Pursuing Awareness

To be honest, writing the next post has been a challenge. I’ve had to come back to the post multiple times over multiple days, and it’s not progressing very well. The words just aren’t flowing like they should. I think it is because there are so many directions to take, things need to be said succinctly and it’s cognitively difficult. I don’t know. I’m finding it difficult. I intend to not give up though! 

In the meantime, because this is where the words are flowing easily, I will explain an example of choosing from my everyday existence.

Yesterday afternoon I had the warning signs of an oncoming migraine; for me that looked like feeling uncommonly hot (not sure if that’s always a sign, but I didn’t feel good) and the main sign – my vision goes a bit haywire. It’s hard to explain, but I see white spots, things shimmer, I develop blindspots. This happens every couple of years to me. Only yesterday did I google and realise that this might be the ‘aura’ part of ‘migraine with aura’ that my sister gets. I guess it’s from my genes. Great.

It’s now morning and I slept for 12 hours, from which I think might have managed to stave off from it hitting with full impact, but it’s still hanging heavy on me. Literally, my head feels heavy. Sucks.

I had choices last night when the migraine was coming on, and I have to admit that I failed in my choosing. I didn’t choose to respond well when the circumstance presented itself. I was irritable to my partner, quick to temper. I hadn’t seen her all day and then I was a dick. There were better possibilities open to me. There was the possibility of not acting on the irritability, on the temper. Why? I was semi-aware of my irritability and I think I enjoyed just letting it out, acting on impulse, but I didn’t really make myself aware of other options. On reflection, was that the ‘right’ choice? No. I would rather have been strong in the face of my impulses; disembodied from them. I would rather have been patient, self-restrained and assertive but not in a dickish way. I want to say ‘noble’ as well? I would say yesterday I displayed none of those qualities. That’s okay though. I can learn from this. When I’m feeling irritable and quick to temper, THOSE are the qualities I want to choose to embody. 

The circumstances are different today. Time has moved forward. The new circumstances are that right now I have what feels like a massive hangover and yesterday I have been a dick to my partner. I have possibilities today to acquit myself in the ‘right’ way. Give me strength!

I’ve recently returned to this idea of choices.

I would love to integrate choices more into my daily thinking, beyond the reflective period in the morning where I give a shit about this kind of stuff. It’s a work in progress.

I was thinking about the lineage a bit more of when this became a profound insight for me; a moment of clarity. I think it was reading Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankel, in 2015. What I took from it: You always have a choice in how you respond to the circumstances you are given. 

That’s all you have. Even if something or someone else has taken everything away from you, that is what you are left with.

And he was right. The world beyond my mind is circumstance, including my body. But in my mind, I have the capability to choose. I have agency. In fact, I am always choosing. I’m constantly in the present tense of the verb ‘to choose’. Right now I’m choosing. This is the only thing I can truly control in this moment. It’s inescapable. I’m choosing because I can only ever be (physically with my body and my mind in my body) in one place at one time. It’s zero-sum. Binary. I’m either doing x or not doing x. Therefore, every moment matters. 

And that’s why awareness is so important to me. Whether I am aware or not, I’m still choosing. If I’m aware of the choosing, then I give myself a fighting chance of making a choice that is ‘right’ in my eyes. I can be intentional in my choosing. And look, I’m no saint, I spend a lot of time unaware of my choosing, or I am aware but I still make the wrong choice. That’s just the way it goes. It’s a numbers game though. The more time I can be aware, the more chance I have of catching my choosing, the more chance I have of making the ‘right’ choice.

