Passion

I think it was a psychologist who once told me that if you don't know what you're passionate about, try being passionate about whatever it is you're doing. That's the trick, I suppose, being able to manufacture motivation and drive where there would otherwise be none. Still, often the act of believing something is enough to make it so. These may seem like strange words coming from someone like me, slightly cynical and as pessimistic as I often am. Funny thing is, I think I really believe them. I'm not talking about anything supernatural or paranormal - although I went through that phase in my teenage years - but, as I keep saying, a little self-belief can go a long way to creating confidence, and all manner of good things can flow from there. I keep harking back to this because, although I have accepted this idea intellectually, I haven't embraced it emotionally yet. I keep repeating it for my own benefit, in the hope it will sink in.

My idea of passion isn't an elitist one. I don't believe it only matters if you're driven to be a doctor or lawyer or pilot; it's not about external measures of success, it's about individual emotional fulfillment. If your dream is to become a human rights lawyer and change the world then go for it but, equally, if it's your dream to open a fish and chip shop in a seaside town then go ahead and do that. It might sound cliched but I think that regardless of what your dream is, if you've got the courage to follow it you should be applauded. I'm not talking about following a dream at all costs with a screw-everyone-who-gets-in-my-way sort of mentality. Shirking responsibility to chase a dream is selfish and probably isn't going to leave you feeling all that rosy.

At this point in my life I have no real responsibility. Nor do I have any passion. I have a couple of vaguely-defined goals, neither of which I'm really working towards. There's the writing thing and there's also faint desire to play cricket for Australia. The latter is nothing more than a daydream considering I don't actually play cricket but, for the last couple of years at least, I've thought it would be something I'd enjoy. Not that it's actually that much crazier than me wanting to be a writer, I rarely do any writing either. The reason for this inaction, so I keep telling myself, is that I'm lazy. But that's not really true; I'm not a lazy person at all. It's really because I have no faith in myself. If I did have a real passion for something, or at least enough self-belief to pursue my current goals, I know I would whole-heartedly apply myself to achieve my objective. I know that's a cop-out - putting the solution beyond the realm of my control - but it's how I feel.

To a degree, I also feel as though not trying is a way of keeping alive the idea that anything is possible. It's counterintuitive, I know, but if I follow a dream and fail, I'll need to accept that I'll never achieve that dream. If I don't try (and consequently don't fail) then, at least in theory, I'll always be able to believe that dream is still possible. In practice, however, it is pretty clear that accepting this means accepting that I'll never achieve anything.

If it wasn't already, it should now be blindingly obvious that I over-think and over-complicate just about everything. Some advice I got in a comment a few days ago definitely needs to be applied, quite liberally, to my whole life: don't think so much. If I disconnect the unnecessary part of my brain for just a minute, one thing is clear: I'm a fool if I wait around for things to happen to me, I need to make them happen. Life is going to come and go, with or without me.

A Musical Note

There's something almost spiritual about lying in total darkness listening to your favourite song. With the headphones in and the volume up, the inside of your head becomes a concert hall for an audience of one. Your other four senses numb and you just absorb the sound while it absorbs you. That's the power of good music, the sort of music you connect with.

Music often becomes associated with the best and the worst moments of people's lives; hearing songs can take you back to times and places long forgotten, instantly recapturing emotions of years past. I can remember crying myself to sleep listening to some songs while others remind me of a time when I felt a sense of possibility that now eludes me. Good times and bad times, much of life has a soundtrack. Not in a cheesy, pop kind of way - like holiday snaps set to the latest number one single - but on a far deeper level, where a song perfectly encapsulates how you feel at a particular point in time and becomes permanently imprinted with that emotion so that every time you hear it you're reminded of your former self. It's a symbiotic relationship in a lot of ways; music has the power to influence your mood and inspire you but at the same time you are able to project your own thoughts and feelings into songs so that they become uniquely meaningful for you in a way that other people who hear the song will never know.

Songs become people, places, and raw emotions, forming an aural record of your life. When I actually think about how many songs take me back to a place or a time or a person meaningful to me, I come up with dozens. I often enjoy taking long road-trips by myself because it gives me a chance to just listen to many of those songs. For three or four minutes it's just me, the road, and a reminder of who I used to be or how I used to feel and then, for the next three or four minutes it's another memory and another outmoded version of myself. You can re-live your life in a few hours. It's a great way to reconnect with yourself, to remember how you used to feel and see how much you have or haven't changed since certain moments in your life.

There's a lot of value in this sort of refection. I think it's one of the best ways to get through a difficult time. If you can remind yourself of a period in your life when you were at your lowest, when you couldn't see how you were ever going to recover and yet you did recover, then that should be enough to give you just a little bit of hope that, even though you may once again be down and don't know how to pick yourself back up again, you'll get through it. That anguish will eventually become just another song in your playlist.

Away From Me

I’ve spent about half of the last two and a half years overseas. My travels have taken me through Asia and across the United States; I’ve already seen more of the world than I ever thought I would. That’s primarily because, as a child, I never had any real desire to travel at all. I wasn’t one of those people who couldn’t wait to finish school so they could take off and explore the far corners of civilisation – I savoured the comforts of home too much for that. A couple of years ago I decided an overseas holiday would be good for me and it really was. Since then I’ve traveled on-and-off for a couple of months at a time.

I’m a different person when I’m overseas. I don’t know what it is but for some reason, when I’m away, I feel much happier. It’s almost like I instantly become a better, more optimistic version of myself as soon as I touch down on foreign soil. I’m more confident, capable, and, in general, really enjoy life. That confidence doesn’t extend to dealing with girls but I guess I can’t have everything.

Last year I spent some time in South-East Asia with a few friends. For a few days we rented motorbikes and rode around a small town in the south of Thailand. The first day we had the bikes we took it pretty easy – I’d never ridden before – and we did a few laps of the main streets of town while we were getting the hang of our hogs (they were only about 100cc). After a few laps, a fellow tourist on the side of the road waved me down. My friends were riding ahead and once they realised I’d stopped it took them a few minutes to turn around and come back to me. The girl who'd got my attention was in her late twenties or early thirties, European and, if I may say so, pretty attractive. We were a couple of kilometers from the centre of town and sort of in the middle of a desolate area and she explained that she was looking for a monument she’d read about in her guidebook. We’d passed it a little way back and I told her it was about a half hour’s walk down the road. She wasn’t enthused about the prospect of walking all that way in the mid-afternoon heat and asked if I would mind giving her a ride. I didn’t mind at all except that, after only about twenty minutes of riding the bike I didn’t fancy my chances of being able to maintain my balance with a passenger on the back. When my friends eventually caught up to me and I explained what had transpired they just laughed at me. I’m forever whining that I can’t pick up a girl and when one literally asks me to pick her up I decline.

Then there was the time I was wandering around a mall in New York and out of the blue a girl comes up to me and nervously says, “my friend overheard you talking and thinks your accent is really cute, where are you from?” Somehow I manage to walk away from that situation having politely explained that I was only in town for a day and in a couple of weeks would be heading back to Australia. What was I thinking? In fairness to me, I was working that day and was in a bit of a hurry but I didn’t think to get a phone number or an e-mail address or anything. Opportunities like that never present themselves to me and when they do I don’t recognise them. The universe is probably thinking, “what do we have to do for this guy, send him a singing telegram?” Maybe that would help; at least it’d get my attention.

My monumental ignorance notwithstanding, I really enjoy my time overseas. It takes a lot to get me down when I’m away. When I get home, for a few days at least, I maintain that positive state of mind but it doesn’t take long for me to lose the momentum and sink back into an apathetic stupor.

It’s tempting to take off again but, right now, it just doesn’t feel right. It would almost be like I would be running away from my problems, which are all pretty much inside my head anyway. There must be a reason why my mood alters so drastically depending on my geographical location. I will head overseas again sometime this year but I first want to work out why I’m so unhappy while I’m here. I’ve got no reason to be – my family and friends are supportive and I have life very easy. Maybe my discontent and disconnectedness is my way of telling myself that, right now, I should be somewhere else.

A Different Approach

I was at a barbecue today, thinking that all I ever seem to do is play tennis and go to barbecues. I still haven't done any writing, despite wanting to. Or at least thinking I want to. This week I will do it - I'll make myself do it and accept no excuses.

I got a comment from Kylie yesterday, talking about how my friend's suggested approach for talking to the girl seemed a little much. She suggested being a little more casual about it and slowly building a rapport by making small talk a few times. In theory, I agree. Being too direct could scare someone off. Strangely enough, it scares me more to think about just making small talk. I'd be less afraid to just ask her out. That's a little weird, right? How can it be harder to make small talk? I don't know why but I feel like I have more to lose doing things that way. It's almost as if I'm expecting to fail and want to get it over and done with more quickly. Spending time trying to get to know someone feels like it would be time wasted and just a way of falsely getting my hopes up.

Maybe I don't think I can take any more rejection. It's not much fun. But how am I going to break the cycle if I don't try? I feel like anyone who would agree to go out with me would only do so out of pity; like they'd be doing me a favour. I just can't believe that I'm desirable, on any level.

