Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 19 MAY 2011

My bicycle’s inner tube exploded on the way home last night, so this morning I had to push the bike to my old neighbourhood where my “office” is located. When I arrived at the bicycle repair shop near my old apartment, it was closed. Two hours later when I checked again, it was still closed. So, I had to walk to school this afternoon. And back. On my way back, I walked past the shop – which had finally opened its doors. Ten minutes later I was there with my bicycle and the busted inner tube.

“NT$450,” the owner tried to rob me when I asked him how much it would cost to replace the inner tube.

Seconds later, I was pushing my bike back to my office, and soon afterwards I again walked the two kilometres back home. In my sandals.

Two insights:

1. It’s a sad truth that not every dark cloud has a silver lining. But if you don’t see the silver lining because of your attitude, ask yourself: Is my problem terminal, or can I do something about it?

2. “Every man has his price, Bob, and yours was pretty low,” sings Roger Waters. So every person has their limit where they say: “I can’t go any further. I can’t do it anymore …”

Question: Where is your limit?

Perhaps your bitter experience is over in five minutes, or in two days, or in a week. Are you going to look back, when it’s over, and say: “Damn, I shouldn’t have given up so soon … I really wish I hadn’t started moaning and complaining so hard at that point already …”

Near the end of my hike this afternoon my legs were stiff, and tiny little pebbles had gotten stuck in my sandals as I shuffled along the sidewalk. I thought of soldiers who had to march miles in miserable conditions, just to lie down in a ditch the next morning and shoot at other soldiers who had also hiked a long way to get there.

That’s when I thought of the Roger Waters lyrics: “Every man has his price … and yours was pretty low.”

I realised if I had started moaning at that point, it would have been my limit. And it would have been pretty damn low.

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FRIDAY, 29 APRIL 2011

An Internet marketer whose advice I occasionally follow writes in the article, “Sheena was a man”*, why most people who try to “Internet market” fail. I knew I was the target audience.

She also refers to Merlin Mann’s excellent article, “Cranking”, and a good article by Ed Dale entitled, “Burn the ships and Hail Mary’s”*.

After a few minutes I came to the realisation that what I am also doing, with my commercial projects that are supposed to be generating income, is “cranking” – like Merlin Mann’s mother that constantly cranked her husband’s hospital bed in a hopeless attempt to make him a little more comfortable. I’m constantly learning, constantly messing things up, constantly motivating myself to keep going. My efforts fall flat at regular intervals, and every time I have to pull myself up by the collar.

I know why I do these things. I have to make money, because it’s unfair to expect of my partner to cover most of our household expenses, and for her to ride out to a business day after day to do a job for which she has long lost any motivation. I have to make money for myself, for a better life, and to ensure that the woman I love doesn’t suffer because of me.

Yet, again, I cannot fail to see the difference between what I call “business” and my writing projects. With the latter, it’s like getting into a car that stands idle for months at a time gathering dust under a tree. I’ll shoo away the pigeons that have nested on the roof, lift the dog from the driver’s seat, turn the key … and a second later the car will pull away like a recently overhauled seventies model sports car, tyres screeching. I don’t need pep talks to motivate myself. I don’t need to read informative articles about what I do wrong, and what I should do to get back on track. I don’t need to crank anything up.

I constantly tweak my material; I never crank. I waste little time with my writing projects. I know where I’m heading. I see in my mind’s eye the end result, and I pursue this vision. I don’t get to a point where I’m unsure of what I should do next. I don’t lose my way.

The reality, however, is that I have to make money. I have to make money not for status or luxury, but to better take care of myself. I have to make money to provide assistance to my partner’s attempts to bring about a better life for herself.

Because I need to make money for the right reasons, I’m compelled to occasionally learn what I do wrong, and to constantly try to better my efforts.

The hope, in the end, is that I’m not merely making cosmetic changes to what at times appears to be a rather hopeless situation.

———–

* These articles are not available online anymore.

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FRIDAY, 8 APRIL 2011

I like money. And it can certainly be said that I hate to be broke.

Several things I have learned about making money have also worked exactly as it said on the proverbial box. I can thus say that I know how to make at least a little bit of money.

But it’s almost as if everything stops there. Money came out after I had pushed a button, in a manner of speaking. So it makes sense to press the button again, does it not?

What actually happens is quite fascinating. And extremely frustrating. I would mumble something about pressing buttons, and a few related things. Then I’ll listlessly hit the button again – the same one that had produced money a day or a week previously.

And then it’s almost – could it possibly be true? – as if I lose interest!

How can this be? Isn’t it true that I enjoy having money! And it can certainly be said that I hate being broke!

Work ethic is not the problem. If I have to work on a writing project, I can be nearly as productive as a whole office full of people. I will work at it seven days a week, from shortly after I’ve swallowed down my breakfast until just before bedtime. It’s a natural process. I don’t have to motivate myself or psych myself up in the slightest degree.

Is discipline the problem? And is “discipline” a code word for “You must be willing to work on things that bore you to death”?

Then I’d have to accept it: You either have to work on things that are boring, or be happy with being broke. Or you have to pay other people to do most of the mind-numbing stuff, and focus your own efforts on, amongst other things, the quality of the end product.

In short, if you don’t want to do boring work, you have to be smart.

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SUNDAY, 20 MARCH 2011

Imagine a Taiwanese Afrikaans writer.

Imagine hundreds of Zulu writers who express their experience of reality and their stories in Afrikaans.

How would a Brazilian writer’s essays read that were not translated into Afrikaans but originally written in Afrikaans, with the background of both Afrikaans and Brazilian culture? Or a Russian-Afrikaans author’s stories. Or the poetry of a Filipino-Afrikaans poet.

What would the short stories look like of an Afrikaans writer who grew up in Afghanistan, in southern India, or in Sri Lanka?

Afrikaans novelists from Lagos, Kinshasa, Istanbul, or Buenos Aires?

What about Afrikaans-Vietnamese film directors, sculptors, graphic artists?

Afrikaans-Japanese comic book artists?

Afrikaans painters from Chicago or Hyderabad or Fiji or Hong Kong or Riyadh?

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TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2011

I look at a showerhead, and I see something whose existence has a purpose. I also know it is something that was designed with a particular purpose in mind, and manufactured to serve this purpose.

Some people believe it is logical to deduce that if there is a purpose to your existence, that you – you specifically – were designed and manufactured to certain specifications by an Invisible Force to serve this purpose.

It will be dishonest of me to create the impression that I believe so too.

Where does this leave me? One possibility is to accept that my life serves no purpose.

Suppose, however, I decide that my life has to serve some or other purpose. In that case, I can design, as far as possible, my life, even my person, for this purpose. I would have to work within available means, but is that not what the people behind the showerhead also did? I will thus for all practical purposes manufacture a life to serve a particular purpose.

My life will then eventually serve this purpose, because I decided it should be the purpose of my existence.

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