Practically Making Time

I love quotes but I love far too many, to actually manage to recall them all. There is one though that always stands out, since it is the most prevailent in a life of an anyone who must work in order to attend to basic needs.

It goes as follows:

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
~Gene Fowler

If the world is a grain of sand, so too, is it in a flower. And yet, Work makes us forget those colourful bits.

Though, I must admit, the way it tends to run through my head, it goes more like this:

"I like work. I can stare at it for hours. Until blood drips from my head."

Just as much sarcasm but with a slightly more all-encompassing twist.

Either way, however I choose to remember the quote, the key phrase is essentially that you can literally spend your life working and working and working and in the end, what is there to show from it?

I had a most wonderful dinner with my landlady/bnb host. I should note I am not sure what to define her as seeing as she runs a bnb but I am staying here long term. I use the kitchen and all that jazz as I would in a flatshare, except the flatmates change on a regular basis; for a day or so there seems to be no one at all, and a few times over the next months I will have to shift to another room simply because some people need to (and do) book six months to a year in advance. Fair enough. Plus, I get my sheets done, I can have my laundry done too and there is a tidy collection of tea bags, instant coffee and milk always. I feel ridiculously fortunate and more than a bit horrible that I cannot seem to be very good at obviously expressing my gratitude. I am though, grateful, beyond words. It's little things like tonights dinner that remind me I was right in my feelings to not take a room on one of the shifty estates or that it was okay the gentleman with the room I initially found, basically dropped me without notice for an older and more settled nurse.

But none of that is particularly on poise for the purpose of this post. Though it is a rather perfect presentation of one of my problems. I ramble. Horribly. Which often leads to me getting lost in both figurative and literal corners. Bury St Edmunds was a bit of a nightmare the first day I wandered. I was lost within seconds. Mostly because my sense of direction is not used to factoring in little alley ways, side streets and the sort of detours that are literal holes in brick walls that you think will just get you straight out to the other end but really take you 'round the opposite.

That being said, I am also a very driven and goal oriented individual, when it comes to material goals and achievements.

My move to England however, was one of those rare things that essentially made a disreputable hash of oil and vinegar (the bad sorts filled with factory chemicals I mean) in terms of my goal-orientation clashing with my butterfly imaginism. It took me just wanting to get the flipping fudge out of Vernon, because Victoria, as adorable, artsy and quaintly British as it tried to be, was still Canadian, and therefore Not British. No matter how many times you walk past the Empress, the Parliament buildings, grab tea at Murchies or have clotted cream and scones. There are still those silly tourist shops selling carry-on sized maple syrup bottles, maple fudge, the Bay, and that hilarious black bear, or maybe it was a moose, that sat outside of one of the shops in a Mounty's hat. (See I can't even remember it's just so stereotyped). Then though you have the gorgeous totem poles, the orca statues and well, double decker buses with the blue and green British Columbia logos all over (I'd almost say they were copying London, except that all of BC has double deckers in the larger towns...except Vancouver, Vancouver is in a class of its own). 

England though is England, in all its mist-rain, whinging-is-a-national-sport (complaining) and excess of packaging and pennies. Their rudeness knows no bounds in one area and the next second they are all a mask of rock, politeness. Also, their driving is terrifying but their public transit is peachy.

Either way, I am here. I am experiencing. I am here for experience. Lots of it. But when you spend most of your days staring at work for hours, until blood drips from your forehead because you are racking your brains on the laundry wires until they are parched, your mind wonders what the flack you're doing. Well, that and the usual questions of how will you be more successful? How will you feel less tired? How will you be more happy?

I've just been falling back on, "it's experience. Live and let live. The day is over. It has passed. Move on. Breathe. Trust. Relax. Enjoy."

I panicked this morning because I had to take my form group out for a fire drill and I hadn't a moment to preview the path the group was meant to take from their room (which is not my usual classroom). They though, being Year 11's had more experience than me, and anyway, I had a moment before the start to vaguely glance over the email with the map. But I still used time panicking. Or, in other words. I let blood drip from my forehead and wasted too many ticks of the clocks (which still aren't matchin up in the school, anywhere).