I was journalling last night to try and assess the last couple of months using just my memory, obviously an exercise of fools, but hey, I’m a fool! Instead, I let the mind retrospectively mould what it thought was the key bits. Firstly, the mind bucketed the chronological narrative into different sections with a key theme for each (I guess what I considered most important or ‘consuming’ at the time):

1. Starting new job (3 months) – I think back to this as a hard, barren time; a grind. There were so many things to adjust to and I struggled with it. I did manage to maintain my morning routine though.
2. Exercise (3 months) – I got into my head (from Andrew Huberman, Peter Attia) that I needed to build strength, as well as it being something I wanted to do anyway but always had excuses not to. I was successful in being disciplined in doing 5×5. Therefore I see this time as solid routine, progressing through heavier weights (for me – llight for many other people).
3. Pulled piriformis and ill (1 month) – I put it down to too many squats (2-3 warm-up sets of squats + 5×5, 3 times a week), but whatever it is, I pulled what I think is the piriformis in my left butt. No more squats or lunges or nada because I felt I needed to rest up. I stopped the exercise program but carried on with stretches. I also got ill for 2 weeks or so – nothing serious – but just meant I felt low.
4. Festival (5 days) – Felt right again in time for an amazing festival with my friends. I simply had a great time.
5. Post-festival chaos (1 month) – Couldn’t get out of bed like I normally can. No umph first thing. Started doing more social things in the evenings with friends, tried out new activities, boozy weekends away with friends. Really, falling out of good habits (meditation, eating healthy) and into bad habits (staying up later, bigger dinners). I put this down to burnout.
6. Holiday (WFH 1 week abroad, 1 week holiday) – A welcome break and respite – the first relaxing holiday since Christmas. It was a glorious break which actually let me relax and find time to re-assess and pick up good habits again. Meditation – I realised I didn’t need to force myself to sit cross-legged to get the benefit. I could just sit on a chair.
7. Now – One week post holiday, and I feel like I’m back on a good routine. Getting up early, meditating, a bit of writing, exercise, packing a salad for lunch. This is a good base from which to work off.

Assessment of choices

I think I’ve had mixed results when it comes to making the right choices for myself.

• Basic maintenance – Until the festival I think I got a lot of things right, and choosing to be go to bed at an early time most nights e.g. not watching to the end of football matches etc, has been the best choice I have made most days, as it has set me up so well for the next day. I’m not saying it’s perfect, far from it, but I think the basic elements have been there. I understand myself more than before. Although I’ve unintentionally jabbed at it before, it’s a shame it has taken me 29 years to really start to ‘get’ that if I go to bed early, I wake up early, and then I have my most productive hours on the things I want to do before work. It’s a shame there’s not enough time to fit in everything I want to do. I have prioritised exercise and meditation at the expense of journalling, this blog and other activities. I would say this routine has been intentional and aligned to me being able to experience more joy than if I had not got a solid basic maintenance regime. The mornings are my favourite part of the day. Therefore huge thumbs up. Additional insight: The chaos period, although unintentional and not great from this perspective, allowed me to understand that meditation has been key to me having more equanimity and generally be a nicer person to be around (I think for my partner).
• Professional life – For the new job, it has been a bit of a mission: bearable, but not setting the world alight. I’ve waited to see how it will play out, which I think has been the right choice, but now I need to start seriously considering what the right choice will be for me going forward, as it has now been 9 months so I ‘get’ what the future looks like a bit more and how I will spend my time. This will no doubt be another post entirely. Thumbs at a 90 degree angle.
• Festival – I didn’t initially want to go to the festival, thinking it would be too much effort and would throw off my basic maintenance. However, I chose to go in the end (thinking it wasn’t what I wanted) and it was probably the highlight of the year. Therefore I can only say it was unintentional, but it aligned with being more joyous. Thumbs up.
• Pulled piriformis / chaos – I was probably not as intentional as I could have been during this period, going from having the exercise routine to not having it, I think it threw me off. I would say overall I probably made easy choices rather than intentional and aligned to joy choices. Therefore a thumbs down.

Okay. What lessons are there here? Early sleep good. Morning routine good. Understanding when I need to make big choices okay. Sometimes it’s fine to go have a blow out, good. Take a day to re-assess if you realise you’re off track. Book some annual leave?! Clear a weekend day?!

