Trail Dreamer

Why Social Enterprise is Shite

2010-12-29T16:02:00.001Z

I work for a charity these days. The big thing being pushed at charities in the UK is 'social enterprise.' We're all getting sent on (free!) courses on how to set ourselves up with arms that trade, so that we can support our charitable work ourselves, instead of relying on donations or government handouts.

Sounds fair enough. Does it not?

Arms that trade. Makes me think of that poem, 'not waving but drowning.'

I object. The thing I object to is the principal that trading, selling stuff, is the only activity that matters. Especially if this 'stuff' is just exactly that. Stuff. More crap that no-one really needs. It may well be small-scale, organic, recycled, ethical and local - all good principals to direct your purchase-power. But ultimately, it's about selling more Stuff. More soap. Or bags. Or Christmas cards. Or cakes and coffee, to an already over-cafeinated and caloried society.

Crap. Shite. Clutter. Junk.

I am a person who objects to the culture that pushes us to buy, need and want ever more Stuff. And yet now I'm being trained to direct a huge chunk of my intellectual energies and working hours towards thinking up a viable business model for creating and selling shite. Even it is actually very good shite. Shite that people want.

No.

The reason I do the work I do, the reason I work for a charity and not a bank, is because I'm primarily concerned with people's needs. Not their wants. The people I work with have severe disabilities and are not able to work. Which means they do not have money. Which means that they do not have any power. Even though they have huge needs, they will never be able to buy the services they need, and so no-one will ever go out of their way to provide that service. It is not a viable business model.

And that is why charities exist.

The ultra-consumerist, free-market-driven model is all about first creating and then catering to the wants of people who have money, and already have everything they could possibly need. Which is all very well. But now they want charities to do the same.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Image by davco9200

Too Many Projects Syndrome

2010-12-29T12:46:00.000Z

It's that hiatus between Christmas and New Year, that lull, the time when weeks of too much food, drink, work, stress, buying, spending, travelling in snow and general fretting finally gives way to... a rest. Whew.

Which of course turns the mind to New Years Resolutions. I don't tend to do New Years Resolutions. Don't see the point. Why wait till the 1st January? Why set yourself up for failure at the bleakest time of the year, the time when you're mostly likely to need the comfort of bad things - be it calories, alcohol or retail therapy?

But then, I'm also prone to making resolutions very regularly throughout the year. Catch me out at any time of year - and if you can get me to be honest and up-front about it which is unlikely since I'm a fairly defensive kinda gal - I could confess to several resolutions bubbling away on the back burner. I don't call them resolutions though. I call them projects.

I am definitely someone who has 'Too Many Projects Syndrome.'

So, what are the projects sloshing round my head just now? Well:

There's the Creative Writing course I'm actually doing, which leads to the Someday I'll Write a Novel project.
There's the Very Small Business (VSB) project. But then, there have been various VSB projects that I've worked on over the past couple years. None yet have led to much.
There's the Weight Loss project.
There's the Overcome Injuries project.
There's the Get Back into Running project - oh how I desperately miss running. I glare daggers of envy at runners when they pass me.
There's the Healthy Eating project.
There's the Reduce my Clutter project.
There's the Save as Much Money as Possible project.
There's the Make Nice Presents for People project.
Etc.

Much of this is all about the changing and harnessing of habits. There's an excellent blog called Raptitude that discusses habit change. The blogger, David, explores habit change through a series of very focused experiments. I love his honesty, about himself and his processes. I can't remember which post in particular it was, or maybe there were a few, but ultimately he points out that trying to change umpteen different habits all at once is a recipe for failure.

This year's resolution? To have fewer resolutions. To get over my Too Many Projects Syndrome. Ha!

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

Under The Radar: Conspiracy or Incompetency?

2010-11-06T21:29:00.000Z

Our governments run shadowy networks that monitor the moves of every last citizen. Even as you read this, data is being captured and stored for the future use of Big Brother. Really. If you want to live under the radar, the first thing you gotta do is ditch your internet habit...

But wait, don't run screaming from your computer just yet!

It's all true. Except the bits I'm making up.

I am a believer in all manner of devious strategies of manipulation and mass-media brainwashing. I'm a total cynic about many of our favourite institutions and supposedly benign influences. And I love unpicking the discourses of advertising and closed cultures that require people to believe things that serve the ends of those in power. I write about these sorts of things regularly.

And obviously there are anti-terror task forces that do have all sorts of terrible powers.

But I don't think we should get too caught up in the idea of a great big Conspiracy. Honestly, we gotta get over all the glossy Hollywood drama of it all. We are not living in an episode of 24 - though if we were remember we'd just be the blow-uppable extras in a thrilling sequence of explosions. Kiefer Sutherland is not the embodiment of what we're up against here.

Why do I say this? Well, most of us have, I think, probably experienced the 'left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing' phenomenon when dealing with government bureaucracy. Having worked in the NHS in the past, I can say with some authority that the idea that even your nurse, your doctor, your therapist and your social worker might have the foggiest idea what each other is doing for you half the time is being optimistic, let alone that a shadowy network is competently keeping tabs on us all. Nae chance.

(Though I suppose they might be keeping tabs on me, since I've written google-ranking blogposts about living under the radar... shit...).

Sophisticated surveillance isn't needed all that much for most of us. All the hoops we have to jump through around ID and providing traceable address histories, its more for our credit scores than for the government.

I think it's more likely that (unless you're out there planning some seriously bad shit, in which case I hope the anti-terror task forces find you), it's actually about a whole load of unrelated agencies covering their backs and making sure their boxes are ticked. Because really there is no radar. There's nothing but a wide-spread fear among various agencies of law suits, insurance claims, and litigation. And these agencies pass this fear on to us, in the form of inconvenience, anxiety, and the steady erosion of freedoms.

So don't worry about living under the radar. Unless, secretly, you really quite fancy meeting your end in a thrilling sequence of explosions.

Image by *ade

Does The World Conspire Against You?

2010-10-31T14:26:00.002Z

There's no shortage of inspirational quotes, telling us to follow our bliss, commit ourselves to impossible targets, dream big and dare to fail.

There's also no lack of useful and informative books and websites telling us how to make our dreams come true, how to identify our goals, how to draw up our step-by-step road maps to success.

But without an awareness of how the status quo conspires against you, you have to be damn lucky just to get past Go.

That's what I'm interested in: unpicking the cultural and psychological forces that inhibit, sabotage and crush all those giddy dreams for a better life.

Once unpicked, it's so much easier to push forward.

Image by cameronparkins

A Badly Dressed Woman

2010-10-31T13:54:00.002Z

I've been getting fashion-envy a lot lately. As I go about my daily business, I catch myself eyeing up other people's threads. But its not the usual stunners who're attracting my attention, and there are good reasons for that.

A Badly Dressed Woman
The other day, I gazed with admiration at a really badly dressed woman. She broke all 'the rules' of good dress sense, and seemed to have a total disregard for the effect of her overall ensemble. She was neither stylish, nor quirky. This was not an intentional statement of non-conformity and individualism, packaged in some self-consciously retro combination of vintage, high street and designer. No. I think (though I didn't ask her) that this was a true and genuine case of just not caring. How liberating!

So what was she wearing? She wore blue jogging bottoms with a lilac polyester blouse and cheap granny pumps. Her hair was straggly, thin, and all over the place. There wasn't the slightest smudge of make-up. If she were a client of a learning disability or mental health service, her appearance would probably be prompting all sorts of earnestly judgemental case discussions.

But this was no poor soul in need of social work intervention. This was a lecturer in neuroscience, standing before me to lead a tutorial that was mindblowingly good.

I contemplated her appearance, and her lecture, and thought... 'wow.'

I'm As Bad As Anyone
Ok, so I'd noticed her for her pigs ear of an outfit, and evidently made a negative assessment of it, so I'm as bad as any other shallow individual for whom clothes form the basis of how people are judged. But on reflection, she personified for me a principal frequently paid lip-service to, but rarely lived.

We all tell each other that 'appearances aren't everything' to make ourselves feel better for not being supermodels. But most of us still strive to look the best we can, and we spend not inconsiderable sums of money to help us.

I've as much neuroses as the next person about how I look, but lately I've been noticing the people who don't bother themselves overly much with their appearances, and thinking there's something to aspire to there.

Freedom From The Fashion-Police
Think about where this compulsion to have to look better comes from. There's something inbuilt into human nature no doubt, psychologists would be able to tell me all about all the evolutionary and contemporary advantages of looking good. I'm not daft nor blind, I'm aware of all that. But I also think that we live in a culture that pushes messages at us day in day out to make us feel insecure enough to buy our way to beauty so that we can be sexier/more successful/happier/etc. Not because it'll work, but because it feeds the economy, feeds businesses, feeds wealth (other people's), and feeds the cycle that makes as many people as possible feel the same way.

What About You?
Can you honestly say you're not affected by all that? Have you already mastered this little life-hack to more freedom and less anxiety in life? If so, how'd you do it?!

There's a freedom in rejecting the priorities of appearance and physical conformity. I'm all about freedom.

So, perhaps, it's time to test my courage, time to start dressing primarily for function, and not caring too much how it looks. Not to go wilfully ugly just to be contrary, that's of no use to anyone! But to just focus on 'enough' rather than more, more, more.

How much difference will it make to my life? Now, there's an experiment for a rainy day...

Image by fictures

What Do I Do Here?

2010-10-31T09:22:00.001Z

Sunday morning, the clocks went back an hour last night, and most of the UK is relishing 'an extra hour in bed.' An extra hour in bed doesn't excite me too much, I like being up and about when the roads are quiet and my neighbours sleep.

I'm out walking the dog as the sun breaks cover over the crest of Spittal Hill. The moors glow shades of pink and peach, the wind is cold. I treasure these moments, when I have the world to myself.

As I walk, I think. I think about this blog, and what I do here. I no longer run, and its taken months to accept that. But I still have my dreams of doing interesting things, I still have my doubts about the systems and routines and expectations that make those interesting dreams so difficult to attain.

So, it's pretty simple really, I'll just go back to writing about all those systems that bug me so much.

Hey presto, hallelujah, abrakedabra, all sorted.

Tune in next time for more tales of cynicism, negativity, doubt and determination. I'm beginning to think that might be what I do best!

Image by stevendepolo

Half Cut: Long Gone

2010-10-30T21:56:00.004+01:00

It's Saturday night. I sit at my desk, King Creosote crooning beside me. A half-drafted work of fiction has turned my eyes square. A half-stitched quilt has looped loops into my eyeballs. A half-drunk bottle of red wine makes my world wobble. The weekend is half-gone, I am half-cut, it's good to have time for all this. G'night.

Most excellent felt eyeballs by ingermaaike2

How My Bank Wasted My Time Asking Me Stupid Questions: And Still Made Me Happy

2010-10-28T20:57:00.004+01:00

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from one of those call-centre marketing surveys, asking me all sorts of questions about how I perceived my bank. In general, I perceive banks as scum. Strangely though, that wasn't one of the questions. At no point during the phonecall was I asked to rank my bank on a scale of one to ten, where one is not remotely scummy, and ten is the pinnacle of high-scumdom. What they did ask me was loads of very stupid questions.

For example, 'on a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to recommend this bank's ATMs?' Who recommends ATMs?

Anyway, I digress.

This banking survey did ask me one very useful question. It asked me whether I'd seen any of their adverts. My answers were as follows:

TV - no (don't have one).
Cinema - no (the nearest cinema is well over 100 miles away, and I haven't been for nearly two years).
Billboards - no (do you do billboards on sheep? clouds? moorland? ruined crofting villages?).
Newspapers & Magazines - don't think so (do you do ads in the local paper? Haven't noticed. Otherwise, I don't generally bother with print media).
Internet - possibly (I am an internet junkie, so I probably have, but I'm not sure advertising works in quite the same way online, I never ever click through on ads, I'm not sure I even see them...).

This information probably wasn't all that useful to the bank. But it was incredibly useful to me.

I now realise that I live a life with fairly limited exposure to advertising.

This is a good thing, a great thing. It isn't something I ever set out to do. But, after moving to the sticks and ditching the TV a couple of years ago so that I'd have more time in my life to do the things that matter to me, I did begin to become aware that I was... happier. That's the only word for it. Happier. And only part of that happiness is due to doing more stuff that I like to do. A crucial factor is that I no longer have a constant stream of messages coming at me, telling me:

You could be so much happier if... so much cooler if... so much more attractive if... so much more efficient if... so much more enviable if... so much more successful if... so much sexier if... so much more relaxed if... so much better if... so much cleaner if... so much more fragrant if... so much more beautiful if... so much thinner if...

I'm not trying to sell you anything, but honestly:

You could be so much happier if... you cut the sources of advertising out of your life.

This article was made possible by the Bank of Scum.

Picture by Alan Cleaver

Back From The Void

2010-10-27T21:29:00.001+01:00

I've been gone for ages. I almost deleted Traildreamer. And then, a week or so ago, I was travelling north on the train, rushing through hours of total black-out darkness, mind numb and backside aching (those seats do get uncomfortable), when this long-forgotten little blog bubbled up out of nowhere and called me back. So I'm back.

I was seduced, for a long time, by all sorts of problogger advice, all sorts of entrepreneurial dreams, and I read up and studied all round the realm of Blogistan for tips and tricks to blog better. What happened? I blogged worse. I tried to develop a 'proper' voice. Did I get one? No, all I did was nearly lose the only one I've got. I messed around with self-hosting Wordpress, and got it all set up lovely, but it wasn't me. I was clunky and awkward, like an insecure teenager in braces trying to be something I wasn't, I'm not, never will be, never want to be. Quit trying to run with the cool kids. It's all flash and mirrors anyway.

I'm happier here. I am Traildreamer, I am nearly anonymous, I don't flash my name and identity about for all to see in the hope of building a brand or a tribe, trust or community, though there are folks who know who I am and its not a secret as such. That is just not the function of this blog. I've nothing to sell, so sod it with all the sales and marketing. I'm just me, footering about with thoughts and ideas, that I may feel strongly, but I don't want to shout from the rooftops. The rooftops round here are pretty low anyway, I live in a region of crofts and cottages and vast empty spaces.

So hello again. Though I know I speak out into the void. That's part of the pleasure. Hello again.

Image by cod_gabriel

Goodbye 2009

2010-01-03T14:34:00.011Z

It's a new year! Cheerio 2009, it's been mighty fine, and well helllloooo 2010. There's loads of good posts kicking around the blogsophere just now, everyone seems to be having a think about what 2009 meant for them so, ach, I reckon I'll jump on the bandwagon too.

In 2009 I:

Left the big city behind. Hopefully forever.
Moved out to the back of beyond in the Scottish Highlands. When Tim Ferriss talks about his 'remote working arrangements' he only knows half the story.
Landed a fabulous new job with a fabulous small company.
Tried working from home. It really does rock by the way.
Injured my ankle. Repeatedly.
Gained a lot of weight.
Lost some of it.
Didn't run two marathons.
Tried a gluten-free, dairy-free diet. Not as bad as I was expecting...
Did my first course with the OU. Then immediately did another one. The OU beats every other university I've ever studied with.
Celebrated two years with my wonderful man. To mark the occasion, went to a comedy ceilidh, complete with flashing sporrans and hula hoop solos. Hula hoops should be part of life more often.
Was interviewed for a newspaper. I'm not including the link, because it really was so embarrassing. A media darling I am not.
Got chickens!
Abandoned Traildreamer.
Resurrected Traildreamer. Missed you baby.
Wrote poems that made me giggle.
Wrote stories that gave a friend's 6 year old daughter nightmares. Note to friends, my stories are not children's fiction, no matter how childish they may seem.
Bought a kick-ass bike. Kicked ass, by bike, for miles in every direction.
Spent oodles of quality time with family.
Didn't travel overseas at all, not even once (unless you count a long weekend in the Orkney Isles. Stromness is great, but it ain't Maui).

Overall, I've had a fabulous year. Chickens must bring you luck. What about you? What did you do, or not do, this year? Would chickens help? Or hula hoops maybe?

Image of hula hoops by otherthings

Happy New Year

How To Find Your Blogging Voice?

2009-09-24T18:02:00.007+01:00

All the 'how to blog better' advice always goes on about how you should blog about your passion. If you do, it'll come through in your posts, instantly making you more interesting and more likely to make your fortune from the comfort of your living room.

I agree that you should blog about something you're passionate about - why would you want to regularly sit down and write about something you find dull? Surely even the motive of finding your internet business cash cow wouldn't really be motivation enough to buckle down to it, when it comes to the slow drip feed that building up a blog takes. Post by post, day by day, one new reader at a time...