I remember asking someone out about five years ago. It was someone I'd gone to school with and had stayed in semi-regular contact with after we graduated. A mutual friend told me that, unbeknown to me, she had been interested in me for a few years. I called her up and we went out for a cup of coffee. Incidentally, this isn't the story I alluded to yesterday, where I, according to a friend, behaved so pathetically I disgraced all mankind, but this isn't much better and I would probably do things differently if I had the opportunity. Come to think of it, I could probably write a (humorous?) book about how not to ask girls out. I've figured out quite a few of the wrong ways to do it.

Anyway, we met for coffee. I hadn't been having a great year and was struggling to figure out where my life was headed. I was pretty depressed. So I told her that. It was a really stupid thing to do but it felt right at the time. I told her that I'd liked her for a while and that I wanted to go out with her but I thought it was only fair to her to let her know I was going through an emotional rough patch at that time. How dumb can I be? I mean, really? Looking back, it's quite obvious that I was subconsciously trying to sabotage myself. What astounds me is that I didn't consciously realise it at the time. I'm happy to say that I haven't repeated that mistake - I realised that moroseness isn't something most people find endearing. But I do think I've probably been the victim of self-sabotage on numerous occasions. And that begs the question, is it that I only think I'm going to fail or do I really want myself to fail? If I continue to undermine myself the way I have done in the past I'm probably always going to.

A Lark

On a less serious note than usual:

I played tennis again a couple of days ago. I mention this only because there are a couple of girls who work at the reception desk where I play tennis with my friend. A couple of very attractive girls. They're not always there but about half the time one of them is there behind the desk. As you may have guessed from my post a couple of weeks ago ('The Girl') I find it difficult to even make polite conversation in these situations; I'm usually all business: pay for the court, collect the key, and get out of there.

As my friend and I were walking out of the reception area and down the path towards our court I asked him how he would ask one of the girls out, just to get a different perspective on things. He knows how much I struggle in these sort of situations - he's known me more than ten years so he's seen it first hand on more than one occasion - but he's got a girlfriend and he doesn't seem to struggle talking to the opposite sex. If it seems like I'm approaching this as if I'm a nervous high school kid, it may explain a lot if I tell you that my last relationship was when I was in high school. But that's a story for another day.

My friend's response was simple: just say, "I was just wondering if you're seeing anyone?" He went on to say that if she says yes then he would say, "he's a very lucky guy," and if she says no then he'd just ask her out - to dinner or a movie or whatever. Simple as that. I was rather astounded by the simplicity of his approach. I asked him whether he was serious or whether he was just winding me up and he assured me he wasn't kidding, he figures being casual and up-front is the best way to approach it. No stupid pick-up lines or anything, just be straight-up. Do people actually say stuff like that? My friend seems to think there's no harm trying. I'm just not too sure. I've since contemplated saying something like that and it doesn't feel right. I've never been able to say anything like that in the past - although I've rarely been able to string coherent sentences together when talking to someone I'm attracted to so maybe I should just throw caution to the wind and try it. What's the worst that could happen?

Realistically, nothing that bad could happen. She could say no. She could laugh at me. That's about it. Nothing would be hurt except my pride, unless she's a judo master or something who attacks guys who hit on her, but what are the odds of that? I usually can't work up the courage to say something like this, partly because I don't exactly see myself as the catch of the day, and partly because I don't like making people uncomfortable. I don't want to put someone in a position where they've got to either make up a lie about why they can't go out with me or hurt my feelings. Just writing that down makes me realise that's such a cop-out. And I've been hiding behind that one for years. It doesn't even make sense. All someone's got to say is 'no thanks', or something to that effect, how difficult could that be? I'm not going to use that excuse anymore.

I've asked, at most, maybe a dozen girls out over the last ten years. They've all turned me down. That doesn't fill me with confidence. A couple of years ago I couldn't have been more pathetic when I asked out this one girl out. I literally couldn't have been more pathetic. I told a friend about it afterwards and he told me I was a disgrace to all mankind. Now that some time has passed I look back at the situation and laugh at how ludicrously stupid I was to say what I said. Actually, there are a couple of instances where, through nerves or whatever, I've handled it very badly. Again, I'll write about those another time. It might give you a laugh.

Now that I think about it, why should I let my less-than-stellar track record stop me? Really, why should I let that hold me back? What have I got to lose? Even if I just did it as a lark, worst-case scenario I'll have something to blog about that day. Stay tuned for updates - if I ever work up the courage to actually go through with it. I know it's going to be a lot harder in the moment than it is just sitting here in front of my computer.

Fear

Over the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what’s been holding me back these last few years. I’ve said in previous posts that I lack confidence, and that’s a big part of why I haven’t been moving forward for a long time. But more than that, I think for a long time I’ve been afraid. Not afraid in the most obvious sense which I think is being afraid to fail and therefore not trying (which is a part of my problem) but I’m talking more about being afraid to succeed. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense to be afraid of success; what is there to fear in achieving something?

I think that if you spend long enough in a situation, even an unpleasant one, you can become comfortable in it. To qualify that, I’m speaking more metaphorically than literally, and there are obviously lots of unpleasant situations that no amount of time could make comfortable. What I mean is, you can adjust your thinking over time so that you become accustomed to and even comfortable in situations that you initially don’t find pleasant. In my opinion, depression falls into this category. When you first experience it it’s no fun, but if enough time goes by it can start to feel familiar and even normal. Over time, your emotional barometer sort of resets and you can’t see a way to feel better and you don’t really know if you want to. You just sort of accept it as part of who you are. At least, that’s sort of what it was like for me. I remember a few years ago, sitting in a psychologist’s office discussing my depression and he asked me if I wanted to feel better. My honest answer to him was, ‘I don’t know’. I really didn’t know. I wanted to want to get better but I didn’t want to get better. I’m not sure where you draw the line between wanting something and wanting to want something but, at that moment, I knew what distinguished the two. I’m not sure I still know what I knew then but I at least understand how conflicted I was feeling.

To get out of an emotional hole you have to believe you can and you also have to believe that you deserve to. The latter is where I was, and am still, struggling: I didn’t feel like I deserved to get better, I felt as if being depressed was punishment – for what I’m not sure – and that I should just accept that I’m not supposed to be happy. Put simply, I just didn’t like myself. I still don’t. Just let me stop myself at this point to say that I didn’t write that in order to get people to feel sorry for me or tell me that I’m a good person, I did it to just put it out there so I can acknowledge it and hopefully move on. I’m not sure how much I’ve changed in the past few years but I think I can upgrade my 'wanting to want to get better' to 'thinking that I want to get better'. There may not even be a difference between those two things but it feels like there is to me and I think that small amount of difference is a step in the right direction - hopefully the first of many.

Getting back to the point I started to make a couple of paragraphs ago, why would someone be afraid of success? Well, once you feel like a failure, it can start to define you. It can erode your feelings of self-worth and how you perceive your abilities but, in a strange way, it can become comfortable and familiar. Once you stop expecting anything of yourself your world becomes safe and predictable. Sure, you’re not happy but the world feels like it makes sense. From this perspective, success is unpredictable because it breeds expectations. If you regard yourself as a failure you know that you are unworthy of those expectations. Make sense? Perhaps it can be better summed up by a joke I remember reading in high school drama: “I hate broccoli. And you know what? I’m glad I hate broccoli because if I liked it I’d have to eat it and I hate the stuff.” If you liked it, you wouldn’t hate it, just as if you succeeded you wouldn’t be a failure. It’s a situation where emotion rules over logic.

Once you feel comfortable where you are, the alternative can seem mysterious and even frightening. If you already feel like you’re at the bottom it would make sense to start climbing back up again except, of course, when you know you’re always going to fall, irrespective of how many times you try. If that’s the case, why even bother?

Please bear in mind that while I’ve felt that way in the past, I don’t feel that way right now, I just felt like writing about it tonight. I’m trying to un-learn a lot of the subconscious negativity that’s been standing in my way. Progress is slow but I think that, little by little, I’m getting there.

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P.S. Happy Australia Day.

Blank

I’m at a bit of a loss about what to write today. There are a couple of semi-constructed posts floating around in my head but I don’t think I have the energy to type either of them out tonight.

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for almost an hour now and nothing’s come to me so it seems like what I’ve already written is as good as it’s going to get today. I’ll write a real post tomorrow.

A Step Forward

For a couple of hours last night I sat on the back verandah in silence, taking pictures of the night sky. I’ve been meaning to really test my camera out for weeks now so I’m glad that I finally got around to doing it. I experimented with long-exposure shots (something I’d never tried before), and I now feel pretty confident using the camera in that type of situation. As an added bonus, I took a couple of shots I’m really pleased with. I’ll try to post them as soon as I have access to a better internet connection.

The place I’m house-sitting for the next couple of weeks is far enough away from the city and suburban lights that practically all the light I can see at night originates from the moon (although moonlight actually originates from the sun so that's not terribly accurate). It’s probably the best place for me to start learning about night-sky photography because all I have to do is step out onto the back deck, point the camera towards the stars and click the shutter release. The universe does the rest.

