Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 9 JULY 2009

It’s not me. It’s just an involuntary chemical reaction in response to an external situation. To say, “Look at what an ass I am making of myself again!” is incorrect. It is most certainly not I.

THURSDAY, 23 JULY 2009

11:33

I watched the last part of Boiler Room this morning. It made me think. We’re constantly bothered with ambition and success and with how we compare with our peers, and with people younger than us, and with people older than us when they were our age.

But here’s something to consider: Try not to cause too much harm. If at the end of a day, or at the end of a week, you can look back and say, “I reckon I didn’t do too many things that would cause me or other people trouble down the road,” then you should already be able to give a sigh of relief.

Success, and dreams that become true are then a bonus, not just a stick with which you prod yourself forward every day.

[Here is what the British actor of Yes, Minister fame, Paul Eddington once said during an interview on TV: “A journalist once asked me what I would like my epitaph to be and I said I think I would like it to be ‘He did very little harm’. And that’s not easy. Most people seem to me to do a great deal of harm. If I could be remembered as having done very little, that would suit me.”]

17:55

Everyone takes chances. Everyone “gambles”. Playing roulette, opening a coffee shop, getting married, betting on horses, taking a new job, no matter how you spell it or how it comes out of your mouth, it’s all gambling.

FRIDAY, 31 JULY 2009

A few points:

1. A failure, for all practical purposes, and for several good reasons; this is how I appear to myself, to Natasja, to her friends, to my family, and even to my few friends.

2. For this reason, and for the associated desperate need for regeneration, or merely just good old transformation, I am now going to shave off my beard. (Clean: 14:28)

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FRIDAY, 5 JUNE 2009

10:27

Okay, I admit it: I may have thought adult life would be easier.

21:01

In my own country, I would have been trying to get another part-time job as soon as possible, seeing that my current employer cannot or does not want to give me more work.

Unfortunately, my legal situation in Taiwan is similar to that of peasants in the Middle Ages. Like them, I cannot just walk over to the next district to sell my labour there. My work permit ties me exclusively to my current employer: I can be punished – including getting deported – if I work for anyone else without permission, even part-time. (Of course, I have little choice but to do it anyway a few hours a week, regardless of the risk.) Even my current residence is linked to my employer – I don’t have to rent this apartment, but it is my reality at this stage.

SATURDAY, 6 JUNE 2009

An image: Me standing at a traffic light with a sign around my neck: “Will teach for money.”

That is how I feel about the idea of self-marketing.

Okay, two more images – difference this time is that I will focus on the person inside the car.

Image two: It’s a hot day. Cars are steaming up at a red traffic light. You step closer, with a sign that says, “Will sell ice cold cola for cash!”

Image three: A blinding dust storm just ended half an hour ago. The air is dusty, but the wind is still. Motorists at the red traffic light hang from their windows frantically wiping their windshields with handkerchiefs or any other piece of cloth they can lay their hands on. You step closer with a sign around your neck that says, “Will wipe windshield clean for cash!”

WEDNESDAY, 10 JUNE 2009

Look at 1916 through the eyes of someone born in 1840.

Look at 1956 with the eyes of someone born in 1895, not with the eyes of someone born in 1975.

Look at 1823 with the eyes of someone born in 1770, someone who remembers “simpler times”.

THURSDAY, 18 JUNE 2009

It is as if this subtropical summer rain, and the warm, humid air that keeps clothing and towels and bedding damp all the time intensify my internal problems – problems with myself, what I do for money …

SATURDAY, 20 JUNE 2009

Life is a process of elimination: friends, tertiary education, career, town or city, home, address, lifestyle, partner, the next step. It is just as much a choice for what you do not want to do next as it is for what you do want to do next.

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THURSDAY, 11 JUNE 2009

I dislike any casual comparison to the tragedy that was the First World War (1914-1918), but today I couldn’t help but register some parallels with my own story in recent years of trying to make money from home.

1. In World War One, everyone had hoped for a quick war at the start, in August 1914. The reality was a war of attrition that lasted for more than four years.

2. Most people thought at the outset, “The boys will be home for Christmas.”

3. Hope for a quick outcome did not fade after the first year or two, or even after the third year of war.

4. Optimism and in hindsight naïve faith were placed on any strategy that could end the war quickly. In the end, the war was long and bitter, and few of the strategies justified the initial optimism.