But writing passionately isn't an automatic route to great content. Finding your passion is different from finding your voice. I've been doing this Traildreamer blog for over a year now. It stems from various interests and passions, it has tracked aspects of my journey. I know I don't do much of what you're 'supposed to' if you want to increase traffic and make money, but I do feel I have found my 'voice' for this blog and I have a small number of readers who check in regularly. When I have something I want to say, it flows very naturally and I enjoy it. I hope that comes through in the reading of it. I'll never be a pro, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of this blog.

I've recently started a new blog, one that links much more closely to my professional interests, and I hope may lead to my own business in some way in the future. I'm not ready to add a link here to it, because I really haven't found my voice over there yet. Each post is clunky and awkward. The content is scatty. The focus switches. I'm trying to write about professional interests that get me really worked up, excited and enthused on a daily basis in my 'real life', but finding a way to talk about it coherently and consistently in a blog is proving unexpectedly tricky. This is stuff I do all day, but it's not stuff I've ever written about or even talked about much.

I've noticed this clumsiness in other blogs I've followed, as they switched from being personal journeys or philophy of life musings to something more strategic. I'll not name them, that would be indiscrete, but I'm guessing it's something that happens quite often. I'd love to know what others think about this. Have you seen the process in blogs you've followed? Have you been through that transition yourself and can offer some advice?

I don't yet know how to find your blogging voice. But I need a new one, and I'm going to be working on finding it. I'll let you know how I get on.

Image from Beverly & Pack

Travelling Gets Into Your Blood

2009-09-22T11:17:00.006+01:00

There's been a rush of Hobopoet posts in the past 24 hours (see here), after months of barely anything. For many years Hobopoet was my favourite blog, before he switched from blogspot to his own domain and then promptly seemed to lose the thread of his hobopoet journey.

A new post from AJ usually gives me a wee boost, redirecting my mind back to the priorities of freedom and voluntary simplicity again. In recent months I've strayed from these priorities, because I've reached what might be described as a 'happy medium.' I've landed a great job doing something I love. And I'm living somewhere I love too - I've left the cities behind, and have the space and solitude of the Scottish Highlands to enjoy every day. A happy medium is a great place to be. Maybe the happy medium is the goal I've been chasing, the word 'medium' irrelevant? Is that word 'happy' the true bottom line? I can't complain, and don't much anymore... Except...

It can't last. My contract is for three years, and then... what? Funding dries up, and we're all back out on the street looking for jobs again. It's silly to worry about what I'll do in three years time, and I don't worry about it exactly. I feel more confident than ever before in my life. But I do feel in my bones that I couldn't bear to go back to working out of an office, with a boss who micromanages, and the autonomy and creativity I enjoy in this job firmly squashed. I couldn't stand to submit again to the senseless bureaucracy and hierarchical systems that dominate most jobs in the sector I work in. I'd hate to shelve all the projects that I can pursue in this job, projects that make a difference to my clients and excite me to pieces, and just go back to doing what I'm told and no more.

And, although I've hung up my travelling shoes and stashed my backpack at the back of a cupboard, I'd be lying if I claimed that I don't crave periods of simple nomadic wandering. I've booked a week down in Edinburgh for a training course in October, and I am so fizzy with anticipation at the thought of living out of one bag again, possessions to the minimum, drifting through hostels, quiet times spent writing and observing, learning some pretty amazing stuff at the training course for five days, and soaking in the experience of being adrift again. Travelling gets into your blood. While I may never take off for a year or more at a time again, I can't say I could settle for just two weeks a year either.

The upshot is, I've a strong desire to claim control and live my life doing what I love in a sustainable way, not to fit in with what needs to be, as dictated by a boss or a mortgage or a funding provider's short-term aims. Some people are always driven to do more, and some people aren't great at submitting to the way it is. I may be one of them.

Image by Irargerich

Once You've Got It, Would You Ever Give It Up? Working From Home

2009-09-06T18:14:00.015+01:00

Poor Traildreamer is sorely neglected these days. The two things that drove it in the beginning were my dual passions of running and travelling. Those two threads led to all sorts of rants and research into work culture, freedom and how to pursue your dreams. No wonder the Traildreamer blog has faltered since then - I've hung up my travelling shoes for the time being while I commit to staying in one place for a bit, probably about 3 years. I've hung up my running shoes due to injury. And many days I don't even make it into a pair of work shoes.

I work from home, often in pyjamas and slippers till lunchtime. I'm pretty passionate about my job, and have an excellent manager who's clearly sussed out that she gets the best work out of me by leaving me to it apart from a once monthly meeting and the odd email.

I'm still assimilating the novelty of this new work set-up. I often marvel at it, and speaking to colleagues in other areas of the Highlands who've been doing the same thing, they all say the same thing...

"How're we ever going to return to a normal work arrangement?" It's true. We were all selected for these jobs based on certain qualities and values, and this job has allowed those qualities to flourish. I have a job description, I have a laptop and a mileage reimbursement rate, and I have outcomes I have to achieve. But how I go about achieving those outcomes is entirely up to me. Help and advice is there for when I want to ask for it, but generally I'm trusted to get on with it entirely on my own. I love that.

Taking on that kind of working arrangement needs high levels of autonomy, integrity, discipline and creativity. And after working like that for several years, how would you go back to an office environment, hierarchies, knowing your place, being closely monitored and controlled, enforced dress codes, having to get approval for every decision or action, being told what to do...?

I think the answer to that is, you wouldn't. Not if you could bloody well help it. Would you?

Image by ansik

Running Gems: Barefoot Under Cover of Darkness

2009-08-05T20:17:00.011+01:00

Under cover of darkness, I go out barefoot and walk around the block, just to see. Only it isn't about seeing, it's about feeling! The pavements feel smooth, cold, wet. Leaves are falling from the trees, and are a light, barely-present tickle against my feet. Some kind of seed pod is scattered all over the ground, and as I step on them, I'm surprised to find that they 'give' under my weight. It's a pleasant sensation. I gingerly hobble over the stones and grit where the road surface is broken, and bits stick painfully to my soles. I notice that I'm padding along on the ball of my foot more than I usually do when out I'm walking. Back at the front door to my block of flats, I unlock and walk in. I wipe my feet, and the mat feels course, but warm after the leeching cold of the concrete outside. I notice I've left wet footprints on the tiled communal porch, and I imagine someone else in the block getting up early for work, and seeing these prints on their way out.

Photo by greencolander

A Blog Worth Checking Out

2009-07-10T08:54:00.003+01:00

This is the most amazing post yet, from a truly amazing blog - check it out:

http://ryanrunseurope.blogspot.com/2009/07/days-47-48.html

This guy is an inspiration.

Short Trails & The Injured Runner

2009-07-05T21:49:00.009+01:00

It used to be that anything less than 3 miles wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.

What’d be the point of going out for such a short distance? But currently 3 miles is about 1½ miles too far to walk, and I can forget about running it altogether. No can do. The physio and the podiatrist have both drummed it into me that over-doing it will do me no favours, so for now, just don’t run at all. I can cycle and swim as much as I like, which is a mercy, but neither are as satisfying as a fast 4 mile run before breakfast, or a full day out walking in the hills. Of course, I’ve pushed my luck, and either walked too far or tried out a bit of a run despite the advice of the professionals. But I’ve come to regret it, as my recovery has taken a knock-back each time.

Now that a whole day on the mountains is out of the question, what can I do? Where can I go that’ll still give me those much-needed shots of wilderness, exploration, and physical challenge?

I haven’t found a satisfying answer to those questions. But I do find myself looking at local ‘short walks’ guides with new-found interest. I used to find them disappointing, their definition of short being considerably shorter than anything I'd consider worth the bother of turning up for. And they don’t meet my demands of wilderness, exploration and physical challenge. But they do meet the closely related criteria of the outdoors, nature, discovery and some level of physical activity. I now appreciate these 20 minute out-and-back, signposted strolls from the car park, that take me over smooth landscaped trails and don’t require even the slightest scramble.

And I’ve gained a fresh insight into the frustrations of being restricted by my body from accessing and enjoying some of the greatest delights in this world, the places that enrich my life and replenish my soul.

As someone who's spent the last 5 years or so working in disability services, there's nothing like an injection of first-hand personal experience to refresh my therapeutic practice. I'm finding it all as frustrating as ever in terms of my personal fitness. But in terms of my understanding of the importance of the natural world to my health and wellbeing, and the barriers that stop some people enjoying those same opportunities that I value so highly, I guess I'm learning something useful.

Image by cogdogblog

Gen Y Blogs: Are They Special?

2009-07-02T07:10:00.006+01:00

I read a lot of these Gen Y blogs, especially if they have a strong entrepreneurial/start-up thread. This is even though I suspect I’m outside the Gen Y age-bracket, and despite the fact that, for the time being at least, I’ve shelved the idea of starting my own business. So why do I keep coming back to them? Why are they the ones that clutter my Google Reader, rather than the hiking/running blogs that I probably have more in common with?

I think it’s to do with the notion of striving for the life you want to live.

These Gen Y bloggers, they’re all about their search for their path in life, their striving to stay true to their dreams and passions, and they’re putting their dilemmas and initiatives out there along the way, for others to follow, and comment on, and discuss. It seems from some of these blogs that they think it’s their generation that defines them in this search - I say that it’s not. That quest is not specific to people born between year X and year Y (as stipulated in the Wikipedia definition of Gen Y). What is different for their generation is that they’ve come of age with the internet, and see their lives through that lens. Every generation of 20-somethings has a significant number of souls who struggle to find their paths and wish for something different and better that the norms offered by conventional society. The majority ‘grow out of it,’ a minority don’t and become the hippies, radicals, artists, drop-outs, nomads, and independent thinkers of their generation. What’s different, and appealing, about the current crop of Gen Y blogs is that this process is out there, globally, for all to see in the blogosphere. Support and reinforcement flows from blog to blog. And it’s also interesting that the Gen Y bloggers don’t aspire to be artists or drop-outs, but high achieving internet-based entrepreneurs... That, I think, is what’s different.

A few examples of these Gen Y blogs? Here's a good three to have a look at:

Jun Loayza
Matt Cheuvront
Luke Snedden

(Warning: Once you have a look at those few, you could end up wandering forever, lost in a world of links from Gen Y blogger to Gen Y blogger, commenting and crediting and name-checking each others stuff...).

Image by jetheriot

Phase 2

2009-06-28T15:37:00.005+01:00

I put a couple hours into the Traildreamer blogbook this morning.

I think I have a new direction for the project. Which is exciting. I’m calling it Traildreamer Phase 2, because the themes of the original block of the blog don’t seem so relevant anymore. That fight is over, a new one is beginning.

I’m not all het up about work culture and wage-slavery anymore, because I’ve stepped out of that culture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still working a full-time job, and I’m not working for myself... But it almost feels like it. I have such a level of freedom, autonomy and creativity in my new job, and it gels so well with my values, that it scarcely feels like work. It feels more like a passion, and I’m lucky enough to get paid to pursue it!

Traildreamer helped me get this magical job. Not directly, but indirectly. Part of what was needed for the post was an unconventional attitude, and over the months of blogging, that’s exactly what I was developing. All that reading and writing on work culture, wage slavery, manic society, freedom, following your bliss... it led me to this point, where an astute interviewer picked-up on the views simmering away underneath my surface, and instead of seeing them as a reason to dismiss me, saw them as the reason to hire me! ‘We wanted someone comfortable with a little bit of anarchy,’ she tells me 3 months after I started, ‘someone who is able to see that most things probably need to be done differently, and won’t be too shy to try some off-the-wall initiatives.’ Ha! The main thing I thought was my terrible guilty secret in my old job, is my key strength in my new one.

So, this new direction. It brings me right back to where I started, in many ways. Traildreaming. This blog isn’t about my work, though there are various points where work is relevant, and it’ll probably stay that way. Traildreamer started because I’d spent many years travelling round various parts of the world, and going running pretty much everyday. My life revolved around running, and finding damn good trails to run out on, no matter what town or village I’d washed into the day before.

Finding trails for running, walking, and cycling. Trailfinding ways through life that are thrilling and satisfying and rewarding. That’s what this blog is about, and that’s the direction I’ll be heading out on in future posts. It’s good to regroup, its good to keep going, and it'll be interesting to see where I end up.

Running Gems: Trail Run in the Highlands

2009-06-25T08:11:00.007+01:00

It's all just too glorious. My ankle is actually still out of action (still!!!!), but I'm still making sure I get out there in some form or another. This track goes for miles. Life doesn't get any better.

Photo by Me

Back Again

2009-06-25T06:58:00.004+01:00

I'm back. Honestly, I am.

For those of you out there who've been following me for a while, and have kept checking in from time to time on the off-chance that I might have posted something, all I can say is sorry for being otherwise occupied for the past couple months. But my life is settling down again, and there is now enough brain-space left in my head at the end of each day to be able to get back to some blogging.

It's good to be back. And it's good to be where I'm at.

Life has changed massively since I left my sensible job and my city flat back at the end of March - and I'm so glad I made the leap. That leap has liberated me from so much of the bullshit of living and working based on other people's stupid expectations and conventions. Now I'm in a position to push forward with amazing things. Here we go folks.

Amazing image by D. Sharon Pruitt

Into the Groove

2009-05-19T07:25:00.004+01:00

I cannot believe that a whole month has passed since last time I posted here. I've been busy, obviously. A big wedding, a big move, no internet for several weeks, a new job... it all adds up to no blogging. But things are settling down again now, and I'll get back into the groove soon. Bear with me till then.

Image by PresleyJesus

High-Gloss Voluntary Simplicity

2009-04-22T10:38:00.005+01:00

There's something contradictory and cool about Tinymine, a blog I discovered a week or so ago. It's voluntary simplicity, from a glossy perspective. And I'm surprised to find I love it.

I've always come at Voluntary Simplicity with a very minimalist, make-do-and-mend approach: less is more, focus on 'enough,' possessions weigh you down and curtail your freedom in every way - physically and pragmatically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

I've usually lived in flat-shares where my space has been my room and no more - that puts a nice limit on how much stuff you can accumulate. I've avoided shopping, and trawls through furniture showrooms are my idea of purgatory. In contrast, I've enjoyed scavenging for cast-offs, and at one point lived in a flat almost fully equipped with furniture lifted off the streets of Glasgow on council pick-up days before the vans came round. I've also moved frequently, and valued the regular opportunity to ditch surplus and walk away. And I absolutely loved backpacking for extended periods of time, which by necessity reduced my essential possessions down to the volume and weight capacity of one rucksack.

But there's been an irritating conflict in my mind lately, as my life has led me to put down some roots. Making a home requires possessions, tools, equipment and storage. Which means more stuff, and more bloody shopping: for a bed, for a fridge, for a garden spade! No, please don't make me do it.

Tinymine gets voluntary simplicity, gets the concept of 'enough,' and the maximising of what you've got, not what more you could endlessly 'need.' And yet also accepts that we do need things, embraces and enjoys the fun of it, and revels in the aesthetics of it.

Whether you're a hard-line minimalist nomad suddenly faced with having to set up home, or a previous big spender suddenly faced with having to go small and simple, Tinymine might be worth a look.

5 Good Things About Cycling (For People Who've Forgotten)

2009-04-21T20:16:00.013+01:00

My busy life is getting out of hand! New job, new home, brother's wedding... there just aren't enough hours in the day to find time to blog as well.

So, my (brief) message for today is... cycling rocks. Not news to many, but a fabulous reminder for me. My running is still on the back-burner, but the biking is going great. I used to bike a lot. Before I got my drivers license (which wasn't till I was about 26 or something), I biked one hell of a lot - it was my only means of transport, and I lived in some pretty rural areas, so I regularly covered a lot of miles out of necessity, never mind all the cycle touring I did for fun. I used to dream of being Josie Dew, I read her books, and wished I could go off and cycle round wonderful foreign countries as my main occupation. But then I had to pass my drivers test and get a car for work, and then I moved to the city, and just didn't enjoy, or feel safe, or feel confident enough to cycle in the traffic-crammed streets.

Now I'm back up north in nowhere-land, the bike has been hauled out the shed, and I'm rediscovering the joys of cycling. Here are a few motivational reminders for the newly re-inititiating (not for the experienced experts who'd never be so slack as to stop cycling, you guys probably take all this stuff for granted and scoff at such newby-ism).

The achey sore backside you get when you haven't been out on the bike in a while. Ouch. (It doesn't stay that sore forever, honest).
Peddling downhill like a maniac, in the highest gear that'll gain purchase, till you go so fast you could almost be flying... zooooommmmmmmmm.....
That pounding-in-the-chest feeling you get when you finally get to the top of a hill. Have to stop, gasping for air. Rest a moment, soak in the views. And then become aware of the powerful sensation of your heart pumping strong and sure. Oh yeah, I'm alive!
Thighs getting noticeably more firm and muscular even after just a handful of sessions out on the road. Excellent.
Swallowing flies. Yuk.

