All of us need some kind of creed by which we live: stay sober, work a job, pay taxes, exercise mind and body, eat right, save, don’t buy things you can’t afford, stay single, avoid vexatious people and things, and seek out only that which is uplifting and beautiful might be mine. Anyone who wants to know why I would do those things is invited to explain why they want to be a hungover, indebted, unemployed, welfare-claiming, dumb, soft-bodied overweight married man with an unpleasant wife and surrounded by ugliness. Kinda answers itself really. Since a lot of people are some of those things, I can only suggest how much their lives would improve if they were all of them, and that the improvement they will feel is its own answer.
You may also want to ask is that all? There must be more to life than that. If this thought has occurred to you, I have two replies. First, I’ll thank you not to be so rude about my life choices. Apology accepted. Second, if you feel that way about your life, you don’t need God, or a pilgrimage, or for that matter, a couple of weeks' holiday somewhere exotic. And you don’t need to find-your-purpose or discover-your-passion. Stop reading those self-help books.
What the more-to-life-than-this and the find-your-passion brigades want is a purpose that smacks them upside the head and takes them over, without them needing to decide. Kinda like getting married and having children. His wife smacks him upside the head and his kids take him over. Have I sold you on making your own damn decision?
How does a man live? Any damn way he chooses: bear in mind the time before you do the crime. You decide. You might swipe an idea from someone else - you probably will - but you decide to adopt it. If you feel sour doing whatever it is, stop, dummy - though it may takes some time to change whatever it is. Only you can give your life meaning. No-one and nothing else can. That’s the curse of free will.
When I start feeling a little sour about my life, that tells me it’s time for a change. The trick is recognising what that change might be. I don’t know how to do that, but I do know that the first thoughts I will have are all the cliches. Kinda like the first draft of a blog post or a BBC TV drama. The difference is that the BBC broadcasts the first draft, and I take the time to take away as many of the cliches as I can. The first thought is almost never the best thought. The third or fourth thought is usually pretty good.
One thing for sure: religion is a first-draft cliche. You could listen to the massed ranks of priests, imams, mullahs, and other assorted pundits, or you can use the free will and rationality that God - the Christian one anyway - gave you to figure out how best to use the gifts you have, both for the benefit of others and yourself.
These thoughts were prompted by Krauser’s comment a while back that he was thinking about converting to Christianity and that if he did, he would withdraw his Daygame manuals and videos. It never occurred to him that he might have been doing God’s work in writing and producing his Daygame content. Oh ye of little faith in yourselves. And a very TradCon conception of what behaviour pleases the Almighty.
Monday, 4 March 2019
Thursday, 28 February 2019
I've Lost That Righteous Feeling
A life needs an underlying feeling or attitude to hold it together and make sense of it.
It might be a mid-90’s Morrissey miserabalism, or an upbeat Instagram life-is-fabulous-ism, or the ups-and-downs of the man who follows football, or a constant level of outrage driven by everything from the Today programme to Twitter, or perhaps deep invovlement with one’s work - but that only applies to a handful of artists, mathematicians and other creatives. SQL-bashing doesn’t cut it.
For the last few years, for me, that making-sense feeling has been that I’ve been living a righteous life. Work, exercise, sobriety, reading, keeping the act together against the forces of ageing, maintaining an interest in aspects of what’s happening, though that’s more about new restaurants than new bands.
Recently I realised have lost my sense of righteousness. It’s all become toned-down enough to make a ho-hum weekly routine.
A vicious two-week cold with a lingering recovery period doesn’t help either.
I used to feel righteous because I kept up with the arts and movies, but neither are now worth keeping up with. Read Art Monthly for a few issues and you’ll see what I mean: the art is so mediocre it can’t stand without being politicised.
I used to feel righteous because I trained regularly. I still do, colds permitting, but the intensity has gone. And training without intensity is just humping crates of Coca-Cola.
