Thoughts at the Start of 2018

Entrepeneurs in Cars had a list of six lessons learned in 2017. Three caught my attention:

1. Only a very small proportion of men are willing to do the work to make themselves a better version of themselves
2. Manage your energy - give a frak only when it’s going to benefit you
3. If it’s not Hell Yeah, it’s Frak No

And I’m going to take the first and third as somewhere to start.

Am I one of that small proportion of men prepared to do the work to be a better version of myself? Ask what I would look like if I wasn’t sober, exercising, single and employed. I’d be a mess. I’d be on filthy drugs with names ending in ‘statin’ or ‘formin’. I would have no muscle tone, I would have a gut, with even worse body-fat than I have now. I would be paying alimony, living in a squalid flat because that’s all I could afford after the divorce. I would be alone in an empty marriage. If I wasn’t sober, I’d be dead. And don’t doubt that. Ever. I would be mostly unemployed, with occasional breaks of clerical work through agencies: if I was lucky, I’d have a postal round.

You know what? I pretty much am a better version of myself. Actually, as long as I’m sober, I a better version of myself. Two things.

First, maintenance is a bitch. When you’re ‘better’, very few of your options take you to ‘even better’, and those are hard work. Enough is enough. Better is the enemy of the good (old Russian proverb). And so on.

Second, I’m not having as much fun as I could be, in fact, I’m rather good at denying myself fun. Some of that is due to the habits of denial acquired by wearing dental braces for eighteen months. Some of it is about logistics, and I’ll get to those.

Next. If it’s not Hell Yeah, it’s Frak No. Now I like this. The idea is that if I’m not immediately up for whatever it is, I don’t talk myself into it because what else am I doing? What this made clear to me is that there are some things I want to do, but talk myself out of, usually on the basis of cost and logistics. I may need to reverse the maxim: if it’s not Frak No, it’s Hell Yeah.

My idea of fun is cultural consumption. That includes good food in nice restaurants. A good few years ago, the culture industry jacked the prices up: £18 for an art movie? £72+ for Shen Yun at the Dominion Theatre? £33 for a concert at the Wigmore Hall? I don’t demur at the prices for modern dance at Sadlers Wells, but that’s because it’s My Thing and there’s no alternative. For £33 I can get a top-end Wagner opera on CD. Wait a few months and I can get the movie on DVD for £10 or less in Fopp. (You can tell I’m a Pricing Guy.) And usually there’s more than the ticket price. If it’s mid-week, I park in Richmond so I can avoid the ultimate buzz-kill of travelling from Waterloo after 20:00. That’s nearly £14. And there’s a supper as well, say £10 or so even for a pizza. Going out in London is expensive.

To which I tell myself, either spend the money or find some other kind of fun.

Logistics. I wake up at 05:30, do a day’s work, and you expect me to be looking forward to a two-hour show at 19:30 and a return commute at 22:00? Especially with a session at the gym and a light meal to pass the time between leaving work and the start of the show. That’s a long, long day, and there ain’t no sleeping-in the next morning. Last year I trapped myself into trying to wake up refreshed and relaxed. As if I could do that with an extra sleep cycle. But dragging one’s ass out of bed into the kitchen every morning can lead to the belief that There Must Be Something I Can Do. There isn’t, but I fell for it. Trying to get enough sleep and wake up at 05:30 means no activity in the evening at all. Late afternoon at the latest. Movies that start at 18:30 in town are verboten. Even 18:30 locally could be a bit late.

I think the objection-by-logistics is an excuse for not doing something. I live where I live, not in central London. This is one of those suck-it-up things. And right now, it’s damn cold, and that makes any kind of going out feel like a really bad idea.

No pretty, full-of-motivation conclusions, but for the moment that’s where I am.