Image by moriza

4 Secrets of A Surveillance Society: The Power of Inconvenience

2009-04-14T20:23:00.007+01:00

I'm quite enjoying this low-profile, under-the-radar-living thread. I started to think about the ways that low-profile lives are monitored and restricted. Here's a few:

1. Packing-plastic.
You need to have a credit card, even when you don't need one. When travelling in the UK/Australia anyway, almost any accomodation requires a credit card. Even when you turn up on the spot, in person, at the front desk of a hotel, guesthouse or hostel, with your bag on the floor beside you, and you're looking to book just one night, tonight, and you have a fistful of crispy notes ready to hand over to pay for the night, and they do not have a problem accepting cash... A credit card number is still required, 'for security.' What are you going to do with it, I asked. Nothing, they said, we just need it on our computer system 'for security.'

A few years back my brother had the experience of having his application for a credit card turned down, not because he had a bad credit history, but because he had no credit history. He'd never had a credit card, or any other form of debt, and so there were no records on him for them to check. Rather than think round this, look at his current-account record, or anything else, the bank denied the credit card. You need credit to get credit.

2. Registered Address/PO Boxes
They need to know where to find you. Over at Hobopoet, his latest post (here) talks about car-living and advises getting a PO Box as a way of getting round the mailing problem that comes with having no fixed abode. The USA must be different from the UK, because, as I am currently finding out, I can only have a PO Box if I can provide evidence of my current place of residence in the form of recent utility bills in my name. As I am, once again, in transit, I have no address, so no such utility bills and so no PO Box. Proof of address, in the form of utility bills, is a standard request if you want to register or gain access to just about anything in officialdom - bank accounts, security checks, rental accomodation, utilities...

3. Photo ID
Seeing you for real isn't enough. They need to see you stamped in plastic, and overwritten with biometrics. That night's accomodation at the cheapo youth-hostel that required a credit card? Also needed photo ID. Bank account? Yup, photo ID, 2 forms of thank you very much. Drink in a bar, even though you're well beyond your 18th/21st birthday? Photo ID. Of course, security checks require photo ID. What's the big deal? All you need is your drivers license and/or your passport, you've probably got at least one of them on you at all times?

But whether you're trying to live a low-profile life, a low-carbon life, or are in the unfortunate position of having to live a low-income life, a passport/drivers license may be two things you just don't possess. Not owning these two items doesn't just exclude you from travel overseas or driving, it also excludes you from fully participating in day-to-day life in your home country.

What about standard-issue ID cards? The UK doesn't have these yet, though I know many other countries do. I object, on principal, to the idea. But can principals stand up to practicalities?

4. Inconvenience
The upshot of all this stuff is clever, creeping change. If the government suggests a tightening of security and surveillance, with compulsory trace-able histories and ID cards, it usually sparks a massive controversy in the media around civil liberties and freedoms, that clogs up the progression of the policy. But, inconvenience, now that's something different. That can move people to accept things that may have been unthinkable when framed in political terms.

In this hard, fast, now society where any delay drives us to the point of rage... The threat of inconvenience has the power to make us accept things that even the threat of terrorism doesn't. The inconvenience of not having all the necessary bits of paper, laminated cards with unflattering photos, the credit history, the strings of numbers, and the barcodes - its not worth it. Getting snarled up in a no-mans-land of 'computer says no' bureaucracy when all you're trying to do is move house, change jobs, receive mail or go on holiday - it'd drive you nuts.

Realistically, faced with that lot, I'd probably accept the ID card without even realising I'd just gone and compromised a step too far.

Would you?

Photo by nolifebeforecoffee

How To Live Under-the-Radar

2009-04-11T08:45:00.009+01:00

Over at Code Name Insight, there have been a couple of interesting posts recently (see links here and here) about how to live a 'low profile' life, below the government's or other authorities' radars. But it got me thinking about the situation that probably faces more people - transitioning in and out of 'the system,' and the benefits and difficulties that brings.

This isn't as radical as it sounds. This is for anyone who's gone off backpacking on a shoe-string, strung together some low paid/cash in hand type jobs, helped out friends or friends-of-friends with house-sitting or other odd jobs in return for board and lodgings, or even just had a partner who's taken the reins and had everything in their name...

Before setting off on my travels back in 2007, I had to spend a fair while disentangling myself from many of the systems that kept me in my place. Shutting down contracts for phones and internet, cancelling direct debits for services I no longer needed or wanted, writing letters to inform the tax authorities that I was leaving the country so they could strike me off their list for the year... It was a complicated effort, they don't like to make it easy for you, but with each contract cancelled I felt a notch lighter and freer. This is well worth it, I thought to myself.

On my return, I was faced with re-instating many of those ties. But I was more wary, not out of any political motivation, but simply because its all such a hassle. It made more sense to avoid contracts and debts and accounts with all these different services and agencies. Pay as I go, cash, upfront, as and when I need something.

It is easier. Except when you want or need something from that system.

Code Name Insight wisely states that if you want to live a low profile life, then don't work in the military or any other sector that requires a security check. He's not wrong. I work in Health and Social Care, and in the UK every time you get a new job in that sector, you need a new criminal records check to be carried out - its called an Enhanced Disclosure (what a lovely turn of phrase, all woolly and fluffy). Its a very important procedure, we don't want criminals and abusers working with the most vulnerable people in our communities. But it does not cope well with people who haven't been 100% traceable all their days.

Sat in an office with an official, we tried to fill in the form together. I had to give all the addresses I'd resided at in the past 10 years. Unsurprisingly given my life over the past 10 years, there were not enough boxes on the form. And then there were the stints when I'd been of no fixed abode; away off backpacking, crashing on friends' or family's sofas, catalogues of hostels and campsites and benches in trainstations or airports, sleeping in cars, working for short periods of time for board and lodgings in a not entirely official capacity... always moving on.

Getting out of the system isn't easy, but getting back in again can be exceptionally difficult.

Will there come a day when it goes beyond inconvenient to come back into the system? Governments are increasingly regulating and controlling life. Will a system be devised to effectively monitor under-the-radar lives? Or will it be easier for them to simply exclude anyone without a seamless, official, trace-able history?

Have you found yourself living under-the-radar? Was it an intentional move, or just the way things worked out? And how has it been, getting back in?

Interested in Under The Radar living? You might also be interested in:

4 Secrets of A Surveillance Society: The Power of Inconvenience

Picture by ToastyKen

5 Amazing Places to Run in Australia

2009-04-08T20:12:00.010+01:00

Right, let's just imagine for a moment, that you're taking some time out. Getting away from it all. You want to run, and you want it to be amazing. Here's 5 random places in Australia that, if strung together, make for a tremendous trip.

(Most of these routes are mostly off road, so no traffic, and nicer on the knees. None of these trails require driving to get to the start, they begin as soon as you step out the door of your accomodation. So backpackers and public transporters can run them, just as much as people with the wherewithall to hire a car).

1. Sydney's North Shore.
Start with running under the Harbour Bridge and take in views of the Opera House. Keep going, round Cremorne Point and Mosman - watch the ferries, climb over a hill all banked up with posh houses. Keep going, out to Taronga Zoo - pretend you're skirting Jurassic Park with its high electric fences, the scary animal sounds, and the significant reptile presence. Keep going, and going, and going... all the way to Balmoral Beach, or The Spit, or even out to Manly if you're hardcore enough. Running in a city does not get better than this.

2. Hobart's The Domain - Tasmania
Loops with stunning views over the city. Botanic gardens at the base. A great spot to get started in Tasmania from.

3. Bicheno - East Coast Tasmania
Stay at the funky backpackers hostel at Bicheno. Do hill training up and down Whalers Lookout, then swing round the rocky shore leaping from rock to rock. A nice trail follows the shore to the beach (fantastic blackberries to re-fuel on if you're there in season), then hit the beach and go for it. Magnificent. Don't run those rocks in the dark, you'll die. But do hang out and listen to the fairy penguins... they sound like alien monsters coming to get you.

4. Freycinet Peninsula Loop - Tasmania
I've mentioned this one before here. Stay in Coles Bay, unless you're rich and can afford the swanky accomodation at the base of the park. Bit of road running/beach running/campsite track running to begin with, then... you reach Freycinet National Park, a runner's dream. There's a well-maintained track that swings out the peninsula to Hazards Beach, then you can turn inland to cross the isthmus and suddenly you emerge onto Wineglass Bay - supposedly and believably 'one of the worlds best ten beaches'. From there it's a hard climb up to the lookout, and then a hard and fast descent back to the road you came in on. Not for the fledgling runner, probably a cool 13 miles or so...? But well worth training up for.

5. Strathan to Ocean Beach - Tasmania
Stay in the town of Strathan, and head out on the sealed road towards Ocean Beach. You don't cover many miles before the road becomes unsealed. Amazing views back over your shoulder to the mountains beyond. As you keep running, probably in total isolation, a roar builds and builds - this is Ocean Beach, its big, and its loud. And when you reach it, it'll take your breath away - assuming you've any breath left. Truely magnificent. If you got to West Tasmania without a car, then chances are the only way you'll reach this beach, is to run there. Well worth it. Just you and the kangaroos.

Oh wow, just writing that lot has made me nostalgic. Take me back... Then again, take yourself there, and let me know how you got on. Heavenly running or your money back.

Picture by Linh_rOm

Plan B

2009-04-04T19:46:00.011+01:00

The ankle has gone again. Goddamit, I was just building up to half-decent mileage again, getting excited about the spring and summer ahead, trail-running in the hills day after day... When boom! Something in my ankle goes and tears and screams and stops me in my tracks. This was originally meant to be a blog about running! Who'd have known it?

Anyway, am meeting up with a physiotherapist friend tomorrow, and will prevail on her for a consult at a reasonable price. In the meantime, the bike has come out of hibernation. Took off this morning, for a test-run 5 miler through mist and smirr. Hey, this is pretty good. No longer in the city, I can make the most of empty roads that don't lead anywhere in particular. I belt down hills at a fair old lick. Around me, there's no sound but the whirr of my wheels, and the cry of birds in the fields and moors - curlews, lapwings, snipe, geese...

The world is peaceful, alive, and magnificent.

Image by ex_magician

Tactical Genius

2009-04-04T18:44:00.012+01:00

Trouble with taking action, is... I've been doing too many other things to be able to sit down and blog. Sorry for the full week without a peep. Here's a wee something, harking back to previous diatribes and musings about motivational speakers...

Browsing the books and blogs of motivational speakers like Robert Holden (see here), I'm struck by how many high-profile conferences and courses and development days he's spoken and coached at. Not all, but most, seem to have been at senior manager or chief exec level. If all these senior managers of all these big organisations are attending these sessions, all about 'love', flexibility, communication and change in the workplace... How come the lower ranks rarely see any change? Or only changes that work them harder, control them more, and increase stress?

Is it just a junket? A 'jolly' for all those at the top of the tree? All the inspiring talk of change, values and success is fun and heady at the time, but implementing it turns out to be too much effort.

Or, is it an indication that things are gradually changing? That interest in these notions is growing? That a tipping point will soon be reached? I'd like to think it's this second option...

But is it? What about when Holden and his ilk get to speak for the lower ranks? The occasion this happened at my work (see previous post here), it created a real feel-good and revolutionary buzz for a day or two, before a 'healthy' dose of cynicism kicked in. We critiqued the speaker's message all to shreds, and went back to the same old. Did management authorise, invite, and pay for both the motivational speaker and all our man-hours because they really wanted change to take place and spread from the bottom of the organisation up? Or was it a good-will gesture of tactical genius? A way of giving us what we want, no, more than what we'd wanted, and then having us crush it all by ourselves?

There would have been the risk that a tiny minority of staff might've been inspired to do something radical and wonderful, or quit (which may amount to the same thing)... But it would arguably be a risk worth taking for those who prefer the status quo. The potential loss of one or two skilled staff who're already wavering, must be more than outweighed by the double-bluff of offering the majority a dream that they reject for themselves.

Image by Martin Kingsley

Bring On The Next Adventure

2009-03-27T16:44:00.010Z

Having so recently had my knuckles rapped for being all talk, no action... Here we go folks! I am taking action, and I am outta here.

Already left the job last week (emotional moment at the time, distant memory already). Most of my stuff left this afternoon (thank you to the kindly family members who had the boot of their car free to lift it all). My final bag is packed, and I am scheduled to leave early-doors tomorrow morning (after a last final jog round the botanic gardens, for old-times sake). And that's it.

The end of my city-living, city-slicking period. The end of easy access to global coffee chains (Starbucks I'll miss you). The last of lounging the afternoon away in global bookshop chains, reading Tim Ferriss for free (Borders, its been good). The demise of crawling the last 5 miles home in first gear every night (M8 motorway, you can go hang for all I care).

Its a new beginning. A new era of working from home (praise be to internet connections). A new start in wilderness living (how far did you say it was to the nearest Marks & Spencers?). A new life of self-sufficiency, not retail therapy (not that I often did that anyway).

I don't know how its going to go, but I am more than ready. Bring on the next adventure.

Picture by atomicjeep

Would Just One 'Great Escape' Be Enough For You?

2009-03-26T10:52:00.015Z

A conversation with an occasional reader the other day, put me in my place. "What you write is all very good," he said. (Oh shucks, thanks...).

"But when are you actually going to do something about it?"

Oh. Ummm... Is it enough to say that I'm trying? 'Very trying' would be the droll response to that one. How about: Learning? Laying the foundations? Taking the first steps? Building capacity? (Ha! I like that one, appropriate a bit of that corporate-speak that says nothing, always a good tactic). He has a good point. But I'll counter with a better one:

Nothing sustainable happens overnight.

I could've walked out on my job any day I chose, and still can. I've got an emergency fund in the bank, and could bugger off to New Zealand or Hawaii or Outer-bloody-Mongolia any time I like. Still might. I've got a pair of running trainers by the door, and could start jogging and keep going, right this minute. I could, and I might, and when I do, just you watch me.

I currently have the choice to take any of those steps, and I have taken all of those steps in the past. I 've learned, through direct experience, that they're not all that drastic. I can do them, you can do them. But I've also learned that done like that, they're not necessarily sustainable.

Ditching work and going travelling is an easy thing to do.

Really it is. But at some point, the money usually runs out. And then comes the point of coming back, cap in hand, grovelling for a job, any job, because the basic needs have to be met. That's not easy. That's rotten. What I'm aiming for isn't a one-off splurge. I've already done that and loved it. What I'm trying to do now is create a life where the things I discovered on that splurge can be steady day-by-day realities.

There's also the fact that I don't just want to indulge myself. It's a whole lot easier to swan off to somewhere sunny and lounge on a beach (for a short while at least), than to make a difference. I've done both, and I would like to keep doing both. But one crucial factor is:

Making a difference takes more effort.

Making a difference takes more small daily steps, and more commitment. Which is tricky to do, if you're ducking off on great-escapes and then reduced to taking any old job you can get.

I've lived the dream. Now I'm finding the way to make it sustainable for life.

What about you? Have you already done something about your dreams? And would just one 'great escape' be enough?

Image by Sainaalphotography

Fat or Manic?

2009-03-26T07:36:00.014Z

There are some great bits of terminology evolving out there, amongst the people who think hard about the world as we know it.

Some examples are:

The Joyless Economy
The Overwork Culture
The Hyperactive Workplace
The Manic Society
The Wage-Slave System

These terms are great. They make neat and emotive short-hand for long, complicated concepts and arguments. I have slipped into using them, on a not irregular basis. But sometimes... I have to take a step back, and say "hold on a wee minute there!" What they describe and assume, doesn't always ring true. Sometimes I wonder if we're all playing a game, signing up to notions that tell half a story, because they excuse us from our mistakes and our failures.

Take an example, the Manic Society. This is one of Robert Holden's bits of jargon that I came across in his book Success Intelligence: Timeless Wisdom for a Manic Society (2005). But while he's responsible for the term, he's certainly not the only writer out there describing this phenomenon. The way he tells it, we live in this 'manic society', where everyone is so busy, busy, busy all the time. So far, sounds so true.

But it strikes me that we're also a society characterised by quite a lot of stagnancy and sloth. Now that would never be acknowledged in the writings that are focused on unpicking this 'manic society' for readers who are already interested, and identify with feeling too busy, and too pressured, and too stressed. But come on. Look at this carefully. We're so manically busy, that we're too busy to physically do things for ourselves:

We're too busy to wash our own cars, we'll drive through a carwash instead.
To busy to carry our groceries from the shop to the house, we'll get them delivered.
Too busy to walk anywhere, we'll drive.
Goddamit most of the time we're all too busy to move at all.

We are all so manically busy... that we're getting fat?

Is this not a contradiction? There's this trend in the media to describe ourselves as a manic society, to lament that we're all so busy, and never have enough time... Its a terrible problem, for which you deserve sympathy and maybe should demand change. And at the same time, it's a complement - there's kudos in being super-uncontrollably-busy. There isn't in being a lazy, apathetic, fat bastard.

