Giving in to the delay

I have been trying to get a breath mint business off the ground, and it is taking so much longer than I want it to. I think this is generally the way of new businesses, new projects, new ventures. They always take longer than we think, even when we take that into account.

I have had a suspicion though that the short terms delays in getting the business started are going to mean the business will be better crafted and formed in its early stages, giving it a much better chance of producing something useful, and having a long life.

The key thing we are trying to sort out at the moment is the structure of the company, and the split of equity between the founders. This is something we have been almost discussing for about four months, but with something always getting in the way.

Today one of my co-founders called to talk about the business structure, and without me even prompting clarified two of the key questions that had been concerning me. It seems to me that the delays in forming the business have actually given us all time to work out what this thing we are creating needs to look like. 

Deep down I knew that it was time to wait, time to allow some key things to fall into place. But there was a narrative in my head saying that I needed to push and force, and I was getting so frustrated with the lack of progress. But I think if I had have got my impatient way, I may have created something brittle and inferior that would not have lasted.

I see some of me in him

There is something about my eldest. It is like I somehow grieve my childhood when I think about his. And it is like I can sense his pain and confusion, as if I am seeing my own at his age.

I don't fully understand it yet, but I think it is more about me than him. I think that he is probably doing okay, going through the normal childhood stuff, with a little extra (like having to navigate two homes) thrown in. There is nothing in his behaviour that I am overly concerned about.

It is in the moments when we part ways that I feel this grief most acutely. Perhaps I am feeling the grief of my own recent loss of intimacy and connection when we part ways. Perhaps I am feeling the lack of deep connection I felt with my own parents as a kid. Perhaps I am grieving that he is eventually going to feel his own deep pain and loss, as is the course of life.

The part I do know is that it hurts, and gets me pondering how much I long for, and how difficult it seems, to have intimate connection with another human being.

I will not avert my eyes

My favourite line from the first season of True Detective is towards the end of the series, where detective Rust Cohle forces himself to watch the entirety of a horrific piece of video evidence he finds. When his partner asks why he watched the whole thing, Rust says:

I will not avert my eyes. Not again.

I have been playing a bit of basketball lately, just shooting some hoops like you do. What I have started to notice is that the more clearly I am able to look directly at a specific spot on the ring, without being distracted, the more likely I am to shoot accurately.

I know there are times when I have averted my eyes and not look directly at a thing, because I am distracted, unable to summon the will to hold a gaze, or afraid of what I might see if I continue to look.

Usually I get a sense of the thing I need to look at. It is often a feeling I get in my body. It might be a hunch about a relationship that is not quite right. A thought that I need to stop for a second before I do something I feel compelled to do. About the reason I want to eat a whole lot of rubbish food even though I am not hungry.

For Rust, averting his eyes cost him years of his life, and many others their lives altogether. For me, I know averting my eyes has cost me years doing things I know have not been quite right for me.

I sense that although it is so difficult to look at reality sometimes, so difficult to hold a gaze in the heat and pain of discomfort, the sooner I am able to see things as they are, the sooner I am making decisions based on facts rather than my version of a distorted reality. 

The protection of laziness

I have finished reading Dr Jason Fox's book on how we can change our motivation through how well and consciously we design our work.

One of the side points he makes in the book is that laziness can be seen as a self-preservation exercise. It ensures we do not put effort and energy into things that ultimately do not contribute to our survival or enhance our existence: stopping us from working on goals that we cannot ever achieve.  Way back in the cave day this meant that we put our energy into hunting for food and making shelter, and were lazy for things like perfectly clipping our nails and stylishly cutting our hair.

Today laziness has a bad name. Whilst I agree that laziness as an end state is not helpful to anybody, getting curious about instances where we find ourself being lazy might reveal some interesting insights into how we think and live.

My laziness in my corporate job extended for a number of years. It wasn't that I was so lazy zI stopped showing up, rather I could not summon the will to do it well for extended periods of time. In retrospect, if I was able to get curious about this (instead of feeling guilty about this), I might have realised that my laziness was protecting me from a job that ultimately was not going to bring me satisfaction, and deep down was out of alignment with my values.