I used to feel righteous because I kept up with the movies, at least, with the art movies, but now I don’t give a hoot. Half of what I’ve streamed recently is playing catch-up with movie history. My utter lack of desire to look at the new galleries in the Tate Modern is because they are mostly full of sculpture, not an art I care for much, and modern sculptures are, uh, well, you know.
I used to feel righteous because I was holding down a job, at an age when a lot of my contemporaries are out of work.
And of course, because I had almost zero contact with junk culture and junk food.
I can live without feeling righteous, I would prefer to have a feeling that is immanent and pervasive and colours the rest of my life. At the moment that’s all a bit grey.
I’m not going to speculate about why, nor guess what I’m going to do about it. For the moment, it’s enough to recognise it.
It might be a mid-90’s Morrissey miserabalism, or an upbeat Instagram life-is-fabulous-ism, or the ups-and-downs of the man who follows football, or a constant level of outrage driven by everything from the Today programme to Twitter, or perhaps deep invovlement with one’s work - but that only applies to a handful of artists, mathematicians and other creatives. SQL-bashing doesn’t cut it.
For the last few years, for me, that making-sense feeling has been that I’ve been living a righteous life. Work, exercise, sobriety, reading, keeping the act together against the forces of ageing, maintaining an interest in aspects of what’s happening, though that’s more about new restaurants than new bands.
Recently I realised have lost my sense of righteousness. It’s all become toned-down enough to make a ho-hum weekly routine.
A vicious two-week cold with a lingering recovery period doesn’t help either.
I used to feel righteous because I kept up with the arts and movies, but neither are now worth keeping up with. Read Art Monthly for a few issues and you’ll see what I mean: the art is so mediocre it can’t stand without being politicised.
I used to feel righteous because I trained regularly. I still do, colds permitting, but the intensity has gone. And training without intensity is just humping crates of Coca-Cola.
I used to feel righteous because I kept up with the movies, at least, with the art movies, but now I don’t give a hoot. Half of what I’ve streamed recently is playing catch-up with movie history. My utter lack of desire to look at the new galleries in the Tate Modern is because they are mostly full of sculpture, not an art I care for much, and modern sculptures are, uh, well, you know.
I used to feel righteous because I was holding down a job, at an age when a lot of my contemporaries are out of work.
And of course, because I had almost zero contact with junk culture and junk food.
I can live without feeling righteous, I would prefer to have a feeling that is immanent and pervasive and colours the rest of my life. At the moment that’s all a bit grey.
I’m not going to speculate about why, nor guess what I’m going to do about it. For the moment, it’s enough to recognise it.
Monday, 25 February 2019
Loneliness Is A Symptom, Not A State
The feeling of loneliness is your soul’s way of telling you that you’re keeping the wrong company. Maybe they’re just too square, man, maybe they are just too hip, maybe they talk about their stupid jobs and petty careers, maybe they talk about football, or maybe you want to be with people who talk about their promotions and how they sold a piece of crap to some dumb client.
The point is, whoever you’re with, if you’re feeling lonely, it’s not someone you want to be with.
It’s not about the quality of the connection. I knew a lot about some of the people I didn’t really want to be with. We had similar problems, because we were at the same stages of our lives. There were plenty of similarities, and really, not that many differences. The only real turn-off then was what it is now: holding and expressing a certain kind of pop-culture idea. Show me a mother who believes that the triple-shoot will harm her child, and I’ll be polite, make my excuses and leave.
So I didn’t feel lonely because I didn’t have deep, meaningful, intimate connections with other people. Given my frakked-up emotional state at the time, that was never going to happen. Other people can’t have a relationship with a walking, talking neurosis. I felt lonely with other people because I didn’t want to be with myself, and being with other people stopped me distracting myself with books or movies or whatever else. Hence the neuroses were raw. It took sobriety, the Steps and a lot of other stuff before I got more comfortable with myself.
In the movies, that recovery would be a story about how I learned to love and trust, and learn the true value of friends. However my life isn’t a movie, so it doesn’t end like that. It ends with me reaching peace through acceptance.