Yet most of the time, admit it, most of us are manically sat on our bottoms.

Likewise, there's this trend to analyse how we're all so busy that our personal lives suffer, our relationships falter through neglect. The media is full of these surveys and stats around the breakdown of family life, parents spending 8 minutes per day with their kids or some such horror... But the same people do get through an awful lot of hours watching TV, and movies, or browsing online (me included)...

I'm not denying that people are busy, and stressed, and working very hard, and doing stupidly long hours, and worn out, and all the rest of it. I think we've nearly all been there, seen it, done it. But it's half a story. We're manically busy, and we're lazy sods.

Why is that? Is it the way it has to be? And who gets to decide?

Image by herval

Why Excellent Employee-ism Is Sick

2009-03-25T22:21:00.011Z

My closest friends are, by and large, excellent employees. I am the sole odd-bod. They turn up on time, do what they're supposed to do all day, clock off 8 hours later (unless they're doing some overtime), see themselves doing this for the next 30-40 years, and don't have any problem with any of that. "That's the contract. That's what you sign to in return for your pay packet," they explain to me in exasperation.

All the potential consequences not mentioned in that contract - stress, exhaustion, damaged health, wasted relationships, weakened sense of self, dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment - are entirely separate issues as far as they are concerned. If you do develop significant problems in any of those areas, well, that's a personal issue, to be dealt with on a personal level. Get a grip. Snap out of it. Deal with it. Accept it. Go to your doctor and get some anti-depressants. Or some counselling maybe. Or some vitamins. Do more exercise, in your own time. Fit your relationships round your work better. Improve your time management skills. Or, ultimately, leave if you just can't cut it.

The job description as it stands, the workplace environment, culture and expectations are all sacrosanct. The individual has to adapt, or die (metaphorically rather than literally, obviously. Although...).

Image by theogeo

Do We Sabotage Our Own Dreams?

2009-03-25T10:03:00.010Z

I came back from my travels last year, excited. I'd had a glorious year of running and travel - a combination that rocked my world. I couldn't wait to get stuck in to doing more of the same in my home country. Have you seen what Scotland looks like?! We may not get the weather, but oh my god, we have got the terrain for trail-running. My head was full of dreams for all the great things I'd do, building on the things I learned while I was away.

But the running has not really taken off since my return. Its sort of limped and faltered. I've chugged out a few short runs per week, doing circuits of the park that barely meet the minimum to keep my body ticking over. Sure it's been good, its very rare for such a thing as a 'bad run' to occur. But, now that I think about it, its been a lot of years, like 10 perhaps, since I've run so little or so poorly. My dreams, that I'd made part of my everyday life while I was away, seemed inapplicable and unobtainable back in my home country and my ordinary life.

What's that all about? Yes, I've had an injury to contend with, but that didn't happen till January. What was going on between August and December?

There was a poor adjustment to being back in 'normal life.' Let's face it, full-time work, urban living, long commutes snarled up in rush-hour traffic? They cannot compete with a life on the road, where your time is your own, the national parks have paths that lead toward heaven, the sun always shines, and the priority for each day is: where shall I run and how far do I feel like going? I got fed up and despondent about that.

I've had to hand back a certain amount of autonomy to my employer and other authorities. I've had to compromise on values that while I was away, I could live my life by. Things around travel and transport, recycling and waste, time and efficiency, functionality versus 'keeping up appearances'. This has made me feel conflicted inside.

I've also had a shift in focus, getting really into political, economic, environmental and ideological debates. I've gotten very focused on the systems that limit and crush people and their potential. I've been angered by our wage-slave society, our over-work cultures, our misplaced priorities. And I've tried to make something of the alternatives, to explore other ways of living (and making a living) so that both my own and others' futures don't need to be so restricted. I've had my ups and downs with that side of things.

I've often felt frustrated, disappointed in myself, and sabotaged since my return to the UK. I've also been getting flabby and weak. But, today I wonder...

Has it been 'society' that has sabotaged my dreams? Or has it been me?

One thing I need to remember; there's always a choice.

What Happens Between Jobs?

2009-03-24T07:45:00.012Z

So. I am 'between jobs' at the moment (though it'll not be for long, it has to be said). I can feel my internal gears crunching. It's that shift, away from being externally directed by all the requirements dictated by a job - what time to get up, what to wear, how to travel, be there by such-and-such a time, leave when we say you can...

Now, my time is my own, and I've got that 'cast adrift' sensation. I've been here before, more than once, and I know how it runs. But that doesn't stop me floundering a bit. For the next short while, I can get up when I want, wear whatever I damn well please, and best of all, do what I choose... Fabulous.

But my internals are still adjusting. They're expecting a blast from the boss, or a word from the line manager, or a phone call from a client.

Waiting for something external and all-powerful to make my next decision for me.

Nae luck to that. For now, it's just me and I'm going to enjoy it.

Image by aussiegall

Farting Camels

2009-03-19T20:19:00.007Z

"Learn to recognise the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel."

Hafiz, Sufi Poet

Image by lovelypetal

How Travel Can Save The Planet

2009-03-17T09:21:00.011Z

A dilemma I have, and rarely address, is the contradiction between how much I love and value travel, and how much I don't want the world to be decimated by self-indulgent plane journeys.

If you haven't already, you must read Thomas L. Friedman's book Hot, Flat & Crowded (2008) - see here. It's the book that got me seriously thinking about this topic. The book focuses on the environmental crisis, how bad it is, and what needs to be done about it. Something that made me increasingly uncomfortable as I read, was how extensively the author seems to have travelled. His book is riddled with sentences like 'At a meeting in... While presenting at a conference in... While hiking in... While visiting a conservation project in...' Sentences that seem to include all continents and most countries on the globe. These details seem incongruent. How could somebody so knowledgeable and so inspirational about tackling climate change be so blase about what must be a truly massive carbon footprint? Is it that his global influence justifies his personal impact? Is it just like Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth? I wasn't sure about this.

But, he did say something very poignant, that I was sure about. One of Friedman's main motivators in tackling environmental issues has been his travelling the world and seeing the amazing and endangered places, ecosystems, plants and animals for himself. He talks about the Amazon rainforest, and the orangutans in Indonesia... I think about the places I've been; the forests of northern Japan, the moors and mountains of the Scottish Highlands, the red heat of the Australian Outback, the palm trees and surf of Maui's beaches, and the underwater coral reefs and wonders offshore.

Being there for real, experiencing the reality of these natural wonders on a true, immediate, and sensory level - that's how I know these places are bigger than us, and far too precious to sacrifice.

With modern life being increasingly urban, man-made, and managed to meet human/economic requirements... How many people get the chance to truly experience the natural world, and from that know how important environmental issues are? Thomas L. Friedman's personal experience and connection with places has motivated his writing and his politics. My personal experience and connection with places has motivated my own small efforts in this direction. Air travel does need increasing justification. But travel in and of itself does not.

When it comes to environmental issues and the hard choices we're going to have to make, travel might be one of the very few effective motivators for change that we have.

Image from NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Damn Good Quote

2009-03-17T08:52:00.005Z

I read a very good paragraph recently, one that clearly articulates something that I have been battling to get to grips with in my head and in this blog for some time. Something that I feel is at the core of so many things that 'just aren't right' with our society. So I'm going to reproduce it. Here goes:

"The great failure of market economies is that they take no measure of externalities: if something doesn't have a market value, it doesn't exist; this is what the economists call 'the tragedy of the commons.' The emergence and development of the environmental movement pioneered the understanding of how markets, in a bid to drive down costs, 'externalise' them - or, to put it more crudely, get someone else (usually the taxpayer) to pay for them; for example, polluting a river is cheaper than processing and recycling it. In just the same way, markets externalise the social costs of their way of working; it is left to individuals - and their overworked NHS doctors - to deal with the exhaustion, work-related depression, stress and the care deficit."

Madeleine Bunting (2004) Willing Slaves: How The Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives.

To me, that sums it up really neatly.

Running Gems: Spring Has Sprung

2009-03-17T08:36:00.007Z

Spring has arrived, and this morning's run was colourful. As the sun was rising, the sky blushed a rosy pink... Bright yellow daffodil heads beamed and nodded at me as I passed... The turquoise dart of a kingfisher zipped by me, on its mega-fast way upstream. Dew drops glint silver and shimmer on the washing lines.

I was only out for about 20 minutes, but already the morning has made me smile and feel oh-so-glad to be alive.

Picture by Muffet

Do You Think Big or Small?

2009-03-12T20:49:00.010Z

A mosey round the bookshop the other day led me round the usual sections - business, economics, popular science, environment, sociology and politics... I usually skip past the self-help/psychology books - too much like compulsory training courses at work I tend to assume... But this time I stopped and looked, took one off the shelf, and sat down for a read, tried another one...

I was struck by how many of the self-help books tackle similar issues to those covered in my usual economics/politics/sociology choices - though from a very different angle. All in, there must be millions of tomes, all with slightly different perspectives on these same themes. Which themes? Things like: there's more to life than money, money doesn't buy you happiness, follow your bliss, your job is making you ill, our lifestyles are killing the planet...

What amazes me is, how come when there are so many books preaching these ideas, virtually everybody is still chasing the money, signing up for colossal mortgages, consuming like resources are infinite, turning a blind eye to others' suffering, and compromising on our own lives because we just have to work more, more, more and harder too?

It must be an amazing market to get into, because if you can rattle off a couple of hundred pages theorising on happiness and freedom, ideally along with a 'how I did it' case study, you may well have a best seller. And since people love the idea, but find it really hard to implement, they'll probably buy your follow up too. These books, in the self-help genre anyway, are selling hope! But don't actually have to deliver on it, because that's up to the reader.

I got some damn good quotes and soundbites out of the self-help books I browsed that day, and more than a few will probably turn up in this blog. I'll probably read some more self-help books too. But I think that overall, I'll continue to gravitate towards the broader genres, that aren't so self-help orientated. Of course I'm focused on me, and improving my life - what are most of these blog posts, if not a running commentary of my thoughts and efforts in that direction. But I think that recognising and changing the systems that create and maintain all these problems and imbalances is probably a more important focus.

May as well think big, if you're going to think at all.

Image by janetmck

Why This High?

2009-03-09T07:13:00.006Z

Wow, I'm on a high this morning. Up before dawn as usual for my morning run, and, with no shame about being cheesy as hell, I 'ran like the wind.' Beat that if you can before 6am on a Monday.

Got the laundry done, got some housework done, pulled together a 'to do' list, browsed all the blogs I follow (which made me feel even more inspired than I did when I first rolled out of bed), and now nearly all set up to head out for the day.

Why this high? Because it's all happening. I spent a good chunk of the weekend ditching loads of the crap that I've accumulated over the years, all the stuff that builds up, cluttering the house and weighing me down mentally, physically, financially, spiritually... Moving will be easier with half the possessions I owned two days ago, and so will ongoing life, hopefully. (Just have to persuade my other half to do likewise). Plus, some ideas slotted into place yesterday. Some notions in the direction of a micro-business, an independent way to earn a living, make a difference, and maintain my freedom... It's all very well ranting about the failings and frustrations of my wage-slave job and the wage-slave system, but without any notion of an alternative... it's all about as much use as farting against the breeze really. It's too early days to splurge my ideas out into this blog, but I'm high because I've a vision of where I want to go, both personally and professionally, and I can see the first steps I need to take to make it happen. Starting today. Like, right now. See ya's later.

Image by mysza831

Running Gems: Time-Trial Snowman

2009-03-08T10:02:00.010Z

I could've done without a run this morning. I wasn't feeling particularly inspired when I got up, I could almost have gone back to bed, or put the radio on and curled up with the newspaper under a duvet. Let the weather do its worst, enjoy the rattle of rain on the window panes, while I lounge snug in pyjamas with hot tea and toast. That's how I felt first thing.

But, I made myself get out there, into the wind, rain and sleet. Chug out a mile or two, I thought to myself, make a token gesture.

A couple of miles in, the sleet transformed to snow. Masses of snow swirling madly round me on the wind. My black running gear was getting caked white, I kept going, like a time-trial abominable snowman. Big fluffly flakes clogged up on the outside of my glasses, while on the inside I steamed up. I jogged on through a haze of poor visibility. More flakes landed on my lips, tingling as they dissolved. Grinning from ear to ear, I kept running in a state completely ill-equipped for this kind of weather. Brilliant.

Picture by foggydave

Are You Playing The Game?

2009-03-07T17:50:00.011Z

I've only 2 weeks left at work, and my professional facade is wearing thin. Not with clients, but with all the games and pretending, all the unsaid rules, and the unsaid scams, that permeate this organisation. I didn't often mind this stuff before. Occasionally something would get under my skin, but usually I played the game and didn't think about it much, just like everyone else. That's a big part of what being 'professional' is. But now, with the end in sight, absolutely everything is getting to me.

It doesn't make sense. How many times have I declared on this blog that I love my work? I thought I was being genuine too. I was being genuine; about the work I do, directly with clients... But I was obviously kidding myself about loving the big, unweildy, bureaucratic monster that I work for.

I want to find a way of living and working so that never again do find myself 'playing the game.' At least, not if the game is all lies and scams, shirking responsibility, getting 'creative' with paperwork, or compromising the health, principals and dreams of myself and others.

Image by kennymatic

Why Being Sensible Is Super-Risky

2009-02-26T17:40:00.009Z

Do you ever get chinks of hope? Moments when cracks appear in the walls in your head, and through the chinks, you can see clear for miles in hundreds of different directions? Moments when you catch fleeting enticing glimpses of all the wonderful things that could be?

It's scary leaving a career that was secure for life (more or less). But then, a 'career for life' is a fixed path, with little room for deviation. That's scary too. Especially when it encompasses life choices that will lock you onto that path, even if/when it goes horribly wrong, and you want out. Sensible people strongly advise caution - get a good job, get a pension, buy a car, get a mortgage, furnish your house, provide for your family, and slog on slog on. "You've got to play it safe or you'll come a cropper," they say. They're right of course. So long as everything goes to plan. But I look at some of my friends and colleagues right now, they played it safe and did what you're supposed to do, and their lives are falling apart. They're in desperate debt, depressed and stressed, their future looks damned shaky despite 'sensible' decisions, they've either lost their jobs or they feel trapped by them rather than inspired. To me, that's not a good example of how the normal way is the best way.

It's a risk, but is it really? By taking that first step, that foolish reckless step off the well-trodden path of a sensible career, wild colourful possibilties open out. Things that wouldn't really have entered my mind one month ago, now sneak their way into my mind's eye... I'm free. Free to make choices as opportunities arise, free to do what I fancy, free to follow my bliss.

What makes me free where others aren't? Why are my colleagues saying "you're very brave/you've very lucky," instead of doing the same thing as me when they so clearly want to?

These are some of the things underpinning my big step:

A certain mental attitude - a faith in freedom, a belief that there must be better ways of living life. A suspicion that just because most people do things one way, doesn't mean it must be the best way.
A financial attitude - where both debt and affluence should be treated with caution, as they both entrap and limit choices. Focusing on 'enough' rather than 'more.'
A financial safety net. I'm not talking big bucks here, I'm talking what many Brits would probably spend on a family holiday in the sun for 2 weeks. Not loads, but enough to tide me over if it all goes wrong. It goes without saying, that I try not to spend the safety net.
No dependents - I recognise that it's much harder to throw caution to the wind when you've children and loved ones depending on your hard-earned monthly salary.
A willingness to do without in order to do more. I know I'd rather live in a basic wee flat, if it means I can make big leaps of faith and quit work and go travelling/ take lower paid but more inspiring work. A lovely big house, beautifully furnished, with all the best stuff would be nice. But it just isn't compatible with that kind of freedom. If I have to choose, I want the freedom, not the matching suite, the dishwasher, and the curtains from the John Lewis department store.
Blind hope.

So it might all go wrong. I can see troubling clouds on the horizon in some directions, and may well find myself blogging about disasters and bad choices in the months to come. But who expects life to be peachy right through? Better though, that life choices are based on the chinks of hope rather than dogged resignation.

Why I Quit

2009-02-25T18:00:00.011Z

My notice is in, and I'm counting down to my last day. Busy, getting on with it: clearing the caseload, typing up reports, filing the paperwork, handing over the outstanding stuff that needs picking up... Sometimes, in amongst the dross, shivers of anticipation catch me out - I remember where I'm going, and why I'm going there. See above. I cannot wait!

Cake Is A Political Issue

2009-02-25T15:34:00.014Z

This post is not just about cake. But a lot of it is.

The other week, I was having a party, and I decided to make a cake. It's been a while since I've done such a thing, so out came the recipe books. "Using an electric hand whisk, whisk together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy," it said. No food mixer came with the flat I'm renting, so I was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, by hand. I set to with the wooden spoon. Within a minute, I had to have a rest. My arm muscles were too weak to keep going! I got started again... knackered. I kept having to do a bit, rest, do a bit, rest... I was mortified.

