rebel lemming

Here is the problem. I wiped the slate clean and now I have a blank canvas. This should have made it easier to write. Instead I find myself staring at the screen and doodling in my head. Which basically means I have a few hundred ideas and they’re all going  in different direction and when I try to get something on paper ( or these days, on my screen) it’s me trying to say everything at once. So I delete, try to refocus and try again. Same result. So all of a sudden it’s three weeks later and I haven’t written a thing. And now it’s even harder to write anything because I feel like I’ve failed again. Because one of the main things I wanted to do this year is write.

Basically I need to take my own advice in this earlier post and stop beating myself up over things that I haven’t done. So hereby I am putting the bat down. really it’s down now. and instead of forcing myself to write something, just anything (and I realized I just did), I am not.

I will take a step back. I am not going to think about it anymore. and tomorrow I am going to open my moleskine and write down every idea that I have. and then the next day I am going to see if I can organize it into anything coherent. Categorize it. and then I am going to apply those categories to this blog. and then I am going to write. Because with this I will create some direction for my writing. and not just be a unguided projectile. I have all ideas ranging from balcony gardening, to getting back into cross stiching, geocaching, cooking and all of it I want to write about. and it just feels like it’s all over the place. But at the same time, this is who I am and this is my life and well this is my blog. So I should be able to write about all of it if  wanted. And who is stopping my anyway. Oh that would be me. Why? Because I’ve read too many things about finding your niche. Write about one thing. Focus. If you write about everything that you’ll never get readers.

Well to them I say pffff. Yes you heard me pffff. I shall write about my life. My boring, day dreamy, a thousand and one projects but sometimes all I do is play the xbox life. and I shall take pictures along the way.

Hello

looking forward

We all have habits. good and bad habits. Personally I think it’s our habits that define us. Well to a point. If somebody says habits your mind will probably jump to smoking or drinking or some other bad habit but on the whole it will be a bad habit.  ”oooh I don’t have any habits” you might hear yourself say. trust me, we all have habits. How you wake up, how you make breakfast, the way we put on our clothes, how we drink our tea. The vast portion of our day really is made up or influenced by our habits. Our little idiosyncrasies.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us. - John Dryden

I always say I am a habitual person. It takes me only a few days and something is routine, a new habit.  I have problems with stopping to smoke, for instance, because it’s a habit for me to smoke when I am at work. NO, I don’t mean smoke when I am literally sitting at my desk I mean to to take breaks and smoke. So that’s a habit. I don’t smoke at home and I don’t smoke in the weekends or mostly on holiday. But as soon as I am near work,  I reach for the cigarettes. stupid habit.  I have more stupid habits but this is the biggie really. So you’d say it would be easy for me to change a bad habit. but no.

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Once in a while the simplest lessons are right there in front of you.

A few day ago we received a box of goodies (read  hagelslag which are chocolate sprinkles  for on your bread at breakfast- it’s a dutch thing!), a chocolate miffy and some other stuff from a friend of ours in the Netherlands.  As R and I ran to the cupboard to get bread and immediately use our hagelslag, the box it all came in landed on the floor and in a very short time our cat was going insane with it.

jumping in and out and in and out, running around it, dragging her string in and out of it and chasing her own tail in it but best of all is when the side flaps appear to be attacking you

Vala and the attack of the box

Right next to her is this odd pink pig thing that is also a scratching post that had us rolling in the aisles when we saw it at the pet store and she likes it. She sits on, plays with the paws and once in a while also remembers that it’s a scratching post and not us.

But this box she loves. I mean reallly loooovvvveeeessss. At night we put it on top of the cupboard so as not to keep us awake all night when she us playing with it and she looks like we’ve just told her that she’s going back to the pound. In the morning it goes back on the ground and it’s long love lost found again.  The pig sits lonely being jumped on once in a while but for now it one cat and her box.

so what is the simple lesson. it can’t really get more simple.

It’s very often the simplest things in life that bring you the greatest joy.

the pig and the box

These days we want everything fast and we want it the second we think of it. Everything is about instant gratification. If we can’t have it right now then it takes too long and we give up. In our jobs we we want everything as fast as we possibly can without putting in the time or the effort to actually earn that promotion. We want a new car, we’ll get a car loan. We want those shoes, we’ll use the credit card. What happened to saving for something, working to earn something? If everyone always gives up because any hurdle is too high these days who is still working for their dreams.

I’ve made some decision in the last month that have caused the odd raised eyebrow. I hear a lot of but didn’t you want to… Yes I do and I will.

In the past I was one of those people that couldn’t look very far down a road before it got blurry. It would seem endless, with huge hurdles and I would get distracted and give up.  I would always have a new daydream, a new plan, there would always be a new turn in the road to take.  I started most of my plans with the best intentions. In the end, though, I would always come back to the same dream.

I decided to visualize my road. Seeing what my hurdles could be, seeing if they were real. Also I wanted to know what I would have to do in order to make it to the end of the road and get to where I wanted to go.

I can see the road ahead of me right now. I can see the realistic hurdles and have taken down the imaginary ones. I can see the side roads leading away from it and the distractions.  I’ve sort of got a game plan (I really hate to use this terminology but it seems to fit here.)  And the game plan involves putting in some major hours, sacrificing a few things right now and well simply just getting on with it.