Being away from the potential distractions of home for a little while, I hope to use this time to do some writing. I’m not expecting myself to churn out a novel in the next couple of weeks but if I could get myself into the routine of writing for a few hours every day it would be a big step in the right direction. I’ll revisit the stories I started last November and hopefully finish them off and start something new. I want to do it and, right now, I even feel like I can do it so over the next couple of weeks I’ll just have to constantly remind myself I am capable – I just need to try.

Luck

After reflecting on last night’s post, I feel as though I wasn’t as clear (or concise) as I could have been. I said that my friend has not beaten me in a tennis match over the five-or-so months we’ve been playing and yet, every time we play, I struggle to believe that I am capable of winning. That may not seem to make a lot of sense but it is part of a point I intended to make but never actually got around to articulating. Allow me to elaborate.

Lack of self-belief is a big thing for me. I always doubt my ability to do anything. I made that point yesterday but what I didn’t really explain is that even when it’s clear that I can do something – as proven by the fact that I have done it in the past – I have an uncanny ability to write-off my previous achievements and tell myself that they prove nothing. It’s far easier for me to say that any success I had in the past was simply a result of good luck and nothing I can take credit for. Using this logic (if you can call it that) I have explained away practically everything I’ve ever succeeded at as just good fortune that had little to do with me. My successes, therefore, become more like failures because I see them as undeserved; I feel as if I didn’t earn them and can’t take credit for them. In this way, success becomes an unattainable ideal.

I don’t have a problem taking responsibility for things but I’m uncomfortable taking credit for success. I am much more comfortable taking the blame for failure. Often I’ll take the blame for things that weren’t really my fault. What a peculiar way to approach life. No wonder I’ve become so withdrawn and lacking in ambition; in my mind I pretty much fail everything before I even start.

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On another subject, please don't take offense if you leave a comment and I don't get back to you. It's just that I'm currently struggling with a very slow dial-up connection while I'm staying at someone else's house. I'm typing my posts in Word and then just cutting and pasting them into blogger because it's nearly impossible for me to open web pages at the moment. As soon as I get back to my broadband connection I'll respond to any comments. Thanks.

Confidence

Today I unintentionally taught myself a lesson about confidence. I was playing tennis with a friend - something I try to do at least once every week. As usual, I was playing well while we were practicing but as soon as we started playing a game I started to choke big-time.

There’s a little bit of a back-story so I’ll quickly get that out of the way. As I said, my friend and I play about once a week and we usually practice for a while before playing a (one set) match. We’ve been playing for about four or five months now and my friend has never beaten me. We're of about equal skill level and he’s come very close to winning a couple of times but I usually manage to squeak over the line; last week I won in a very closely contested tie-break. Despite my winning record, I always start each game very tentatively. Even though I haven’t lost yet, winning is never a foregone conclusion.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I aren’t pro-player-wannabes, we’re just a couple of guys who are trying to get some regular exercise and happen to enjoy playing tennis. Occasionally one of us will produce a great shot but our matches are generally a little on the scrappy side. It’s not that either of us lacks ability – we both know how to play and have played tennis socially for about fifteen years – because we can smash the ball around in practice but as soon as we start a game we revert to the sort of tennis you might see primary-school children playing. We both know we do it but we don’t know why. It’s not as if our games mean anything, they’re just for fun and we don’t take them too seriously but we both somehow get intimidated and inhibited and end up just trying to get the ball back into play.

Back to today’s game. My friend was leading 3-0 and I was serving at 15-40, looking down the barrel of a 4-0 scoreline and the possibility of not only losing but losing to love. As I already said, I’d been hitting the ball well while we were practicing and I’d even been serving well but as soon as we started playing for points I just tightened up and began playing very poorly. I tried to concentrate a little more and, although I continued to play conservatively, I managed to win the next few games to lead 4-3. The match was pretty even after that and I eventually won 7-5. I was relieved that I’d managed to win the match after such a poor start but so frustrated that I hadn’t been able to loosen up and start hitting the ball freely.

After the match we were both still feeling pretty good so we decided to play another set. This time, I made an effort to start more positively and really go for my shots. I’d been making them in practice, why wouldn’t I make them in a game? Surprisingly, this change in attitude actually made a difference. I played well and won the set 6-2. I was even serving well, something I usually struggle with during matches. After we’d finished the set we decided to rally for a little while before heading home. I was on a bit of a high because, for once, I was happy with the way I’d played and I was really smashing the ball around. With my confidence through the roof, I was hitting the ball so hard and right into the corners of the court; I felt like I couldn’t miss and about ninety percent of the time I was right. I don’t think I’ve ever hit a tennis ball that well. It came time to go and I didn’t want to leave. We’d been playing for three hours and I felt as if I could play for three more.

This afternoon’s events got me thinking. If my tennis game improved so much, so quickly, just because I started believing in myself, maybe I can learn a lesson from that. Maybe all I’m lacking in my life is the confidence to try things and the ability to recognise my own talents and abilities. That’s not to say that all of a sudden I’m going to be good at everything if I just believe in myself but there are moments in my life when I’m confronted with a challenge and I think, ‘I can do that,’ before quite quickly being undermined by a general lack of confidence in my ability to do anything. Consequently, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have pretty much stopped doing anything, certain that if I try I’ll only fail. If I can just manufacture a little confidence and start having some ambition then maybe I can get my life heading in a different direction.

Moving On

Today I saw the movie Juno with my friends who depart for Canada at the end of the week. It wasn't a bad film, but I went in with pretty high expectations and I was a little disappointed. Still, I'm glad I saw it and it was nice to spend the morning out of the heat and inside an air-conditioned cinema.

This afternoon I caught up with a friend who I haven't seen in quite a few months. Time just gets away sometimes. We talked over a drink at a coffee shop (for once it wasn't a coffee, it was a blended fruit drink) and brought each other up to speed about our lives. I didn't have too much to report as not a great deal has happened in my life since we last spoke but she told me that she had decided to split-up with her boyfriend. This came as a real shock to me as they've been together for years and have lived together for quite a while. She explained to me how she had come to that decision and that it was based mainly on them each wanting different things in life; she said she'd known that they had been growing apart for quite a while but didn't really know what to do about it. Now she knows it's time to move on, for her sake and his.

Unsure of where she'll find the courage to do what she knows is inevitable, she's still trying to figure out how to tell her boyfriend. She doesn't want to hurt him but is there really any way around that? Under any circumstances a break-up is painful, but after living together for years separating must feel like losing a loved one. I suppose, in a way, you are losing a loved one - especially if you're the one being broken up with. It's probably no easier to be the one who decides to leave; you have to live with the fact that you're breaking someone's heart and that would be painful enough in itself. But once you know what you need to do and make the decision to move on, there's no getting away from it: there's going to be pain. For both of you. At least it will only be temporary. And in the months or years to come, maybe the right person will find you and you won't have to go through it all again.

Guessing

This morning I got a text message from the girl I had coffee with almost a month ago. It’s the first I’ve heard from her since I tried calling and text-messaging her a couple of times about three weeks ago. The question is, why did she bother getting back to me at all? After about a week of waiting for a reply and not getting one, I expected never to hear from her again and then this morning she sent me a text message. In the message she apologised for taking so long to get back to me and explained that she has been very busy over the past few weeks.

’I’ve been busy’ is a funny sort of excuse. It gets used quite a bit by people when they’re trying to explain why they haven’t done something. It’s a kind of generic reason for not doing something. Often it’s the excuse people use when they haven’t done something that they really didn’t want to do in the first place and it’s a polite way of not saying so. I’m not saying people don’t get busy or even that this girl wasn’t really busy and that she’s making it up but, really, you have to be pretty busy to not call or message someone for almost three weeks. I think that if you take that long to get back to someone you probably don’t want to get back to them at all, whether you’re aware of it or not.

To be fair, I often take a few weeks to reply to e-mails and this doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep in touch with my friends. I like to write long e-mails to my friends and I have to be in the right frame of mind to do so. As of right now there are probably three or four e-mails in my inbox that I’ve been meaning to reply to for a few weeks but I just haven’t got around to it yet. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to write back, it just means I can be lazy about e-mailing people sometimes.

So maybe I can’t read too much into not hearing from the girl for three weeks. Maybe she really has been so busy that she hasn’t had time to call any of her friends. Or maybe she didn’t want to speak to me again but felt guilty about ignoring me completely so she decided she’d send me a message to say hi. I don’t know what she’s thinking and it’s pointless to try and guess. I waste a lot of energy speculating about this sort of stuff and I spend far too much time trying to figure out what people are thinking. When you think about it, what’s the point of doing that? Even if you convince yourself that you know what someone else is thinking, you still don’t really know. It’s probably much better to approach things the complete opposite way, assume you don’t know anything about what other people are thinking (which is the truth most of the time) and just do what you want to do. If you try to read too much into things, your assumptions will just end up holding you back. I know.

Away

For the next few weeks I will be housesitting for someone and won't have much in the way of internet access. Right now, for the first time in a long while, I'm using a dial-up connection. I'd forgotten how slow it was. I'll be going back and forth a little between the place I'm staying and my house so I'll try to post from home as often as I can. Hopefully this doesn't get in the way of my desire to publish a post a day, at least until the end of the month. I guess I'll just have to do my best.

