Tag: balance

A Disciplined Ramble

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Life is funny. Life is full of surprises. We think we have it all worked out and then something comes along to remind us we have no idea. We have no control. I have been criticised in the past for just going with what comes in front of me and forgetting everything else and in some ways there is validity in that. Living in the moment is great, being present is real but so are things that you can’t see. But then there is also a lot to be said about going with whatever twists and turns life’s rollercoaster throws at you. Part of that is embracing the good things that come up but with that we must also embrace the struggles. It may feel like what you are faced with, whatever daunting prospect you see blocking your way, is inhibiting you and preventing you from finding happiness but we never know what series of events will unfold because of it. Maybe, just maybe, something will come into our life that brings some happiness but that thing wouldn’t have had those more negative events first not come. It is important to remember this when we feel everything is lost. I could relate this to the virus, but I could very easily relate it to something else, or anything in fact. It’s just nice to discover something positive from events which haven’t turned out as we originally thought they might.

I haven’t re-read that but what a ramble I imagine it was. It’s been a long day and i’m already into the next. The early hours of the morning. This isn’t going to be a vintage piece and it’s another day of learning more about discipline. It’s genuinely interesting, for me at least, to see how natural and easy it is to write each day now. I’m so tired, it’s 2am and I really want to sleep but I’m here writing this. It can’t be that far off six months I’ve written every day. Every bloody day despite what has been going on around me. It might not always be exciting for you but fuck, it’s amazing what not wanting to have a public fail will force a person to do. What is interesting though is that I have seen changes in my daily approach to things. While I still have idle moments if I need to focus my energy on something undoubtedly I am far more capable of it that in the past. I genuinely think I have learnt and become a more disciplined man in my everyday life from this. From forcing myself to write no matter what. Habits are everything. Just imagine what kind of an enlightened being I’ll be in another six months. Look out world.

An Unknown Transition Into The Unknown

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m not someone who feels the need to play music all the time. I enjoy silence. I enjoy podcasts. I enjoy music. But a balance between them is vital, as is my mood on their regularity. I have been listening to some music for the last half hour while I was online and avoiding writing this. When I see people listening to music and being able to study, read or write, basically concentrate, I have often wished this was something I was capable of. The words coming on this page would be inspired by the sounds around me but I can’t focus and not even one word follows.

I was listening to some dub and desiring a party or a festival. These last few years have been an interesting transition in life. Everyone goes though different chapters in their lives, even if they marry at 18, never divorce, never leave their home town and keep the same job, there will still be chapters within this. Mine have been slightly more adventurous and I can recognise periods when I wanted nothing but travel and others when I felt a need to rest for example. It took about five years from my first desires for rest to get to were I am now but life is all so extreme that I’m still longing for adventure equally alongside some kind of ‘normal’ existence. ‘Normal’ is a strange and inexplicable concept, which is why I won’t even try explaining what I mean by it and I know my version of it will still be a long way from the man with many chapters in the same town above. But fuck, right now having listened to a little music and recollected a few memories, there is a part of me that wants to put down the ‘normal’ so much and pick up the alternate once more.

I have also come to appreciate this life though recently and value the people living it far more than I ever did at the height of being a prick in my more adventurous moments. I’ve come to realise there is as much value in this existence as one lived with daily excitement and variety, it’s different value but it’s still value regardless, as it too is exciting and varied regardless. That doesn’t stop me wanting to drop it all and jump on a boat heading somewhere wild and exotic though but I doubt that will ever leave me. Equally this current existence is an extreme in the other direction as I know the ideal will be somewhere in the middle. I only meant to come here for a few months to help a mate out and it’s been nearly six months. He’s taking great pleasure in reminding me a few more months and I’ll have broken my longest job record. With this pizza takeaway now being a thing and coronavirus being an even bigger thing it seems I may still be sitting in this same seat in four months trying to understand what the drink in my hand represents.

Is this now life? Well it’s the current version and I’m starting to learn enough from it that interesting things happen when we roll with whatever comes up. In a way that’s a freedom more real than any enforced search for a liberty that ultimately becomes constrictive. There are always things out of our control which make us jump between paths, enduring the grey transitional space between, but once we’re actually on it; life never really seems all that bad. Quite often the opposite. It has become clear to me recently that we’re owed nothing, their is no destiny, that desires will never happen if we wait for them to and ideas of fairness miss the harsh unknown nature of life. It is an irrational and absurd world. Nothing bad has happened but seemingly I’ve managed to understand the knowledge I previously had and it all seems to make a little more sense. This is why discipline is necessary. Why being able to focus the energy to achieve the goal is the only way we can really get things done. Why I’m curious, excited and unsure about what comes next. It’s a little unknown. But then everything always has been.

