Assorted Notes

TUESDAY, 24 JULY 2012

Spending money is not something that makes me particularly happy. I know having money to spend on the odd luxury is in theory important for happiness. In practice, though, I have conjured up a lot of personal happiness for months on end without having money to spend on things I did not absolutely need. I can sacrifice personal comfort, better clothes, a bicycle that does not creak when I ride on it and that doesn’t have to be left standing against a telephone pole, even to an extent my health. And I have already sacrificed a lot, just so I can work on my own projects during the best hours of every day.

Yet, for more than five years I worked six, and regularly seven days a week on my own projects – without the accompanying happiness I expected from it. Why so? Virtually all my projects over that period were about making money. Everything was about selling or marketing stuff to people. I did that because I wanted to create a better life for my partner and me. Week in and week out I told her, just wait a little longer, the money will start coming in soon. For more than five years I kept reciting this line over and over, I kept predicting, kept explaining: Just wait a little while longer.

I know writing makes me happy. I also believe writing is part of a higher level of existence for me. I can even believe I serve a higher purpose when I write – especially when I write about certain topics. In the more than five years that I spent almost all my time trying to make more money, for the most part, I relegated my writing to the background. It deprived me of the happiness that was always the result of the writing process. It deprived me of the belief that I was living on a higher level than when I only struggle for survival.

February last year [2011] I decided, or realised, I couldn’t take life for granted anymore. Life ends every day for a multitude of people who were still thinking about doing what truly made them happy. So, starting last February, I have again been spending time on my writing almost every day. And again I have been experiencing the happiness that I knew would be the result.

But it remains hanging like a millstone around my neck, like a scandalous letter against my chest: I don’t make enough money.

Which means my partner – the woman I love – has to work harder to make money.

Which means I am happy at her expense.

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FRIDAY, 20 JULY 2012

Imagine a thick slice of white bread. You spread a thin layer of butter on it, and then you pour about seven tablespoons of golden syrup over the bread. Seven tablespoons. Then you go watch TV for an hour. What do you get when you go back to the kitchen? As expected, you will find yourself a slice of bread completely drenched with syrup.

So it is with purpose and all life on earth. Everything from the eye of the fly to the parts of a microorganism, to your own eyes, skin, toes, blood and bones – everything is completely drenched with specific purpose and function. [Apparently quite a complicated issue. Initially, scientists thought much of the human genome was “junk DNA”. Then they discovered that they may have missed a few things.]

How on earth can every part of every small and large organism and creature on this planet have a specific purpose, but the whole of the fish or cockroach or rhino does not? How can every small part of a human being have a specific “task” to do, but the person as a whole does not? How can someone shrug and claim that his life does not actually serve a purpose? And if it does serve a purpose, they do not know what it is.

Of course no one is born with a note tied around their neck that explains what the purpose of their life is supposed to be, but how many people aren’t exactly psyched up to seek out what might be the purpose of their lives?

Does human life have a purpose? Does each individual have a specific role to fulfil? If so, who – or what – determines what it is? And what kind of possibilities are we looking at?

Many people who wonder about these things turn to their local minister, pastor, priest, imam or rabbi and expect these figures to tell them what the purpose of their lives is supposed to be, to spell it out for them, to give them clear instructions.

I think that’s lazy. I think that’s the easy way. I think it is a shortcut that too many people take.

Question: Does the education we receive from our parents and at school and in the broad community prepare us to sort out or discover what the purpose of our lives may be?

If not, what can we do as adults to make it easier for the next generation? What should we do as adults today to give this quest a reasonable chance of success – for the next generation, and also for ourselves?

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This note was inspired by Document 1_181104_2359.doc.

See also: The purpose of existence 310305.doc

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WEDNESDAY, 11 JULY 2012

Earlier this evening on my way back from to the buffet place, I thought about how much of my adult life so far has run counter to the values my parents maintained – especially regarding religion and the importance of money.

Two thoughts emerged from this:

1. That I stopped believing in traditional Christian doctrines was a direct consequence of the seriousness with which I had previously regarded traditional Christian doctrines. One can even go so far as to say that my eventual “faithlessness” was the result of my former “faith”. I believed in traditional Christian doctrines because I had been taught the value of Truth. I believed in the traditional Christian doctrines because I believed it was the Truth. When I learned how the “truths” had evolved and changed over the ages to serve human agendas, I took the only option that allowed me to maintain my integrity: abandon the path of traditional Christian doctrines, and continue following the Truth.