Nice. Now that’s out the way. Time to move forward!

I was going to write a post about ‘what the hell have I been doing for the intermediary period of time between my blog posts on the 19th November 2022 and (today) 16th August 2023’. I was going to lay it out in a rather boring fashion – a list of what I did do and what I didn’t do, but then I thought I’d go one step further. I’ll set out the framework here in this post explaining how I’ll look back at the last 9 months, and then will follow up with another post with the assessment (partly due to trying to encourage myself to return, partly to have shorter posts that I can tackle in 25 minute segments).

I have a real big thing for choices. I get hard on the thought that we have agency. This first occurred to me in this way at the back end of 2021 I think. I was thinking about how joy should be the ultimate aim of life, and how do you get to joy, and how do you live a life worth living, which in this instance I defined as a life with a maximised probability of feeling joy for the longest period of time and at the highest intensity. I will re-visit this at a later point as it requires a much larger discussion, and without re-visiting my thinking and challenging it too deeply right now, I’m not sure entirely sure it’s correct.

Anyway, a by-product of that thought process revolved around Choices. The Path. Tim Urban’s graphic really sparked the way I was thinking about it. Each tree split in the graphic represents a choice (a decision tree), and along the y-axis you have joy at the top and no joy at the bottom. Each choice you make moves you closer or further away from the probability of experiencing joy for the longest period of time at the highest intensity over the course of your life.

I made an infinite number of choices during that time given each moment represents a choice being made, and that is the framework I’ll use to assess the last few months.

Appendix

Re Tim Urban’s graphic – I don’t want to be a blog that simply regurgitates other people’s ideas, but I’ll certainly allow myself synthesis from greater minds and will reference where I’m aware.

So that went to shit immediately didn’t it?

I pretended for a few days like I was going to write a blog, and then I didn’t at all.

All those little plans and dreams of mine instantly went down the drain. But that’s okay. I had misaligned expectations. No one died.

I haven’t even looked at this blog since I wrote the last post. It just ran away from me when I started the new job. And yes, I know from reading back through ‘Turning on the taps’ that one of my fears was that I would drop the habit straight away because I was in between two jobs. I get it. I failed. That fear was in fact completely justified.

I found the reviewing difficult; the amount of re-editting I was doing was insane versus my expectations. I had a really tight turnaround on my morning routine and exercise has been swallowing quite a bit of time. That was probably due to my set up, thinking about it like a Day One, Day Two etc. I was trying to review Day One before getting Day Two out, and then I was having other ideas along the way. Not disciplined enough with my time. Not happy enough with the words on the page. Hunting for perfection. I struggled with splitting out the time between writing fresh material and reviewing / re-editing new material given the time commitment.

Well, 9 months later, here I am again. It’s been playing on my mind for a while that I think I have more free time in my life now so I want to do a blog. Hey, I already have one! Albeit one that had the lifespan of a fruit fly. Time to change that.

Funnily enough, reading back through all the previous posts, I went through all the exact same thought processes AGAIN. Life is circular. Thoughts repeat. Fears remain. I have a sneaky suspicion that will never change.

What I also forgot about was that little framework I had going on. It looks pretty decent, I might try it again.

Hello. Welcome back. Join me on my quest for greater awareness and other bits.

Procrastination. Ah you beautiful thing. 

Just 45 minutes ago I became aware that I wasn’t doing the review of the previous blog post ‘Turning on the taps’. I was absent-mindedly thinking about how I was procrastinating and how I shouldn’t be procrastinating. Fortunately, I managed to become aware of this, and then thought ‘let’s document that’. So here we are.

Let me dig into what the word ‘procrastination’ means to me. If I just pause for 30 seconds, close my eyes, let my mind sit on the word ‘procrastinating’, what comes up? 

Slob. Inept. Image of me eating a pizza slice. Frustration. Annoyance. Weak. Image of my phone in front of me at a desk. Come on. Just do it. Put your phone down you fucking idiot because you need to do this shit. DO IT NOW.

