Use it, then lose it.

 Tuesday 12 Nov.

The day after ‘remembrance day’, the day we forget what it was all about and go back to our day to day life of not giving a fuck about the fact that history is about to repeat itself in a very dark way. 

Right wing politicians going to remembrance services while advocating policies that will take us back (politically) to the darkest years of the 1930’s. 

That my friends is satire, sad but also funny, the hypocrisy of us Sapiens knows no bounds, and we are all guilty of it in one way or the other. 

I claim to be worried about the climate and I despise the way we plunder the world and it’s resources, yet at the same time I also order things on line, mostly things I need, but sometimes things that after two or three weeks (at most) get shoved in one of the drawers (if I can find space) never to be used again. We have, these last few years, developed a sort of consumerism Bulimia , using consumer goods the same way as some of us use food, as a comfort, a temporary dopamine boost that passes almost the moment the thing is delivered, the biggest dopamine shot is the waiting, the delivery, the unpacking, then the first time you use/or wear the thing, then the dopamine recedes, the feeling of guilt comes over us, we hate ourselves and the system, for luring us into the consumer trap, then a few days or weeks later it repeats itself.

How to escape this trap? Well we can watch some self help videos on ‘You Tube’, then they themselves become addictive, and they come with ads telling us to eat more of this or that, or better still ‘take this food supplement’. 

‘Exercise more!’, but only when using this or that drink, wearing this or that equipment, the one drug gets quickly exchanged for the other, and as long as you keep keep consuming and spending, and staying on-line, the algorithm is happy. Don’t be afraid of robots, we are the robots. We are the robots whose job it is to consume, give away our privacy and data, and decrease our own mental ability by watching more and more mind-numbing shite on line. 

Escape plan? I don’t really have one, but maybe spend less time on line, get outside and leave the phone at home or switch it off, read instead of watch.

Oh yes, one more thing before you start commenting on the above, I know I’m also using social media and on line platforms to post this, but hey, I’m human and therefore I’m contradictory in some ways. 

I have no problem with the internet and the way we connect, my gripe is more about how we use this ‘new world trickery’ while under pressure from the algorithm to waste our time and feel malcontent about ourselves. 

We are on a learning curve, we need to learn how to use all of this technology, while not letting it use us.

And here we are.

 Thursday October 24th 2024

 o.k. as you are.

I listen to podcasts, try to stay informed, trying to find the key to whatever it is I’m looking for. Does all this listening give me any feeling of a well spent life? They fill the day(s), that’s about it.

I sometimes listen to American based comedians talking to other celebs and creators in the hope something might rub off on me, it doesn’t, I just wake up tired, every friggin’ day. 

At one point during Covid while still in ‘lockdown’ I started to become more aware of myself, I was the only person I had real any real knowledge of. I started looking in to the more spiritual side of life. I promised myself I would sign up for Yoga lessons after the lockdown (if anything were still to exist then). 

Meanwhile I would try doing Yoga from an old book I have, written by a woman displayed on the cover in full leggings and shiny Yoga gear. I tried it in my baggy boxers and t-shirt, it was stretching, I felt a teeny bit better in my body, but no spiritual awakening. 

I downloaded (and subscribed) to a well known meditation app, I still use it, does it work? Hard to tell as I’ve never really understood what the end goal or the road to that goal is supposed to look like. My mind wandered, sometimes I nodded off and had a few minutes of deep sleep. 

I’ve done the morning pages routine, as I’m doing now I sit at my laptop writing, with no real aim. I seem to be missing the ‘drive’ the ‘aim’ the ‘urge’ to be getting somewhere , that almost mystical place where I am definitely not at now. 

Am I in some kind of identity crisis? That’s not how I feel, I feel mainly o.k.

I’m just not one of these ‘inspired’ people I guess, I’m totally at ease with where I am now, I perform my few gigs a week, anything more than that is not on my bucket list. Does that make me a ‘loser’? Not really, I’ve always wanted to do stand-up comedy, I’ve made a living out of it for the last 25 years, I feel o.k. 

We’re constantly being bombarded with apps, you tube shite, and podcasts telling us to ‘fight for succes’ ‘aim high’ all that sort of competition jargon which in my eyes only leads to frustration and creating goals that will never be reached. Not everyone can make it ‘to the top’ in their field, if they could there wouldn’t be a top or a field. Whatever domain you work or relax in needs all sorts of human activity to sustain it. Find your groove or niche, find a level of activity that makes you feel o.k. and stick to it, continual growth? leave it to they who love being on the rat race treadmill. Even talking about winners and losers in life is wrong, life is not a sport, it is not a game, it’s an experience. Life is a period of time(we never know how long it will be) during which we experience what it is to be human in our culture and country and nature, and within the boundaries socially acceptable in our society. 

Whatever, and however you choose to fill that ‘precious’ time of actual experience on this earth is your freedom. All the experiences you have, will travel with you to the grave and no longer exist. It’s all about your own personal experience, if you can say at the end of each day “I think I got through today pretty well” well, then you’re a winner ;-)

P.S. As someone said in some book , ‘don’t waste time looking for yourself, you’re already there/here’.

Refreshing Freshwater.

 I might not have participated in the Olympics, but during the marathon, I made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and washed the dishes—a record time!

I have buckets of respect for Olympic athletes, but I didn’t watch much of it. I also try to put in ‘personal best’ times for chores, and I have some writing to get done. The garden also needs some TLC, so sitting in front of the television admiring the strength and endurance of athletes won’t help me.