Time. It goes by fast. Everyone knows that. But you don't really *know* it until you are near the end of it, something, or a particular stage. I have been in England for one month and three days. I didn't even note the passing of the full month. I was focused on the end of September itself. Either way, time has moved. Fast. And here I am, for experience. What have I experienced? Loads. Of course I have. It's a new country after all. Except there is still loads more. What I have experienced feels like poking my toe into the water at Long Beach (Tofino, BC) when I was eleven (or something, that first time) and then I finally stood up to my ankles in the ice water and let the tide slurp my feet down in a miniature version of a sinkhole, before jumping out of it with a giggle. Child's play.

The loads more I have to experience is that little something called travel. The little bit that sparks the desire to move to a different country in most people. I am most people in that regard. I came here to see many different places, most of which I have only seen pictures of, as a film set or read in books or on the internet. In short, from that intangible distance is a puzzle of experience that cannot be solved until you are breathing the same air as the person you idolize or that which various buildings or mountains were formed in.

Which brings me back to the dinner with my landlady. Uttler lovely. But you'd be bored out of your mind. The key bit I do want to leave you with is something I am also challenging myself to do now.

I am going to call on my practical side. I am going to call on my creative side. I am going to combine the two and practically make time.

Or, in more mundane language, I am going to make lists. I am going to make lists of all the places I want to visit, all the locations in the places I want to visit, all the things I want my camera to snap, all the foods I want to try and whatever else I can potentially dredge up as I make linear lists.

Then, applying myself religiously to the perusal of airlines, trains and coaches, I will be setting aside one weekend per month in which I go somewhere.

September, though nearly done, is basically set on me possibly getting to Cambridge and at least, very definitely going down to London again to visit a cohort who came to teach in England back in April. 

Making lists is difficult and it is still very easy to forget to add something, which makes me feel it to be restrictive. Then again, if I want to achieve anything, if anyone wants to achieve anything, lists are one of those necessary evils that act a bit like fabric bandages. They stop the bleeding forehead when you've been at work too long but the act of pulling them off (ie: getting them done), is on the list of distateful tasks that remind me of cleaning bathrooms with bleach back in the days when my mom hadn't twigged on the natural cleaners that one, did not smell of deadly chemicals and two, were a million times healthier and better cleaners anyway; being natural, non-deadly chemicals. She has me to thank for her being, if still a crazy cleaner, at least an environmentally friendly, crazy cleaner.

Will you be practical this weekend and make a list of goals to get accomplished and time frames by which they must be accomplished in?

I've got enough to practically make more time than eternity.
Moony.

If I Had

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.

~ from "To His Coy Mistress"

Andrew Marvell 1621 -1678 

Have you ever heard the phrase "had I but world enough and time"? I have. Not sure where though but it was circling through my head this morning as gray light slipped through the huge windows of my new home and I snuggled deeper under freshly washed sheets...only to have a list of potential things to do start running a marathon on the oval track of my brain. 

There is always so much to do, to see, to hear, to taste, to touch. I walk into grocery stores here and it's a struggle to decide what to go with in terms of one, being diverse and healthy, and two, keeping to a budget, and three, allowing myself treats but also ensuring I am trying new things so I can experience as much as possible. The same goes for what I do on a daily basis. Yes, most of my days are living at school since I get there for 6:30 and often don't leave, exhausted, until 6. By the time I am home I might have planning or marking to do, I squeeze in a bit of lazy reading and then I drop into bed, lately, near midnight. Especially, if I get asked if I want to go out for dinner, or come by for tea or whatever the case, and then things get shifted back or around even more. In my idealistic mind I figured every weekend I should aim to travel to somewhere for the weekend, but honestly, as a new teacher and an introvert who needs alone time, with just a book, not even random cafe strangers, in order to recharge, that probably won't happen. 

 I'm still going to try but what I am currently coming to grips with is the notion that we don't have eternity and nor is the world and giant place. Not that I really have a desire to see every single corner of it. Just certain parts. What I am learning currently is that, when you choose to move to somewhere to live, to live, even if it is to a new country that you want to explore and learn about, you are living there. That means factoring all those mundane and dull things that come with being human. Like sleeping, eating, having a disgustingly oily face by the end of a ten-twelve hour day because of the more humid climate or just having a personality that as much as your logical brain cannot shut and wants to keep going and going, your emotional side just wants to curl up in a corner with a comfortable book you have read before and smells like home. Currently I have my nose in Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" again. 