What they don’t tell you about any kind of therapy or recovery is that, when the patient succeeds, whatever that means, they are still where they are: they don’t get the time back, and they don’t get the life they would have had if they hadn’t had whatever it was. It’s not an episode of Buffy, where killing the witch makes all the spells reverse and undoes all the damage. They are still where they are, they just don’t feel the same way, and they know how not to make it any worse.
So there the patient is, at some point in middle-age, and try re-building a life at that point. Everyone is married, divorced and spending Saturdays with their children. They have their social circle, and they have their stories and memories and loyalties and secrets and that is a lot of doors to open and hurdles to jump. His challenge is not to try to build the-life-he-would-have-had-if… because that is impossible. It is to find a way of living that satisfies him and avoids raising feelings of regret, self-pity and loneliness.
Contrary to every pop-therapist ever, one very effective way of avoiding loneliness is not to hang out with random people who have no idea what he has been through. Before you ask, work does not count as ‘hanging out’.
Part of the cure for loneliness is not more people. It’s less people. Anyone who tells you to find some like-minded people knows nothing and is repeating empty advice they heard once.
The other part is not faking for too much of your life. If you know you're putting on an act for the people you are with, because that act is all they will take, you're going to feel lonely. Or resentful. The fewer people you have in your life you have to be fake around, the less bad you're going to feel. The therapists can suggest you find someone you can be honest with, who will accept the real you. Sure. Any idea where? In the house where the rainbow ends in the garden?
I was caused to think about these things by a remark someone made in a You Tube video, about how, though he had had quiet the time with girls when younger, it began to feel lonely. That’s what happens when you have to sustain being someone you’re not, and that seems to be common among PUAs. He didn’t really want to be with those girls, however easy it was to get them to bed, and much more, he didn’t want to be with the man he had to be to get them to bed. That’s loneliness.
The point is, whoever you’re with, if you’re feeling lonely, it’s not someone you want to be with.
It’s not about the quality of the connection. I knew a lot about some of the people I didn’t really want to be with. We had similar problems, because we were at the same stages of our lives. There were plenty of similarities, and really, not that many differences. The only real turn-off then was what it is now: holding and expressing a certain kind of pop-culture idea. Show me a mother who believes that the triple-shoot will harm her child, and I’ll be polite, make my excuses and leave.
So I didn’t feel lonely because I didn’t have deep, meaningful, intimate connections with other people. Given my frakked-up emotional state at the time, that was never going to happen. Other people can’t have a relationship with a walking, talking neurosis. I felt lonely with other people because I didn’t want to be with myself, and being with other people stopped me distracting myself with books or movies or whatever else. Hence the neuroses were raw. It took sobriety, the Steps and a lot of other stuff before I got more comfortable with myself.
In the movies, that recovery would be a story about how I learned to love and trust, and learn the true value of friends. However my life isn’t a movie, so it doesn’t end like that. It ends with me reaching peace through acceptance.
What they don’t tell you about any kind of therapy or recovery is that, when the patient succeeds, whatever that means, they are still where they are: they don’t get the time back, and they don’t get the life they would have had if they hadn’t had whatever it was. It’s not an episode of Buffy, where killing the witch makes all the spells reverse and undoes all the damage. They are still where they are, they just don’t feel the same way, and they know how not to make it any worse.
So there the patient is, at some point in middle-age, and try re-building a life at that point. Everyone is married, divorced and spending Saturdays with their children. They have their social circle, and they have their stories and memories and loyalties and secrets and that is a lot of doors to open and hurdles to jump. His challenge is not to try to build the-life-he-would-have-had-if… because that is impossible. It is to find a way of living that satisfies him and avoids raising feelings of regret, self-pity and loneliness.
Contrary to every pop-therapist ever, one very effective way of avoiding loneliness is not to hang out with random people who have no idea what he has been through. Before you ask, work does not count as ‘hanging out’.
Part of the cure for loneliness is not more people. It’s less people. Anyone who tells you to find some like-minded people knows nothing and is repeating empty advice they heard once.