Barbecue

I just got back from a barbecue at a friend's place. It wasn't your regular steak and sausages deal, it was an authentic Laotian barbecue cooked on a barbecue plate I brought back from Asia last year. The plate wasn't expensive (it cost me only US$3) and it wasn't heavy but it did take up a lot of room in my already overstuffed backpack. I was also a little worried about bringing it back through customs because, although it's in no way illegal, it is a strange-looking thing (it resembles an over-sized, metallic, orange juicer but it's actually more like a shallow saucepan with a raised grill area in the centre) and I was concerned that whoever was operating the x-ray machine at the airport might mistake it for part of a warhead. All it actually does is cook meat and soup.

A Lao Barbecue is a great way to entertain a small group of friends. Everyone sits down around a fire pot with a cooking plate resting on top and you just cook your own meat (it's cut up very thinly so it cooks fast) and scoop out the soup from around the outside of the plate. It's not the sort of meal that's over and done with in half an hour, it's probably best to spend two hours or more cooking and eating. The great thing about it is that it's such a casual thing, you can cook and eat while you're talking to people; it's an atmosphere conducive to a really pleasant and relaxed dining experience. There's also just something nice about sitting around a fire with a group of friends.

As usual, the night ended with some hilariously competitive games, tonight it was a card game called Apples to Apples. It's a great party game if anyone wants to check it out. I heartily endorse it.

In less than a week two of my friends are moving to Canada for the year (or perhaps indefinitely) so it was great to catch up and do this with them one more time before they go. The three of us traveled through Asia together and look back fondly on our time there - for months we ate, drank (mainly coffee, softdrinks and milkshakes), and were merry. Nights like tonight are almost like being back there, with the added bonus of being able to share the experience with the friends who've never been.

Note To Self

Another nothing day today. I can see where I’m going wrong, I just don’t know how to put myself right. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. Or at all.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned one of my favourite film directors, Woody Allen. A lot of what I wrote about yesterday can be summed up, in far fewer words than I used, by this Woody Allen quote. I read this biography a few months ago and wrote this particular quote in my notebook so that I wouldn’t forget it:

"80 percent of life is just showing up."

Here is the author’s explanation of exactly what Woody meant:

"By this Woody means that if you put yourself in the way of opportunity – make yourself available to, say, a woman who is attractive to you, or some task you think you might be qualified for – something good may come of the fact that you are there and that someone else, perhaps equally qualified, is not. The corollary of that idea, of course, has to do with not showing up – not finishing your play or novel, not going to the audition, being so shy or insecure that you dare not risk failure."
- Richard Shickel, in his biography of Woody entitled Woody Allen

It’s such simple advice. It’s not a guarantee that action will equal success, instead it’s a statement about how inaction will all but guarantee failure. I think it’s the perfect advice for someone in my current situation, that is, someone who’s going nowhere, and fast. I recognise the fact that a big part of the reason I’m unhappy is that I never do anything. I never take even small risks in life and I really feel like I want to change - that I need to change - what I’m doing but the emotional part of my brain just won’t let me believe that I’m capable of making that change.

Where do I go from here? You can lead a horse to water but what do you do if the stupid thing ignores it and is slowly dying of thirst? And what if you are the horse and you know you need to drink but still won't? What then?

The Girl

A few years ago, while I was still at university, I went out for coffee with a friend and saw the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life - she was working at the coffee shop. I was transfixed by this girl. There was just something unique about her and in all the years since then I've never been able to describe the sort of beauty she radiated. I don't like to think of myself as shallow (maybe I'm wrong about that) but I think even the deepest thinkers on the planet, when they observe someone or something they perceive as beautiful, at least acknowledge it as such. Sure, there's a whole lot more to a person than what they look like but I don't think many people would deny that a physical attraction is often what initially draws people together. Not always, but definitely often.

Me being the suave and confident guy that I am, I didn't hesitate to head right up to her and ask her out. Yeah, right. I drank my coffee, spoke to my friend, and went home. Since it was a coffee shop where I often met my friends, over the next few weeks I was there again and again - and so was she. Every time I saw her I wanted to say something casually funny while placing my order but found myself so nervous that I could barely even speak. That made it a little tough. The coffee shop also happened to be next to the cinema I used to go to every week and I had to walk past it every time I went to see a movie. I often stopped in there after the movie to get a cup of coffee, whether I was with other people or by myself. It didn't get any easier for me, I never got close to talking to her and could hardly even make eye contact. Just reflecting on the situation as I write this is making me nervous so imagine how I felt back then.

Over the weeks and months that followed I often felt conflicted when I thought about her. On one hand, here was this girl I was really attracted to even though I knew nothing about her; on the other hand, I lacked the confidence to say anything at all to her which was a pretty big roadblock in terms of getting to know her. It didn't matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't think of a way to just be cool and say something. I was way too nervous for that and I knew if I tried I would probably come off as crazy. Every week or so I would still go there for a cup of coffee and each time I did so without saying anything I became more sure that I never would. I never did.

A guy I used to work with once asked me if I collected anything. I half-jokingly answered that I collected regrets. I was smiling while I said it and he laughed about it but I really was only half joking; I do collect regrets and I have a lot of them. In theory, you shouldn't have regrets in life. Regrets speak of mistakes and missed opportunities. While having regrets can be valuable if you recognise what you're feeling, learn from it and let it help inform your choices in the future (mistakes aren't really mistakes if you can learn from them), it often also speaks of an inability to forgive yourself for acting the way you did under certain circumstances. Self-forgiveness is something I'm yet to master and thus my regrets don't serve as guiding lights for my future actions but instead as reminders of past failures and my flawed character. Of all the regrets I have in my life up to this point, never saying anything to that girl is perhaps my biggest.

That may seem like an immensely trivial thing to regret so much but it's not so much about that specific situation as it is about what my inaction in that situation says about who I am. On one level it's incredibly simple: I was attracted to someone and yet I couldn't find the courage to do anything about it. Even on that superficial level I regret it a lot. But it goes far deeper than that. It's not so much about me not being able to ask a girl out or what she would have said to me if I had managed to work up the courage to do so. It's not really even about that at all. If I look a little deeper I can see that it's really about me knowing what I want and firmly believing that I don't deserve it. It's about me feeling unworthy of what I want. It wasn't obvious to me back then that that's what was happening but it makes sense to me now. I can recall plenty of other instances in my life where that thought process has been paralleled. I have often found myself in situations where I felt I didn't deserve what I wanted. Those thoughts have become almost involuntary. I'm at a point now where desire in itself is almost painful and I try not to want anything at all but that's just left me feeling incredibly empty and worthless.

Is that the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this? Not the part about being worthless, the part about avoiding desire. That's what Buddhism's all about: ridding yourself of desire. I just think that, if I was supposed to learn that lesson, it shouldn't be because I believe I'm unworthy of what I desire. Surely it should come from an entirely different mindset, more like a realisation that desire can never provide lasting happiness. Right? In any event, this is just an interesting tangent and I really don't know what I'm talking about. I'll get back to what I was writing about to start with: the girl.

As I said, I never spoke to her beyond saying, "I'll have a cappuccino, thanks." I just never found that confidence. Anyway, more than a year (perhaps even two years) after I had first seen her I was out at the beach one summer night with some friends. We were there to watch a fire-twirling display; it had become a weekly event over the summer and every Sunday night a hundred-or-so people (at least) would gather in the park beside the beach at sunset to watch the fire-twirling as a dozen drummers pounded hypnotically on enormous tribal drums. Between the sound of the waves and the drums, the salty sea air, the fire, and the starry night sky it was just magic.

My friends and I watched and listened for an hour or so before walking up to the headland, eventually returning to the park and sitting for a little while. A bit later we decided to call it a night. I stood up to leave and began to make my way through the crowd of people. As I was doing so, someone cut through the crowd and walked right in front of me. It took me a second to realise it but it was the girl from the coffee shop. By now it was pretty dark and only the fire and moonlight illuminated the people in the park but I knew that it really was her and that I wasn't just imagining it. I didn't know what to do or whether I should say something or not so I just stood there. She had walked past me and off into the night but about twenty seconds later she walked right in front of me again, this time heading in the opposite direction. I wanted to say something, I really did. I thought it was about as good an opportunity as I was ever going to get. Maybe it was, but I'll never know.

I only remember seeing her once more after that night. It was a few weeks later and I was at the same beach one afternoon and she passed me walking through the park. I went back to the coffee shop a few more times but I don't remember ever seeing her again. I had gone to school with one of the other girls who worked at the coffee shop so I thought I might ask her if she knew the girl and try to find out what had happened to her. That sounds like rather a simple task but I somehow managed to turn that into a nearly insurmountable undertaking. The girl I went to school with and I had always made small-talk about how we were going when we saw each other in the coffee shop - it's not like I couldn't actually talk to her at all - but I got so nervous about trying to bring up the subject of the other girl that it took me weeks to muster the courage to ask even the most basic of questions about her.

