Tag: challenge

The Habitual Self-Evolution

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Now it’s not that I’m not enjoying this writing challenge that I set myself and thought others might like inflicted upon them, but when I finally decided to check to see when the last day would be and discovered it not in early October or possibly even late September, instead mid November, my heart sunk a little. There was a little glimmer of hope in my mind that I had less than two months left and it turned out I have a full three. As I said it’s not that I’m not enjoying it and I know for certain I’m getting a lot from it, but I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to not have a day in which there isn’t something at the back of my mind reminding me I still have to sit down and write something. It does feel like my one daily chore and as I write that I realise how lucky I am to have only one real chore. It’s not cool to blow ones own trumpet but for such an undisciplined person it has been a remarkable show of discipline. If only it was possible to transport that into other parts of my life.

It’s also quite easy though let’s be honest. To write four times a week but on any particular day or even at any frequency within the week would probably be more of a challenge than knowing it’s a daily routine of sitting down and doing something. When something has to be done daily there is a lack of opportunity for free thought and potential excuses. If I know I don’t necessarily have to do something today as I still have tomorrow to do it creates a different kind of challenge altogether. Discipline with choice or discipline without. I know myself and it may be a struggle. They do say, whoever ‘they’ are, that if you can do something for a whole year you will create enough of a habit to be able to maintain consistency and practice. I’ll now have a real example to use of whether I believe there to be any truth in that.

My heart sunk then when I discovered I still have a quarter of a year to go. It sunk despite knowing I enjoy and appreciate the benefits of doing this. This isn’t about really refining any styles, although I hope I will have done without realising. I’ll read from the beginning one day and see if my writing evolved over the time. It is about creating the habit of doing something regularly. I know I repeat myself a lot, or assume I do, but certainly I see a huge importance in understanding, observing and changing habit where necessary. So much of our lives are defined by habit. Arguably our actions and potentially even characters are just a series of habits formed from birth. We can say we have both good and bad habits and there would be validity in such a statement but I would like to explore whether it’s possible to challenge all habits no matter how they’re viewed in my mind. Can we be habit free? If habits are character defining then the answer is probably no but it would certainly be fun trying to find out. In the meantime this is simply one more piece closer to a new and hopefully long term habit. I share this with you, and pretend sometimes it’s for you, but let’s be honest I’m just using you all in my quest for some kind of self-evolution.

To Endure The Discipline

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There are probably a few things wrong with this blog. Firstly it’s a blog and I know blogs are not always viewed upon in the most appreciated of lights, I assume this is because of the potential for a little self-indulgence and self-aggrandising. I don’t dismiss that, and while I try to avoid doing this I know I am probably guilty sometimes, especially the self-indulgence. The fact I write from the first perspective quite often probably doesn’t help. There is something else about this particular blog though I know definitely doesn’t lead to ease of anything.

Because I write every single day, there are numerous days in which I force myself to find both the energy and the subject matter to write about. I doubt anyone has read every piece I have written, I wouldn’t blame you for not as there have been a lot and I know I wouldn’t have kept up were it someone else’s project. One thing that is clear though if you have read a few is that there are a lot of pieces in which I have written just about anything to complete the task of writing something every day. Not that that isn’t a problem because ultimately the first and really only priority was to write each and every day, after that writing well and about interesting things could only ever be a secondary. I don’t doubt there have been days in which I can be proud of both my writing and the content but there are too some which are quite the opposite.

It turns out it’s quite difficult to write something on a daily basis and I’m impressed that some professionals manage it so proficiently when they do. Admittedly being professionals they make the time but still it is an achievement I am recognising more as this year has progressed. I struggle because not being a professional writer means I have to be a professional something else and for me that is making pizzas in the evening and delivering bread in the early morning. I wasn’t expecting to drive tomorrow but events have allowed such a scenario to happen, so having finished pizzas I know I need to be awake in about four hours. When you throw in the lack of desire to talk politics, the lack of brain energy to talk philosophy not that I do on here very often despite my original desire to do so, and really a lack of desire to talk about anything, I find myself writing pieces like this. Now this could appeal to the people who write about writing blogs, and what I am doing is a great experiment in blog writing I’m sure, but it’s not the kind of thing that would garner great attention and back slaps.

I would love to pretend I am above back slaps but let’s be honest if I’m willing to publish this every day it’s not just because doing this publicly helps force the discipline to continue. We all love being told we’re doing something well etcetera etcetera. I have mentioned before that when the year is up I’ll perhaps write one or two pieces a week but hopefully make them really interesting and thought out. In a way that is even more challenging in a disciplined sense and also sometimes I feel my best pieces come out in those late at night forced moments. It’s strange like that. Writing this has so far been a very interesting experience and I know I’ll elaborate more as the days tick down towards the full year. Thankfully though that is more than enough of a piece for tonight and I hope someone somewhere managed to appreciate just slightly the insight into the life of someone who is enduring a blog. Enduring sounds perfect as my eyes begin to close.

An Inspiration Block

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I accept they can often not be entirely relevant to what I have written of course but I still enjoy them. I have been procrastinating a little too much these last two days and this blog has felt like a chore. I stepped away from my computer about ten minutes ago after struggling with writers block and thought up a great title. I have subsequently forgotten it. It was really smart though and I was very happy with myself. It related to my inability to think of anything to write about and my inability to stop avoiding just writing.