I have so many people in my list of connections now. Just skyping them all takes many hours. Plus I've begun making friends here and that too of course takes time. Then, I still haven't stopped my writing dreams, I still have plans to go out in early morning hours to photograph Bury St Edmunds without many people about, I have an ever building list of places to visit, Cambridge and Sutton Hoo being the closest and most present in my mind at the moment since i could day-trip them both which leaves me time to actually prep for my teaching job. Whoever says teaching is the most slack job because of all the time off does not realise how much effort goes into the job outside of the work hours you are paid for. Especially when you are new at it, have no experience or resources to draw from and yet you are expected to take on the same work load as an experienced teacher who has five or more years of resources to pick from. 

But maybe, maybe, we need to do not what Andrew Marvell suggests, which is to take time to think about what we will fill our days with, but to just do things on spontaneity, to not judge our choices as good or bad. If we need a day to recharge. We need a day. The point is that we are making a choice and we need to wholeheartedly believe in that choice. 

The challenge is when you wish to do great things but your idea of great things measures up to the individuals who are buried in places like the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. It's at this point in the teeter totter of your mind I remember Andrew Marvell who I didn't know, let alone did I attribute him to this poem or the line this post is centred around until I looked it up out of mild curiousity about a year ago and I've heard the phrase "if I had world enough and time" (which is really not even very accurate) thrown about for much longer than that. 

It tells me that whatever I do, however I do it, this blog for example even, will go out into the world, it'll be some words among trillions, some thoughts among billions, one life among ten million years worth. So, really, then, what does it matter what I do, so long as I do something. 

After all. I am here aren't I? Here on Earth. Living. Breathing. Writing all this right now. 

Here's another saying for you. An idiom: "the devil's in the details." 

Berry details on a walk through a nature reserve in Bury St Edmunds.

I see that as meaning life is in the details. The good, the bad, the little, the big, the sideways bits that don't ever actually turn out how we envisioned. I encourage you to spend today looking at things with a magnifying glass (whether you wish it to be metaphorical or not is up to you) and you'll see your life in the things you spend time with. It is in the seconds you take to enjoy your toast in the morning. Just your toast. Not your toast with your newspaper or your phone or your prep for work or while you are running scattily toward your transit vehicle. Your life with be the sum of many parts. It is neither good nor bad nor sideways. It is life. It keeps going no matter how many times you sit down to think about which way you are going to walk into order to best pass the time which is delegated to day cycle of this planet. 

If had we world enough and time, I would suggest we kept our ears opened and did whatever we desired during every second that passed us by. It might be watching tv, reading a book, listening to music, walking, biking, sleeping, eating, visiting with friends or family, scrolling through websites or wandering through isles of clothes. 

Whatever it is. Enjoy the details of this life. You've just got one. 

Moony.

The Point of You

ARTHUR: Yeah! I love going through the X-ray gate! It’s a bit like a game show, isn’t it? There’s always that moment of ‘Will I make the buzzer go? Will I make the buzzer go?! Yes! I didn’t make the buzzer go!’ Or ‘Ohhh, I made the buzzer go!’
GERRY (laughing happily): All right, then! Well, follow me!
DOUGLAS: I think I might leave you to it and ...
ARTHUR: Oh, come on, Douglas! It’ll be fun! We’ll make a game of it! Like, one of us could put something metal in our pocket and see if the machine can tell which one of us it is!
DOUGLAS: I think the machine can tell that. That is the whole point of the machine.
ARTHUR: Yeah, well, let’s see. There’s lots of things that are the whole point of me that I don’t do.
DOUGLAS: Like what?
ARTHUR: Floss. Don’t tell Mum.

Cabin Pressure Series 4.2 - Uskerty 

I would apologise for the excess of Cabin Pressure references on this blog, except that it was the precise thing which sparked the initial inspiration for this particular post.

After all, isn't the point of everything that every existed, to wonder, what is the point? 

What is the point? 

What is the point to living, to thinking, to eating, to laughing, to crying, to working, to breathing? What is the point of you? 

In other words, what will you leave on the world? With your indeleble Sharpie marker, what will be ingrated into human consciousness because of your existence? 

