Author: Brand Smit

WEDNESDAY, 18 JANUARY 2017

Some people arrange their lives according to systems they believe will increase the likelihood that they’ll survive and at least half of the time feel good about themselves. Other people have goals they pursue. Regardless of whether you prefer systems or goals, or a combination of both, I think everyone aspires to what I can only describe as a point. Sometimes you are aware that you are striving for this point, sometimes not.

This point for many people is an ideal lifestyle – a specific way they would like to spend their days and nights on earth.

Some people’s point is to have a family, to play the role of mother or father to children of their own.

Then there are people who want to reach a point of almost inexhaustible financial means – to know they can buy whatever they want and do whatever they want, the well will either never dry up or the money spent today will simply be replaced tomorrow.

My point is to have the ability to get lost in an activity – it may be a writing project, or a book, or research on a topic that interests me. I want to get lost in an activity without needing to remind myself that I’d have to go out later in the day to sell something (usually my ability to do some or other activity) or do something else that is supposed to make money.

Most people don’t think about it on a daily basis that the real purpose they are pursuing is to survive that specific day and night. And if you survive, you do what you have to do to make your survival worthwhile. To have a point you are aspiring to is more than just a goal you hope to achieve. It is the inspiration that propels you forward; it helps to make your survival today worthwhile.

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MONDAY, 16 JANUARY 2017

18:03

Going through a few pieces from 1999 and 2000, a theme takes shape: I was an ordinary man who just wanted to get married, hold a regular job, buy a house and raise children, but then something scrambled my programming. Since that time, I was lost and confused and unsure of what to do with my existence. I was between a rock and a hard place, as I explained: I wanted everything and I wanted to do everything, and I knew very well I could end up with nothing.

19:40

Personal Agenda is no longer “My collection of writing” that has to include every piece of text I had considered good enough to show other people at one point or another. There is text in the original Personal Agenda that I do want to publish, like “Thirteen minutes on a Saturday night”, but I also reckon Personal Agenda has a broad theme, right? (I especially realised this when I read the “Preface to the complete project”.)

To put it differently, there are pieces that are currently part of Personal Agenda. These pieces are only part of the project because they were written between January 1999 and February 2004, because I thought at some point they were good enough to show other people, and because I only had one book project at that stage (namely, Personal Agenda) it made sense that all the pieces should be included in that project.

Fact is, I have since developed two internet properties with hundreds of pieces of content on each site. If I wrote something in 2000 or 2002 that I would like to share with other people, it no longer needs to be part of Personal Agenda for me to do that.

TUESDAY, 17 JANUARY 2017

01:25

Personal Agenda is about certain issues: to be alone; self-imposed exile (why? where? how long?); identity; family and friends and life partner; language and culture as part of a theme about place and belonging; experiencing meaning in life; understanding life well enough to be able to function outside a mental institution (including dealing with the religious beliefs with which you grew up, either incorporating them into your worldview as an adult, or rejecting them; if the latter, why?); creative ambition (in my case writing) as something that gives value to your life, something that gives you a sense that you are doing something with your existence that is appropriate considering what magnificent animal you are. It then follows that only pieces dealing with these issues should be included in Personal Agenda.

09:36

A new day has brought clarity: Personal Agenda is indeed “My collection of writing” of the period February 1999 to February 2004. Certain themes do stand out as mentioned in this note last night, but in the first place it was and still remains my collection of writing from that period, just like Post Untitled, volume one is my collection of writing from March to December 2004, Post Untitled, volume two is my collection of writing from 2005, and so on. To take out certain pieces because they do not touch on particular themes is to say the book was planned and written with those themes in mind. It was not. I just wrote whatever I felt like writing. Only later did I start collecting all the pieces.

Bottom-line: In 1994, I started taking notes on topics that interested me. In 2003, I started bundling together notes in a single project, and continued writing. Then I conjured up a title. I cannot now look at the title and say, “Wait a minute, this title seems to indicate that the book is about certain themes, and these 12 or 34 pieces aren’t about those themes, so they’re out.” Each compilation, starting from Where you are nobody to the collection that will contain the 2017 material is a collection of my writing – in the first place of a particular time period, and then if you look closely you can identify specific themes. BrandSmit.NET and Assorted Notes are just new platforms where I can share what I have written. The material, as I wrote it, remains my writing from a particular time.