The Present & Desire

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I was thinking today about finding balance in life. I’ve probably mentioned it before but it always appears to be something that alludes me. In one moment I’m dropping everything and running off on an adventure, and the next I’m craving the stability offered from a home that if I’m honest I’ll struggle to create because I’m always running off on the adventures I yearn for after too long in a stable home like environment. Now either that’s an inability to find balance between the two or it’s an example of someone not being happy with what they’ve got and always believing the green happiness grass is just around the other corner. It’s also just an example of someone who wants it all, and probably another few examples of all sorts of things. For the sake of this though lets stick to the idea that I am unable to find the required level of balance.

There once was a time in life that like everyone else I believed that if I just did, saw, bought, met, went to x, y, z then happiness would be sure to follow. I was not conscious of that belief but certainly it was unconsciously there playing a part in my decision making. I am not suggesting for a second I’m some enlightened being who has managed to rise above such things because I still crave all those things in my own little pursuit of happiness but am aware that with their receipt I won’t be taken around some magical corner that happiness was simply hiding behind. It is also probably most likely that accepting this will bring me closer, as well as not actually looking for it in the first place, but as I love missing the point in the moment and clearly only know it intellectually I’ll continue this self-defeating quest.

By not constantly imagining the answer is around some instant corner nobody has ever seen let alone looked around, we must surely stop craving these extreme changes in life, such as finding the answer in some foreign land or by the hearth. Importantly also it takes away from the present, in that you’re neither in the foreign land or at home if your mind is always looking out for some hypothetical feeling of happiness it imagines it should be experiencing. You forget to actually enjoy the place you’ve made the effort to go to or the contentment and security of home when you take the time to relax. I suspect were we to enjoy these things properly we may stop craving them so much when we don’t have them anymore. Have you ever drunk that last mouthful of coffee without realising before looking in the cup to find there is no more and feeling unsatisfied. Compare that to really taking the time to enjoy and appreciate that last mouthful; you are content with what you’ve had, you feel satisfied. Why would life on a larger scale be any different.

Work Life Balance Bullshit

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I was discussing with a friend / taking the piss out of the concept of the work life balance today. He owns his own company which means either there is no such thing as a work life balance or that he has created one he has to be comfortable with. I remember doing a training session for a new teaching job a few years ago in Athens and we had to do a one hour session on the importance of finding a work life balance. It is fair to say it was mocked widely as we went through it and this became clear why when the job seemed to take up six of the seven in my week shortly after, with very little reward. Now my mate works six out of seven days and this is normal for him but for me it was a travesty of existence. I had been used to working whenever I needed to and I would do it in a way that consisted of giving up on life for a month or two before giving up on work for the following six. I have worked on christmas tree farms, at language camps, picking fruit and so on. All pretty exhausting jobs but ones which as long as you’re willing to just work intensely allow you to save a little before finding somewhere interesting to enjoy life.

These days I have started to look beyond that despite it’s obvious benefits and am willing to find something I enjoy and which I would be happy to spend more time doing over the course of the year but far less intensely while doing it. People often don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re not working but I always enjoy my own company. I realised recently that my problem, if you want to look at it negatively, is that I treat life like a series of hobbies, let’s just say I’ve put far more value on life than work over the years. But that is me, not somebody else and it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. The chef who goes into his restaurant on his day off so he can experiment and cook something for the pleasure is potentially finding the balance that suits him. My six months of pleasure were great but I always hated the extreme nature of dropping everything and disappearing into work mode somewhere random. There was a balance but it also felt like living two extremes.

Clearly there is no formula you can teach someone and people have to find their own way. We must also recognise the futility of it when we’re working six days a week in jobs we dislike but need, especially when our manages then proceed to lecture us on the importance of finding balance. There is something almost perverse about capitalism heartless joy in that respect but everyone at every level needs to hit their figures. That is the reality of the work life balance. The man at the bottom works so the guy at the top can enjoy his life. Two very different types of figures. I wonder how long that can last. In the meantime it does make disappearing away into the forest sound rather appealing.