Tag: hitchhiking

It’s Time For Now

Hamar Williams1 Comment

It is such a shame that the idea of living in the moment has been flogged to death. It’s past the point of cliché. It’s such a shame because it’s also something that is of such importance. Recently I have been attempting to practice this and have had far more actual and empirically measurable success than ever before. It seems strange to suggest it is something measurable because it is something you experience without a computer scanning your brain waves. You feel it though and it is measurable because your conscious mind can compare it to previous memories of experience.

Recently I have been able to bring my head out of the clouds. The clouds were anxious one revolving around the stresses of a man soon to turn thirty-five and with little to show for it in a conventional sense. What we must always remember is that we are not alone in this world and undoubtedly somewhere someone is feeling very similar emotions to us in this moment. We are never alone in our worries, people have been there before and others will be there in the future. But the actualities are not important, the point is that we lose ourselves in our mind and struggle to exist in the moment. While I am thinking about the enormity of the future and the size of the task of achievement ahead of me I am not experiencing anything that life gives me while I am sitting on this boat, or spending time with friends or family, or walking up the mountain, or whatever it is.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have just spent the last half an hour coming up with a pretty spectacular plan for this time next year involving hitchhiking through Patagonia, and sailing to Antarctica or the Chilean fjords on the west, or both. This escapism into fantasy may be a hell of a lot more enjoyable than embracing the anxiety of sorting ones life out but it is equally as pointless. Of course we have to come up with plans to make anything happen but it’s important not to spend more time in them than is absolutely necessary. The moment this happens it is nothing more than escapism.

What of the success I mentioned earlier then. It’s not ground breaking. Somehow you need to find a way to step back, to centre yourself. It is as if you step out of your mind for a second, observing yourself. See your surroundings and understand you’re not in that future, you’re not taking on the entire task of fixing life there and then, or you’re not sailing fjords. Step back and see what your eyes see, what your ears can hear, nose can smell. You just come back into yourself for a second and in the process break the chain, the flow the mind was rambling on in in it’s old habit. Then you realise all you have is today, and think what you can do in this moment, today, how to achieve whatever it is the mind has been intoxicated with all this time. You can’t do anything more than you can do now, you take it one step, one day at a time. That is all, that is all you can do. Nothing else is important, but when the time comes for it to be so you’ll deal with it then, one step, one day at a time. Even then we still procrastinate, it doesn’t stop us being lazy, we continue to put things off but at least we only have to deal with little things as they come. In time who knows, that’s the future, it’s conjecture, it’s still nothing more than a fantasy. It’s not now, it’s not real.

Night Shift

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There are certain jobs that suit different people over others. I’ve done a few bread deliveries over the last month and it is one of those jobs that would be either perfect or a nightmare. Getting up early is a total nightmare of course when you’re not in that rhythm and you end up doing the shift on only three hours sleep but it doesn’t take a lot of thought so you can get by. It is one of those jobs that gives you the opportunity for some peace and quiet as you rarely speak to anyone until a few hours into the shift and even then it’s only a few sentences of routine greetings and jokes. I can imagine there is a certain repetition and they must love it when a new guy comes along. The roads are empty, it is dark, quiet and you have time for yourself. There’s also another world of things and people going on that over time would give opportunity to the most interesting set of stories. Without the interesting random events though it would probably become tedious like any job and if I’m still helping out here in ten years doing this then please somebody come and find me. There’s also the possibility that these interesting stories are only comparatively interesting and are few and far between. From time to time and in the short term though there is something interesting and enjoyable about it, but then you could say that about virtually any job if you were the sort with a curious mind.

I would be interested to know what a night shift stocking shelves in a supermarket would be like. I hope to never find out, let me make that clear, but the curiosity is more that I wonder if I enjoy the van driving at night over the working at night, I suspect I would hate every second of stocking shelves no matter the time of day, or the packing warehouse, or especially the cold outdoor work in the winter. So perhaps it has nothing to do with the night time but more with my fondness for driving around and feeling all warm inside my van. I do prefer the night hours more though. There is also some romanticism going on here and I have always imagined lorry drivers have been the types who love the solitude, the long endless nights and being left alone. In fact I have met a few, I have hitched with a few, and while I can’t confirm they enjoy being left alone they can be total oddballs for sure.

Ultimately it takes a certain type of person to work nights, to work such unsocial hours which seem to conflict with our natural rhythm. I have a lot of respect for nurses and doctors in that case as not only do they work nights but sometimes days too, and even then there shifts are long and intense. People are generally amazing I think is the conclusion and by amazing I mean they are all so varied there is always something to discover. Why we seem so determined to pander to our fears and box everyone away, especially in such enormous generalised boxes is beyond me. There may be jobs out there but try getting everyone to work a night shift unless they love it or are desperate and you can see why people don’t want to just work any job. If people were just given the education to discover there own paths then what an interesting workforce we would have. That and a bit of variety I would imagine.