My behaviour during that conversation would probably be best described as Woody Allen-esque. I've often thought of myself as that kind of person, minus the intelligence and wit, which, come to think of it, just leaves the neuroses, making me less of a Woody Allen-type character and more of a standard-issue neurotic person. It's probably just that I love Woody's movies and relate to the character he plays - I figure if I'm going to be neurotic I'm probably best thinking of myself as a hilariously exaggerated version of myself. At least that way I might be able to look back on things and laugh. Anyway, I doubt I behaved like Woody would have in the same circumstances (he manages to make witty remarks even when suffering extreme nerves) but that's what I felt like.

After walking towards my car, stopping abruptly, heading back towards the coffee shop, stopping again, walking back towards the car I stopped myself again and decided that I needed to make myself go back to the coffee shop and ask about this girl. I got back to the coffee shop and saw the girl I went to school with sitting at a table by herself, drinking a coffee and reading the newspaper. Walking over to her I asked if I could sit down and the I took a seat. Exactly what I said is a mystery to me but I remember I talked really fast and said things without thinking about them first, meaning I'm sure a lot of what I said was pretty much nonsensical. The one thing I do remember about the whole exchange is that my friend was looking at me with a furrowed brow the whole time, as if trying to figure out what was going on. Eventually I managed to ask about the girl and found out that she had got a job somewhere else. I asked if she knew how I might get in touch with her and she said that she could probably find an e-mail address or something if I wanted to come back and see her again in a few days. I said that sounded good but after I left I realised how crazy I must have sounded so I never went back to get the e-mail address. I could hardly e-mail her anyway, she had no idea who I was. I just had to face the fact that I had had several opportunities to act and had wasted them all.

I still think about her sometimes; I wonder where she is and whether I might bump into her on the street ten years from now. It's irrational to think like that, I recognise that, but I think part of me just likes to torture myself and not let it go completely. I wish I could say that I'd learned from what was so obviously a mistake but I think I'd do things the same way if I had the chance to do it over again. It's not that I wouldn't want to do things differently, I just don't see how I could find a way to overcome my fear. And I still think I don't deserve what I want.

It's been said that at the end of your life your greatest regrets will be about the things you didn't do and wish you did, not the mistakes you made or the things you did that didn't go the way you wanted them to. The things you wanted to do but never did, those are the things you'll always be left wondering about, never knowing what might have been.

Review

Today, for the first time in months, I went to the movies. For someone who loves movies as much as I do, I sure don't go very often anymore. I used to go all the time, probably about once a week, and beyond just seeing the latest release movie I really enjoyed the experience of going to the cinema. It's much more engaging than watching a movie at home, the atmosphere in the theatre is different. If you're out of the house, sitting in the dark in front of an enormous screen and surrounded by speakers I think it's far easier to suspend your disbelief and lose yourself in a movie. For the duration of the film you can be somewhere else or someone else if that's what you want. This is probably more desirable if you're watching largely escapist fare but the cinema also provides a distraction-free environment, making it easier to concentrate if you happen to be watching a film that's a little deeper than the latest blockbuster.

I normally go to the movies alone but today I went with a couple of my friends who were heading out and asked if I'd like to tag along. I'm really glad I did because I don't think I could have spent my afternoon any better than watching No Country For Old Men. Perhaps it's not the sort of movie you can say you enjoyed but I walked out of the theatre thinking about what a great film it was. I know at least a few of the people sitting around us didn't feel that way because as soon as the credits came up I heard a couple of twenty-something guys mutter to one another, "Who picked this movie? It sucked," or something to that effect. I got the impression it was a view shared by at least a few other people in the cinema and, although I didn't agree, I wasn't really surprised.

We saw the film at a busy shopping centre and were a little confused when we made our way into the theatre and had to settle for terrible seats two rows from the front because the cinema was practically full. Given the subject matter of the film, my friends and I hadn't expected such a crowd. If we had been seeing I Am Legend then we wouldn't have thought twice, nor would we have thought the crowd odd if we'd gone to see the film at an art house theatre but we were at a shopping centre and we were seeing a Coen Brothers film. It's usually the Farrelly Brothers or, going back a few years, the Wachowski Brothers packing out the multiplexes, not the Coens. Their films tend not to have the same sort of mainstream appeal.

I laughed to myself when I heard 'it sucked' from somewhere behind me but I started to wonder about the sort of person who, with such a shallow analysis, reduces such a complex film to those two words. I don't think everyone has to like the film and I can appreciate why a lot of people won't like it, because it's not a simple, conventional film that ties up every loose thread in a happy ending. Although it's not the sort of movie that will leave you smiling, it is a fantastic film and it will get you thinking. That is, if you don't instantly dismiss it as a piece of junk.

As my friends and I parted ways and I headed back through the shopping centre towards the carpark I noticed the two people in front of me on the escalator: a guy and a girl, both in their early twenties. As the escalator descended, he rested his left elbow on the handrail and gently placed his right hand on the small of his girlfriend's back. For a second I forgot about the movie. I wanted that to be me. I wanted to be leaving the cinema with my girlfriend. It wasn't envy, I just wanted to know what that kind of happiness felt like. Pathetic, I know, but it's what I was feeling. And where I'm at right now, not being able to get a girl to return my phone calls after we go out for coffee, I feel a long way from knowing what that's like. But I didn't dwell, I would have only made myself feel bad. I stepped off the escalator, brushed those thoughts aside and thought some more about the movie as I headed for my car.

Belief

Today, I spent most of the day just watching TV. I need to find something more constructive to do with my time. For starters, I should clean my desk. I can't even sit down at it because of all the junk I have piled on top of it. And it is mostly junk. Every six weeks or so I am overcome with enthusiasm and throw stuff away, organise what I want to keep, and dust my desk off so it's ready for action. It's all done with the best intentions but something always seems to get in the way. I always seem to get in the way of myself.

I have a friend who I've known since my school days. We see each other often and we get along well but we differ in a lot of ways and I occasionally wonder what it is that makes us such good friends. Perhaps we're more similar than I realise because despite our conflicting opinions on movies and music and other such trivial things (although occasionally we agree on something) we've always enjoyed each other's company. In the last couple of years I've noticed one major difference between us, one that has possibly caused our lives to head in different directions. That difference probably illustrates the usefulness of intentions about as well as I can get my head around it.

My friend is the sort of person to just go out and do something, without giving it too much thought. I think in my previous posts I've demonstrated that I'm not that kind of person. I tend to over-think pretty much everything. So, I'm more of a thinker and he's more of a doer. Each approach has its own merits, to a degree. But where have our respective approaches taken us? Well, he's working in his chosen field and enjoying life, and I'm doing neither the former nor the latter. It seems that at various points in our lives, when we've been confronted with choices, we've reacted in different ways. I've often let myself be controlled by my own self-doubt and not attempted something that I may have achieved if I'd given myself a chance, while he has generally just given everything his best shot and usually found a way to get through. I don't know whether he ever feels like he's going to fail and continues on regardless or whether he just doesn't think that far ahead. Unlike me, he doesn't seem to be afraid to fail and, consequently, he's attempted far more than I have over the years. However he does it, I admire him for it.

This comes back to what I wrote yesterday about the only real failure being the failure to try. I think I do genuinely believe that to be true. The trouble is, I'm not living as though I believe it.

Capturing the Moment

I've done a decent amount of traveling these past couple of years. I've been to a lot of really beautiful places and seen them captured in gorgeous pictures in various guidebooks and on travel websites. Also, a quick Flickr search for sunsets, long exposure photography, water photography, snow photography, or just about anything else you can think of will return thousands and thousands of fantastic pictures taken by scores of different people all over the world. Some of those images so perfectly capture moments or images that you can get lost in them and perhaps spend hours searching through other people's photo albums.

I've always had an interest in photography but my recent travel experience has heightened it. On my travels I took my pictures with a fairly old, 3.2 megapixel camera. It was light, easy to use, and the pictures were good quality. I have taken a lot of pictures in the last couple of years. But most of them look like holiday snaps. You know what I mean, they're not artistic, they're just pictures of a monument or a bridge or a church or one of the world's natural wonders, and sometimes I'm there in the foreground. I don't mean to say that like it's a bad thing but there are lots of pictures like that around. They're not unique. And while I'm glad I have them to remind me of where I've been, it would have also been nice if I had taken some more artistic shots of the places I've visited.

With this in mind I recently got myself a dSLR. It's a nice one, with high resolution, great manual controls, and couple of zoom lenses giving me a lot of flexibility to try all sorts of photography. I was so excited to get it because it meant I could get out there and start snapping away, experimenting, and hopefully take some nice pictures along the way. I thought it would be a nice hobby and also a way to express myself creatively. So far, in the eight-or-so weeks I've had the camera I've only taken a couple of hundred pictures and most of those were for other people (friends wanting pictures for their blogs or websites, etc). Inaction is becoming a recurring theme in my blog, isn't it?

