Depth, Breadth and Nothingness

This post expands on an earlier post.

In this post I simply want to make a distinction between depth, breadth and nothingness, as discovered from my daily adventures in the information universe.

Depth
I have recently discovered that reading a book allows me to focus on a topic - to achieve a level of depth. There are no embedded links to lead me astray into the vast reaches of the information universe. I am simply free to wander through a finite garden and taste of its seasonal fruits.

Breadth
I have also discovered that the internet gives me access to so much. What an amazing resource! I can learn about anything, any time, from any number of sources. The potential seems limitless. Surely this will lead to great things.

Nothingness
Unfortunately, having all this at my disposal yields limited results for the most part.

I buy books compulsively - my bookshelves are packed with highly interesting reads, which I'm sure could help me in all areas of life. If only I would read them.

I also end up scanning the internet, using constant, full-on tabsplosions to explore the ins and out of a bazillion different topics, websites, and ideas. I bounce from one thing to the next, with the assumption that I am learning, filling my mind with all sorts of new information. With every click I am closer to realising my full potential as a smart, informed, skilled person, with all the knowledge I'll ever need in life!

But by the end, I can barely remember a thing, and my day is almost over. I don't feel enriched, I don't feel the joy of having wrestled with a problem and solved it, and I don't feel like I took control over my day. Essentially, I feel like I have gained very little ground. Compared to what I could have achieved, it feels like nothing.

Tomorrow
Challenge for self: fix this!

How? Well, I could try and:

• Make a list of things I want to achieve and learn about (this year, this month, week, etc.)
• Identify books/websites that will help with each area
• Plan the day/week/month - what will I do/research when?
• Proceed!
• Also, close ALL tabs at the end of each day - don't reopen them again the next day
• And, schedule in time for nothingness - a small amount each day is still important!

What would you add to the list?

Me and my education - a brief to do list

To do:

• Acknowledge that I am very angry about a lot of my education - things I was taught both explicitly and implicitly, both in and out of school
• Take responsibility for the way I have conducted my life up until now, even though I was taught wrong things
• Try to understand the flaws in my education, why they were there, and how I might be able to help change these for future generations
• Forgive those who I feel wronged me in my education
• Be thankful for the good things about my education
• Find things to laugh at about my education
• Learn what good education is meant to be
• Learn stuff for the fun of it! (and hopefully learn to take myself less seriously in the process)
• Pass good learning stills and attitudes onto my children and students
• Figure out why all this matters so much to me
• Realise I have only scratched the surface and will never know everything. This is a good thing.

Why people don't really understand what you're talking about until they've experienced it themselves

I just came across a website full of advice on how to get the most out of life. How to 'hack life', essentially. No points if you can guess the site.

I realised, reading lists entitled things like "If You Don’t Do These Now, You’ll Regret 10 Years Later" and "10 Life Lessons People Should Learn Before They Turn 30", that life advice is only kindof helpful once you actually learn it from life itself. The reason is this: life advice all sounds obvious. "Money doesn't solve your problems" and "Don't take anything for granted". We all 'know' these things. We're taught them in movies, at school, on 'inspirational' posters, greeting cards, songs, etc, etc. But actually, no. We're not really taught them. We're told about them. And we think we've learned them. We say "yep, good, glad I know that and won't stuff up my life as a result".

I know this because this is what I've done my entire life. I've spent most of my life as a fairly intelligent, capable person, believing that I am actually very wise, having been exposed to much life teaching, and having thought about a lot of the 'deeper' things in life. I fooled myself into thinking that I was therefore prepared for life.

But no. What I was prepared for was a pop quiz on 'how to live', not actually How To Live. I've found it's taken me many years of my life thus far to learn what now seem very basic, fundamental life lessons, which can be summed up in little platitudes for inspiring the masses.

For example, I'm now 26, and am only just realising, after about 19 years of school/uni, that I've been pursuing things for largely the wrong reasons. I always thought I was "giving myself a headstart in life" and "working to reach my potential" by "taking opportunities" like joining the school debating team, teaching piano, working with school kids, doing all manner of extracurricular stuff because it looked good on my resume. It made people go "wow". Or at least I thought it did. Whatever, I thought it earned me more approval, probably in the eyes of my parents, and gave me more validity as a person.

Whatever platitudes I gorged myself on turned out to be pretty empty. Recent life changes have thrown me into an early 'mid'-life crisis, even after I thought I'd already begun to find my 'true' calling, in playing and writing music. Even if that is a true calling of mine, I don't even know how to do it because I enjoy it. I only know how to write my music for someone else. To write my masters thesis for the benefit of the markers and my supervisors. It is so ingrained in me to follow the structures set my others around me that I don't know how to construct my own, from my own vision.

So, you can tell me all you want that I should "follow my dreams" and "do what I love", but until I truly have done those things, I don't believe I will know what they mean, though I always thought I did.

Take away: don't expect people to know what you mean. Expect them to take away from what you say things that they have already begun to experience and understand. Don't expect to fully understand what someone means by what they say as it is backed by their individual life experience, and you are interpreting it with your own.