(Where am I going with this?!).

I am lucky enough to live in a society where I can buy cakes, really really good cakes, for cheap, anytime anywhere. And if I do want to make a cake myself, there is a wide range of fancy equipment to take all the effort out of it. I am very lucky indeed. Must go out and buy an electric hand whisk...

Except... perhaps it is precisely that luck, and all those lovely electric hand whisks, that has resulted in me being so mortifyingly weak and feeble? The systems of our developed society work brilliantly together to save me time, and save me effort, and probably save me money too, while earning somebody out there a decent living. But what are the invisible costs? Lost skills, and atrophied physical capabilities? Ill-health and soaring health-care costs? They'd not show up on a balance sheet, but could it be?

'That link is so tenuous it's silly. Get a grip, and stop harping on about cake. Go down the gym if you're worried about being weak.'

Yeah yeah, I know. But that's kind of the case I'm making...

Making time, paying for the gym membership, and summoning the inclination to formally 'take more exercise' patently isn't easy for people - if it were easy, we'd not have the ever-increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and other fat-related illnesses that blight the Western world. Even for those of us who do make time, and passionately enjoy our preferred means of exercise - there's clearly something out of balance when 'a marathon runner' doesn't have the physical strength to whisk up a cake mix! 'Not enough cross-training,' the fitness freaks will tell me. They'd be right - runners are advised to cross-train in order to improve their running form, speed, endurance, and I know I don't cross-train as much as I should. The body is a system, and it works best when all aspects of it are trained. Wouldn't the same idea apply to everything we do? Why is physically using your body increasingly something separate from day-to-day activity? Ever think we're focused too much on component problems and not on the wider system?

'Taking more exercise' is an individual solution to our societies' health problems. But perhaps we should be focusing on all our activities. Perhaps society shouldn't be structured so that individuals are focused on sitting at desks/in cars/on sofas/in front of screens for most of each day, with technology doing all the other things that need doing. Perhaps then telling these same people to get off their fat arses and go down the gym for 30 minutes 3 times per week isn't helpful either.

We need to look instead at creating lifestyles where sitting on your ever-fatter-arse simply isn't what people do all day? Plus on tangent, think about the environment - so long as we have food (including cake), we are walking talking bundles of renewable energy. Since we're hell-bent on scoffing more calories than we should, why not use it for something?

Use it to live an active life. Not a passive grub-like one.

Mouthwatering Photo by shimelle

Photo: Details in the Sand

2009-02-25T15:33:00.001Z

Everybody Loves a Quitter

2009-02-19T16:41:00.005Z

Everybody loves a quitter.

There's something counter-intuitive about that sentence. It goes against everything we're taught and told in life, and all those corny American movies we go to see where lame ducks finally come good cos no matter the odds, they didn't quit.

But I'm not so sure. I have battled on against all odds in some things - studying for degrees, running marathons through a haze of pain, living in a foreign country despite being miserable as sin... And I have quit repeatedly in others - studying for degrees, living in a foreign country where I'm miserable as sin, certain jobs... Part of me has carried around a germ of guilt and shame for being a quitter. But the more I think about it, the less I think that's justified. It's important to choose the things worth quitting and the things worth sticking at. But if the choice is based on something more meaningful than sheer laziness, it's probably the right choice.

And at heart other people think so too. When it's come to quitting jobs, the most common responses I've encountered are... envy, admiration, and excitement. No matter that my quitting leaves those left behind with more work, higher caseloads, and increased aggravation until a replacement is found and trained up. It's important to stress that this is not the same as when you leave a job because you're moving up in the world - for a promotion or a better paid more important job. In those scenarios, you're not quitting. There's no risk, no 'giving it all up' to do something risky based on what your heart truly wants. So there's not the same heartfelt envy and excitement amongst colleagues.

It happened today. I went in with my letter of resignation and met with my line manager and my boss. Both were a little shocked and alarmed at the implications for them and the team, but for me... they were delighted. Both agreed, 'good on you.' They both said things like, 'We'd love to do the same - but we're trapped. We've based our lives on the levels of earnings we get here, we've got our mortgages and our cars and our commitments. We're fed up, scunnered, disillusioned and angry, but we can't do anything about it.'

There is something of a vicarious thrill in their responses. But hell, there is in mine too!

Am I quitting a sensible secure job for a risky future? Or am I quitting a career I don't want, for a life that I do? It's just a matter of re-framing the risks. I've never felt so sure as I did today that the risky things are the right things to do. Quitting is good.

Global Weirding & The Runner

2009-02-18T19:49:00.005Z

Unseasonable ice turns to unseasonable mild. Last week saw me running on snow, kicking up powder, sliding on ice. This morning saw me jogging in short-sleeves, delighting at the feel of air on skin, and the lightness of not needing layers. Mmmm... This weather is weird, but I love it.

Why Boldness Needs Practice

2009-02-17T18:15:00.009Z

"When faced with two alternatives, always choose the bolder." Chay Blyth

I love that quote. I reckon it's a fantastic notion to put at the core of life. Not that I can say that I always do - bold is scary, and risky, and ill-advised, and something parents will definitely disapprove of.

But hey! What the hell. Given two alternatives recently, I have chosen the bolder, and it's kick-started an adrenalin rush and a sense of freedom that is very exciting! The two alternatives were:

1. Stay in the job I've got.
It is about as secure as a job can realistically be, it is well-paid, it has good holiday allowances, excellent parental leave options, and one of the few half-decent pension schemes left in the world. Plus I like the work, my colleagues, and my boss.

2. Leave the job I'm in, for something that is only one step less risky than ditching the lot and going travelling again.
It's a short-term contract, with less money, less holiday and less pension. Whaddya reckon?

Maybe the above description doesn't really get across how I feel about the two options.

1. I like my current job, but the 'security' of it frightens me silly.
If I stay where I am, I could easily be doing what I do now for the next 30-40 years. The thought of that makes me feel sick. I don't want my entire adult life to consist of 40 years full-time work for the same employer, with 2 week holidays scattered amongst it, all driving towards retirement and finally getting my hands on my pension so that I can live without work. Just in time to find I've developed arthritis in my knees and wrists, or some other chronic debilitating illness, and can't bloody well do any of the things I've been waiting to do all my life.

2. In the job i'm going for, it keeps me practiced at being bold - boldness is something that definitely needs on-going practice. It's about actively making things happen and changing things for the better. It saves me from stagnation. It keeps me from getting too comfortable, so I continue to live simply, cheaply, autonomously, flexibly, able to act according to my principals without being cowed into submission by fear, debt or authority. And it lets me prioritise my family, my running, and the wilderness.

Plus I'm hoping that it'll move me forwards. It's hard to develop independent entrepeneurial skills in a government-funded establishment job. While I don't yet know where I'm headed, I hope it'll be in the direction of short intensive work bursts and frequent 'mini-retirements,' or 'years out' (starting to like that phrase, once its in the plural).

In terms of risk, I've already ditched the lot and gone travelling before, and found that it wasn't all that risky really. I've never regretted the leaps I've taken, though I have felt crushed at the points where I've chickened out, been sensible, and not taken the leap.

I may live to regret it, but till then, I'm going to be bold.

Do We Really Live In The Land Of The Free?

2009-02-17T17:16:00.012Z

We're lucky, we live in the land of the free. Or do we?

Freedom of expression, freedom of speech are fundamentals of Western society. But since I started this blog, I've found myself reluctant to give away too much about myself that could identify me to the casual reader. Partly this has been about retaining a sense of privacy, and perhaps also a certain lack of confidence. But a big part of it has been a wariness of the powers that be.

When I was doing my professional training, our lecturers covered our future responsibilities. And one of these responsibilities would be to not bring our profession into disrepute. We were told a tale, repeatedly, about a group of female physiotherapists who were struck off because photos were taken and published of them on holiday - indulging in some topless skiing! Bit of a hoot that story. Was it even true? I don't know. But the moral was clear as day - what you do in your private life, can be justified grounds for disciplinary action if its deemed to be potentially damaging to your profession. So watch it!

In a previous job, a colleague of mine was very politically minded and frequently went on marches, always in a peaceful capacity I hasten to add. She used to joke that the authorities would certainly have pictures of her ugly mug on file (though was she really joking?). With the G8 protests coming up, she was getting all geared up for participating in the big day, when a senior colleague took her aside and advised her not to go. He warned that if anything happened, any sort of trouble or controversy that she could be connected to, it could impact on her job or her entire professional career.

In a world where 'freedom' is supposedly entrenched in our culture, it's depressing to hear stories like these - stories of people engaged in very benign activities who can still find their lives turned upside down by authorities that feel... what? Threatened? Undermined? A laughing stock? In reality, the cases of authorities or professional bodies actually taking action against individuals who show them up in some way must be miniscule and extremely rare. But the stories of it are rife - keeping us all in check through self-imposed regulation of what we say and do.

I don't have anything particularly radical to say. But nor do I tow the party line 110%. And with blogging, what emerges over the weeks and months is not planned out in advance. It evolves, and I don't know where it's evolving to.

Blogging is all about self-expression, and when I find myself self-censoring just in case my profession gets wind of my personal opinions, I have to wonder.

Just how free are we?

Photo by erix!

Do You Learn More After 'The Big Trip', Than During It?

2009-02-15T11:35:00.016Z

I read a lot of blogs where people are gearing themselves for their first big trip, to ditch the routines and expectations of ordinary unfulfilling lives and Go Travelling. And I also follow a lot of blogs where people are out there, right now, doing it, living their dream (I'm a wee tad envious of those people, it'll be sunny where they are now). All the focus is on making it happen, and then enjoying it. Rightly so too. But...

What happens after the first Big Trip? If I think about where I'm at right now...

I started this blog at the end of a major experiment in simplified and free living. I saved some cash, packed in my job, and set off to Australia for a year's experimentation. I experimented in trying not to work, trying not to need many possessions, trying to enjoy each moment, and trying to focus on the activities and passions that naturally emerge given true freedom, time and space. Which, for me, turned out to be running, the great outdoors, writing, creativity, and close meaningful relationships. I did it all, loved it, made the most of it, and didn't think to blog about it till after the fact (doh!).

The experiment was a success! I came back with a clarity, a peace and a direction that was new and thrilling. I found a confidence in myself outside the norms of society that was positive and healthy and strong. Along the way, I found blogs and books by people who also had similar principals and goals, and I followed them closely (the Hobopoet, the 4 Hour Work Week, and The Art of Non-Conformity being three of the best).

I started this blog to try and keep myself on track. To keep experimenting, and build on the experience to integrate simplicity, creativity, and a freedom from wage-slavery fully into my life, longterm. Great goals, eh?

Instead, something else has happened. I went back to my full-time job, and got a nice flat with my other half, and got my car back from my brother, and found there were lots and lots of things I 'needed' and simply must buy...

And all the simplicity, freedom, time and space evaporated. My 'year out' (now there's a telling phrase, who coined and propagated that one?) was nice, but as a model for a longterm lifestyle, surely ridiculous? The words 'unrealistic, irresponsible, and juvenile' all spring to mind. I write these thoughts down, and I realise that the brainwashing of modern society is working on me. I'm letting things slip, reverting to my old pre-freedom self.

So, has my experiment actually been a total failure?

No. I've just been redirected a bit. Out of those travels, I have found a new direction and passion in relation to my work. Where before I was floundering a bit, now I'm focused. Suddenly notions of social justice, equality, health and wellbeing really fire me up. Now, I have a more independent enquiring approach to my job that I didn't have before. Its no longer enough, somehow, to just do my job each day, as expected, as instructed, and not concern myself with the things that really might make a difference. I now know for sure that work is good and important (though I also now realise that the way many jobs are structured gets in the way of all that).

What I'm wondering is, can I combine the two types of success? Retain freedom, autonomy, simplicity and creativity as viable principals to guide my life. But also apply them as principals that may help others? Simultaneously strive for a job, a business, or an income that works to change the fucked-up priorities of our society, and improve things for all?

Following your passion, or your bliss, isn't just about hanging out on sunny beaches (though sometimes it is!). It's also about ensuring that the principals that you care passionately about are the core of everything you do.

Maybe you learn more after The Big Trip than you do during it?

Why 'Good Business Practice' Is Shooting Itself In The Foot

2009-02-13T11:52:00.018Z

'Good' business does great by downsizing and streamlining, by paying its workers the minimum it can get away with for the maximum amount of work it can squeeze out. This is efficiency, and this is what it's all about. Our economy is founded on principals of cost efficiency and productivity. But does this mean our society should be too?

The idea is that if your company masters efficiency, and is a hard, fast, streamlined hive of productivity your company will succeed and you will become rich. Hooray. And if you don't own a company, but are a hard worker with in-demand skills, you should be alright. Well done.

But there will be a pay off. All the people who didn't cut it; who couldn't be fast enough, flexible enough, skilled enough... They can be streamlined out of your business model, but not out of existence. Just because they don't work for you, doesn't mean they're not going to be your problem. Consequences will result, whether through crime, unemployment, illness, disability, the feel of society or the cohesiveness of communities... We're all inter-related, inter-dependent, and can't all be boiled down to clever market forces. You may make great savings and great profit in your work, but there will be a cost somewhere along the line. It might be financial, which is easily understood in our economy and may provoke action (preferably by someone else). Or it may not be directly financial, which is more difficult. How do you price the human costs of unhappiness, exclusion, fear, loneliness, pain, anger or suffering? What goes around, comes around - in one form or another. Better surely to create a society that takes account of this cycle? That factors in the indirect human costs as well as the direct financial ones?

Running Gems: This Other World

2009-02-03T16:40:00.007Z

9pm: out running through thick snow. Each footstep makes a clean squeak, a sound more satisfying than the pop of bubble wrap. Fox prints pepper the whiteness, and I dance round them as I run. Ice underfoot makes me pull back my pace, makes it cautious, steady and sustainable. In this other world, muffled under blankets of snow and darkness, I could go forever.

Picture by Aaron

Running Update: Body Versus Brain

2009-01-20T15:48:00.010Z

There've been no running posts lately, because there's been no running. It seems I was a wee bit premature, thinking my achilles was basically fine. Instead I've found that yes I am ok pottering about a sedentary life of work, driving and mooching about the house... But set me loose on a run, and within five minutes, sharp pain spears through the appropriate bit of my ankle and I have to hobble home again. And in fact, the compromise of a brisk walk in the usual running slot didn't seem to be doing my injury any favours either. So, rest it is, and rest it will be for as long as it takes. Even if I have to miss the Lochaber Marathon in April, I have no intention of not being fighting fit for Loch Ness in October. So I'm just taking each day as it comes.

The mind may have accepted the situation, but the body sure as hell hasn't. It's funny how quickly the discomfort sets in. Within a day or so of no running, the lack of exercise has the muscles in my back feeling irritable and my spine feeling all clogged up. I try to kid my body, I try to con it, fool it with a vigorous 5 minutes of sit-ups and press-ups, the stretch routine, shower. 'Whaddya mean! Course we've been out running today! Can't you tell by the slightly raised heart rate and subsequent wash?!' Sometimes, very occasionally, it works... But usually it doesn't. The body knows fine.

What will be worse is when my body adapts, and no longer wants to go out running 5 days a week. Then I'm in trouble, because while the discomfort will have eased off, so too will every shred of fitness. I can't bear to even think about that.

How Travelling Can Give You Super-Hero Powers

2009-01-19T16:28:00.012Z

Like Hiro in the TV series Heroes, I too can travel through time and space.

As I'm typing this post, it is this winter's first snow fall in the city. Big fluffly flakes of snow are cascading down and settling on the cars and bushes and buildings outside my window. And as I sit here I get a rush, backwards in time and across thousands of miles! Suddenly I am simultaneously sitting at my window in my little house in the north of Japan 8 years ago, watching the snow fall. Something about the light, the temperature, the sense of contented isolation having come home to an empty house after a day's work, is identical. It's not just that i can 'remember' it, it's that I can feel it, vividly.

Having travelled in real time and space once, I am able to travel back there again and again for the rest of my days. All I need, is the right sensory trigger.

That's what travelling does for you, it gives you super-hero powers.

Why Value-Conflict Is Eating Me Up

2009-01-18T12:57:00.010Z

For those of us who are sick fed-up with our jobs and believe there must be more to life, a big part of the problem is conflict at work. I'm not talking about the petty, though aggravating, disputes with colleagues about silly things like re-filling the paper tray in the photocopier or washing up the coffee mugs.

I'm talking about conflict between our values, and the values and expectations of our employers and the systems we work in.

I've been getting seriously wound up about my work. The evidence for this is there for all to see, splattered all across my recent blog posts. Why am I so wound up? I love my work, don't I? I'm a therapist; I help people, I like helping people, I'm pretty good at helping people. What's the problem?