I can feel tension around my collarbones, my chest, my biceps as well.

Eyes open. Okay. There’s a high likelihood, based on that, that under the hood of my awareness I experience a lot of negative thoughts and stressful tension every time I think I should be doing (or should already have done) a task but haven’t yet, even if I’m not technically labelling it ‘procrastination’.

Let’s see if this is true. So what am I currently procrastinating on?

• Wiping the mould off the wall behind my desk and in the bedroom. Excuse: ‘I can’t be bothered, I’ll do it later, I’m writing a blog post right now. Why can’t A do it?‘. 
• Taking the bins out. Excuse: ‘The bins are too full, it’s going to take effort and might split on me. I can’t be bothered. I’ve got other stuff going on right now‘. 
• Looking up some stuff as a potential business idea with a friend. Excuse: ‘I can’t be bothered. It’s chill time right now. This time is precious. I’ll do it later. I don’t want to start exploring a new business idea and putting work in when I know I’m going to be starting a new job shortly anyway.‘

So yeah. I procrastinate on a lot. And yeah, the thought of each of those stresses me out. Understood. It’s a lot of perceived effort to do these tasks. That seems to be a theme as to why I haven’t done them.  

I make my excuses, forget about it, remember again in a few hours or days I still need to do whatever it is, let my mind beat me up, free rein, and repeat until I do it. Great feedback loop there. 

And that is the crux of my procrastination. Not a pleasant cycle.

How did I at least overcome procrastination for reviewing the last blog post? I really wanted to do the review, because I wanted to keep the blog momentum going.

1. Awareness of the procrastination thought-pattern – I am aware I’m procrastinating. Mind is suggesting different things to do instead of reviewing the last post. Relax. You deserve it. You’re tired. You’ve already achieved a lot today. Podcast. You’ll do it later when you’ve got more energy.
2. Awareness of right now – Breath. Shoulders. Foot on floor. Crossed leg on thigh. Air foot sole. Bum. Back curved. Shoulders. Breath. Do I have energy? Am I tired? Lethargic yeah. Temperature – comfortable/warm.
3. Awareness of priority – Can only do one thing right now at this moment in time. Does the task really need to be the one thing I’m doing right now, does it really need to be done at all, can I commit to doing it in the future? 
4. Take the smallest step to just change current experience, not necessarily to do a task. Do any physical movement.
5. Change environment (if can get over stage 4) – Take off hoodie, stand up, go into the garden for 5 mins, bounce from side to side or sweep. Make a tea. Come back and see how you feel.
6. Either do the next smallest thing that would go towards the task, accept the task doesn’t need doing, or schedule when you will do the task in a calendar. 

I did the task after this. This framework might absolutely be some bullshit, but I’ll try to give it a go next time I become aware I’m procrastinating. 

Presumably, I’m not the only human to go through this. Good luck to anyone else who recognises themselves in this piece.

I have successfully completed 15 minutes of writing each day. Bam.

A confession: I far exceeded the 15 minutes every day. It’s not a humble-brag, but rather I want to unearth fears I have discovered in the face of writing a lot. My mind has entertained them a few times, flashing up negative images and giving me smack talk.

1. The first fear is juicing myself dry. The mind is saying ‘You’re not going to be able to think of anything to write about. You won’t have any content for this stupid blog which you never should have set up. You’re in the honeymoon period.’ My mind has taken me to a future place where I’m feeling stressed looking at the blank pages in front of me, willing myself to come up with something that sounds original and innovative but nothing is coming.
2. There is then an insecurity that is anchoring on to frustrations I’ve had in the past with creative processes, like making music. ‘The end product is not how you had it sounding in your head and it’s most likely shit.‘
3. The third fear is the one that is most front of mind, in that my free time is artificially high now because I am in between busy periods (changing jobs). My mind envisions myself as busy and stressed out from my new job, and I simply will make choices that mean I don’t write. It’ll be easier to do something else instead.