This blog really is a journey. The initial excitement seems to have gone, as has the secondary excitement when I initially published my first piece after the first month. There have been some pieces I’ve been really happy with and some, I suspect like this, which I have just struggled through. I suggested a few weeks ago that I was looking forward to completing the year so I could just write two to three times a week but with quality. This idea tempts me. It is contrary to the initial challenge though and while I have written after midnight and I have regularly written more that the four hundred word limit, to stop writing a daily piece would challenge the very foundations of this blog. It is a challenge though but that is part of what this is as an experiment. Some days I will have only little time and others little idea, but then as I said I have written some pieces I’ve felt inspired by. These ups and downs are natural in anything of this kind of regularity, nobody can be interesting everyday.

There are possibilities that I need to crack back on with that discipline journey. Maybe it is just down to a lack of that. Certainly the fact I have spent the last hour looking at everything online but this blog, would suggest I have slipped slightly. I doubt I ever had the mental discipline to write something of well thought out quality daily but physically sitting down and just doing it never seemed too much stress. I must commend whoever has continued to read to this point, your dedication to struggle through to this point with me is commendable. It really has been a slog this evening and I still haven’t even thought up a title or looked at images to use. A sleeping man might do the trick for tonight. Maybe I should finish with a lullaby. Fuck it I’m off to bed.

Day 32

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Fuck!! Today is the big day, the first piece I publish properly. I don’t know if I’m ready for this mentally, I’m a bit nervous actually as it has been purely writing for myself until this point. It’s also probably worth mentioning that today is Day 32 and if anyone is inclined for any reason to read all the way back to Day One, I was supposed to publish for the first time on Day 31. Yes I missed my own opening party by a day.

But what the hell am I talking about I hear you say. I should explain as I doubt anyone is going to read all the way back to the first piece, and even if they did, I haven’t exactly stuck to my own rules. This is an experiment, I’m experimenting with myself, although not in a teenage boy kind of way. The idea is to learn the discipline needed, and create the required habit, of writing a piece on this blog every day for an entire year, three hundred and sixty-five days to be precise. That has already been broken, but I have published everyday so far, which was a rule change I decided upon at one point. I wrote two pieces one day, saved it in reserve and subsequently used it one day. That piece was Amor Fati and I make no excuses as events made writing that day impossible. The other rule I seem to be breaking more or less daily is that each piece was supposed to be only ten words more or less than four hundred, and there was a reason for that although I won’t go into it again. I seemingly love the sound of my own thoughts though as I am averaging about five hundred words per day.

So far then it has been an interesting experiment. I have proved I can write daily, although were I to go adventuring and my environment changed that may prove a new challenge to sustain. There have been days I haven’t been able to think of much and have just dribbled something inane onto the page, but then that is all part of it. It was interesting to realise I found it quite challenging to write and at first what came out seemed quite immature. Not really writing for the last ten years has not allowed my writing style to develop. It’s just practise. There are more observations I could share with you but I can’t remember them off the top of my head right now so they can’t be important. Ultimately though I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. Whether habit has been formed yet I’m unsure, they do say something about a month of repetition being an important milestone though. This is just a simple blog on my observations, misunderstanding and everything in between, it may be self-indulgent but then I’m kind of doing it for myself more than anyone else. Saying that, I do hope you enjoy it, and I must thank you for at least taking the time to read this far.

Tomorrow

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The challenge of an experiment or a learning experience, or whatever is best to describe my attempts at learning discipline and practising writing at the same time, is that there will be days when nothing really comes to mind about what to talk about. There is a list of things written down in a notebook somewhere, a notebook unfortunately out of reach in the next room, on various topics that could be worth writing about. This list was written down about six months ago though when the idea of writing this first arose and bar What would Henry Rollins do no other topic on the list comes to mind. That is however not the point because so far nothing that I have written about has been from any list or pre planned. That may be pretty obvious, mostly each piece seems off the cuff and I have preferred that to planning as seeing something evolve organically is enjoyable, and let’s be honest having a little ramble for four hundred words is far less effort than writing about a particular topic.

Do people enjoy reading a little ramble that’s the thing. There are plenty of blogs, opinion pieces or editorials in which if you look carefully it is pretty clear they’re not much other than a little ramble dressed up as serious journalism. Todays piece certainly doesn’t even reach those levels as it threatens to drift off to sleep in the gutters of nothingness but that doesn’t mean it’s existence has no value. We never know what is born out of any event, cause and effect if you will, it isn’t alway the moments which appear great that holds a true sense of enormity in a lasting sense. Sometimes things are born out of the most inconspicuous of events and this may just be one of them. It equally may not, that is for future us to discover. What is clear though is that if every moment has the possibility of creating something whose significance is not immediately obvious, then we should not dismiss any moment. Another way of putting that is that we could attempt to be conscious of all we do at all times. Be the Buddha, be enlightened he says, be human also but don’t dismiss something because on first glance it appears to hold no immediate value. Today though, the task of rambling with an obvious conclusion is complete, but we never know what tomorrow will bring.