5. After three years of stalemate, Germany started taking bigger chances, hoping for a reversal of a grave situation. Initial results looked promising to the German military leaders, but the greater risks they had taken eventually sealed and accelerate their end (amongst other things the indiscriminate attacks on commercial shipping led to the entry of the US into the war).

6. The longer the war lasted, the more difficult it became to compromise on the result. That too much had been sacrificed already was a sentiment widely held.

7. The war broke out with more enthusiasm than planning; too much passion and not enough practical consideration. Vague, ambitious answers were given to the question of ultimate goal.

8. The war eventually passed, but the peace was wasted. Nothing should ever be taken for granted.

FRIDAY, 12 JUNE 2009

Stalemate, attrition, waste of resources, missed opportunities, muddled command, ego and personality getting in the way of getting things done, ego and personality being primary causes of misfortune.

WEDNESDAY, 17 JUNE 2009

Written about one of the German military leaders during the First World War: “[…] prudent, clear-minded […] did not propose to embark on some gigantic […] gamble aimed at winning the war outright.” (The Great War, p.67)

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MONDAY, 1 JUNE 2009

A few years ago, I said how you earn an income is not who you are; it is merely how you make money.

In fact, how you choose to earn an income requires so many choices – if you are lucky, I should add – from so many possibilities that you eventually choose something either because you reckon you would have an easier time making money with it than with something else, or because you know who you are and what you want to do with your life.

What you ultimately choose as a career or how you choose to earn a living is for many people a concrete manifestation of identity – of how they see themselves, how they want to be seen, and of how they choose to spend their days and nights, or a significant block of hours each day.

WEDNESDAY, 3 JUNE 2009

13:21

For me, the attraction of betting and trading lies in the fact that no identity or appearance is required, only commitment to the minimum of routines, and a predilection for statistics, patterns, and strategies.

14:10

It is as if I have forgotten since 2006 who and what I am and what my life is about with all this obsession with making money.

“Money is important,” I wrote at one point. When do you lose your soul? is what I ask now.

16:58

Someone without identity is dead to the world.

Want to appear, must have identity.

Who are you? What are you? What is your purpose? What is your function? What are your goals?

21:34

The thought occurs to me that I would do better managing money than making money. Problem is, I do not have money to manage, so I would have to focus on first accumulating enough money. For this, I reckon, one needs identity – or then, public identity: “Hi, how are you? My name is X” type of identity.

This, to me, is apparently a huge fuck-up.

21:50

Isn’t it ironic: I recently had all these insights about brands and identity and “Platform35 is Brand Smit” … and now I am basically saying I’m like an old pickup truck stuck in a ditch full of quicksand when it comes to identity – spinning my wheels until the air is thick with rubber, but I’m not getting anywhere.

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FRIDAY, 29 MAY 2009

10:40

I mentioned this recently, but I am once again thinking: my activities of the past forty months have been conducive to the manifestation of an inherited tendency I have toward manic behaviour.

11:23

Funny thing is, I didn’t connect the dots, not until recently. I think it is one of those things where you can go your whole life without knowing you have something in your blood – like the genetic potential for cancer or something. If the environment is right, and other factors are conducive, then the writing is, however, on the wall: it will manifest.

In my case, it has manifested. It also wasn’t the first time that it manifested, but other times I called it something else – eccentric behaviour, compulsive behaviour, compelled by faith or, in the service of an idea.

Is this a handicap? It could be. It is, in many cases. You would have to control it. You should be aware of it. You must be wary of it.

15:02

The psycho-analyst will say: Brand Smit suffers from periodic episodes of Hypomania; or rather, he experiences these periodic episodes, then he suffers the consequences in the following weeks and months as he tries to be “consistent”, to “see things through” and to finish what he started instead of “flip-flopping from one project to the next”.

SATURDAY, 30 MAY 2009

12:20

So, what am I saying?

I am caught between two poles: days, and sometimes weeks of creative, inspired activity characterised by totally exaggerated ambition and unrealistic, over-optimistic expectations, and then the days and weeks in between of trying to make something of the over-ambitious projects that I had started, but without the energy, the conviction, and the inspiration of the “other time”.

22:12

The conversation would go like this: “The bad news is that there is indeed something wrong with you. The good news is that it isn’t so bad, as long as you keep it under control.”

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