Okay, cool, thanks Mind. Now I’m aware of those things, let me try to address them:

1. Awareness – I recognise I have these fears, doubts and insecurities. There may be more lurking in the depths, and I’ll try to recognise them when they come up. I see you Mind and what you’re saying. I understand that I can’t will the fears away. They will always be there. I also understand that they must be common, it’s unreasonable to assume I’m the only one who has these fears. One step further, people have these fears but still manage to put pen to paper and express themselves to the wider world. I know that to be true, evidenced by the amount of wordage I have come across in my life.
2. Awareness – right now, I can feel the pressure of my bum on the chair, my arms on the kitchen table, my feet on the floor. Right now, my breath in and out my nose. Right now, the fears, doubts and insecurities are being realised 0%. They are only relevant in the context of me writing this blog post now.
3. Intellectual reasoning – let me self-validate and give the ‘sensible, rational’ counter-argument to each point i.e. what I know I should think and would say to a friend if they voiced these fears:
   • Juicing myself dry – This could happen, let’s say with 49% probability on any given stretch of time. However, it hasn’t happened yet (albeit over 5 days). I have written multiple ideas in that time which can tide me over if I can’t think of any new topic in the moment. If I reach that point then I can address it by finding some tools to work through a mental block.
   • Past insecurity – Okay yes, that is unavoidable because it is history. It also is not right now. The only thing that exists right now is the image in my head, the word ‘inadequacy’, and what I imagine to be shame represented by a slight tension in my upper abdomen. This blog post is getting done right now, in the present. Some other factors to consider:
     • This blog has some accountability through being public from the start, so I’ve already removed the ability to choose between showing or not showing anyone, of which I would otherwise forever stay in the ‘not showing anyone’ world.
     • I seem to have less physical tension to expressing myself in public with writing vs. music, maybe because I write emails, memos, Whatsapp, maybe because my mindset is better primed for it right now. I think of it as ‘safer’.
   • New job = no time – This could happen, let’s say with 49% probability during the first month I have no time to write, and then gradually I’ll have more time thereafter which will mean an increasing probability of me being able to get back to it. I can prioritise time for this and compromise on other stuff if necessary.
4. Intellectual reasoning – okay, I feel that I have presented reasonable counters to these fears. Now, can I brainstorm any specific, actionable ideas for creating conditions that increase the likelihood that the fears don’t materialise? Shit like ‘Be consistent or Be the champion you are’ does not count as it is not an action.
   • The morning routine is doing you well re getting up early and creating time for yourself first thing. When you start the new job you need to leave the house at 8.20am to get in for 9am. Continue with going to bed early, in bed by c. 10pm, so that you can continue to get up early (6.20/6.30am). Aim for 6am. This will help when you start your new job because i) you’ll have time for walking, of which one of the downstream effects seems to be generating ideas based on the weekend, and ii) you’ll have time for writing itself. Your other morning activities you can work around these two.
   • At the new job you might forget the ‘documenting’. Set a reminder now on your phone to review this when you are one week into the new job. Done. A recurring weekly reminder: ‘ARE YOU DOCUMENTING YOUR LIFE/CAPTURING? Do a catching motion with your hand. From 15th Nov 2022 version of yourself at the kitchen table.’ This might not be enough to re-engage, but let’s see. Update (next day): Changing to be ‘Open up Perspective RIGHT NOW and document as of RIGHT NOW environment, thoughts, feelings, taste, touch etc, from the version of you that you want to be – energised at the kitchen table 15th Nov 2022.
   • Not specific, but on the to do, sort out your method of documenting ideas. You prefer handwritten but your current notepads are not private enough when out in public (you know that from when you tried to journal a few months ago on the tube) but you also complain internally about spending too much time on your phone and don’t want to type because it hurts your thumbs. Even when on your phone, you don’t know how best to organise the writing so that it all makes sense. Book in your calendar ‘Try the app ‘Perspective’; tomorrow at 9am, which you’ve had on your phone for ages and not really used. That might be a good documenting system. Update (next day): Went for a walk immediately after writing out this revised post and started using Perspective. It’s ideal.