Why haven't I been out there in the national parks and on the beaches taking pictures like mad? I have a reasonable enough grasp of the principles of photography, having taken a photography-related course at university. My camera is easy enough to use and, being digital, you can instantly see when you've made a mistake with exposure, focus, or framing, etc. and can correct it accordingly. Also, a couple of my friends are amazing photographers and if I ever needed help or advice I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige. In addition, I've read lots of books on photography and I read the Digital Photography School blog almost every day. (Incidentally, it's a great resource for anyone even remotely interested in photography - I encourage everyone to check it out). I've learned a lot by reading but there comes a point where you can be reading too widely and spending too much time doing it.

Reading about something can be a great way to learn. It can also be detrimental. I think that it becomes detrimental when you find yourself reading how-to book after how-to book and never actually get around to doing anything yourself. That's the trap. And it's a trap I've fallen into more than once. I was reminded of this last night when I was reading Alex Epstein's blog, Complications Ensue, a blog about screenwriting. Someone had posted a question for him asking whether an expensive set of DVDs about how to be a filmmaker sounded like a good investment. Apparently the set contained detailed information on every individual craft involved in making a film. Alex's answer to that question was, in short, 'no'. Basically, he said that instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a set of DVDs, it would be far better to buy (or borrow from a library) any of the existing books written about filmmaking. He went on to say something that I don't think a lot of people understand:

"... neither books nor DVDs are going to teach you how to make short films. Not really. What teaches you to make short films is making short films."

In short, you learn how to do something by actually trying to do it. He said that reading a book to learn about something is fine, so long as it doesn't prevent you from rolling up your sleeves and having a go at it. His tip: read one book and then make one film. Then, read another book and make another film - don't get stuck just reading books. It's great advice and I remember reading that same advice about six or seven years ago. The author of the advice when I originally read it was Alex Epstein. The same guy.

I had first read the advice in Alex's book, Crafty Screenwriting, one of the dozens of screenwriting and filmmaking books I read, one after the other, while trying to gain the knowledge and confidence to start writing a screenplay of my own. Even back then I knew it was probably the best piece of advice any of those books could impart to me because it encouraged action. For months I had been reading every filmmaking book I could find and, while I'd learned a lot, I wasn't doing anything with that newly-acquired knowledge. It didn't matter how much of it I got, all that knowledge was basically useless unless I did something with it.

I don't remember if I actually followed the advice all those years ago but I remember reading it and thinking that it was well worth filing away for future reference. What's interesting is that all these years later I stumbled onto Alex's blog (after following a link on a friend's blog) and read the same advice all over again, just as I'm experiencing the same problem: being bogged down reading books and not actually getting my hands dirty.

What was perhaps more interesting was that years before I even wanted to be a screenwriter (I had my heart set on a very different career) I was writing screenplays but I was doing it for fun. Before I started university I had written two and a half feature film scripts. Dreamworks hasn't knocked my door down to offer me millions for them - and trust me, they aren't going to - but I wrote them, all by myself, before I read even one book about how to write a screenplay. They're bad screenplays but they're bad screenplays I wrote and, at the time, I didn't even care that they were bad. Back then, the writing process wasn't painful and it was quite quick, so what's happened in the intervening years? It seems that the more I learned about screenwriting and filmmaking, the less confident I became. I retained a lot of the information I read but I started thinking about things too much. I think, especially in creative endeavours, that it's probably best not to think about things much at all and just get in there and start experimenting. There's no reason you can't seek information out as you go but doing all the reading and research ahead of time is probably a significantly greater hindrance than it is a help. Obviously, you can't do things in this order if you want to be a surgeon but if you're just writing a script or making a film then what's the harm?

What is harmful is never writing that script, never making that film, never taking that photograph. Even if all you end up with is something awful, if you put your heart and mind into it then it was worthwhile. If you try and fail you at least learn from the experience. To never try, that's probably the greatest failure you can chalk up. That's good advice, I must have it tattooed on my chest so I don't forget it...

The Blog

In the absence of a more meaningful post I just wrote an entry about the nature of blogging. An entry I hastily deleted after deciding that I don't know enough about blogging to write about it. It all came about because today I spent a few hours trolling the internet for blogs of interest and started thinking about the whole blogging phenomenon and how I am now one of the many millions of people who regularly contribute to a blog. That's kind of cool.

I hadn't given my blog that much thought. It more or less only exists because I made a commitment to myself to write every day and, since I'd never blogged before, I thought it might be worth a try. I don't know whether it's the novelty of the process or that daily writing is something that I enjoy doing, but so far I haven't tired of it yet. Not like years ago when I tried to keep a journal - I think that only lasted a few days. While this obviously isn't a journal it's similar in that it's somewhere I've been able to write down whatever I'm thinking (instead of just filing it away like I used to do). It's a little like therapy. That's why I've chosen to blog anonymously, because I feel like I can be much more honest about what I'm thinking and feeling this way.

I like that, for the first time in my life, I'm writing publicly (albeit anonymously). It's great that what I write can be read by others who are free to comment about what I say and give me their own unique insights. It's also great that I am able to read what other people write on their own blogs. I don't know why it took me so long to get blogging.

The Game

Last year I read a book that I was sure would change my life. I'd like to be able to say that it was something like Plato's Republic - a book I tried to read in my late teens and didn't get past the first hundred pages - or Henry David Thoreau's Walden. This book wasn't like those books but it was thought-provoking.

I find it hard to meet people. I'm shy in social situations and it's really quite difficult for me to just walk up to someone I don't know and introduce myself. I see people do it at parties and wish I had that ability. I don't know why but it's inconceivable that I would ever approach a girl I didn't know. It's something I struggle with because, if I can't introduce myself to people I don't know then how can I meet new people?

I don't know how many times I've been at a party, seen some girl I've thought was really beautiful but not been able to muster the courage to walk ten paces across the room and say something. I don't mean trying to use a pick-up line, I mean saying something simple like 'hi'. I know I'm not a confident person but in those situations it's more than that, it's like I've come to believe that one of the unwritten laws of the universe is that I am never allowed to speak to any woman I'm attracted to. Consequently, my level of self-confidence is inversely proportional to how attracted I am to said female; the more I like her, the less confidence I have (and remember, I'm not starting with a heck of a lot). I thought it might just be an awkward teenage phase that I'd grow out of as I moved into my twenties but, more than halfway through that decade of my life I find myself in much the same position - wondering how other people do it and why I can't. How did my friends meet their current partners? Was there some big secret I wasn't aware of? Turns out there was.

That brings me back to the book I was sure would reverse my fortune: The Game, by Neil Strauss. I was certain it would turn me from the guy you see nervously nursing a glass of lemonade alone in the corner at a party into someone who could, at the very least, make eye-contact with and have a conversation with a woman I'm attracted to.

Neil was a free-lance journalist for Rolling Stone who, after hearing about men who became known in some internet circles as master pick-up artists, became interested in the techniques these men used to get women to notice them. After only a few months of research he not only became one of these men, he became regarded by many within that underground community as the best pick-up artist around. When he begins his story he basically has no self-confidence, describes himself as not particularly attractive, and he can't talk to a woman to save his life. The transformation he makes in the space of a few months is incredible. The book isn't so much a how-to guide but more of a memoir and as such it is a fascinating read. There is, however, much that can be learned by reading about his various and extensive experience picking up women, and he does reveal a few tips along the way.

In short, he talks about how he learned to approach women without fear and, using the skills he learned from the pick-up artists he befriended, he found that talking to women was not a difficult exercise - once he knew how to do it, it became easy. The techniques Neil used basically reduced the whole process to a formula; he describes ways to get a girl's attention and make her interested in you, not the other way around. That was a very interesting notion. That's why I read the book.

It was never my goal to become as adept a pick-up artist as Neil Strauss became. I didn't want to date hundreds of women, I just wanted to be able to talk to a woman I was attracted to. I wanted to overcome the fear that had been holding me back for years. And I still do. Reading that book, while it was a very entertaining read with some good tips on talking to women, didn't change my life. It was never going to. No book ever would or could. For me to change I would really have to work at it and I haven't done that yet. For years I have indulged myself in self-pity and just accepted that by not talking to girls I was attracted to I was saving myself from what would inevitably be painful rejection. Living that way is the easy way out and ultimately not very fulfilling. Reading that book had initially made me think that change was possible but it didn't change my mind about who I believed I was. I thought that, even armed with a few techniques and a little inside information, I would still fail. So I never really tried. That's why on a Friday night I find myself at home writing a blog entry about not being able to meet people instead of going out and actually trying to meet people.

But all is not lost. I haven't completely given up on myself. I'm going to make an effort to be more outgoing this year. And I'm going to try to keep an open mind. If I want to stop being a failure then I need to stop seeing myself as one. At least I've learned that much.

Rejection

Just after Christmas I went out for coffee with a friend of a friend. It was a set-up, the first time any of my friends have ever tried to pair me up with someone. So how did it go? I'm not sure. I find it hard to objectively evaluate anything in my personal life and consequently I often find myself at a loss when trying to figure out what someone is thinking or feeling. But that generally only applies when I'm interested in someone romantically, I'm usually pretty intuitive with my friends.

