Sunday, June 29, 2008

Reflecting on Greatness and in some cases Sheer Awesomeness

To do what I do best, is to do nothing. I must face the fact that of all the things I do, I will never be so efficient at any of them as I am at doing nothing. I can do nothing now without having to expend any energy at all.
Writing believe it or not beleive it , is what I do second best. And lets face it writing is as close to doing nothing as doing something ever gets.
One could contemplate the plight of my man at MIT facing a life of 'publish or perish' and whilst he still seems deadset about becoming one of the new manchurians the amount of filters his writings will have to traverse before his idea takes the world by storm is daunting.
I am less likely to ever be published than him. If it wasn't for the fact that I can publish myself anytime on this blog.
But I don't mean blog writing when I say I'm back to writing. I mean to say I am writing 'something' hopefully by tomorrow, I will be writing 'somethings' better known as 'some things' as in the plural non specific quantity of things.
And maybe you haven't guessed but for some reason I am trawling wikiquote.org and thus my blogs have been fed by quotes from dead white men for the past couple of days. Rest assured I have others for my little project from females too but the one catching my eye right now is one from the repository of wit and wisdom that is Mark Twain:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.


I was at a party last night with an old palski who I hold in high esteem, and at around 3am I had decided it was time for me to go home. And in parting he said (disclaimer, I get wasted REALLY easily and unfortunately for me this party marked the occasion of which I broke an effective 9.5 month dryspell on alcohol both hightening my emotion and dulling my recall) 'man send me those scripts again and I occasionally check out your blog, your a great writer keep it up [or something to that effect] its so great you are doing what you are doing...' which was more than the necessary 'bye' the situation called for.
Not that he was wrong to say that stuff, he was in fact singling himself out as great. It's precicely these minds I crave to have around me, almost need around me right now to stop me from compromising myself.
So I just want it on the record for this persons personal benefit that by Mark Twain's definition of really great, you are one of the really great people out there.

Then let's go back to another anecdote way back. It was my third year at RMIT. I had failed two subjects in my first semester of 2nd year, as such my first 6 months had been spent not doing a co-op placement as I should have done normally but by taking a full time load of subjects. And somewhere in those 6 months I forgot to really do anything about lining up a job for myself for the next year.
I am one of those wonderful planners who plans everything so that no effort is ever required on my part and I always know what to do when things go wrong. See I'm not the 'classic organised' who plans how to make things go right. I hope things go right, and plan for every other outcome.
And I thought I had a plan, I had infact 2 plans. I didn't really want an exemption from the Co-op year, but I figured at the time I had a job with a marketing company doing market research calls, so I went to see the co-op coordinator who we shall call Maureen to tell her I hadn't lined up a job yet and time was running out and dissolving my other options.
I was trying to avoid a worst outcome where I wasted 6 months of my life trying to find a job doing nothing in the meantime.
Maureen said 'no' and not much else to me. When I suggested we just write off my part time casual work as my Co-op placement (I assumed this wouldn't be a problem because I had heard worse co-op storied from my friends out in the field already) she said 'no' to that too.
Eventually I had to prompt dear old Maureen onto my plan c by saying 'are there any alternative programs I could complete?'
Maureen said 'no' to that too, informing me the cut off for the alternative PSP had closed for the semester already (Professional Skills Program). But then she doubted herself and maybe that day learnt the old idiom 'if you don't ask you don't get' because she got on the phone to someone who actually had the word 'yes' in their vocabulary.
She sent me a hefty 10 meters over to the PSP offices, where I met Terry, who I had met with once before about my prospects of completing co-op in Japan. Terry had no 'no' in his vocab. The mood was overwhelming for me immeadiately in one of the best moves I ever made in my life. The atmosphere of Terry's office was that of 'yes' it was all 'how can we make things happen' instead of all 'you must follow the protocol' and Terry was just the kind of guy that seems to bounce off the walls trying to make things happen for you. The guy still interrupts me to offer me jobs periodically.
For this Terry is also one of those people whom are amongst Mark Twain's really great.

Then their are the Stalwarts Bryce and Shona, Shona probably more than Bryce is explicitely enthusiastic. A quality I profess I don't exude much of myself. But with Shona in the corner its just that much easier to go rounds with the guy who chewed a bit of your ear off just before. Specific examples are numerous and redundant, I'm sure most people who know Shona would testify that this is how she is.
Bryce is different, for me anyway, he often testifies to my greatness, often discourages me from travelling the beaten depressing path of life, and more often differs in opinion from me in conversations that degenerate into obscenity shouting competitions.
That said, I look to my long lasting friendship with bryce as proxy evidence that he keeps me around for a reason, and it can't be so I can piss in his pockets or blow smoke up his arse. That for me is enough to believe that somehow I am great.

There are others too, but these are a good cross section, the recent, the distant and the contants.
Someday I aspire to be someone who makes others feel they can be great.
Thanks guys.

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