That is the point of living, thinking, eating, laughing, crying, working, breathing and more. That is the point of you. 

But if I was to sit down with you and have tea, coffee, juice, whatever your drink preference might be, would you be able to tell me what the point of your existence is?

A few years ago I figured, the point of my existence was to create something big, something that would be all over the news. After all, isn't that often what society tells us we should do? We need to end world hunger, win the Nobel Prize, discover a new animal species and stop global warming. 

Ha. Ha. Ha. 

Have fun trying to reach those standards. 

(Note: I say that very sarcastically, one, because those are not the singular and sole points to our existences in this world, and two, because there are people who certainly aim for and achieve those particular objectives of existence and we need people like that). 

No one looks the same. So, no one should have the same standards they must reach. 

Thus, no one has the same point of existence. Plus, returning to to the quote, even if someone has a particular "point" or purpose they could achieve, it does not necessarily they will or they will chose to. 

After all, is it really the end of the world if you don't floss? 

No. Contrary to the popular belief of young children terrified into following the rules and regulations of society, failing to floss will not result in the world going up in flames. 

So to, will the world not end if you don't strive to achieve the societal point of existence that are considered "successful" either. 

No, your success. Your life purpose. The point of you. 

That is your very own, very unique, freckle, or sunspot, or fingernail. It's you. Just you. 

That is the point of you. 

Just keep being. Don't obsess over living up to the standard of flossing all the time. Just do what feels right to you. If "right" means flossing every day, flossing four times a day or five times a week. Great. That's your point. No one elses.

(Note: I am very much using "flossing" as a metaphor for goals and dreams and am in no way wishing to condone either bad dental, or neurotic dental, habits).   

After all, if you do ever happen to pick up an episode of Cabin Pressure, you'll note that Arthur is the epitomy of positivity. Everything and everyone is brilliant to him. And yet, he is also horrible at understanding the most basic of tasks, like microwaving dinners, or picking up van keys and addresses. His point is being the one who will always see the best in every situation and always (generally) believe the best of anyone and everything. 

He'll never win a Nobel Prize and it's amazing he managed to even graduate high school and he apparently doesn't floss. Yet he stands by his unique perspective (whether intentional or not is debatable), and he lives up to his point of existence. We are not metal detector machines in airport security, we have choices, we have control, we have the ability to choose what our point of existence will be. It can follow whatever you desire. 

The point though, your point of existence does not have to follow what anyone else thinks or says. It might, yes, but it does not *have* to. It might even, and probably will, change from day to day, year to year and hour to hour.

So, what is the point of you today?

Currently I am always playing Yellow Car. 
Moony. 

The Best Way to Choose Your Own Adventure

Welcome to the distant land called Adventure. Occasionally it's just in your head. That's an adventure too.

 
In the short-ish life of this blog this has probably been the longest I've gone without rambling away with something on here that might provide curious insight at the very least to you all.

It's probably going to happen a lot more (at least for the recent future). I've got a potential job floating about. It's currently very nebulous but it's certainly been an adventure and will continue to be for the foreseeable future as it involves living in another country for at least a year, for starters. It's taught me quite a bit about going for things, and a bit like those yellowy old "choose your own adventure" books that were in my elementary school. So let me tell you my half of the story so some context can be applied to my reasonings behind how best to take hold of your own adventure and future.


The Call to Adventure:
Unexpected phone calls at odd hours. Unexpected meetings. Unexpected tragedies. Unexpected celebrations. Unexpected deers jumping into your path.

Notice those. Immediately. If you breezed past them. Back up now, either literally, if it was a person, or phone call, or if it was a one-time event, just go to your memory.

The Door. Crossing the Threshhold:

That unexpected thing just opened a door. Walk through it. Dive through it. Roll through it. I don't care how, just get your bottom off your couch and go through it. That is my advice as your personal wise Wizard with a pointy stick (staff). 

Tests, Ordeals, Possibly a Death of Some Sort:

Cheers for going through the door. Things aren't all robot rainbow unicorns though. You've got a monkey barrel of tests, possibly lots of paperwork, using acting skills that you don't actually have because employers sometimes need to see an image before they see you. You might screw something up. Fantastically. A great big bomb of a boom because you pulled out the red wire instead of the blue one.