Do you have a dream that you always come back to? what’s stopping you going for it? Are the hurdles real or imaginary? can you visualize what you have to do to make it happen?

(This is me being very much me. slightly goofy, rambling through the english countryside, happy because it’s sunny and I am standing in the middle of a sea of yellow flowers)

I have a question for you. Who do you want to be?

I want to you to think about this. really think.

I want to be an adventurer.  not necessarily the kind that does things like live in a cave for a year or ride a donkey through asia. I want my life to be my adventure. I don’t really care if someone else thinks it’s an adventure or not. I want to wake up each morning and look forward to my day (I am working on this…), I want to look at my girlfriend and see in her eyes that to be with me is a crazy ride. I don’t want my life to be predictable (sadly right now I am predictable with certain things). I don’t want to conform to the norm because it’s easier.

I want to be a loving, caring and passionate person. I want to a touch eccentric.

I discovered something. I don’t want to be a WHO in neon lights. To be me doesn’t mean I am on my road alone (though admittedly the road is kind of scenic, calm and not too busy), I don’t hurt anybody by being me. (this one is taking a bit of time to get used to).

I discovered something else too. Who I want to be I have always already been. It’s just been buried. by judgement, by life, by conforming to the norm to fit in.

This is who I want to be. and you, who do you want to be? Do you let others tell you who you are? When you daydream about your life, who are? where are you? and who are you with?

Do you know about Zenhabits? well you should. Go to this website. Read everything you can and then hurry back here. anyway a while ago Leo Babauta wrote about living with no goals. And I agree with him. To live with no goals would be the most stress free way to live. but here is the problem for me. My goals are keeping sane. They are keeping me from standing up at work and screaming at people right before I hit them over the head with a healthy dose of reality. (I am aware this make me sound insane)

I have one major goal. I want to live a happy life. free from obstruction and judgement. just a simple life. living in the sun. growing tomatoes. Smelling all the different herbs outside my kitchen window. Watching the cats be lazy in the sun. See the dogs sleep contently in the corner of the kitchen floor on the cool tiles and watching my girlfriend out in the garden picking the vegetables we need for dinner.

anyway I digress. goals. that’s where we were. see I need them. Giving half a chance I wonder of into my day dream at any given notice. So goals. to get to my simple life (which I will get to!) I needed to set some sub-goals.  Well that’s what I am calling them. If I have only one major goal then what do I call the little goals to get there? so my sub-goals:

1. clear debts
2. create a financial buffer of at leasat 6 months
3. educate myself further and grow my online business.

That’s it. Three goals. So very easy to say and not so easy to do. but those goals are there with every decision I make during the day. And these three goals will get me to my one big goal. To lead my simple  happy life.

Could you live without goals? or are you somebody who also needs goals in order to stay focused?

Last week I was watching Adam Baker’s TEDx talk  ”what does freedom mean to you?”.   ( I can highly advise watching it by the way). And the question has been with me since then. At the oddest moments the question has popped into my head, “what does freedom mean to me?”

Freedom is free will. The vast majority of us think we live in a free world. We, in the developed world, have bought into the best marketing campaign of the modern age. We believe we live with freedom.

The vast majority of us live with a script that was written for us by governments, politicians, religious leaders and educational institutions. From the moment we are born, we are moulded.  We are hit by a massive marketing campaign that has convinced all of us that unless we follow these steps or aim for a certain lifestyle we are not successful. Status is eqaul to money. Respect is equal to the status we have.  Success is equal to the stuff we have.

In truth we live a life that was designed for us. In truth we are drones in  consumerist shallow society.  and I was a drone for a long time. I measured my success by the stuff that I had, that I could buy more then others, and I a measured my self worth via other people stuff. that’s how I ranked my success. What could I buy more then others and what could others buy more then me. I bought into the marketing campaign. But I wasn’t happy. I had all this stuff but I wasn’t happy. and it started to weigh me down. so I stopped and we sold it. I rebelled and now I am happier.

Free will is the ability of someone to make choices that a free from certain kinds of constraints. 

We have free will. we can decide what makes us happy. We can decide for ourselves what makes us successful.

What does freedom mean to me?

Freedom of mind. Freedom of stuff. Freedom of designed constraints. Freedom of thought. Freedom to be who I want to be. Free from consumerism.

Yet I see the mistakes and debts I made in my old life as something I need to clear first in order to live my life of freedom. So right now this is what I am doing. Working to pay of the old and planning the new.

What does freedom mean to you? How much are you willing to sacrifice to get it? Are you doing that now? or have you made a plan on how to get there?

I really don’t like new years resolutions. I don’t really see the point. if you want to so something then just do it. On the other hand and in a true contradiction  I like marking time for a challenge or resolution. saying things like in a month I’ll be doing this, or starting now and for the next 6 months I’ll be doing this.

So I find myself at the start of the Gregorian calendar thinking of the next 12 months, and I am not going to call them resolutions because they are not. I became insprired by Aileen over at creating clever  and I have made a 2012 manifesto for myself today. I will be printing  it out in A3 and hanging it on a wall, to remind myself every day what this year is all about:  TRUTH and FOCUS. and what I want from this year.

Have you thought about what 2012 means to you? are there specific goals? wishes? dreams? write them down, make your own manifesto or even just a page in your journal. Have it somewhere where you can look at it everyday and remember this is what you want from your year!