The problem is conflict. There is a conflict between my personal world view and politics, and the world view and politics of my employer, and hence my job. I am a gung-ho, fully-paid-up-member of any movement pushing for improved health, well-being, quality of life, rights, and opportunities. In the context of my job, that'll be for people with learning disabilities, mental health issues, or any other sort of disability. In the context of my life generally, that'll be for everyone!

But, I am not remotely gung-ho about the way our society is organised. As far as I can see, our society either creates or exacerbates many mental health problems and disabilities. Our society also creates unhappiness, loneliness, fear, hopelessness, isolation, and stress.

My job expects me to help people towards improved health and well-being in the context of the wider society basically staying the same. I feel strongly that more than everything, it is the wider society that needs to change.

So there.

How Much Do You Want To Be Just Like Everyone Else? A Professional Rant

2009-01-12T20:40:00.021Z

I am a health professional with bad attitude. No, really, it's true.

I'm decidedly dubious about much that underpins good proper professional practice in Health and Social Care.

What am I talking about? In Scotland, like many places, there is a move to provide care and support for people with learning disabilities in 'the community'. The idea is that everyone should access mainstream opportunities for work, leisure, living arrangements, and relationships. Notions of equality and diversity are central to this perspective. The consultation and report that underpins this approach in Scotland is called 'Same as You?' And that is what health and social care professionals work so hard to achieve - to give our clients the opportunity to be the same as you and me. But...

What is good for me, isn't necessarily what is good for you. There are many different ways of doing things. You just have to look at the sorts of people who follow this blog and others like it to see that the quest for 'something different' is huge. But only the narrowest and most mainstream range of life choices is recognised in Health and Social Care circles. This bugs me because:

There are many people who neither thrive nor benefit from the mainstream ways of living, and the norm can be downright damaging to some.
The social, cultural or economic influences underpinning what is 'mainstream' and why this is the case are never considered.
There is an argument that the mainstream way of living is primarily organised that way in order to benefit the economy and the richest within our economy, not the ordinary person trying to live an ordinary life of health and happiness.

Notions like these are never considered in our professional practice, though during our tea-breaks we may well grumble about its impact on our personal lives.

Have an example. Increasingly, we are supporting people with learning disabilities to live in their own flats or houses, usually on their own, because this is considered the norm. No-one questions if this is necessarily the best option for a specific client, because nor is it questionned if it's the best option for anyone else. There are many people - with and without learning disabilities - living on their own who are lonely, isolated, depressed, anxious, or afraid. If someone does question it, it's pointed out that it's 'not normal' in our society to live in group homes, or to live with people who aren't immediate family. That smacks of institutional care, and by god you'll get the sack if you get caught leaning in that direction. But students live in Halls of Residence or flat-shares - some like it, some don't, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It's an option, and some would continue with that sort of mode of communal living if they could; if it weren't so difficult to find the opportunity outwith a university context. Living in youth hostels while I travelled suited me just fine, and I met plenty people along the way who also liked and actively chose that kind of communal living. In other countries, the one-flat one-family unit model isn't so strictly normal.

Likewise, huge resources go into kitting up a client's new home with all the furniture, equipment, utensils and other objects that we all want and need. Some clients love this process and benefit from it, some really couldn't give a damn what colour or style their new suite is, or whether or not they even have one. No-one questions what exactly underpins this norm - a consumerist, materialist, isolationist society. And no-one questions whether that is something we should be aspiring to - either for our clients, or for ourselves.

The environmental impact of the 'normal' way of living - where we each have our individual house and all the individual items deemed necessary to furnish and equip a home - is absolutely never considered. Why should it be for a learning disability population, when its not for the general population?

In Health and Social Care, there are certain principals that guide our practice, and anything outside these principals really isn't our domain of concern. The social change we're chasing is that of equality for a certain sector of society that historically has been excluded, undervalued and mistreated. There is nothing wrong with that goal. But, it seems to me that in day-to-day practice we're often waylaid into focusing on the physical and material aspects of equality - 'normal' housing, furniture, clothing, possessions, and wherever possible, behaviours - an outwardly normal lifestyle. We are too busy, and often too stressed, to take the time to focus on the core spiritual and human aspects of equality - things like rights, responsibilities and respect. Strict adherence to an ethos of 'care in the community' often means that we cannot recognise individuals' needs that don't fit within dominant societal norms. We're meant to be 'person-centred' but that only goes so far under policy, time and budget pressures. You're much more likely to get a 'person-centred' service if what you want is to be just like everyone else.

We need to recognise and respect individuals' rights to be different from you or me.

Running Update: The Value of Frozen Peas

2009-01-12T20:29:00.009Z

Frozen peas. What I've learned this week is that every runner should have a packet of frozen peas stashed close to hand. The achilles is aching, in a dull anxiety-inducing sort of way. To run or to rest? To ignore and ice it, or molly-coddle and indulge it? Wild weather at the weekend had me glad, sort of, to ease off and stay home instead of train as planned. But that's another long run missed, making the marathon goal that bit harder to attain. God damn it, injury is crap.

Picture by Andrew Michaels

Running Update: Achilles Crack Alert

2009-01-07T18:28:00.013Z

Yesterday, the hard run went swimmingly. Back in the door; I stretched, showered, painstakingly updated the running diary. Ah... the satisfaction of rigorous training. And now for a cup of tea. In the kitchen, I put the kettle on, stretch up on tip-toes to the top shelf to pull down my favourite mug, and... felt a 'crack' in my left achilles tendon. No...! No no no no no no no... Panic gripped me, I cannot be injured: the training schedule leaves no room for recovery before the April marathon. And even without the marathon, I'll both go crazy and balloon in size without my running. Today, I think it's okay. It was a warning shot, not an injury. I've gone away, done my homework, and will be far more careful from now on. But still, fear ghosts round my ankles.

Image by Hello Turkey Toe

Indeed

2008-12-23T16:22:00.001Z

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Blue Bloody Murder

2008-12-23T15:45:00.013Z

Listening to a radio interview with a UK politician the other morning, I found myself swearing blue bloody murder at the numpty. Answer the sodding question!!!!

Politicians and their policies are about creeping improvements, but with minimal change. We all know about obesity being an increasing problem in the Western world. But measures to tackle the problem are feeble, because the objective is to keep everything basically the same. Suggestions usually focus on improved information and education, so that people can make the choice to eat less crap and do more exercise. The talk is about 'empowering' people to take the small steps that'll make their existing lifestyles that bit healthier. For example;

- get off the bus one stop early.

- use the stairs, not the lift.

- have a salad, not a burger.

- have a low-fat burger, not a full-fat burger.

There's no serious examination of our existing lifestyles as being a root cause. The talk is not about empowering people to make the big changes that would overhaul their entire lifestyle, and our entire culture, for the better.

Given that obesity and many other lifestyle-created health problems keep rising in the West, I would argue that we need a more radical approach. It's not going to work, to simply use the stairs more. What is needed is a new way of looking at the entire system that's creating and maintaining these unhealthy and unbalanced lifestyles. And a real commitment to change. To act, not just to debate, and definitely not to dodge the question.

Image by Joao Paulo Correa de Carvalho

Windows

2008-12-22T10:20:00.007Z

I'm on my Christmas holidays, and today is just Monday! The whole week stretches ahead, deliciously. Out on my run this morning, I'm unfocused and ok with that. I jog along, stop and start, stroll and sprint as the fancy takes me. I take an interest in other people's front rooms - glancing in windows as I pass, and admiring their trees, lights and decorations.

It's damp, still and mild down here on the ground. No sunshine to speak of. I look up in the sky, and watch the silent course of a plane as it passes overhead. Its vapour trail is lit up by the sun, a fluffy arrow of unearthly white. It makes me smile. I love that sensation of being up above the clouds as a new day breaks. Sitting next to the window hatch, gazing out at the view: blue skies, and landscapes of clouds piled high like heaps of clotted cream, every one with silver-hued and irridescent linings. The sense of calm, the contemplation, and the anticipation of being en-route to the next big adventure.

Running Gems: Hectic Sunday

2008-12-22T09:30:00.005Z

Yesterday; a hectic Sunday, too much on, too much to do, got to get on, no time for a run. My brain kept telling my body that the day's run was off, but my body wasn't having it. My spine tingled naggingly, agitation built up in my bloodstream. I needed to go out.

Into my running gear, and out the door. I'm slapped in the face by horizontal rain, and knocked sideways by the gales. I run fast, buffetted from side to side, trees roaring over my head. I pull off my hat and gloves; weather makes direct contact with skin, nerve endings fizz. I am buzzing with exhileration. 15 minutes in total, flat out. Magnificent.

Running Gems: Something Suspicious

2008-12-20T12:10:00.011Z

Wild storms yesterday. This morning, the sun's not risen yet but the sky above is fresh and clear. The trails beneath my feet are all mud, grit, mess and flooding. A stone picnic spot down by the river looks suspicious somehow - too perfect, too smooth and flawless. I peel off the track and approach. Normally I would take a flying leap down the steps, but today I step out gingerly. My shoe sinks an inch in deep sludge, skids a little. Fearful of slipping, I pick my way out to the railing over the river, a line of squelching footprints in my wake. There's something satisfying about being the first, about leaving my mark in the muck. It's like leaving the first footprints on an untouched beach - only less romantic. I can't bear to spoil them. I clamber my way along the railings back to the bank, and scramble up to the track. One line of prints left in the mud, with no return. I run on.

Image by Joyseph

I Do Therefore I Am

2008-12-18T19:29:00.010Z

"I spent the early part of my life trying hard to be someone else. At school I wanted to be a great athlete, at university I wanted to be an admired socialite, afterwards a businessman and, later, the head of a great institution. It did not take me long to discover that I was not destined to be successful in any of these guises, but that did not prevent me from trying, and being perpetually disappointed with myself. The problem was that in trying to be someone else, I neglected to concentrate on the person I could be. The idea was too frightening to contemplate. I was happier going along with the conventions of the time, measuring success in terms of money and position, and climbing ladders which others placed in my way, collecting things and contacts rather than giving expression to my own beliefs and personality. I was, in retrospect, hiding from myself, a slave to the system rather than its master. We can't, however, discover ourselves by introspection. We have to jump in before we learn to swim. We find ourselves through what we do. "I do therefore I am" is more real than "I think therefore I am."
Charles Handy (1997), The Hungry Spirit
What do I do?

I run, travel, and write about it - in order to connect, share, inform and inspire.
I question the system and its impact on the health and happiness of people and the planet itself, and I act to change it.

What do you do?

Problems with Articulation

2008-12-14T15:54:00.006Z

The Social Model of Disability argues that it is the way society is organised that disables people more than their individual impairments. Change should be directed at society rather than the person.

The gulf between the rich and the poor in Western societies is growing ever larger. If you're one of the comfortably well-off, and everyone you know is equally comfortable and secure, this might seem unlikely and of little immediate concern. But the current credit crunch and recession is laying bare just how tenuous the middle classes' notion of 'security' really is. Many people have found themselves just one unexpected event away from losing everything. And to me, 'losing everything' isn't the terrible thing, it's the stress, fear and misery that comes with it.

Much of the way our society works not only disables people, but also makes them ill, lonely and unhappy. Despite unprecedented wealth, health and technology, the stats indicate that our society is afflicted with ever increasing depression, anxiety, isolation, stress, obesity and a sense of never having enough time.

There is, of course, a lot about Western society that is wonderful. But I don't think that that makes it ok to disregard all that is not wonderful; that is awful, wrong and damaging.

We're not encouraged to truly question the status quo. I often question things, but I find it very hard to articulate what I mean, what I'm getting at. I struggle to find examples or data to back myself up, to justify my questionning. I can't think fast enough, or can't remember the details of the report that led to my questions. I don't have any answers, so I flounder.

I do have instincts, gut feelings and direct experiences that inform and illustrate my questions. Some of these find their way onto this blog. And I do listen to others and read the words of people who can articulate themselves better than me, who can collate data and marshall arguments.

In the meantime, I can say what I feel. I feel that the answers to these problems lie in the way we think about work. The way we value time, relationships and creativity in relation to money or security. The way we prioritise the environment versus economic growth. And the choices we make about moulding people to systems or systems to people.

An Inspirational

2008-12-14T14:10:00.009Z

"If you are lucky enough to feel passionately about something, then really your only obligation is to be true to that."

(Del Kathryn Barton - painter & sculptor.

Published in The Australian, 03/05/08)

It's About Compromises

2008-12-14T13:33:00.007Z

It's Christmas time, and the shops are full of 2009 calendars. I had a day off work on Thursday, and went into the city to do some Christmas shopping. 8.30am and it was still pretty dark outside. As I walked along through the business district, I nosied in the bright-lit windows of all the offices. Many shades of grey lay before me. I was glad to be able to keep walking - through the rain and the icy patches - rather than climb the steps into any of those buildings and have to seat myself at a screen in a blanket-grey environment for the day.

After a bit, I noticed a colourful pattern developing as I passed building after building: it was in the calendars hanging on the office walls. Glossy pictures of amazing exotic beaches, of surfers catching splendid waves, of sunsets, autumn leaves, and astonishing natural wonders across the world.

On Friday, I went to my work and gazed at the calendar hanging above my desk - Scottish mountains no less - in a new way. It was meant to be motivational and inspirational. But really it's a compromise. A salve for an aching soul. Is that enough?

Therapy

2008-12-10T19:00:00.005Z

Its winter, and I'm obviously suffering symptoms. Kinda like Seasonal Affective Disorder, only its colour I'm missing rather than daylight. This picture is therapy.

Running Gems: December Mornings

2008-12-09T07:54:00.010Z

6am, dark and cold. The city sleeps. Stars twinkle overhead. Christmas lights flash-on-flash-off in the windows of tenement flats. I run, frost glittering by beneath my feet like a galaxy of disco lights.

Image by calebkimbrough

Underfoot

2008-12-08T18:30:00.000Z

Making Time

2008-12-08T18:14:00.009Z

The next thing about the Hobopoet's audacious plans is... training for an ultra takes time. Sure, time as in months, perhaps even a year or more. That's not a problem to my mind, that part of the appeal.

I'm thinking about the time in each day to build up the necessary mileage. As the distances creep higher, so too do the lengths of time needed to cover the distances. I know this deliciously well from marathon training - I adore the Sunday 20 miler out into the wilds, or the mid-week 9 miler through the botanic gardens and down by the river. But it can be a struggle to fit it in around my full-time job, commute, and other interests and commitments.

I'm guessing this may not be a problem for the Hobopoet, experimenting as he is with the 4 Hour Work Week concept. And I know there are plenty runners out there who manage it - I'm always mightily impressed by tales of hospital doctors, who fit in a bit of adventure racing across the Arctic on the side. But it must surely be a problem for most mortal souls.

Living the dream has its costs, and often its not so much the money that is the problem but the time. Maybe the question to ask is 'How can I make the time?'

The Hare & The Tortoise

2008-12-08T17:42:00.009Z

The Hobopoet talks about one of his latest ventures - training for a 50 mile ultra. I ache and long for such an audacious goal... He outlines his training strategy: slow-oh-so-slow and steady. Sounds like good solid 'hare and tortoise' principals, and puts me in mind of the last marathon I ran - The Great Ocean Road in Australia. It's an amazing route, with scenery to cherish for all eternity. They close the roads for the morning, so the runners have probably one of the most driven tourist routes in the whole world, all to themselves! Magical. And also fairly hilly.

For the first 18 miles or so, I was mostly level with a guy with a very audible heart-rate monitor strapped to his chest. On the uphills, he'd barely take a few steps before his wristband started beeping frantically and he'd drop his pace to a walk. I'd keep chugging along at my steadily trained 'marathon pace', catch him, pass him, leave him in my wake (that turn of phrase makes it sound so glamorous!). But no matter how long or steep the hill, he'd always glide by me again before long, whenever we reached a downhill or a flat stretch. This pattern continued till around mile 18, when I began to break. The hills and the headwind got the better of me, and my steady pace broke down into a faltering mix of walking, shuffling, and pained jogging. The man with the monitor continued, effortlessly it seemed, off into the distance. I checked the results later, and found that he finished more than an hour ahead of me.

Slow-oh-so-slow works a treat. I don't know why I'm surprised. 'The Hare & The Tortoise' was one of my favourite childhood stories.

Image by rmricci

A Blaze of Colour

2008-11-30T11:46:00.001Z

Mad Keen Runner

2008-11-30T10:57:00.008Z

I've been a mad keen runner for a good 10 years now. I fell into it during a lonely year in northern Spain - even through the winter, the long siesta in the working day saw my colleagues lunch and snooze, but I never got the hang of that. Instead, every lunchtime I took myself off down the tracks that snaked along beside the river Ebro, to see what I might find. At first I just walked, but walking wouldn't let me get far enough in the time allocated. So I began to run.