What I do enjoy are the interviews with the medal winners. Hearing how much training and effort they put into getting this far reminds me that there are times when we all need to develop some of that discipline to improve or train ourselves for our favourite hobbies or jobs.

So, I’m trying to spend less time in front of the screen, whether it be on TV or idly scrolling social media pages on my phone. The time that we waste on endless streams of (let’s be honest) trivial B.S. doesn’t help us at all. 

I enjoy gardening and performing stand-up comedy. Both require knowledge and discipline. Gardening knowledge is gained only through research, followed by trial and error and work. Comedy requires giving yourself time to stare, think, and write—lots of writing. 

With the arrival of social media and the internet, our ‘free time’ has been put under enormous pressure; in our pockets, we carry machines that are a porthole into the total knowledge acquired in the history of homo sapiens - everything, it’s all there. Still, dogs and cats are also on skateboards, and humans are falling off things. We can use it to learn; we can also use it to blank out the ‘real world’ by endlessly and aimlessly scrolling. All alone in our bubble, we scroll; scrolling has turned us into people with addiction; we are hooked on being isolated from actual human contact. Breaking an addiction is hard, but it’s something I (we) need to do. 

This summer, my wife and I spent two weeks in a village or settlement called Freshwater (Carbonear) in Newfoundland. We met people who, without knowing, made us think about how we ‘urbanites’ seem blissfully unaware of how we let our lives slip by and how far we have become distanced from our ‘humanness’. 

Freshwater is a small community, and thanks to our Airbnb hosts Andrew and Ingrid, who are inspiring with their life stories and exploits, I could listen for hours to their tales; we met many others in the community. Andrew is a retired Vet and author of some exciting and entertaining books (look up Andrew Peacock), plays guitar, has a comprehensive brain in music, and kayaks (or is it Canoe?) He also finds time to help organise the community Church and get-togethers. Ingrid, a retired Doctor, has more energy than a three-year-old on steroids; she also plays the harp, Piano and probably much more. Then there were ‘the others’, ‘The Daves’, Jennifer, Jake, Bonny, Belinda, Clive and many more whose names I forget, they all sing, play instruments, make jam, paint, fish (I mean the real deal). They build their houses and are pretty good at what they do. I couldn’t help thinking, where do they get the time? And do they ever rest? Of course, I had forgotten that doing something you love and enjoy is not ‘work’. It is a form of relaxation and even meditation. 

While in Freshwater, we were invited to a BBQ at a house (I think one of the ‘Daves’); we hardly knew anyone, but it’s been a long time since we felt so welcome and ‘part of it’. People sat around talking and listening to each other, singing, dancing and creating a feeling of acceptance for everyone there. Nobody, not one, was texting or scrolling; a good time was had, and I felt that ‘life karma’ or call it what you want, had brought us here to witness how things can, could and should be. I thank the community of Freshwater for that. 

It’s been three weeks since we left Newfoundland. We have agreed that it was our best vacation ever. The week we spent in St Johns was also great, but Freshwater has given us something else. 

So, sorry Netflix, you Tube and Instagram, I’ll still use you but no way will I be letting you use me and my precious time.

King Dong.

 King Dong.

While I was meditating, I was getting flashbacks to my youth. At school, there used to be a boy called Andrew Wiggins; he was known amongst us boys as the boy you don’t want to stand next to in the shower; Andrew was blessed (or cursed) with having the most significant ‘Willy’ of us all, it wasn’t just a bit bigger than ours, it was huge, in fact it looked a bit like some of those deep sea monsters you see on sea life documentaries appearing from under a rock on the bottom of the ocean. 

We used to crack jokes, asking him what he fed the thing; we were in complete puberty and were amazed at anything and everything bodily; a girl in our class, for example, had six toes on one foot. Everyone wanted to date her just because of that one fact. 

Andrew Wiggins was also very muscular, good at sports, and a lovely lad; he wasn’t a bully; if you had him as a friend, you were pretty much safe from the boneheaded bullies that hung around. His speciality in sport was the long jump. Word had gotten around about his huge Willy and the fact that he let it swing free while performing sport; he never wore underwear under the sports shorts, so many a time you would see him taking the run-up for the long jump with the Willy popping out from under the shorts as he ran. It was Comic and awe-inspiring. Wednesday afternoons, when we had sports class, girls -and some boys- would lie down on the grass next to the long jump, trying to get a glimpse of ‘King Dong’ as we called it. 

I always wondered what Andrew thought of the whole thing; he was quiet whenever we made comments, never boasted, bragged or got on the macho bandwagon; he just smiled as if it was just his ‘cross’ he had to bear. 

In the youth club we all visited on weekends, it was taken for granted that he was the guy to hang around with; his reputation had the girls flocking toward his ‘charisma’, so the thought was, if we hung around with him, we might get to hook up with some of the girls as a sort of second prize. 

Yet he never took advantage of the opportunities that came his way; he was quiet, never danced, never flirted, and was almost embarrassed by the attention. 

After I quit high school, I never saw him again and often wondered what had become of him; I always thought we had a unique band, even if it was just alphabetically when the teacher called the register each morning calling our names us answering ‘present!’ It was great for me when it got to the ‘W’ ’s the tension was palpable ‘Webb? Present! Wiggins? Present! (laughter and comments like ‘both of them’) then ‘Williams?’… and for that moment, I felt top of the bill… until some witty kid shouted, ‘That’s a long way down!’