2. I like to say money isn’t everything. To my parents, thirty years ago, with three children to feed, to keep healthy, to provide with clothes, warm beds and a roof over their heads, and to support in their education, the sentiment that money wasn’t everything was a bigger luxury than a new caravan, a bigger luxury than a holiday by the sea. To say money isn’t everything was a sentiment they could simply not afford.

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WEDNESDAY, 4 JULY 2012

I previously thought that to say, “I’m a lawyer” should not be seen as a statement of identity. It is just how you make money. I figured if you wanted to mention your job, it would be more correct to say, “I make money as a lawyer,” than to say “I am a lawyer.”

Then, over the next few years, it became increasingly clear to me that how you make money is a fairly important part of your identity – sounds reasonable enough, but it is still the kind of discovery that I had to make on my own, at my own time. You can thus not say, “I am X” and “I make money with Y” and expect the one to have nothing to do with the other. “I’m a lawyer” is not a statement that represents a person’s entire identity, but it is certainly an important aspect of who that person is.

The other great discovery was to be expected. If you do not know who you are as a money-maker, you will find it a challenge to make money.

Also good to take into consideration the opposite: If you have gone through the process of sorting out, discovering, and choosing how you want to make money – and then in a way or ways that suit your personality and talents, you will most likely find yourself placing fewer obstacles subconsciously in your own path.

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What to do then with what Karl Marx wrote, that in a more ideal world it would be possible to do one thing today and another tomorrow – to plant vegetables in the morning, catch fish in the afternoon, take care of your cows in the evening, and after dinner make a speech about a political treatise you have read, without ever becoming a vegetable farmer, a fisherman, a cattle farmer or a politician?

Perhaps Marx assumed that one would not need to make money in an ideal world. Yet someone would still have had to hunt or plant vegetables. Someone would still have had to fish. Livestock and other animals would still have had to be fed. And someone would have had the ability to form an opinion and criticise the opinion of others. So, in Marx’s ideal world, if you had been competent in any or all of these areas, you would have done these things, with no focus on occupational identity. Remove money from the story, and expect things to look different.

MONDAY, 9 JULY 2012

I believe in myself – or, I certainly have what can be described as positive self-esteem (rather important seeing that without positive self-esteem you are 98 metres behind the other athletes in a 100-metre race). I also know that this is to a large extent a performance, but that it is important because the performance has practical value. In truth, there is much more uncertainty. It must be so if you want to be honest.

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TUESDAY, 29 MAY 2012

14:22

I am currently going through my notebooks from the years 2005 to 2011.

Two remarks:

1. Every now and then I took a few minutes from my very busy schedule of almost full-time failure to produce notes of highly usable quality.

2. If I had done a personal writing project after 2004 but failed to include an honest assessment of my many failures between 2006 and 2011, the project would have ended in weak, half-hearted attempts. Because of my experiences over the past few years, my manic working style and the less than positive results, I am likely to produce another personal project. And the notes that I have dutifully made will, as always, be indispensable.

One more remark: I have to stop nurturing the false and inaccurate notion that the period 2006 to 2011 in my life was one big nightmare full of failures. A writer needs a life to produce material. For a better one, I could not have asked.

19:22

By the time I was closing up tonight, two thoughts were rolling around in my head.

Thought one: the material from 2005 is a different story, but the notes from January 2006 to this year are starting to look like a big, new project – a “second” Personal Agenda, as it were. The “first” Personal Agenda dealt with my struggle for identity, place in the world, purpose of existence, meaning of life, why I continued living knowing that I could give up, and what to do when you have discovered and worked out all these things. The “second” Personal Agenda would deal with a struggle that is familiar to most adults – the struggle to make money. It may sound trite, but I reckon a brief narrative of my dozen efforts to make money and my perseverance after repeated failures might just be worth reading.

Thought two: It seems that I have quite a lot of work to do. With the skills I have developed, and lessons learned about marketing and publishing your own literature, my literary projects could possibly be considered as more than just personal work – it may actually be time to look at it as a source of income.

It is as if I have come full circle. At the beginning of January 2006, I was very serious about publishing my writing. Then I discovered that I could make money from home, on my computer connected to the internet. For the next more than five years, I moved away from my writing, in an effort to make more money. The plan was, first financial independence (“Everything seems so possible!”), then I can pay other people to proofread and translate my material. Five, six years later, I am back at the beginning: Similar financial situation, and me deciding I cannot wait any longer to publish what I have written.

So, money or no money, I am working on my writing again. If my books eventually make money, pay the rent, buy food and other groceries, and make it possible for me to take my wife out for a nice meal and a movie, and maybe even to afford a weekend in the mountains, I would reckon that I didn’t do too badly. I would certainly not have been able to conjure up a better story.

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