We met, weren't immediately repulsed by one another, and talked for a while over a cup of coffee. It was just general chit-chat kind of stuff: jobs, music, movies, travel, and all that. During one of the few brief breaks in conversation I made an observation about awkward silences and how they make me nervous. She responded by saying that she didn't think silence was awkward at all and didn't know why people regarded it as such. That's a fair point, really, because it's not the silence itself that makes people uncomfortable, it's what they think that silence represents. I think I often instinctively read negatively into silence: she's bored, she thinks I'm weird, she thinks I'm unattractive, she's trying to remember why she broke up with her last boyfriend because if more dates with me are all she's got to look forward to then she's definitely going to call him later tonight to see if he has plans for the weekend... clearly, all rational things to be thinking. So that's why I think she's being silent, but generally the reason I'm not saying anything is that I am interested in someone and don't want to say something stupid. When I'm talking to someone I'm not attracted to I am not so focussed on making a good impression and I'm reasonably adept at keeping the conversation flowing. But as I say, there were only a couple of very brief pauses in the conversation so I couldn't really read too much into it.

The body language, on the other hand, wasn't particularly positive. She seemed to be leaning away from me and turning her body to the side so that she was facing forty-five degrees to my right and looking at me sort of over her shoulder. From what little I know of body language that doesn't really seem like good news. This, however, is all really inconsequential because what really matters is that I haven't heard from her since. A few days after we met I sent her a message to see what she was doing over the weekend and whether she'd like to see a movie. She said that she was working and that maybe we could catch up some other time. I took this as a polite rejection but a few days later decided that there was no harm in trying again, just in case she actually did have to work the whole weekend and did actually want to catch up with me. So I sent her another message to which I received no reply. That made things a little clearer. I relayed this to the friend who introduced us and she urged me to try again so a couple of days ago I called her but she didn't answer and I left a message. I still haven't got a response. This makes it pretty clear that she's not interested.

No big deal. She's not interested. Truth be told, I'm not even sure I was interested in her. I know that sounds just like someone being told that they're fired and responding by saying, "you can't fire me - I quit," but it's true. Sure, she's nice, and pretty, too, but I'm not convinced we're compatible. I just thought that since it was the first date I'd been on in a couple of years and we seemed to get on well enough that if we saw each other again we might become friends. It seems I may have indeed been right about what those few brief silences were saying.

What bothers me about the whole situation is that she never said that she didn't want to see me again. She just flat out ignored me, twice. How much effort would it have taken to say, "I don't think we're compatible," in a text message? That's why I sent her a message instead of calling her; I figured that if she wasn't interested I didn't want to make her uncomfortable over the phone and that it would have been much easier for her to just reply to a text message with "no thanks". I'd like to think that I would be upfront with someone and not just ignore them in the hope that they go away.

If I seem more annoyed about this than someone should be if they are genuinely not interested in someone, it's because this has happened to me before. It was about six years ago and it really bothered me then because I liked the girl a lot and she gave me the impression that the feeling was mutual. And then she completely ignored me. But that's a story for another time.

I spend a great deal of time trying to understand women, probably about the same amount of time I spend trying to figure myself out. I don't know who I understand the least. At least this latest rejection hasn't made me depressed the way being rejected usually does. It won't stop me from trying again. What might stop me is that I find it incredibly hard to meet people. I think I'll make that the subject of tomorrow's post.

---

On a completely different subject, my interest has definitely been piqued by a comment which was posted anonymously after a previous entry. I'm told that the author will reveal their identity if I request that they do so. Consider this a polite request.

Cheating

I'm not yet ready to end my streak of writing a new post every day but my brain just doesn't want to work right now. It's sort of cheating to write a post about not being able to write a post but, at least in my mind, it's better than writing nothing at all. It shows that I'm committed to posting every day, at least until the end of January. Maybe I can relax the rules a little after living within them for a month. It sounds reasonable. In the meantime: this concludes today's bland entry.

Triviality

I was out and about all day today. Not the way I usually while away my time. I spent time with a few friends and the day concluded with dinner at another friend's house where we played Trivial Pursuit and another party game. Trivial Pursuit is something I enjoy because I have a knack for retaining very trivial, otherwise useless information and that's about the only time that type of recall comes in handy. There's usually some dispute about at least one question or answer and tonight was no exception. And the other party game led to some very fiery debate. But it was all in good fun and we pretty much laughed our way through the night. I really should get out more often.

Reflection

I must admit, I'm a little surprised that for seven consecutive days I have made a post on this blog. On December 31st of last year I knew that I wanted to start a blog and make a commitment to post regularly but my track record with stuff like that is not good. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say I'm a slacker (although I am currently living like one) but I don't take myself seriously enough to follow through with those sort of ideas. If something is for my benefit alone I tend to neglect it. On the other hand, when I'm given a task by someone else I work hard to make sure it gets done and done well. I am an extremely hard worker when employed by someone else. When working for myself I tend not to respect my employer and the feeling is mutual. After not too long at all I stop doing the work altogether.

A couple of months ago I decided to commit myself to writing something - a novel, some short stories, a short film, I wasn't specific about it. In retrospect, this lack of specificity was probably the problem; I think I work best in a more structured environment where I'm aiming towards a concrete goal. In any event, for about a week or so I sat down at my desk for a few hours a day and just wrote whatever came out. I surprised myself in that I had more ideas than I thought I did. Three or four short stories, a novel (or perhaps just a novella), a couple of short film ideas, and even a couple of lines of poetry found their way onto paper. That is, the beginnings of the short stories and novel found their way onto paper. After little more than a week of regular writing I just found myself making excuses not to do it. I never finished anything. It's all still there, incomplete, in a folder above my desk. I haven't looked at it since then.

Why did I stop writing? I honestly don't know. I have the time to do it, that's not the issue. I also seem to have some kind of desire to write or I wouldn't be where I am, trying (on occasion, at least) to do it. So what is it? What is so difficult about sitting at a desk, pen in hand (I prefer to write the old-fashioned way), scribbling ideas down on a notepad? At first, before I had my week of productivity, I used the excuse that I didn't have any ideas and that sitting at a desk with a blank piece of paper in front of me would be too painful to bear. Can't use that one anymore. I had anticipated the beginning being the hardest part and after weeks and months (read years) of avoiding it I was surprised to find it really wasn't that difficult. I had overcomplicated the process which can be reduced to this: you sit, pick up pen, place pen on paper, move pen over surface of paper to produce shapes known as letters which, when properly sequenced, result in words. Words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs and so on. It may sound like a gross oversimplification of the writing process but that's all it really is. That is, if you don't concern yourself with exactly what you're writing. At that point, however, I didn't really care what I was writing just so long as words were getting onto the page.

As the days went by I continued writing. When I became stuck writing one story I began writing another, and then another, revisiting my works in progress when I had some new ideas. Things were moving along nicely until I hit, in all my stories simultaneously, the point where I didn't know what was supposed to happen next. I had set the stories up without too much planning or forethought and had hit a wall. But instead of thinking about moving any or all of my stories forward, I started thinking about what I was doing in a more abstract sense. All that did was cause me to question what I was doing and whether I had the ability to do it. It didn't take me very long to decide that I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have any ability to do it.

The only reason I'd been able to actually write anything at all during that time was that I'd somehow managed to temporarily disengage the fiercely self-critical part of my brain that had for so long convinced me that I would never be able to write anything that was even remotely good. Once I stalled, however, I lost all that momentum and reverted to the old, impossible to please, me. It wasn't that what I had written was bad - it wasn't great but it was by no means terrible (incidentally, I always try to remember what Hemingway said about first drafts always being... not very good. I think I might be paraphrasing but you get the idea) - but the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that I had no business trying to be a writer, not only because I had nothing original or insightful to say but also because I had no literary ability. So I stopped writing. I didn't make a conscious choice to never write again but I did feel defeated.

A couple of months on, I'm not sure I feel that way anymore, at least not all the time. In a way, it was a valuable learning experience. I haven't lost anything (I didn't burn what I wrote) except for a couple of months worth of potential writing time. The way I figure it - and I'm talking about right now, I may not feel this way tomorrow morning - suppose I am the world's worst writer. Suppose I'm some hack who couldn't even get a job storylining on the worst of the worst reality TV show. So what? Even if that's the case, why should that stop me from writing if that's what I think I want to do? Even if the end result of my writing is a derivative and cliched piece of garbage, what's the harm? What else would I have done with my time? Waste hours absorbing daytime TV? Probably. I have been doing a lot of that lately. I think writing a bad novel would have been a far better use of my time.

I'm lucky that I've now learned that lesson (although it seems rather obvious in hindsight) and that I'm at least aware of how I undermine myself with unfounded criticism and negativity. Up to this point I was aware of it but didn't regard it as unfounded. If I make the effort to be conscious of those type of thoughts in the future I might be able to stop myself from giving up so easily. For now, posting on this blog is the only writing I am committing myself to doing and, one week in, I commend myself for actually making it this far. For the first time in a while I feel like I've achieved something, albeit something small. I hope I can keep it up because I think that so far it's been good for me.