Since then I've travelled lot. I've moved cities, switched countries, and worked and studied in numerous places within the UK. The same black and green rucksack has come with me on all these moves; much stitched, patched and emergency-repaired. No matter where I'm going or for what purpose, the first thing to be packed into that backpack is always my running kit. Trainers and a stopwatch are the crucial two items. Otherwise, kit has varied over the years and climates, though I have found that the sporty fabrics that are specially designed to wick and not chafe, are a mercy and a gift. I've never had all the sexiest latest gear, and I'm not immune to pangs of envy or inadequacy when someone jogs by who really does look the part. But as I usually choose to run trails and tracks way out the back of beyond, how I look is mostly irrelevant once I've got out there.

Running grounds me, and enlivens me. It ensures me a connection with the weather, seasons and terrain. Late summer comes and goes, and the lush greens in the fields gradually wither to husks and stalks... the first dustings of snow come... through the wild storms of winter... the arrival of frogspawn in the ditches... turning to darting teeming tadpoles... Cherry blossoms and daffodils burst into life... later raspberries stud the hedgerows, blaeberries nestle in the hills... This is an awareness and connection that I find is weakened to the point of irrelevancy in normal daily life in the city. Without running, the changing seasons and weather are reduced to scraping ice off the car, adjusting the thermostat in the house, deciding which coat to go out in...

Some of my best thinking happens when I'm out running. It seems to happen in the empty spaces - between the endless mileage calculations, the chanted mantras to stop me giving up when it gets tough, and the pleasure of being outdoors - there must be cogs a-whirring. Because out of nowhere, new thoughts materialise, problems are solved and clarity gained.

I often, almost always, experience moments of exaltant emotion: euphoria, invincibility, a gratitude and awe for the world. My running is driven by what must be a form of addiction, coupled with an urge to explore: always a little further, what lies round that bend, over that ridge, beyond those trees?

Running has carved a niche into my life. It's a passion. It's a form of bliss.

Choked with the Cold

2008-11-29T10:07:00.005Z

9.30am on a frosty Saturday morning. The sun is rising through a gap in the trees, and bathing the living room in gold. I want to be out there, jogging the ice-crusted trails down by the river. But I'm not, because I'm choked with the cold: just the walk from my desk to the kettle makes my head pound and my eyes wince, let alone the 7 miler my training schedule suggests for today. What is even more galling, is that this is my first bout of ill-health in about 18 months (hangovers withstanding). It seems to say a lot, to me at any rate.

Whilst away travelling, my health was exceptional. No colds, flu, tummy bugs or any of the other common ailments that ordinarily catch me out a few times per year. It was a fear of mine - that I'd end up coughing and sneezing through the night while staying in a 8-share dorm somewhere. How unpleasant, unfair and annoying it would be for my room-mates. Or a stint of food poisoning, while sharing a small block of communal toilet facilities! How vile that would have been for other guests. I did carry around a vague anxiety about falling ill on the other side of the world, away from the familar system of free health care taken for granted in the UK.

But, luckily, it never came to be. I enjoyed over a year of perfect health. It doesn't take a genius to see why: lots of exercise, daylight and fresh air on a daily basis. A massive reduction in negative stress. Autonomy and control over pacing and activity levels - if I felt a bit tired and rundown, I could opt to rest. If I felt buzzing with energy, I could run/hike/write/work like a fiend. Constant changes of my environment and the people around me probably boosted my immune system over time. The need for very cheap and very simple food meant a super-healthy diet of fresh fruit, veg and carbohydrates most days. Being a budget nomad was so good for me.

Now I'm back, have been for 4 months now, which seems to have been long enough for all the good contributing factors to slide away and a pesky dose of the cold to incubate. It'll be over in a day or so, it's no big deal, and I'm grateful that this is the worst health problem I have to complain about. But the compare-and-contrast is resonant. In comparison to before, life now is characterised by significantly less control and autonomy, less exercise, less exposure to daylight and fresh air, more negative stress, a less healthy diet, and less engagement in creative fullfilling activities.

Normal life is bad for my health.

Re-adjusting to Life Back Home

2008-11-27T17:00:00.008Z

This always makes me both laugh and feel nostalgic. Don't know who to credit for it, its done the rounds on Facebook I don't know how many times, but whoever you are out there, thank you. This is great!

"Having trouble readjusting to life back at home now that the travelling is over? Here are 9 handy hints to help you settle back in:
1) Replace your bed with two or more bunk beds, and every night invite random people to sleep in your bedroom with you. Ensure at least one person talks in their sleep and at least two people snore like trains. Remove beds one by one as symptons improve.
2) Sleep in your sleeping bag, forgetting to wash it for months. Add some bugs in order to wake up with many unsightly bites over your arms and legs.
3) Enlist the help of a family member to set your radio alarm to go off randomly during the night, filling your room with loud talking. This works best if the station is foreign. Also have several mobiles ringing, without being answered (at least one should have the default Nokia ring). To add to the illusion, ask a friend to bring plastic bags into your room at roughly 6am and proceed to rustle them for no apparent reason for a good half hour.
4) Keep all your clothes in a rucksack. Remember to smell them before puting them on and reintroduce the use of the iron SLOWLY.
5) Buy your favourite food, and despite living at home, write your name and when you might next be leaving the house on all bags. Your food should include mainly pasta, two minute noodles, cans of food with very plain labels, apples and chocolate.
6) Ask a family member to every now and again steal an item of food, preferably the one you have most been looking forward to or the most expensive. Keep at least one item of food far too long or in a bag out in the sun.
7) Even if it's a Sunday, vacate the house by 10am, and then stand on the corner of the street looking lost. Ask the first passer-by of similar ethnic background if they have found anywhere good to go yet.
8) When sitting on public transport (the London Tube would be ideal) introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you, say which stop you got on at, where you are going, how long you have been travelling and what university you went to. If they say they are going to Morden, say you met a guy on the central line who said it was terrible and that you've heard Parsons Green is better and cheaper.
9) Stick paper in your shower so that the water comes out in just a drizzle. Adjust the hot/cold taps at regular intervals so that you are never fully satisfied with the temperature. Because of this frustration, shower infrequently.

These simple but effective instructions should help you fall back into normal society with the minimum effort."

Living The Dream: Costs

2008-11-26T17:56:00.014Z

Freycinet Peninsula, Tasmania. A nice place to hang out for a few days marathon training. I put in a couple of magnificent 12 milers here, round the Hazards-Wineglass Bay loop, at the crack of dawn while most of the tourists and hikers were still fast asleep.

What a dream. But how much did it cost?

Cost:

Youth hostel accomodation/night = AU$24.

Food for a day = around AU$10, depending on what you can find on the hostel's free food shelf.

Entertainments = running (free), sun-bathing (free), reading (free book off the hostel's exchange shelf), writing/drawing (cost of a biro and a notepad - a cent or two per day), conversation with interesting people (included in price of hostel), likewise any TV viewing.

Thats AU$34 for one's day's simple but blissful living, or £14.50 in UK money! How many hours work is that? 2.5 hours on the minimum wage. Less if you're lucky enough to be able to command more cash for your labour.

Now, ok, maybe it's not as simple as that. An airflight from the UK to Australia is a hefty price (besides being desperately bad for the environment, something I'll deal with on this blog some other day). But if you work out the cost of a round the world/return ticket of approximately £1000, across 365 days... Comes out as £2.74/day! That's less than a daily commute costs just about anywhere in the UK, unless you walk to and from work.

And yeah sure, if you want to be super pernickety, there are other costs: The clothes on your back. Running trainers and shorts. Deodorant, soap, shampoo, toothbrush... etc etc. The list goes on, but not indefinitely. With a minimal kit bag of essential gear (a lot of which can be picked up for free on the road from hostels' free-shelves or other travellers moving on), the cost spreads out very cheaply over several months of travel. Probably a lot cheaper than your lifestyle at home.

It certainly cost me a fraction of my lifestyle at home, and I'm not a particularly extravagant person. For somewhere in the region of £20/day, I was able to live my dream.

How Our Economy Is Killing The Earth

2008-11-26T17:31:00.003Z

For a brilliantly informed and thought provoking series of articles on the relationships between the economy and the environment, follow the link to New Scientist, edition dated 16th October 2008, issue number 2678.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html

Anti-Stuff

2008-11-26T16:29:00.010Z

Been thinking about 'stuff' a lot lately. Cataclysmic economic difficulties across the globe have prompted all sorts of views and debate on the topic and its solution... To little ol' me, the message seems to boil down to... If you're lucky enough to still have money to spend, get out there and spend it! It's your duty to the economy - and by extension, your community, way of life, and the entire social order.

Unfortunately, this clashes big time with all the thinking, reading and living that I've been doing over the past year or so. I've been heading in a steadily anti-stuff direction all this time.

Buying 'stuff' buggers up the environment - and for what? A brief buzz of acquisition, and then, too much junk and clutter lying round the house, and ending up in landfill.
Having lots of 'stuff' weighs you down, mentally and physically. There's nothing like trying to backpack your way round the world, to make you get brutal on exactly what stuff is essential. I found that I'd prefer a light backpack and the ability to run for the bus/train, rather than lots of lovely clothes/laptops/gadgets/books - but an inability to lug it comfortably around with me. Plus when you've got lots of stuff, you've got to worry about how secure it is, what happens if you lose it, insuring it...
Needing stuff means needing an ever-renewing ever-increasing money supply to buy the stuff. Which means working lots. Once I quit work I found, after a bit of an adjustment period, that I preferred having loads of time to run/read/write/paint/soak in the sun/think/hang out with friends. There's a certain level of cash that is necessary to earn - to meet the basic needs. But after that, to me, time seemed more valuable than nice gear.

I didn't work for 8 months last year. I lived off savings that I'd expected to last a maximum of 3 months. But they just seemed to stretch and stretch, as I simplified and streamlined my lifestyle and my needs. As I passed through hostels, I gradually shed clothes, books, shoes and gadgets. And in exchange, I got to train for a marathon, running 5-6 times a week, in some of the most stunning places in the world. It was heaven.

Anti-stuff. That's the way to go in every way. Except for the economy.

The Freedom Not To

2008-11-24T20:55:00.006Z

Lately, I've been reading a lot of Tim Ferriss, AJ Hoge, Rolf Potts, Chris Guillebeau and similar. All guys who describe their routes to a particular pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: portable empires, 4 Hour Work Weeks, internet businesses.

They focus on how their business models have freed them to travel as much as they want, whenever they want, while still running their businesses and making their fortune... And how anyone can live the dream!

I like the dream. And there's no denying that I love to travel. But part of what I dream about, is the freedom not to have to keep wandering. I'd like the option to stay put, in a particular remote corner of the world, and build a life there. But remote corners of the world don't tend to have many jobs going...

And maybe that's going to be the key thing that saves me from a lifetime of wage slavery? I actually like my job, most of the time. Well, I love my work and I think it matters - though I could do without the bureaucracy and the corporate nonsense that comes with it. But I don't want to live here, in the city, for the rest of my days.

I want to combine the work that I care passionately about, with a place I care passionately about.

In Love Again

2008-11-24T20:07:00.007Z

I'm just back from a few days up north. I always get a shock as I drive up the coast, round the bends at Berriedale, and eventually emerge out onto the Causewaymire. Its bleak. There's nothing there. Weeks and months spent in the city shrinks my horizons; I get used to built-up streets and estates, hustle & bustle, advertising and traffic everywhere. There's always something in front of you, and it close up and in your face and noisy as hell usually.

Head up north, and the further you go, the less there is. Caithness in November, is a landscape blasted by gales and sleet. It's miles and miles of rolling moorland in dreich greys, browns, blues and purples. The wind turbines turn steadily, clustered against a wild backdrop of Morven and storm clouds. When I see it all for the first time in a while, it makes me gulp. Is this really the place I love and miss so much? I get out of the car, and am halfway knocked off my feet by the wind. Its bloody cold, and the hail stones sting. I hurry indoors, and close the door behind me.

But by the next morning, I am in love again. The sky rolls by ever changing, and creates unique moments of light that make my spirits sing. Three geese honk overhead in formation. The wind roars through the tops of the Braehour forestry. The moors unfurl ahead of me as I run out to Loch More. There's nowhere else I'd rather be, not in the whole wide world.

Duty To

2008-11-24T20:04:00.003Z

It's our duty to the economy to buy more stuff. It's our duty to the environment to buy less stuff. Hmmm.

Impossible Goal

2008-10-18T07:41:00.005+01:00

I've not blogged for a few weeks. I've been feeling tired and sluggish, and getting increasingly overwhelmed with work and the daily commute. I was letting it all get to me, and my little efforts to sort things out didn't seem to be making much difference. It took a while, but I finally came to the realisation that the only way to sort myself out, was to set myself an impossible goal. No spare minutes, let alone energy, in the day? Think I'll set myself a marathon!

So I have. The Lochaber Marathon on 19th April 2009. I've a good 6 months to train, which should be more than enough. And I can't wait to get stuck in.

No More Of The Counter-Productive

2008-09-30T20:12:00.004+01:00

Sometimes, blogging becomes counter-productive. After the initial fizz of starting this blog, and putting the the thoughts into words for the first time, I found myself stuck. I'd gotten too busy thinking about the issues, reading about others' stories, thinking back on past experiences, and dreaming about the future. The distant future. Not next week or tomorrow, let alone today. Instead of getting up with the sunrise and going out for a jog, I was getting up and spending that time surfing the internet... Blogging got me deeper enmeshed in everything I've been fighting against!

So, here I am, I've not been exercising as much as I like to, and my body feels sluggish and tense. I've not been out into the wilds for weeks, and my mind feels brittle and grey just like all the city streets and concrete. Instead of freeing myself from wage slavery, I've been thinking overtime about work. Enough.

As of today, I'm going to sort myself out. Do! Don't think. What is one of the best things in my life? Running. So it's time for new targets, to get me back on track, and moving forwards.

My fitness is about rock bottom at the moment - barely chugging out more than a mile or two, a couple of times a week. But there are some damn good marathons and adventure events lurking over the horizon in 2009. Time to get training, time to get going again.

The Slow Food Manifesto

2008-09-23T19:46:00.002+01:00

(Written by founding member Folco Portinari, on November 9, 1989).

"Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods... A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life. May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency..."

True, and the argument is not restricted to food. 'Fast Life' forces us to buy ever more things we don't need, to consume ever more information, to accept wage slavery as a fact of life, and to never ever have the time for the things that matter. Its speed over quality in every way.

The manifesto for the Slow Food movement could teach us a lot for a slower, more rewarding life in general.

Bliss On The Road

2008-09-20T22:05:00.006+01:00

The heat in the Northern Territory makes me hot and bothered. Irritable, lazy, nippy. A signpost suggests a range of walks in the Kakadu National Park, all between 1km and 3km, and I drag my heels and if given the chance opt not to bother. In this heat, even 1.8km is too far...!

The mozzies infest the Cooinda campsite, so we retreat into our stinking hot van as night falls, and lie there, sweating in the nude, swiping and squashing the mosquitos that bounce along the ceiling. We are on high-alert and tense to their high-pitched whine. By sleep-time the roof, curtains and sheets are pitted with mosquito corpses and dark stains of our own blood... When we waken with the dawn, the mosquito screen over the window is seething with mozzies, all waiting to get in and gorge on us for breakfast.

The driving is easy, out here in the Northern Territory. They have long, clear, mostly straight roads, with light traffic, that is either going as slow as me or has no problem overtaking. We zip along at a comfortable 80km/hour - the excuse of fuel economy lets me drive a full 50km/hour below the speed limit with no criticism or exasperation from others. The air-con blasts, and we're comfortable - till we have to stop. As soon as the engine comes to a stand-still, thick heat fills the van.

An ice-cold beer out of the eski is my treat, when we come to a final stop at whatever campsite we decide to call home for a night or two. Cold and crisp and refreshing, and the nail in the coffin for any ideas of more driving. I love it. It goes straight to my knees, my joints generally, and I feel woozy-relaxed.

I like this hippy lifestyle. I like not having much stuff, and I could certainly still get rid of more of what I've got. I like swimming in natural swimming holes in the morning, reading my book, writing, sketching or dozing in the afternoons. I love going out for a run in the cool of the mornings before the sun burns orange through the tree canopy.

We sit about and pipedream our futures - travels through Canada, New Zealand, Chile, Ireland and on... I suddenly feel unworried. I could happily 'drop out' after all. I'd manage to find stints of work of some kind. I'm not that interested in accruing lots of the latest and bestest stuff, and that means my hard-earned cash will buy me a whole lot more travel or other simple pleasures...

I'm enjoying this lazy life, but I wouldn't want that to be all there is for the rest of my days. I'm pursuing a reduction in stress and a truer sense of freedom, but I don't want to be idle.

It's freedom to do more, not less, that I'm after.

