one mindset for any level of wealth.  More importantly, it implies that I’d be a fundamentally different person if I were less wealthy than I currently am.  It is true that my upbringing and relative affluence have afforded me opportunities for experience and learning which I would otherwise have been without, but deprivation of such things would not have made me any less of a person. I am reminded of the teaching I was given on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  It suggests that a human cannot experience love or friendship without food or employment: that creativity and human connection cannot exist in a human life without sex or homeostasis.  This is simply a load of piffle.  It is true that different needs present themselves as relevant at different times, and that the basic human needs of food, water, shelter and so on do seem more urgent when they are not met.  Beyond that though, it is clear that those in poverty are more than capable of sharing love and respect, finding self confidence and often being far more creative than I in the convenience of my First World life could even imagine. This is why I no longer speak in terms of “the mindset of a poor person” because at our core, we as humans all seek the same of our days: survival, honouring our responsibilities, meeting our aspirations, building relationships and fitting in any extra fun or enrichment for which we have time.  It is important to recognise that all people can perceive all of these desires at once, regardless of how poor or rich we may be. By being part of a fundraiser like this, I and all other participants seek to improve people’s lives by helping survival to be an easier goal, nor one that takes all of their waking hours to attain.  This will free them up to honour their responsibilities more easily, as well as work towards additional goals, not to mention live longer, healthier, safer lives in general. My question to myself as I move towards finishing this is of how I might reduce my footprint in this world and take a more active day to day role in helping to close that gap. The quest continues.

[trekleeexplorer]

The Right Amount Of Too Much

In general, I wouldn’t say I struggle a lot with organisation when I put enough effort into it.  Motivation can sometimes be an issue, but often the main culprit when my routine is in a shambles is a lack of direction. I have a desire to do something worthwhile, and plenty of time presents itself as open for doing so, yet so often I fall back to the default of watching documentaries or music shows and talking online with friends.  My mind is begging to be active and my psyche is begging to be useful, but they both lack the knowledge of what to do when. Today has unlocked a simple but potentially powerful tool in focusing my energies.  Last night, I knew that today would be busy and that I’d likely forget something important, so I wrote in my planner all the things I would need vitally to do plus any additional things I hoped to do if time allowed.  The day’s entry was completely full. Looking at it today, more of it is checked off than those things still left undone. I could easily beat myself up over the things I haven’t accomplished today, however I think I’ve stumbled upon a great approach to my inner lack of clarity: to list ahead of time all the things that need and want doing over a given period. Sure, I’m unlikely to get a “perfect score” of all things completed very often, but I can say without a doubt that I achieve more when I have itemised possibilities than when I’m left with free time and an undefined plethora of things that could fill it. Clarity is key.

[trekleeexplorer]

Momentum

As someone with significant anxiety over the pressure of ongoing regular deadlines and over completing things in general, it would be easy for me to leave the first two posts of this blog on their own and ignore this project entirely.  I am determined not to fall into that pattern again. One of the primary causes of anxiety in cases like this is that some instalments of my work may not have the quality or longevity of the major inspired moments along the way.  On the surface of it, this seems to be an understandable and realistic concern, but it raises the question: “Who really cares?” Even the writers, musicians, scientists and countless others I admire have screeds of work to which they have not returned and which have been forgotten in large part.  That doesn’t matter in the slightest.  It seems to me that we ought to keep driving along the road of life regardless.  Some parts of the road might be rough, dark, unpleasant to see or just downright boring, but it is vital that we travel through those things if we want ever to see and experience the beautiful, joyous, peaceful, exciting, memorable or otherwise landmark parts of our lives. On a more practical level, an aspiring screenwriter friend of mine once said that on a normal day, one out of every hundred pages a writer completes is good.  On a good day, it’s one in every ten.  On a bad day, it’s one in every thousand.  The important thing is to keep writing.  I honestly find that quite daunting.  I question my resolve and resilience to keep writing those 999 bad pages to write the brilliant one or to keep driving hundreds of dull, wearing kilometres to find a worthwhile landmark. One thing is clear though; unless I start writing, driving, swimming or any other movement-based metaphor in life and then keep going, I know I’ll never reach anything good. There’s something in that Nike slogan “Just do it.” yet I’m still hunting for something to help me break through my inner barriers and get on with just that. I won’t give up hunting just yet.

[trekleeexplorer]

I discovered this quote today.  It is definitely an apt message for my inner psyche at the moment. In addition, I just printed it out to stick on the wall near my desk.  It glitched just after the writing was done and the right hand bit is all pixellated and odd but I actually like it that way.  Methinks there be a lesson in this...

[trekleeexplorer]

The Outset

This blog exists for a myriad of reasons.  Unfortunately, almost none of those reasons are commendable or virtuous. Multiple friends of mine have blogs through which they share great insight or demonstrate considerable intelligence.  I have neither of those things to give.  I only have envy of those friends: envy of their intelligence, creativity and their ability to maintain a blog amid already busy lives. On top of this, I read and watch many blogs of people whose passion, humour and drive bring them a level of celebrity and wealth simply because of the thoughts they share online.  I also have envy of those people and in addition to that I feel so inferior: I have so little to share in comparison to them. My biggest ghost in this however is an overwhelming feeling of uselessness. Often in conversations with family or friends I find myself sitting silent because I have nothing of worth to say.  I sometimes talk anyway, but I can’t escape the feeling that I’m wasting breath, words and everybody else’s time. Besides that, I have no job and no assets to speak of.  I can take some comfort in the fact that the job market where I live is so very fraught anyway, but that doesn’t excuse my countless weeks of not even applying for work out of fear, lack of confidence or sheer laziness. I have proven to myself multiple times that I am a hard worker when the situation calls for it, but my life has become a bubble of avoiding those situations and feeling too scared or exhausted even to give things a go. I am achieving so little in life that even this blog will increase my average productivity by a larger margin than I care to admit. I love my family and friends dearly and try to tell them and show them that whenever I can, but I really struggle to see what on earth they see in me. I want to achieve more but I truly don’t know how. I ask myself: “What am I afraid of?” I can hardly go downhill from here, so what do I have to lose?  Still, the fear seems to win out and I’m stuck in a bubble of filling time with nothing I can be proud of or even satisfied with.

I need help.