The other part is not faking for too much of your life. If you know you're putting on an act for the people you are with, because that act is all they will take, you're going to feel lonely. Or resentful. The fewer people you have in your life you have to be fake around, the less bad you're going to feel. The therapists can suggest you find someone you can be honest with, who will accept the real you. Sure. Any idea where? In the house where the rainbow ends in the garden?
I was caused to think about these things by a remark someone made in a You Tube video, about how, though he had had quiet the time with girls when younger, it began to feel lonely. That’s what happens when you have to sustain being someone you’re not, and that seems to be common among PUAs. He didn’t really want to be with those girls, however easy it was to get them to bed, and much more, he didn’t want to be with the man he had to be to get them to bed. That’s loneliness.
Thursday, 14 February 2019
Lessons from 2018
In 2018 I went on doing what had worked in 2016, and was okay in 2017, but stopped working for me in 2018. Why? Because I’m not a youngster anymore, and at my age, apparently, changes can be step-like, not gradual. Or I passed a tipping-point. Or switched regimes on a catastrophic surface, or whatever metaphor you want.
It was so bad I even watched this Sunday Motivational video from Alux. Don’t be put off by the crassness of their Instagram, the video has a lot of sensible advice.
It occurred to me I should consider changing anything I’ve been doing consistently for the last couple of years.
Except the waking-up-and-going-to-work bit. I would love to stay in bed until 07:00, but the commute would be horrible. And leaving work at 17:00 would throw me into the gym at nearly peak time. Retiring is not negotiable until at least summer 2020. When I will be 66.
Weight-training leaves me feeling tired, not just on the day, but on the day after as well. I’m taking longer to recover during sets, and doing fewer sets. Not the way it’s supposed to work.
I switched to body-weight exercises. I’ve already got a Spin class in my schedule, and as I write this, I’m on my way to the second Extreme class of the year. Saturday morning 09:30 to 10:15. They must think I’m some weird old man, humping it through those routines. The next youngest kid in the class is half my age. You did when you were nineteen and it damn near wasted you. (*)
The only way I can lose weight is by eating almost or actually nothing in the evening. I’m already on week two of intermittent fasting: I’m eating between 06:00 and 14:00, and not afterwards. As part of that, I have to get a decent, preferably hot, lunch. With meat. The trick is to drink water or Jasmine tea in the evening. Don’t even think of eating.
Between these two changes, I’m already waking up feeling more active.
I’m getting a sports massage every week until the knots are out of my legs: the first one was a world of ouch. It made me realise that for the last year I’ve been fighting the muscular mess in my legs just to walk upstairs.
A while back I made a decision to take on a commitment at an AA meeting, and I’m keeping that up. My attendance at meetings had been erratic for a long time. I don’t know if it’s doing me any good, but I’m still sober.
I have to cut right down on most the websites and You Tube channels I’ve been reading and watching. Most are not suited for me. Been working on that.
I have to look at blogging as well. I’ve been at that for nearly nine years, with over 1,100 posts. It’s always been a diary for me, and just how little sense many of the posts make outside my inner monologue was brought home to me when I thought about putting together a compilation (ah that alcoholic grandiosity!). I’ve found it harder to produce pieces, or even photographs, at the rate of two a week recently. Many pieces have started off, and then I’ve rightly abandoned them.
I wanted to get to the end of January before posting this, so that I was on the way to forming the new habits.
(Added two weeks later: and then at the end of January, I got a cold and it all skidded off the road. I’m just about back on form now.)
(*) Spot the movie quote.
It was so bad I even watched this Sunday Motivational video from Alux. Don’t be put off by the crassness of their Instagram, the video has a lot of sensible advice.
It occurred to me I should consider changing anything I’ve been doing consistently for the last couple of years.
Except the waking-up-and-going-to-work bit. I would love to stay in bed until 07:00, but the commute would be horrible. And leaving work at 17:00 would throw me into the gym at nearly peak time. Retiring is not negotiable until at least summer 2020. When I will be 66.
