effort – Observations and Misunderstandings

It’s got to that point in life where I’m thinking of entering the cryptocurrency world. I’ve been given a hot tip and have been attempting for the last twelve hours to act on it. It turns out that buying cryptocurrency is not straight forward. I like things to be straight forward. It’s a complicated world too. Unless people are heavily into it people rarely know much or understand much about what it even is. I just like the idea that once bitcoin cost pennies and now they’re about nine thousand dollars each. Someone out there got stinking rich and is now swanning around having a lovely time. I would like that to be me.

It’s luck really. Unless you know the people who are creating these things and what their next step is, which is illegal of course and also no guarantee of success, then the likelihood is you’ll not make much or you’ll lose it all. They’re like penny shares and if the reward is high then surely the risk is even higher. Some may make a fortune but luck plays probably the biggest part of all. But then luck plays a huge part in all success in a way. Of course the adage that you make your own luck is accurate in many ways that doesn’t mean you’re ever fully in control, or potentially in control at all, of events.

I refer to success in making money in one particular way but this could relate to lots of things. Sports and music would be such examples. That isn’t to say the sports stars and musicians haven’t put in a ridiculous and almost obsessive amount of hard work and sacrifice because they will have but to deny the existence of luck and various events going their way fortuitously in undeniable.

I need some luck then. Am I a lucky person? I’m certainly not an unlucky person, I think I can cede that. Which means I must be lucky. Is there a middle ground? Well nothing is ever black and white so I’ll claim some variety of the middle ground once more. I do love the middle ground. There’s nothing quite like being indecisive. I think I wrote a piece on it months ago, something about the virtue of sitting on the fence. My memory tells me it was a good one. This may be less so but it is better than what I was originally going to write which was; “Tonight I am tired. I have been defeated”. Definitely an improvement. I try not to winge too much about not sleeping enough and working too much but I really need to stop averaging five hours a night. I’m used to doing seasonal work where you destroy yourself for six to eight weeks and then travel. This feels like it’s been going on since lockdown. The travel part really can’t come soon enough.

That’ll do for tonight. I thank you for your patience and your interest if you’ve made it this far. I’m off to bed.

When people get into their thirties, like I am well into now, they discover new things and sometimes become mad and obsessed with them. In their twenties it doesn’t happen so much but thirties for sure I’ve seen people go crazy. The born again christians of whatever new hobby or life direction they take to fulfil that empty hole in their life. My lack of the focus and attention span required may just protect me from this. I’m currently reading a book on beekeeping and they’re incredible animals, from the nanny bees keeping the larvae at the perfect temperature, and I mean to one degree celsius, to the queen laying two thousand eggs a day to the language they use communicating about good sources of pollen like little stoners. They’re incredible and I want my own apiary, healthy nutritious raw honey, tasty alcoholic mead and the connection and bond with an actual hive of tens of thousand of bees. Will I become obsessed, well maybe we’ll see. It may just fall at the wayside like my plan to learn how to write code – I downloaded an app about a month ago – and making beer – I bought a brewing set about two months ago.

The problem with desiring doing too much is that we put so much effort into the excitement of the planning and dreaming that the actual doing becomes boring. The effort and hard work required to complete these fantasies doesn’t compare to how we have been imagining it in our excitable dreams. In the end we do nothing. Part of this then involves discipline and this seems to be the thing that has been lacking for me. Of course it suited me in my twenties having no discipline, who needs it when you’re just traveling around and having fun. This continued into my thirties but at thirty-four I think I may have to become a born again disciplinarian, or at least born again about the idea of it. If I ever have kids, poor little fuckers. This writing experiment is just that, an experiment but it is also an attempt at learning discipline and creating the habit required to not even notice the effort required to be disciplined. I have the physical discipline to write daily it appears, or at least do at the moment while my life is in one place and stable, but not always the discipline to write well or with effort. That will come, as much because it’ll be boring for myself to just dribble out inane nonsense. But what I am curious to see is whether this discipline can spread out and infect other parts of my life. The discipline to do yoga every morning, to do a little exercise, to eat well – these three things are starting to become necessary more each day as I start to feel the aches and pains of age. Maybe I’ll even make my beer and god forbid sit down long enough without procrastinating to find time to write an app.

Time is the master. While it may be infinite our moment within it certain isn’t. What has happened now in the past is done, it is over. It may have been great and full of experience but if we do not look forward we just become those grumpy old lonely travellers lost in their missed opportunities and repetitive stories. Today I drive to Cockermouth, the day after I probably come back, and the day after that, well thats anyones guess but I suspect it may be a good one.

Tag: effort

Permanent Seasonal Work

Born Again