I also struggled with laziness and exercise when I stopped playing team sport. I felt guilty for not being able to sustain early morning riding sessions with a bunch of other guys. Once again, a curiosity about my laziness might have revealed that I did not actually get a lot of benefit from solo sports like cycling, and that team sports offered so much more for me as a whole person.

At the lazy time of the year, a cheer for letting our laziness talk to us.

Of goats and monkeys

Who can wait quietly while the mud settles? 

Who can remain still until the moment of action? 

-- Lao Tsu

My sister-in-law told me that after this year being the year of the Goat, a year of grazing and reflecting, the animal for the next Chinese Zodiac Year is the Monkey, a year of action. 

This fits in well with the words I have chosen retrospectively to frame 2015, and progressively 2016: Still, and Move.  

2015 has been a year of stopping pretty much everything: work, relationships, distraction. It was triggered by a moment of crisis, and I am so grateful that I chose to do less, rather than go even harder which seems to be the conventional wisdom of my culture. Actually, it is being quite generous to myself to say that I chose to stop. The reality is my body would not let me do anything else but. 

And now that I have stopped, I am ready to start moving again. 2016 will be my year of moving, in ways I can and cannot foresee. I will be creating a new business, I will be getting my body sorted, I will be starting new relationships.

This is not to say stillness wont continue to be important to incorporate into my days and year. In fact it will ensure my movement is aligned and purposeful, and not solely because I have it as my word for the year. 

Finally I am enjoying my birthdays

It has taken me more than 30 of them, but I am starting to enjoy my birthdays.

Perhaps that is not entirely true. When I was young I do remember enjoying birthdays, so it seems there is a gulf there between the ages of 21 and 36, where I stopped living in the moment and enjoying what I had, reflecting with joy on what I had lived during the past 12 months, and looked forward with excitement to the next 12 months.

Birthdays during this period were a time of regret for me. A time or remember that I am stuck, that I don't have anything exciting to look forward to for the next 12 months. Of envying those younger than me, and thinking that I was old and had missed my chance.

Right at this moment, I love the age I am. I am grateful for what I have lived, the scars I have earned and the pain I have worked through. I don't envy those who are younger than me. I actually feel for them, the living they still need to do in order to achieve a higher level of awareness. 

And I am looking forward to the next 12 months. The previous 12 months have been profoundly shaping and altering of my course. I understand for the first time how a period of time can be the best of times and the worst of times.

Anniversaries are felt in the body

Today is an anniversary of a traumatic event in my life. My wife moved out of our house today, one year ago. Compounding this trauma, over the next month are three events that were once happy annual events in my life: my birthday, my son's birthday, and Christmas. Thinking about them now brings up feelings of profound sadness and grief.

I have been doing some reading (Mayo, Tim Hill, and Theravive) about the triggers, length, and manifestations of grief. Yes, anniversaries are definitely a trigger, sometimes even unconscious anniversaries. No, nobody knows how long a person's particular grief process will take (but 2 years seems to be a minimum for the end of a marriage). Yes, allowing yourself to go with your body's unique way of processing grief is the way to go (tears, curling up in bed, talking to friends).

While today marks the end of something in my life, it also marks the start of something. I had a horrible night's sleep last night. I know I am going to need to hang out with some friends today. I have a ton of negative energy floating around and through my head, telling me that I should just go back to my old way of living. In spite of all this, I am going to start a new ritual to mark the occasion that I was given another chance to find and live my own life. 

The first part of the ritual is on the day itself - I will buy some new clothes on this day. Clothes that I love. Clothes that I look good in. Clothes that are me.

The second part of the ritual is later in the week - as this anniversary falls on the week of my birthday, I am going to celebrate my birthday each year with my friends. Because it is not just a birthday celebration any more. It is the celebration of a new life.

My process of grief

A friend of mine who is also experiencing grief described the process of grieving like this to me:

"...(grief) is a beast and how long it lasts, is a mystery. You can't force yourself out of it, that doesn't work. And you can't hide from it, as it will catch up with you and bite you on the bum in years to come."