Off you go. Publish.

Edited out through the process of this post

1. I liked writing with the framing of ‘documenting‘ i.e. capturing the moments as they are in my life as close to the experience/thought as possible. I had expected to stick the writing into a set 15 minutes at a specific time of the day, which I did do and continue to expect to do, but there was something great about the additional write-whenever mode. Let’s see if I can pull it off.
2. There were definitely a few logistical kinks I need to address that I hope to resolve in due course, questions such as in what format should I write, how should I write, how do I collect and organise the writing into a blog post, do I blog directly or write off-blog and then compile the best bits, when do I write the blog? I hadn’t expected to run into these issues so soon, but they require some critical thinking and I haven’t done any, so it’s all over the place.
3. Funny, I’m writing about how I’ve written down all these ideas yet none ended up in this post. Update: Some concepts did in the secondary drafts.
4. About this weekend: The mind was a rich and fertile land so it was easy to harvest, which was enjoyable. Bit much no?
5. Blog post has taken 3h30 hours from start to end, and is basically unrecognisable from the first draft. More of a time commitment then the writing in the first place.

Hello. Welcome. This blog is for me to develop a writing habit. Fifteen minutes a day is what I would like to commit to. It’s okay if I go over.

I’m going to discuss how various aspects of my life are going because I don’t have, at least right now, conviction to commit to a particular topic that I want to preach. I know that probably goes against all blog advice, which would be to focus on a particular niche in which to build up an audience. Whatever.

First off – I need to manage my own expectations. I think I understand the rules of the game I’m entering.

There’s an extremely high likelihood that all these words disappear in a vast, empty void for all eternity, unseen and unheard. Part of the experience of starting this blog, rather than doing a journal, will be me dealing with that.

On the flip side, there’s an extremely low likelihood that someone sees this blog AND reads it. There’s an even smaller likelihood that they then find something within it that resonates with them, comforts them, makes them not feel alone, makes them reflect, makes them annoyed, makes them think I wouldn’t fucking do that, or I want to fucking do that, how do I do that? In my life I like to call these moments Jolts – moments of clarity, changes of perception. I’ve received thousands of Jolts from those who’ve picked up the writing habit before me. If I pass on a single Jolt myself, maybe to you, maybe to someone else, well then, I think that makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

With all that in mind, it will be for me to find joy in the act of writing, to throw the words into the wind, and leave it to the world to decide their fate.

Editted out

1. Fear, insecurity, self-doubt, shame (FISS). These are topics I really want to share.
2. At the moment, obviously it’s my first post so my mind is running wild with the success of the thing. I haven’t even written 100 words and my only previous writing experience is email and Whatsapp. At the same time, I feel shame in my gut at imagining myself looking at the 3 blog posts I’ve done in two months, having 0 views and calling it a wrap. Even worse, posting 100s of blog posts that no one has ever looked at. A public humiliation. It’s fine though. Life goes on and I shouldn’t feel ashamed for trying.
3. Rules of the game includes self-promotion. I’ll get the writing habit underway first and then consider it.
4. I wrote another ‘first blog’ post yesterday. It’s still in drafts and will be forever. I’m calling yesterday Day Zero.
5. Need to collect my thoughts on structure, format. This post has taken 1h30 to write and review. I think I will review tomorrow to take some heat out of the moment before hitting ‘Publish’. Update: I didn’t, it’s two days on that I’m reviewing. Don’t want to revise too much because it’s ‘of its time’ i.e. two days ago.
6. I don’t want to be giving out preachy advice at any point, saying something like ‘everyone should get 8 hours sleep’, ‘everyone should think this way’. No. If I do, call me out on it.

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