Image by NeilsPhotography

No rush

2008-09-20T21:51:00.005+01:00

Mid-morning and everyone is out - at work, or at school, or at the shops. I have the place to myself. The rain clouds clear, and the ground begins to dry before my eyes. I sit out the backdoor and drink my first cup of tea of the morning. This is a good example of bliss, and perfection. I put the washing on, and I talk to RockRock - who slevers all over my trousers. I tell RockRock what I'm thinking - that this is perfect and I am happy. He looks up at me with big brown eyes, and slevers some more on my trousers. 'What shall I do today?' I ask the dog. He just nuzzles into me. A flock of cockatoos squawk overhead. A pair of galahs pass over. A tiny black and yellow pointy-beaked bird flutters and dives for insects, lands on the tin fence, tap dances for a moment, then flits off again. I soak in the sunshine while I think about it. This is perfect, and there's no rush.

An Essay On Gumption

2008-09-20T21:11:00.004+01:00

Something I've lacked, so far, is gumption. I've always been an agreeable sort of a person; sensible, hardworking, and conscientious. Particularly in my younger days, I also had dogged endurance in spades. I got through 13 years of schooling using an unsurpassable 'keep your head down' approach, despite being in a relentless state of fear and dread for most of it. I didn't skive, I didn't rebel, I never scrapped, and I did fine academically. I hated nearly every minute of it, but I endured it steadily and unquestioningly, and most of all, I never ever let on.

I'm now into my 30s, and while I've seen my endurance skills falter, I continue to play my cards so close to my chest that no-one else would even know I was in the game! It uses a lot of concentration, energy and strategy to be on the defensive as much as I am. I quake at the thought of exposure, I can't bear to let people know my dreams, because I hate it when I'm either cautioned against being 'reckless' or I'm mocked or criticised for being 'unrealistic.' And I definitely cringe at the thought of the chorus of 'I told you so' if it all goes wrong. That is why I am an avid reader of the Hobopoet - because reckless and unrealistic is what it's all about.

The satisfaction, excitement, focus and fulfilment I found while away travelling was a revelation. But to keep doing it, to pursue it onwards - that's going to take gumption. I'm still keeping it all under wraps because I'm not ready to hear what friends or family might say. I don't want the wind taken out of my sails, unless I know I can propel myself on regardless.

But wouldn't it all be so much easier if I was upfront about it all? So friends and family would know where I was coming from, and where I was trying to go? So I wouldn't have to put so much energy into covering my tracks and minimising my real emotional investment. It's hard work pretending I don't care, when really my dreams are consuming my every waking moment I feel so passionate and inspired by them.

I'm not going to achieve the life I'm dreaming of by continuing the pretence that all I am and all I want conforms with the daily grind.

Searching Out Others

2008-09-20T15:17:00.005+01:00

"Great feats are rarely achieved by individuals in isolation; more often it is a team effort. A team which understands its strengths and weaknesses and pulls together to face the challenge will achieve the seemingly impossible." Robert Swan.

I thought I was alone in all this. I thought it was only me who struggled with the daily grind, and instinctively felt that there must be another way. It was only browsing the internet that made me realise that that might not be the case, and that there are tribes and networks of individuals scattered all over the world who have similar ideas and drives to mine.

Linking in to those tribes helps enormously; searching out others who are doing, or have done, the same thing. And 'the same thing' encompasses all sorts of elements - people who are writers, artists, or entrepeneurs in their field... People who have sussed out simple living or 'voluntary simplicity' as a means of freeing themselves... Explorers and travellers who demonstrate all the different ways of getting out into the world. Thinkers and bloggers who rant about the deeper ideological and cultural issues that underpin how the status quo is maintained, and what it takes to break with the norm. The individuals who are at the various stages of their own struggles and journeys. And the friends and family who not only show how massive progress can be made from everyday beginnings, but also support and contribute to my own journey more than they know.

Searching out others is essential on the journey.

Who's Got The Power?

2008-09-20T14:51:00.002+01:00

Trudy from the recruitment agency calls me again! She keeps trying to fix me up with work. I'm not sure if I want to work. I want to know what the pay will be - if it's worth my while. I want to know exactly what the work entails, and what level of experience they're looking for, and does it match closely with the experience I've got. I want to know what skills I might gain from it, and if that fits with my evolving game plan.

Something magical happens. Something that has never happened to me before. She starts trying to persuade me. She offers me a sweetener if I'll take the job. She almost, very nearly, begs me to take it. She needs me to take it more than I need it. She's the one who is desperate, not me! I feel I've got a power I've never had before. I could push it, I could negotiate for a sweeter deal, for something more on my own terms... I've heard other people talk about this, but I've never had the gumption, or confidence, or security to try it. I've always been desperate for any job I go for. I've always made myself super-agreeable, with the attitude that I can make myself whatever it is that they're looking for. And I've always been up against competition that makes me quake. I've always been pitching outside my comfort zone. The power has always totally been with 'them' - the employers with a vacancy. This is something new, and I like it.

What's more amazing is that even when I turn down the job, she keeps calling me. Another job that might suit... I sense in her voice a feeling that I'm all too familiar with - the 'I have to keep chasing, even though I'd rather not.' Don't get me wrong, I know she's not chasing me because I'm excellent at my job - I've a feeling she wouldn't know if I was good, bad or indifferent. That's not the point here.

I also wonder, being choosy, looking for what is truly right for me, not just any old thing... How does that come across? I call up the employer, and have a good chat with a couple of the staff on the team. It's the most assertive and enjoyable job-related phone conversation I've ever had. I get a really good feeling off them. I don't take the job - I don't have the skills and experience they need.

I walk away feeling great. I've made the right decision, for the right reasons. I've not been desperate, I've not sold my soul for a paycheque, I've not conned myself with long-term strategic rationalisations, I've not pretended to be something I'm not.

My 20s hae been all about striving and pretending. I'd like to start just doing and being.

Don't Go For The Job

2008-09-20T14:37:00.003+01:00

I got an email from the locum agency, about a potential job in Launceston. I got awfully excited - go back to Tasmania, earn some money, gain valuable skills. I emailed back, asking for more information. Then I got thinking... My year out travelling has been a phenomenal opportunity - taking time out, not having to clock-in to my job 5 days/week, seeing and experiencing amazing landscapes. Over the course of this year, a bit of a dream has blossomed - to pursue my creative potential in earnest. Each week, each day, this dream has grown arms and legs. I find I'm more enthusiastic, confident, with more conviction and direction and passion than ever before. Vague daydreamy notions are gaining sharper edges, they're clearer, and more possible. The ideas in my head are coming easier and easier, in rich and thrilling detail, and connections are fizzing up in front of my eyes left, right and centre. It's an incredible journey.

It also has to be said that a lot of this wonderous stuff has bubbled up out of bored and frustrated periods. The meat and the content and the inspiration all come out of the people I've met and the things I've seen and done - in Tasmania, on the Great Ocean Road, across the Northern Territory. But buckling down and doing something with it... Making the space - in time, in my head, in my journals - to sit down and see what emerges from a blank page. That has come from being skint, physically knackered, and bored silly in a youth hostel in Melbourne or a friend's house in Adelaide. If I was out working, none of this thrillling stuff would be happening in my head or in my journals....

Maybe I need to be conscious of the trade-off. Being skint and less than fully engaged in employment, may be a pre-requisite to success in creative or other self-directed endeavours.

I don't go for the job in Launceston.

A Punch to the Solar Plexus

2008-09-20T09:54:00.002+01:00

As I trawl the internet in the library, I tap in a search for artists in the Scottish Highlands. The results come back with Shelagh Swanson (see links). Wow! I knew her at school! I click through her website, and am flabbergasted by her work. It's fantastic. I am so impressed.

And there's another, stronger emotion flooding my insides. I'm not sure what it is. It feels almost like a punch to the solar plexus, my heart is beating rapidly, and my head is almost spinning. For goodness sake, what is this?! It could almost be... Panic? Regret? It's a realisation that the things I privately dreamed of, but put away as childish, unrealistic, or not practical - they're do-able. Not only that, but real people out there are doing them.

An empty, hollow discomfort niggles me as I walk back home for lunch. She's living my dream. The dream I packed up in a box, and shelved for a myriad of reasons. The force of the emotion I'm feeling surprises me. I thought I'd made my peace with my decision, such as it was, made by a daft 17 year old in the throes of a slightly late teenage angst. Not to go to Art School, or to pursue other creative avenues. I had a whole raft of explanations and justifications for it - good, genuine, true and accurate all of them.

If it was meant to be, I'd have got my arse in gear and done my portfolio instead of mooning about, getting drunk, and going off to do other things.
If it was something I'd truly wanted to do, I'd be doing my own creative work, regularly, in my own time. And most of the time, I'm not. So I clearly don't have the dedication for it.
I probably don't have the talent for it either. Sure I was good at school, but that's 'big-fish, small-pond' stuff. I'm probably rather mediocre, and thinking otherwise is embarrassing, and has the potential to be humiliating.
It's just as well I didn't, because there's no jobs in it. It's not realistic to think I could've made a living out of it.
I love many of the things I've done instead - languages, travel, teaching, health.
There's a future to think of, hopefully involving settling down and having a family one day. That'll make home ownership, pensions, security so much more important. So I can't go swanning off on half-baked plans to follow dreams of art, or whatever else.

There, see, loads of good reasons. So, why the emotional upheaval? Is it the realisation that all the negative, pragmatic and 'realistic' voices I've listened to weren't necessarily right. I did give in and accept, at some point, the message that I should put away the childish arty-farty nonsense, and buckle down to a real job. That there was no future in anything I might dream of. Shelagh's website makes me realise - that wasn't necessarily true.

But then, seeing Shelagh's website has shown me that it's possible! I've not missed any boats, and it's not too late. Everything I've done in the meantime isn't wasted, because for all that I have found myself buckling to expectations and trapped in wage-slavery at times... other times I've done the right things that I've been passionate about. I can develop those things, enrich them. I feel a fizzy rush of excitement. Adrenalin. I visualise fragments of my dream life, and I see they're all do-able.

Living and working close to the outdoors.
Running, walking, hiking, cycling lots.
Being largely self-employed and self-directed. A life of late nights and early mornings, working hours fuelled by passion, discovery, creativity.
High intensity stints of work, followed by periods for travel and meandering.
Being part of a community and network of people with similar passions and principals.

It might well be 'unrealistic' but its worth striving for.

Works Better, Not Having

2008-09-20T09:35:00.009+01:00

I think it works better, not having. I used to buy books, and magazines, and prints of writers and artists who's work I admire. I think it's important to support the work of talented people, and its nice to have these things at home to browse. But having on the bookshelf doesn't mean 'having' in my mind - purchasing the object doesn't help me know the content of the book any better, or to internalise the beauty or technique of the artwork.

When I travel, I'm in no position to buy books of interest, or cards and images from the exhibitions I find amazing. I can't go printing off all the gems I find on the internet, and I can't pay for the time to copy things down word-for-word, or even shorthand. I'm forced to just look at the things I see that are wonderful, to read the information I want or need. Pay attention to it. Remember and absorb what I can, and then walk away. Later, I might take the time to write or sketch it out. I'm surprised at how much I remember, and it's interesting what comes out. Not exactly what I saw or read, more like something strongly-influenced but new, a creative fusion. And then ideas bubble and fizz and increase exponentially! It's magical.

When I'm in full-time employment, I rarely have the time to browse things, then let thoughts stew before writing or sketching them out. But I do have the money to buy the book. I build a great collection with little depth. For greater depth and personal creativity, it works better, not having.

Be Bold

2008-09-20T08:26:00.007+01:00

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it" Goethe.

Shortly after arriving in Japan, I became good friends with an American guy who'd also come to Japan to teach English. As the weeks passed, he found himself chronically underemployed and his efforts to do his job, and do it well, were met with both apathy and sabotage. Unsurprisingly, his initial enthusiasm, passion and drive gradually... faded. He became restless, jaded and frustrated.

One day, in the depths of the Japanese winter, he packed his bag, grabbed his passport, left his car at the airport, and went. He didn't hand in any resignation, or advise his schools in advance. He didn't tell anyone amongst his friends or colleagues in Japan. Quite simply, Monday morning dawned, and he was gone.

His leaving like that was dynamite. His employers were furious, outraged and flummoxed, though I believe that this was only because the whole thing didn't reflect well on them. They were only mildly inconvenienced by his actions, but acutely embarrassed.

It was the reaction amongst friends and peers in the ex-pat teaching community that really struck me;

There was some concern for him - is he ok?!
There was a sense of loss - he'd be missed.
Some felt his behaviour was irresponsible, immature and selfish. That he'd treated his employers with unacceptable disrespect. And that he'd done no favours for everyone else left behind. That we'd all be tarred with the same brush, we'd all be penalised for his actions, and it would exacerbate problems that many others were having in their schools. Disapproval and condemnation reigned. (It should be noted that the people who held these views were mostly the ones who were doing well and aiming high within the system).
But the majority expressed a hesitant but heartfelt admiration. Perhaps even envy. He'd broken the rules, and he'd done the thing that many of us dreamed of doing - but never would. Why wouldn't we? Because we'd internalised so many reasons not to do anything radical and true. Each and every one of us had a well-honed work ethic, or sense of responsibility, conformity, commitment. We didn't want to attract disapproval, disappoint others, or gain a bad reputation. We had practical reasons like financial debt, or too many possessions that we couldn't just up and leave like he had done. All of which ensured that none of the rest of us would be so bold, no matter how demoralising and utterly pointless our working lives became.

He'd dared to be bold, and to act where the rest of us just dreamed. And the consequences? I don't know much about all the other ex-pat teachers who kept their heads down and slogged on. But I do know that that particular American guy has gone on to realise many of his dreams, and continues to inspire others to do the same.
It seems that its true, that boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Image by Mihai Japan

Personal Priorities & Principals

2008-09-20T08:11:00.003+01:00

Running in magnificent places.

Running on a daily basis.

Wilderness, countryside, the natural world, the great outdoors.

Creativity, writing, art and thought.

Community, family and friends.

Minimal financial entrapment.

Voluntary Simplicity

Autonomous self-directed work.

An independent and sustainable income.

Time and energy for all of the above.

2008-09-18T17:36:00.003+01:00

And anyway, what's with this 'work/life' dichotomy?! Are they really two mutually exclusive states?

How NOT To Get the Work/Life Balance

2008-09-18T17:36:00.000+01:00

The lifestyle sections in newspapers and women's interest magazines are full of features along the lines of:

How to Get The New Work/Life Balance!
7 Ways to Stress Less, Do More.
I Lost My Mortgage, & Gained A Life.
Work Less, Without Guilting Out.

(Red Magazine (UK), October 2008 edition)

It's clearly not just the odd-bod hobopoets and anti-wage slave idealists who know there's something very wrong with the way we live our lives today. The knowledge is now mainstream.

But every reader who browses the features stated above, will also then turn the page and flick through another umpteen pages advertising objects (clothes, makeup, furniture, accessories) that also promise happiness. The same edition of Red magazine followed the above articles with:

New Season Shopping Special: 60 pages of buy now wear forever fashion!

Contradiction anyone?

What's It All About?

2008-09-17T09:04:00.000+01:00

This blog is all about my struggle for more freedom, autonomy and pleasure in life. My trail running is one symbol and experience of that, as is travel generally, writing, art, and family. I believe that there is a whole lot more to life than the 9-5, the daily commute, home ownership and that mythical pension pot at the end of the tunnel. If you're happy with that, and some people are, that's fine. But I know that I'm not, and I know that there are others out there like me.

For years I'd been desperately unhappy and frustrated in that straight-jacketed world view. Then, just over a year ago, it all got too much, and I opted out. I pulled together some savings (supposedly meant for a deposit on a house) and took a Career Break. I went travelling, to see what'd happen... and do you know what? The only things that happened were wonderful. What I'd thought was going to be horrendously risky - career suicide, the end of my chances of ever getting on the property ladder, and frighteningly lonely - turned out to be no big deal. I rediscovered positivity, health, and energy. I made friends who also believed that a mortgage wasn't the be all and end all. I began to write again, paint again, draw again, dream again - my creativity re-grew its wings and took flight. I took pleasure in the moment, every moment. And I upped my running from a burl round the park to ease out work stresses, to long heavenly explorations of some of the most beautiful places in the world. It was magnificent.

Now of course, I'm back. A Career Break only lasts so long, and here I am, back within the daily grind, like as if I'd never been away. Except, it is different this time. Direct experimentation proved to me that there is more to life, and that it is realistic to pursue it. I now have direction, hope, and determination.

I am on my way.

What A Life!

2008-09-16T21:38:00.001+01:00

I read a review of Haruki Murakami and his new book, "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running."

'... This is a man who goes to bed early, gets up before dawn, writes for a few hours, runs for a few more, then listens to some records before turning in again...'

What a life!