I probably looks pretty strange to somebody observing from the outside, but sometimes I am a teary mess unable to do anything, and then the very next day I will feel like I have all the energy of an exploring toddler. 

My approach is to trust my body, that it knows what I need and how best I will heal. When I am sad, I allow myself to be sad. When I am energised, I allow myself to flow with that energy.

I am grateful for those who sit with me in my dichotomy of states, allowing me to be.

I get worried that I am going to feel like this forever

In those moments when I am low on energy, feeling sad, and not sure what to do next, the worst thing is thinking that I am never going to have energy again, feel happy again, but sure of my next move again.

Of course, this is rubbish. I have been unhappy before, and moved through it. I have been low on energy before, and then regained energy.

The word 'Anicha' comes to mind. This too will pass. Impermanence. 

Therefore I will allow my body to feel and process what it needs to process in this moment. Without turning my attention away from it. Without wishing I was already through it. Rolling with the low energy and sadness and uncertainty. Compassion and gentleness with myself. Believing that there is a higher intelligence in my being that knows what it needs, and is ensuring it gets it.

It hits me sometime on Sunday evening

I have my two sons for one week out of every two. I drop them off to their mum's house on Sunday afternoon. Sometime between dropping them off and going to sleep it hits me. The realisation of how much I love them. How much I miss them. How I have let them down in the week preceding, not given them all that they could have had from me, not being as present as I want to be with them.

Sometimes I start to feel this as soon as I drop them off, if not before. Sometimes it hits me as I am washing their sheets later in the evening. Sometimes it is when I am picking up one of the paintings or drawings they have made while they have been here.

It is like I can feel their little hearts breaking. I see their faces, and I want them to know that I love them so much. That I want to be with them all the time. That I am sorry. It is not their fault.

Perhaps they are okay. Perhaps I see myself in them. A little boy whose heart is breaking. Who feels all alone every second Sunday evening. Lonely, and alone.

Laundry List Item 10: The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there's no compensation for misfortune.

I lived the first 36 years of my life thinking about all the things I regretted and missed out on. Actually, that is not true. For the first 16 or so years, I was living in the moment, on a high. I loved life, my school, my friends, the sports I played. I was excelling.

Something happened over the latter half of my teenaged years. I am not so sure that it was what happened that was the problem, but rather my ability to handle it. I was not capable of that age of tapping into my own internal thoughts and feelings, and trusting that I knew what was best for me. I thought I had to tap into God's plan for my life, and that if I didn't follow it right, then I was going to miss out.

And for the next 20 years that is what I believed, that I had made a series of poor choices and that was why I had not excelled as much as I believed I deserved to. I was depressed, living the life I thought I should live, living within what I knew I was capable of.

It took a crisis to start to understand that the world does not always follow the rules of rewarding me for following the rule book created by others, and compensating me for the shitty things I have experienced. Things happen, and I have a choice about how to respond. There is no plan to follow. There is a lived experience every moment, I get to choose my path based on what happens in each moment, and my presence and wisdom about what to do next.

I am grateful for all the things that have happened in my first 37 years of living. I am grateful for bringing me to this moment of surrender and understanding. The world does not owe me anything. I am here. I get to exist and experience two billion moments. I want to squarely look at and experience each one of them.

Acknowledging the progress

Last night I did not have any plans, so I decided to make an effort and have a solo date. I went out for dinner and had a delicious, medium rare stake. I went to a new cinema I wanted to check out, and watched The Martian. I had a great night.

Although I am tired this morning from a late night, I have a feeling inside that I have marked the progress I have made over the past month. I have trashed about with mints, and now have a name, and plan for making a mint, and clarity on what the values of the business are. I have developed my podcast logo and website, conducting my first interview, and lined up a few more interviews.

This is great progress. Slow progress, yes. It is usually slower than I hope. But it will take as long as it needs to take, and when it arrives I will not remember or be disappointed in how long it took. And since it is will be some time before I can have that ultimate celebration, I will continue to celebrate the small steps along the way, even if I am doing so by myself.