Okay. Breath. Sit back. Make lots and lots of lists. You might go through a metaphorical death, maybe there will be a literal death somewhere (and I give you a pre-emptive hug if that is the case). It'll pass. You might not have talking eagles at your beck and call to help out when your stuck between a warg and a tree, but you'll figure it out. Make lists. What's important to you? What steps need to be done to get there?

Reward! You Got the Sword!:

Yay! You passed all your trials. You got the job. You got the house. The boyfriend. The barrel of monkeys. The raise, the book deal, the green-lit script. Breath. Relax. Trust. Enjoy. Unlike Joseph Campbell's tidy hero cycle, this current reality has a set of Physics rules that dictate you'll have a new set of trials and adventures and all that. Sort of like mini cycles within a cycle. But hey, the world's round, so it does make logical sense that our lives are going to be like that too.

Return:

Your adventure is going to be over at some point and you'll probably go visit whoever lived with or around you before you got the Call to Adventure. This is a chance to go thank them for putting up with you during that period when you were miserable and didn't realize all you needed was to stop hiding and just grab on to an adventure. You'll also probably realize you're really different and probably not happy back in that old place anymore.

That's okay. You've grown. Your a hero. You are living an adventure. It's called life.

Aren't you glad you listened to that wise Wizard with the pokey stick (staff)?

Navigating an adventure to other lands on Earth.
Moony.

How to Create Time: For Anyone Not a Time Lord

I know. Not a clock. But time flies no matter how you gauge it.

 I'd like to point you to this rather creepy but apt nursery rhyme from one of my favourite tv shows. You know, that one with the time-traveling alien who can regenerate and has a time machine stuck in the form of a 1960's police box from London. Not for nothing has it said to be a "hide-behind the sofa" sort of show:

Tick Tock Goes the Clock (From Doctor Who S6.9)


So time. It's scary. Even without peg dolls and whispery background music.

Then again, I'd say it rather scared of humans, seeing as it tends to run away from us, leaving a lot of shock and confusion when the sun is down and you're yawning and thinking back over what the flip you actually did that day.

I have one piece of advice for you which I found worked a million times better than even the best of lists; which if your curious, can be found here on another amazing twenty-something help site: Milk the Pigeon. For those of you who are not twenty-something, but another something-age, I believe advice aimed at one age (even advice for kids can be valuable, depending on the topic), is just as valuable for any age. After all, if you've hit a point where you believe you are too old or definitely old enough to not learn anything more, well, sorry, but you can. It might me it'll take you a bit longer and a bit more effort and motivation, but you'll get there, eventually. Eventually is the key. 

So all that said: My advice for those of you who want to create more time and don't have the fortune of being a secret Time Lord or owning a time travel machine like the TARDIS, well, use a clock.

Specifically, use the alarm function of whatever clock you choose.

Yes, alarms are loud, obnoxious and all around hateful objects but that's the point. They'll jog you out of your happy scrolling of Twitter, reading a book, re-runs of your favourite sit-com or hours releasing stress via a video game. They'll help you fit in everything you want to do in a single day. Everything.

So what if you don't read all fifty pages of a self-help book, or get that work project due next week entirely finished? Did you get a little bit of both in? Did you even keep up your contacts and connections with friends, collegues, potential business or creative partners?

You did. You'll notice I refrained from mentioning "down-time." Why? Well, simply because we have deluded ourselves into thinking letting our brains go, as we watch a show or jump from cool link to cool link on the internet, we are just avoiding what we actually love doing and what will not only make us happy but make us productive and therefore successful.

That doesn't mean you have to forgo silly sitcoms or digging around the interwebs. Go and do it to your heart content. Just make sure you do it with a goal in mind.

I, for example, don't watch a single t.v. show, movie or read a single book without a pad of notepaper nearby where I actively scribble phrases, character traits, plot points and structures or random facts like what the International Phonetic Alphabet for Aviation is (from my beloved radio drama Cabin Pressure), which has since then found a spot in an airship adventure tale I'm drafting. I make my entertainment time active learning for my own writing.

So I challenge you. Set those alarms! Make those goals. You don't need to be a Time Lord to mould time to your desires.

Happy alarm-setting!
Moony.