Weight-training leaves me feeling tired, not just on the day, but on the day after as well. I’m taking longer to recover during sets, and doing fewer sets. Not the way it’s supposed to work.
I switched to body-weight exercises. I’ve already got a Spin class in my schedule, and as I write this, I’m on my way to the second Extreme class of the year. Saturday morning 09:30 to 10:15. They must think I’m some weird old man, humping it through those routines. The next youngest kid in the class is half my age. You did when you were nineteen and it damn near wasted you. (*)
The only way I can lose weight is by eating almost or actually nothing in the evening. I’m already on week two of intermittent fasting: I’m eating between 06:00 and 14:00, and not afterwards. As part of that, I have to get a decent, preferably hot, lunch. With meat. The trick is to drink water or Jasmine tea in the evening. Don’t even think of eating.
Between these two changes, I’m already waking up feeling more active.
I’m getting a sports massage every week until the knots are out of my legs: the first one was a world of ouch. It made me realise that for the last year I’ve been fighting the muscular mess in my legs just to walk upstairs.
A while back I made a decision to take on a commitment at an AA meeting, and I’m keeping that up. My attendance at meetings had been erratic for a long time. I don’t know if it’s doing me any good, but I’m still sober.
I have to cut right down on most the websites and You Tube channels I’ve been reading and watching. Most are not suited for me. Been working on that.
I have to look at blogging as well. I’ve been at that for nearly nine years, with over 1,100 posts. It’s always been a diary for me, and just how little sense many of the posts make outside my inner monologue was brought home to me when I thought about putting together a compilation (ah that alcoholic grandiosity!). I’ve found it harder to produce pieces, or even photographs, at the rate of two a week recently. Many pieces have started off, and then I’ve rightly abandoned them.
I wanted to get to the end of January before posting this, so that I was on the way to forming the new habits.
(Added two weeks later: and then at the end of January, I got a cold and it all skidded off the road. I’m just about back on form now.)
(*) Spot the movie quote.
Monday, 11 February 2019
I Have The Two-Part Cold
That's the one where I get the cold over one weekend, and miss my Saturday class, and then feel better the next week, book the Saturday class on Thursday evening, and on Friday I relapse with an even worse version of the previous weekend. In fact, on Sunday morning, I thought my life might actually be over. Because I'm not being melodramatic.
A cold is good for an instant half-kilo weight gain. Overnight. It puts my weight loss / body fat reduction program on hold. It puts my life on hold. I am reduced to watching Lord of the Rings.
So this week I am going to take it eas(ier).
In the meantime, I have been getting into restoration videos on You Tube. This one is simply breath-taking...
And this one is one of many that reminds me I have no manual skills at all because I would have cut myself to shreds doing what this guy does. Craftsmanship is a real thing.
A cold is good for an instant half-kilo weight gain. Overnight. It puts my weight loss / body fat reduction program on hold. It puts my life on hold. I am reduced to watching Lord of the Rings.
So this week I am going to take it eas(ier).
In the meantime, I have been getting into restoration videos on You Tube. This one is simply breath-taking...
And this one is one of many that reminds me I have no manual skills at all because I would have cut myself to shreds doing what this guy does. Craftsmanship is a real thing.
Monday, 4 February 2019
It Ain't Me Babe
I always thought that Dylan was apologising.
Now I now he isn’t.
All those things she wants, he’s not the one to provide them.
Not because he can’t.
But because he won’t.
And as for the lyrics, try the first two lines..
Go away from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
Dylan, like Hemingway, makes me wonder if there's a parallel English language, that the rest of us don't speak, but in which lines like Leave at your own chosen speed are available to those who do.
Monday, 28 January 2019
Why I've Had Enough Red Pills
I wrote a long piece about the core doctrines of the Red Pill. Crafted it over many days when I should have been doing something more useful. I’m not going to post it. I don’t understand the predicament of the men who find the Red Pill a solace. I’m a born bachelor with the attention span of a five year-old, an ACoA with a drinking problem, and an addict who managed to stay away from drugs because I knew that stuff would kill me. Somewhere in all that emotional chaos and pain I knew that nobody else could help me feel better. It took me a long time to find AA and many years later to understand that my exercise + work + culture life was not instead-of but actually-it. What can I tell you, I’m an engineer / logician not a guru / psychologist.