The Niggle that is the Hint of Amazing

Through my personal crisis of the last year, one of the great benefits has been the way I have been able to reconnect with my friends. They have listened to me, supported me, offered wise council. In short, I am not sure I would have got through it without them. Sometimes the grief and pain has been so overwhelming that the only thing I could do was to call one of them and cry.

I had dinner with two of my best friends last night. We talked footy and I told stories about my latest adventures and experiments in being a part time single man/part time single dad.

At the end of the night one of my friends and I ended up at a bar for a night cap, and we finally got around to talking about him. Its funny, but in me being open hearted about my journey and pain, it has created space for some of my friends to do the same.

This particular friend is certainly not in a lot of pain at the moment, his life is actually pretty good. But he is stating to have a sense that something is not quite all it could be. A niggle. A niggle that is telling him he needs to take a moment to reflect; a day off work to ponder his life, by himself. He is starting to think about legacy, about his health, about how he is a great all-rounder but not excelling at anything, about not really knowing what he likes and what he cares about.

Before a moment of crisis forced me to take action, these were many of the same thoughts that went through my head. I needed a crisis to act on that niggle. The result of acting has been nothing short of amazing. I wake up every day not knowing what adventures will unfold. I wake up excited. I hope my friend can find a way to start acting on his niggle before a crisis forces him to.

"...work out your own salvation..."

The more days that pass, the more Sheldop Kopp's words ring true. I think I will write a post on each item in his Eschatological Laundry List. 

Another quote from his book:

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his (their) pain.

We cannot work out the salvation of anybody else. We cannot take their pain away for them, force them to process things in a particular way because they seem so clear to us. Each person needs to own their own journey, and work it out as best they know how.

Choosing to work out my own salvation, and freeing others to do the same seems scary, uncertain, and probably liberating in the long run. Sometimes I just want to know that outcome, but in the end knowing the outcome would breed apathy.

Reality stranger than fiction

I never really used to believe that reality could be stranger than fiction. I think I lived my life in such a safe way that I did not allow myself to collide with the richness and surprises of life.

The past eight months have reversed all that. My reality, while not stranger than fiction, is now starting to approach it. And I feel more alive as a result. I find myself laughing at the ridiculousness of what happens, and surrendering myself to things I can't control.

Reading Uncertainty has certainly helped me to embrace these moments. The three questions to ponder are excellent in this regard:

• "What does the worst case scenario look like, and how would I recover?"
• "How would the status quo look in 5 years time?"
• "What does the best that could happen look like?"

I also like the Viktor Frankl quote from Man's Search for Meaning:

"...listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! -success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

The wisdom of a few extra years.

While I have been going through a tough time recently, I seem to have gained an ability to see in older men the wisdom they have developed in living the years they have lived.

It is subtle, and I can't put my finger on what it is exactly. It is not what they say, but the humility and sensitivity with which they say it. You can tell that they have compassion, that they have faced some of their demons and lived to tell the tale.

Not all older me are like this. I am greatly encouraged by those who are, and luckily I count my dad as one of them.

On the right track?

There are days when I wonder more than others about whether I am on the right track. I look for sign posts, hints or omens on days like this, because it is impossible to see the destination or to be sure. 

I am enjoying reading Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields at the moment. He talks about leaning into the place where you feel the dis-ease. 

A sign post for me at the moment is the dis-ease I am feeling about starting me own business. Another is the people I am coming across who share a similar ethos for creating and living. 

Therefore I keep walking along this track - from all I can tell it is leading me in the right direction. 

Doing or Being

If there is a choice between rushing to do something, or staying and being, I think the wise choice is to stay and be.

Last night I had the option of going to White Night in Melbourne. It would have been an injection to the creative juices to see all that was going on. However I was feeling tired, and I knew I had a big week ahead in which I wanted to be at my best for my family.

White Night lost out, and I got a good night's rest and I feel ready for what is to come this week.

I remember on a trip to San Francisco I took the opposite approach - driving to see the Muir Woods when there was no time to do this. Staying and being in somewhere like Union Square would have been a much better option.