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WEDNESDAY, 11 JANUARY 2017

There are a few reasons why I regard it as important that I spend a few hours on my writing projects on an almost daily basis. One reason is happy delusion. A well-known cartoonist explains that, since you are probably to a great extent delusional anyway, you might as well choose a delusion that makes you happy. I choose to believe that hundreds of people regularly read what I have so far published, and that it is only a matter of time before more people tune in to my frequency, so to speak. It is a belief that makes me happy, it keeps me going, and it makes it easier for me to do other things that I do not much enjoy, but that brings in money.

I can also point to my writing projects as a positive legacy of my existence, and that I may actually succeed here and there to convince someone to do something positive rather than negative, or to give life another chance, if it ever comes to it.

Earlier tonight it struck me that there is another reason why I ought to continue with my hard work, even if it doesn’t pay. There is a business model that says that you create value first, and then you see how you can profit from it. This is exactly what large technology companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google have done, and the model is also followed by smartphone applications like WhatsApp: first provide value to many people; make money later on. This is in a sense also what I do. I am on track to reach the 700 pieces of content mark on BrandSmit.NET and AssortedNotes.COM within the next year or two. This content is personal, original, and dates back all the way to 1994 (naturally, the oldest text predates the sites themselves).

I can see in the monthly statistics that the sites are visited by more than a few people, and that a significant percentage of people spend at least fifteen minutes at a time on the sites. And there is still a lot I can do to expand readership – social media, more formats, a newsletter.

In short, I am in the process of developing two valuable assets that don’t make money at the moment, but – I might produce a book two years or five years from now that does have some commercial value. And if there is a commercial item on the proverbial shelf, then two websites (one of which has already been on the Internet for more than a decade) with hundreds of pieces of content, with a regular readership, would definitely be valuable assets.

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MONDAY, 2 JANUARY 2017

I woke up this morning just before 5 AM. I went to the bathroom, went back to bed, straightened the bedding, rolled myself up again, and for the next thirty minutes or so, in-between waking and sleeping, two thoughts knocked around in my skull.

The first thought was about the piece in the project, Where you are nobody entitled, “The problem is … city planning!” What is the connection with Korea? I wondered. The text is all about my neighbourhood in Taiwan, and how it compares to the average South African suburb. Funny that I hadn’t realised it until that moment. [It turned out that there were other pieces that were not published until recently that did make it clear that the piece is about my dislike of life in the average middle-class suburb.]

The second thought was about what I am going to call the material that follows Post Untitled vol. three – that is, all the material dating from March 2011. I had thought about this on and off for the past few weeks and hadn’t really been able to come up with a satisfactory proposal. Suddenly, I thought, snug under my bedding, my eyes shut, everything from March 2011 is also actually “post” something, namely post-emergency. Not only does it follow on the piece, “The state of emergency is over”, but my view of my daily existence changed in 2011 after I had decided I was no longer in a state of emergency. I also realised I could call it something like, “Stop kicking against the pricks, vol. 1” – referring to a fact I can no longer ignore: I am happiest when I’m working on a writing project, and seeing that time passes anyway and one doesn’t always succeed in what you think you ought to be busy with (in my case, trying to make money with all sorts of projects on the Internet), I would rather use more of my time to edit what I have written so far and work on what I still want to write, even though I won’t make any money in the process.

The title train of thought continued throughout the rest of the day. An hour or so ago, I thought of another title: “Surrender, vol. 1”, with the meaning of surrendering to what I had written on Friday, 31 December 2004: “Writing has, in the end, outmanoeuvred, outsmarted, outgunned, and outlasted every other possibility of what I had ever wanted to do with my adult life.”

THURSDAY, 5 JANUARY 2017

What I don’t like about “Post-Emergency” is that it indicates the end of a period of my life – good for the title of a single piece, but for a whole series of essay collections?

The same can be said of “Surrender” and “Stop kicking”. They are good titles for single pieces, but do I really want to name a series of essay volumes after my realisation that writing is of existential importance to me?

I thought, okay, if I can’t name it after a period of my life that is over, what about the current period of my life?

Which brought me back to ideas I had had last year, namely “Middle” and “Forties”.

Then I thought: of course age is an important factor of the period of your life in which you find yourself, but isn’t there anything other than “Forties”?

“End of my youth,” it hit me.

And then I arrived home with my supper.

* * *

Apparently, it was Victor Hugo who said, “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.”

Another few witty remarks:

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” – Samuel Ullman

“You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” – George Burns

“I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.” – Francis Bacon

“There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.” – Mignon McLaughlin

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