Sometimes I discover what I believe by contrast with other beliefs. The core ideas of the Red Pill are built on the pseudo-science of evolutionary psychology, can be read as normalising a wide range of dysfunctional behaviour, and produce a cultural-conspiracy theory that mirrors the Feminist conspiracy of the Patriarchy. I’m a Brit: I don’t do totalising ideologies, I do cock-ups, follow-the-money, and logic-of-the-situation.
So in my book, it doesn’t matter why someone behaves badly. It only matters that they do. If there are significant attendant benefits, I may tolerate the bad behaviour. If I don’t want to be around it, I walk away.
Walking away has to be legal and affordable. Always. Never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner. Make an exception for the time it takes to find another job before quitting the one you’re in. The point is: you can quit your job, usually with a minimal cost, even though it takes time. Married men and Baby-Daddies can’t walk out, except at high cost.
Why did I read the Red Pill for so long? I went there because I wanted to understand why my only long-term relationship turned into a sexless habit, why she behaved they way she did, and why it had to be me who broke it up. I found those answers, though it took me a while to translate them from the original evo-psycho. I stayed out of habit, and because some of the gurus say things I agree with. But lately…
I’m a bachelor. Born that way. Never was going to do domestic relationships. Bachelors like women, but the same way they like city weekends and beach holidays: it’s a nice break, but it’s not when we pay the bills and live our lives. The Red Pill guys, and even the MGTOWs, regard life without women as less-than. Not an attitude I share. I really don’t.
St Paul was right when he said that we should live to please God, but that a married man has to please his wife. I’d rather do the secular equivalent of pleasing God: work and pay taxes to discharge my economic and social obligations, exercise, eat right, don’t spend money I don’t have buying things I don’t need to impress people I don’t like, and otherwise, do as I please as long as it’s legal. You don’t have to want to live my life, only I do.
Sometimes I discover what I believe by contrast with other beliefs. The core ideas of the Red Pill are built on the pseudo-science of evolutionary psychology, can be read as normalising a wide range of dysfunctional behaviour, and produce a cultural-conspiracy theory that mirrors the Feminist conspiracy of the Patriarchy. I’m a Brit: I don’t do totalising ideologies, I do cock-ups, follow-the-money, and logic-of-the-situation.
So in my book, it doesn’t matter why someone behaves badly. It only matters that they do. If there are significant attendant benefits, I may tolerate the bad behaviour. If I don’t want to be around it, I walk away.
Walking away has to be legal and affordable. Always. Never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner. Make an exception for the time it takes to find another job before quitting the one you’re in. The point is: you can quit your job, usually with a minimal cost, even though it takes time. Married men and Baby-Daddies can’t walk out, except at high cost.
Why did I read the Red Pill for so long? I went there because I wanted to understand why my only long-term relationship turned into a sexless habit, why she behaved they way she did, and why it had to be me who broke it up. I found those answers, though it took me a while to translate them from the original evo-psycho. I stayed out of habit, and because some of the gurus say things I agree with. But lately…
I’m a bachelor. Born that way. Never was going to do domestic relationships. Bachelors like women, but the same way they like city weekends and beach holidays: it’s a nice break, but it’s not when we pay the bills and live our lives. The Red Pill guys, and even the MGTOWs, regard life without women as less-than. Not an attitude I share. I really don’t.
St Paul was right when he said that we should live to please God, but that a married man has to please his wife. I’d rather do the secular equivalent of pleasing God: work and pay taxes to discharge my economic and social obligations, exercise, eat right, don’t spend money I don’t have buying things I don’t need to impress people I don’t like, and otherwise, do as I please as long as it’s legal. You don’t have to want to live my life, only I do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)