To some extent, we truly are 'alone in our own mind', and yet, we can still connect with others through language. Just don't expect that hearing words means that you understand their meaning. Fill your dry knowledge with fertile, lush experience and don't settle for anything less.

Press stoppage. And restartage.

So, as soon as I started trying to write posts that were slightly more involved than those unfiltered ones at the start, I stopped writing altogether!

In fact, I first wrote a bunch of semi-complete draft posts, which I figured I'd come back to later and make awesome. Later. They're still drafts. And not becoming actual posts any time soon.

So, I might try with the shorter posts again until I can come up with something else that is sustainable.

Recreating the Titanic

This made me laugh. We got a CD in the mail which was promotional material for some apparently famous dude who is wanting votes in the upcoming federal election. (I dunno, I sometimes fall off the face of the current events planet, so I'm not all that familiar with him. Apparently he has lots of money.)

One of the bullet points for the contents of the CD was: "Bonus Titanic II video". First of all I just assumed I'd missed the release of the sequel to the 1997 Winslet/DiCaprio blockbuster. I was like, oh well, I've missed bigger things before.

Then I thought, ha! No, wait, it's a joke! I don't think there is such a movie. But the slogan on the front says something to do with this dude being "Fair Dinkum", so clearly this must be some clever, jokey, Aussie way of winkingly enticing you to put the CD in your computer to see what the fuss is about, all the while communicating the message - "I really am a fair dinkum Aussie. See, I even have a good sense of humour. I'm just like you all. Vote for me, 'cause I too am an ordinary Joe who understands the world we all live in."

So, I put the CD in and went to watch the Titanic video. It started out looking fairly serious, with pictures of the original Titanic, and some spiel about its majesty and whatnot. Or maybe it said something else. I wasn't really paying much attention. I was mainly waiting for the punchline. I clicked to a few minutes in. It was still serious. More minutes in - interviews with people on the street, all saying what a good idea they thought it was to make a replica. More minutes - still no punchline. So I clicked to the end - this sure was one drawn-out joke.

And it never came.

I probably don't need to go on about how if a guy is proclaiming how he's wanting to make the next actual real-life not-a-joke copy of an iconic ship as part of his pre-election attempt to win votes, it doesn't come across in a very I'm-just-an-ordinary-fair-dinkum-bloke-who'd-spend-your-hard-earned-tax-dollars-in-a-responsible-manner kind of way.

And so, the lack of punchline was, for me, the funniest thing.

Starting with no expectations

I think I may have stumbled upon a thing. Writing these posts has helped me get stuff out of my brain and onto the screen. It's been very low pressure, allowing me to write without the expectation of perfection (which is a big thing for me).

However, a couple of days ago I wrote a post that was my initial reaction to reading something online. I read it over heaps of times. I posted it. I read it again. And then I realised I wasn't satisfied with just that level of engagement in the topic. It felt too shallow and reflexive a reaction. I didn't want it to stop there. I wanted to understand the topic better. So I pulled the post down within minutes.

I have proceeded to read articles and books and watch interviews in the hope of understanding whether there was anything to my gut reaction, or whether it was completely unfounded. Interestingly, it's looking like I was right in how I felt, or at least right in being able to point out why I felt that way.

But that's beside the point. What is more interesting to me is the fact that now I'm wanting to write with greater detail and topic awareness, not because I feel the need for perfection, but because I feel the need for understanding. It's not enough anymore to just sit back and spout the odd thought about things because it feels good to just have thoughts and be able to articulate them. I now want more. I want better - and it's flowed naturally in an environment where thoughts are allowed to flow, with no expectation of the result. This is freeing. This is how I've wanted to be able to think. And write. Perhaps all along the solution was not to lower the bar, but rather remove it. Maybe? Whatever. I don't need to know why. I just know that now I can do something I couldn't do before. I'm doing it for me and not because I feel the need to please anyone with perfection.

Now to apply this to writing my Masters thesis. Sigh.

Taking back Eden (by Jamie Wright)

Just, wow.
http://www.theveryworstmissionary.com/2013/06/taking-back-eden.html

Doing things once

I've just discovered that doing THE WHOLE job the first time means I don't have to come back later and finish it - it's done. Want something out of the dryer? Get the whole load out! Rubbish bin overflowing? Bag it up and take it out to the bin rather than leaving it at the back door for "when I'm just passing through and I feel like taking it out" (because that's usually never). Brilliant!

Now to apply this to my songwriting. Maybe I should try actually finishing a song, which I haven't done in way too long. Maybe I'm wasting energy writing fragments, when I could be channeling and focusing it to produce whole pieces. Maybe that would help me move my focus away from the tiny details (which I'm already good at) to the broader flow and structure of the song (which I'm not so good at). Potentially brilliant!