Locked Out

Over the past few weeks I have enjoyed reading One Pic A Day's blog, http://onepicaday.blogspot.com, where every day he posts one photograph he has taken during that day. According to his blurb he started taking one picture everyday in 1989 and has continued to do so ever since - for almost twenty years now. I discovered the blog when it was listed by blogger as a blog of note and only last night looked through some of his retroactively posted pictures from 1989. What an incredible achievement it is to have a tangible artifact, a memory, from every day of your life for the last eighteen years. What a great way to reflect and gauge how much you've changed.

As of today, however, the settings of One Pic's blog seem to have been changed and now only people who have been invited are able to read it. I suppose this may be because, having been featured as a blog of note, he must be having thousands of hits on his blog every day. He has been blogging anonymously and giving each of his friends a pseudonym but the photos he has published do not conceal the identity of the person of people they feature. Due to the upfront and honest nature of the blog maybe he feels that such a wide readership is not wise. I don't know. But it must make him uncomfortable putting so much of himself out there, knowing that it could potentially be used against him.

It's an interesting idea, that. The more you reveal of yourself, the more you let go, at least in an emotional sense, the more vulnerable you become. But, ironically, perhaps the reverse is true. For it takes great courage to make that leap, to demolish those barriers that you develop throughout life as a way to shield yourself from the slings and arrows that might come your way. And if you can muster that strength then are you really vulnerable to anything? If you can do that then I think you become something that other people fear. Without that uncertainty, without any reservation, if you are comfortable enough with who you are to put it out there for the world to see then what can anyone possibly do to take that away from you? People can no longer label you as anything; if they do it won't matter to you because you already know who you are. You rid yourself of the self-doubt inherent in living your life according to what other people think of you. To once and for all be able to examine yourself and comfortably and openly say 'this is who I am' is possibly the most liberating thing you can do. This kind of attitude is, I think, quite rare but I also think that it needn't be. While I'm not sure how you go about finding that freedom I think it's something worthy of pursuit.

And so I came to start writing this blog. I was encouraged or perhaps inspired by One Pic's eighteen years of commitment to an idea that, when he first started out, I'm sure he had no idea would ever become such a part of his life. Sure, I'm writing this anonymously - I never said I was liberated myself - but even so there's something incredibly cathartic about just putting my thoughts and experiences out there for the world to read; thoughts that are normally relegated to the dark recesses of my brain where they just seem to get in the way. I don't have any grand expectations about this blog (I'm not even sure anyone has read it yet) but just having enough faith in myself to start writing - writing anything - is a big deal for me. As many a great person has said, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I'm not sure where I'm going yet but I may well be on my way.

Passing The Time

I didn't leave the house at all today. Nor did I go anywhere yesterday, for that matter. I can probably put staying home yesterday down to the rain - it rained most of the day and night - but I had no excuse today. I just couldn't be bothered.

I don't go out very often but on the rare occasions when I do I usually have a good time. Dinner with friends is always fun as we've know each other so long we can reminisce and retell embarrassing stories about one another for hours. I'm lucky to know so many great people.

Last year and this year are what you could call transitional years. Not so much for me as I'm not really actively transitioning - I seem to be good at staying perfectly still for extended periods - but a substantial number of my friends have either moved away or are about to. I suppose it's inevitable really; people grow up and move away. And yet I seem to be resisting that. I am not building a life for myself, I'm just watching other people build their lives. I feel oddly disconnected from the world and I don't really understand why.

One of my biggest problems is that I expect too much of myself. Ironically, those high expectations are the reason I have become so stagnant. I've always underrated everything I've ever done. Nothing I've ever done has been good enough for me. I've never met my own lofty expectations. I've never allowed myself to feel proud of anything I have ever achieved and I don't know why that is. I did well at school and went on to study at university but have always felt, despite my modest academic success, that I am worthless. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a failure. And so I no longer bother to try. In those terms it seems both incredibly simple and incredibly stupid but that's what's holding me back. I have no confidence and no ambition. I seem to just be quietly passing the time.

An Unlikely Sentence

Just a short observation today. I learned the word 'insalubrious' from a vocabulary-building game. It means, according to dictionary.com, unfavourable or detrimental to health. I'd never come across the word before so I checked the definition and asked the game to use the word in a sentence. This is the sentence the game generated: 'That looks like an insalubrious dog.'

I would just like to know when that sentence has ever been used in the history of the world. Who talks like that? Although, by the same token, who spends their day playing vocabulary-building games?

Warning: Savage Monkeys

Today I visited a friend - someone who isn't as-good-as-married but instead is actually married - and her three little girls. The eldest daughter is four and quite a strong-willed four year old she is. I went to school with her mother and have known this particular little miss since she was born. My friend always laughs at me when I come around because I'm generally the only person her children can boss around. Even her dogs think they're higher than I am in the social hierarchy.

That doesn't really bother me much and I'm happy to sit there and keep the little ones amused. I suppose at the very least it keeps them out of their mother's hair for a while. Today the eldest flexed her imagination as only a four year old can and made up knock-knock jokes while pretending to read me a book which, judging by the cover, was actually a story about some kind of swamp monster. I didn't find the jokes very funny - mainly because they didn't really make sense but perhaps that's just because I'm not four years old - but her enthusiasm in delivering them was enough to make me laugh. With that in mind, I'm no comedy guru so maybe she can get a gig somewhere; non sequitur humour seems popular right now.

She had been given some sea monkeys for Christmas and after she patiently listened to my ridiculous questions about how many bananas they eat each day and whether or not they like to climb trees she took me by the hand and led me towards the small plastic tank in her room. As we were walking into her room, in a moment where she perfectly personified childish innocence and imagination she looked up at me and quite matter-of-factly said, "I'm holding your hand so I can look after you. I haven't fed them yet and I think they might be hungry." With that fresh in my mind I didn't kick up too much of a fuss when she cheated outrageously at Hungry, Hungry Hippos by picking up the balls with her free hand and throwing them down the throat of her pink hippo.

Not So Resolute

As today is almost over, I'm just getting this posted in time. No, it's nothing insightful or deep, just an attempt to start the year on a positive note and keep to my resolution to write more regularly. Day two and, even though it was a bit of a struggle to sit down in front of the keyboard, so far so good.

I've just come back from dinner with a couple of friends. These particular friends are two of my as-good-as-married friends, a term that applies to almost all of my close friends. As I said in my last post, I am somewhat the odd one out in that respect. I've been single for a long time. While I'm never made to feel like a third wheel by any of my attached friends, the thought is often there in the back of my mind. I'll often joke about it myself and my lack of success with women has become something of a running gag between my friends. We all playfully joke about it. What I don't know is whether I have learned to see myself in this way, as some kind of lovable loser who approaches social situations geared towards failing and living down to the low expectations I seem to have developed. Does that sound like I'm overanalysing?

I spend a lot of time - far too much - by myself thinking about things. This is not good. Thinking, at least to the degree I do it, is not constructive. It's what prevents me from actually doing things. I spend so much time trying to figure things out, playing moments back in my head and trying to extract meaning from them, meaning I can use to work out how I should act or what I should do in the future. But this kind of analysis is pointless. It gets me nowhere. It's just an excuse not to do things. It produces the kind of logic that says, "this situation isn't going to work out like you want it to so don't get involved." Sounds reasonable enough. If you know you're only going to get hurt then why not save yourself the trouble? Except that I really don't know how anything is going to go. I can't predict the future, how have I convinced myself I can? I'm probably better off living my life based solely on my horoscope. Aside from that, is avoiding pain any way to live your life? What's wrong with throwing caution to the wind and having the outcome be at the mercy of the universe? Surely that's better than just passing the time, risking nothing and achieving nothing. The choice appears easy so why is it so difficult for me to take a risk?

I've come to the point now where I even predict the outcome of my own self-examination and don't even bother doing that. I already know what I'm going to berate myself about and what I'm going to blame myself for. It's easier just to watch TV instead.

I often think about the old saying comparing the unlived life to the unexamined one. You know, while the unexamined life is not worth living, the unlived life is not worth examining. All I know is that right now I've got my priorities way wrong. I need to do a lot less examining and a lot more living.

Resolute

In my first ever act of New Year's Resolution-making I have decided to start a blog. I can't say I lead the most interesting life but, as someone who claims to desire a career in writing, this will serve as a way to get me writing more regularly. And by that I mean more regularly than never.

So, for hopefully months and years to come, I will publish a new entry every day or so. I'm still not sure what will fill those entries but spending my days stringing words together is surely a better use of my time than watching TV.

More than likely I will fall back on old standards like the fact that I am forever single and, as most of my friends are in long term relationships or are married, I'm beginning to wonder whether I'll be single indefinitely and in perpetuity. Maybe one's mid-twenties are not the time to be worrying about such things but with each passing year it seems that more and more of my contemporaries are getting married and I'm struggling to find someone to have a cup of coffee with me. I don't fancy my chances of stealing the likes of Heidi Klum away from Seal but there are an awful lot of guys out there who are intellectually and emotionally comparable to actual seals and yet they have no problem picking up girls. It's getting to the point where I doubt I could attract a seal myself, even with a bucket of fish.

I suppose it comes down to this: I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've heard "You're a really nice guy, but..." more times than I care to remember and while I don't like to think that nice guys finish last I know that this one always seems to.

With more of that to look forward to, aren't you glad you clicked here?