Tag: Writing challenge

Goodbye

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It turns out to be harder ending something than it does starting or sustaining it. We can fall into things and then rely on habitual behaviours to sustain them but finding a suitable way of calling time appears to be the real challenge. This day was always coming. The end was inevitable despite the odd temptation. The hard part is not about struggling to let go or fearing what comes next, it’s about being able to walk away from something despite it being such a big part of your life, and on the whole a positive part. Throw in the ego which somehow wants to go out with style and any suitable last piece becomes impossible. This is not my first draft. I have had more drafts today, or attempts, than I’ve had second drafts in the entire year. But call an end we must for all this must end one day.

It’s the self-congratulatory indulgent nature of this last piece I’m struggling with. I’m pleased with myself for going a whole year, writing a piece every single day. It’s not that I didn’t think myself capable but I’m only human. Granted there was the post mountain rave piece I only managed a few sentences, the day I wrote a piece but didn’t publish and the day in the first month I published a piece I had written as a back up a few days earlier. I never said I was perfect but there are no judges, nobody except myself to say I passed or failed. I may have involved others, but like most things on social media I was using you for my own ends. The Strava Wanker of the blog writing world. So I pat myself on the back, fuck it I deserve it, and carry on.

This was a fun experiment. It was exhausting and it has been a hectic year. Some pieces I really enjoyed and was pleased with and others descended into little more than journal entries. But it has been a whole year and that is plenty of time for it to morph into a mouthpiece for whatever I’m thinking or feeling, both positive and negative as the days unfolded. What now then, what comes in it’s place. Something must always come in its place. It is important to know when to finish things, and in this case the natural conclusion comes from the planned conclusion. I’ll accept I’m quite a sentimental person and will miss my daily jaunt into writing. I enjoyed creating the habit even though it wasn’t always easy. But now this habit must morph into something new. Time will give the answers and you may hear from me again, just with different intentions and not on here. For now though, thank you for sharing this with me.

On a final note I would like to wish a happy birthday to the man I call father. Sixty-nine years young today.

Until Tomorrow

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Staring at a blank screen. The modern day blank paper. Think of something, do it now. Be creative, write some words worth repeating. Yet nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.

Well always something but it can feel like nothing. It’s times like these you remember to just start saying something, anything. Less than three weeks left. How will I force myself when I don’t have to. That is the real discipline. But I have an idea. Ideas never unfold as supposed to though. I’m curious to know how it’ll feel not to write. After one year of doing this everyday no matter what. How do you then experience not doing it. I might actually miss this little blog.

What to replace it with though. Likely nothing I’ll force upon others in the short term at least but hopefully something creative in another respect. It was discussed, the importance of creativity with a friend a few weeks ago. To say it is important over simplifies an understanding of creativity. But to go down that route in this moment will only result in me being both ridiculous and pretentious. Let’s just say it brings something to life, creativity in any form. it’s not just painting a picture or writing some words, it anything, it’s life.

Bellend.

That’ll do. I have heartburn. I wasn’t very creative with my dinner tonight and ate yesterdays lentils and sausage mixed with some pasta. My burps taste of sausage but I think it’s the day old lentils that have done it. I have a feeling day old lentils do this type of thing. Ah feelings. I quite fancy a beer. I think I’m just thirsty. I would love to say I don’t add salt to my food but certainly that sausage would have been packed full. Sausages are so disgusting yet we always go back. That’s because they’re also really tasty. Or they can be. This one was.

A Cretan rustic sausage to be precise. I liked Crete. I would like to go back. I was tempted this winter actually. Seems like a strange time to be moving places though. The world is shutting down and I’m doggedly fighting what is before my eyes. Why do we do this. Why can acceptance be so difficult. Too many options I always say. Most likely fear of something not immediately obvious. Back to Scotland instead though and what feels like the epicentre of everything viral. It isn’t but seemingly not far off. To leave a reasonably relaxed, warm Greece for a dark, cold inevitable lockdown in Scotland. We make the strangest of choices. They are neither right nor wrong because there is not such thing. Simply a series of events we compare against each other based upon a set of ideas formed from something long forgotten. And yet we choose value and we choose our response to this choice. One day we shall overcome. That’s likely what death beds are for though. Avoiding life’s only real obsession may be wise for now.

I shall end on this.

For now. And come back tomorrow.

A Football Challenge

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Can I blame my obsession with football on love for the sport? Perhaps it’s the love of procrastinating and the ample opportunities the utterly obscene amount of football news websites allow for. Maybe it’s some primal instinct within me that needs to blindly support a tribe, or two in my case. One Scottish, one English. I’m Scottish so it’s allowed, there’s no other reason anyone would support anything Scottish football related. Whatever it is I do spend an awful lot of time with my head in some kind of football related world. It could be that this is inspired by my team losing the derby today against our fiercest and most loathed knuckledragging right wing unionist rivals. Bastards. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I despise Rangers with a passion and feel angry hatred towards them. This is part irrational and it’s a remarkable thing to experience and recognise within me when I like to think myself so rational and calm ordinarily. Note the like to think there. Anyway we lost and I’m not happy about it. My other team aren’t doing much better. Now may be the moment to do something extreme.

There have been days in the past where I’ve not allowed myself any technology until noon, or none all day at all. In those days I go without, I find by early evening I’ve done so much and been so productive that genuinely I’ve run out of things to do. How technology takes up so much of our day is quite worrying. But it’s not the phone or the laptop because I can make a call or do some work, it’s the things that we allow ourselves to be distracted on with these things. Facebook doesn’t really take up too much of my time but I can easily sit for two hours immersed in all things football; the latest news, gossip and whatever other click-bait I come across.

The idea may have been inspired by me being annoyed at losing but I thought about giving up football for a year. Absolutely no news, gossip or even games. That would be extreme but what I was curious about was what I would do to fill the time that everything football takes up. That excited me. But it’s also perhaps a bit too extreme, and unnecessarily so. Let’s say I only watched the games and nothing else. That would be less than four hours of the week taken up which really is very little. Imagine not knowing anything that has happened leading up to it, whether a player is injured or even whether the coach has been sacked. So perhaps the hour leading up to kick off and the half hour after as the result is digested. Get the team news and find out what’s going on prior to kick off like people did before twenty-four hour everything. Even then that’s a maximum seven hours a week. I am in no doubt that there will have been times that I spent that much time doing football stuff in one day alone.

The thing is that football itself isn’t bad or a waste of time, it does serve a purpose. Everything around it these days seems to be the thing that causes the problems. It has become a soap opera. Who needs Eastenders when you’ve got public rows between players and managers or whatever nonsense the media create and inflame. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it though but I want to. As much as anything I want to do it to see if both I can and what will happen, as in what will the outcome be in regards all that extra time I find myself with. If I can do this blog everyday for over eleven months I’m sure I can challenge myself to a new game of discipline. Which is what it all comes down to. This writing is about finding the discipline to do something while that would be about finding the discipline to deny something, or more positively, to do something else. It’s actually quite an exciting prospect. I’ll need a new challenge once this finishes in about four weeks after all.

The Habitual Self-Evolution

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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.