The tension of anticipation

Why can't I resist chocolate in the house? The only way for me to not eat buckets and buckets of it is to not have it anywhere near me. Why? I know that it will taste so much better after some time off, yet I keep nomming, thinking that every next bite will be just as good as the first, but it never quite is. Why can't I delay the immediate gratification for the greater enjoyment? What is it about the passing of time that I can't handle without going for another tasty bite? Is it that I value the experience of chocolate-eating so highly that I devalue the myriad of other potentially very enjoyable experiences in my day? So, then, I convince myself that I need the chocolate otherwise there'll be no other good things in my day? Maybe. I do know one thing, though. It is that focusing on the very moment I am in right now is helping me to appreciate how much good is actually going on. Like here, now, I'm blabbing about whatever the hell I feel like and it feels good. I like that others might relate to what I'm talking about, and yet I don't care if they don't because the blog is really just for me right now. So, clearly, this moment is enjoyable, and good. Though, if I were just thinking about going for the next and the next and the next piece of the supposed all-magical chocolate block, I wouldn't see this moment for what it is. Interesting, very interesting. And also, the other day I found that while there were things in the future that were stressing me out, focusing on where I was right there and then, and what I was doing, I realised that that moment was good, and that it could quite do without the stress of what may or may not be a problem in the future. It was quite a revelation to realise how disconnected each moment is from the next (though obviously they are connected in other ways). Project for self: spend a day noticing the moments. As many as possible, whatever is happening. Then note how important the all-magical chocolate seems. (I don't care how touchy-feely this seems - it was quite a revelation.)

Too many interesting things

There are just too many interesting things in the world to be able to absorb them all. Most of what I read, I'd say, goes into my subconscious, only to be retrieved when external things call it to mind. I can't intentionally go back and get the information because I've forgotten it's even there. And even when it does come to mind, only the general vibe returns, with very few of the specifics. I feel this makes for a very reactive, reflexive way of making decisions and means that often I can't fully articulate why I have made such a decision. I also have trouble recalling enough information to be able to explain a concept I've read about to another person. I can only wonder that this might be greatly decreasing my quality of life, given the amount of time I actually spend reading (most of the day!) - I have so little to show for my time. I'd really rather feel like I've spent my time well. Maybe I can learn to filter, to acknowledge my own boundaries, that I can't internalise every piece of information and discussion that looks interesting. Instead, I can choose - yes, choose! - to focus on things that seem overly interesting, and humbly allow the others to pass me by in the proverbial river of time. Who knows, perhaps I'll float by then again later down stream, but in the mean time, I'll at least be better able to enjoy where I'm currently at. Maybe I'll learn something worthwhile that I could possibly even be able to pass on to others. Sounds a lot more satisfying, and a lot less depressing.

Freewriting

Freewriting is cool. It's really helping me to access/organise my thoughts - something I have long needed. I got an intro to it via the audiobook of Accidental Genius by Mark Levy, who seems to have gotten a lot of his inspiration from Peter Elbow's Writing With Power. Might read that soon. In the mean time though, Levy's book has given me more than enough to experiment with.

Letting people interact with your product

On seeing a particular car drive by us the other day, Mike mentioned how he really liked it because he used to drive it in a car racing game. And yet, car manufacturers were (at least at one point) against having their branded cars in such games because apparently they thought it would be bad for them if people could smash their cars up in games. Turns out maybe not - at least with Mike. This made me think about how we tend to remember a lot from our adolescence, like the music we listen to, the friendships we had, and clearly for some, the cars we drive in computer games. If people will attach positive emotional memories to things in adolescence, it makes sense that they're more likely to have some positive attachment to them in adulthood. Perhaps Mike would consider buying such a car at some point. Message for me: adolescents are a powerful bunch to target for future product appeal. At the moment I just have my songs, and I'm really just writing them to discover my own artistic voice at the moment, but who knows, maybe in the future I'll have a more general product that I'd like people to get on board with for the long haul - maybe then I'd look at how to get adolescents to interact with it, get familiar with it, and feel some sense of ownership of, even before they've bought it.

Starting blogging. Again.

I tried to start blogging a few years ago. Basically nothing happened. I didn't know what to write about, didn't know what people would want to read, and set a high standard for myself in terms of writing quality and thoroughness. 

Now I'm taking a different tack. I'm just going to write whatever takes my fancy, no matter how short, no matter whether people are interested or not. That way, I can hopefully get into some sort of rhythm of blogging without too much expectation of myself (the expectation of perfection being quite likely the root of my procrastination). It might even be one sentence! Whatever the case - I want to blog and I think this might be one of the only ways to get myself started.

The posts will get very little editing and may not even make sense to anyone other than me. The ideas could be vague, easily misinterpreted and possible even misleading due to lack of thoroughness and clarity. I guess the point is that at the moment, this blog is for me to vomit my semi-digested (mmm!) thoughts, and get into some sort of habit. Maybe then I'll start to make it more accessible. So, if you're reading these posts, know that you are looking into my barely filtered brain. The posts are not designed to be correct or scientific, as much I would like to be able to make them in the future.