Intelligence

This is the one in my series of ten that I have been most dreading. I have one to come on Beauty that has a similar problem, that is a brand identity problem as an attribute to be attracted to and to cherish. But at least with Beauty the thinking individual can see a vocal body of protesters out there contending the traditional interpretation.

But intelligence? Fewer buck the conventional interpretation of intelligence and many carry around the preconception that if I were to say 'I find intelligence attractive' they would think of being good at maths and debating and school and shit.

Alternatively people would also find this statement the conventional 'lip-service' treatment of intelligence, one of those qualities you miraculously find wherever you happen to want to find it. If the girl is hot, she is suddenly also intelligent, and has a big pair of 'personalities'.

So fuck that, fuck that shit. Under either convention I don't find intelligence attractive (but do find hot girls hot). But rather than say what intelligence isn't let me say what it is with some distinctions and then all these below, what follows I find attractive, if you are capable of putting them in a gift hamper in your mind and calling it intelligence then I guess I would find that attractive.

So firstly, there's the smart kind of dumb and the dumb kind of smart. A lot of people that make me hesitate most when describing intelligence as desirable are the smart kind of dumb. They have extensive vocabularies, are often informed of topical events and capable of useful work. Yet they tend towards having a lot of faith in 'intellectual-constructs' that don't really exist.

The dumb kind of smart for example, take as an article of faith things like 'what's good for business is good for everyone.' and 'these rules were designed to protect us.' and even 'religion does more harm than good.' and 'schools are educational.' that sort of thing. They are often well adapted to their present environment having landed there through near darwinian natural selection, but like a dinosaur, even while being perfectly suited to their current environment have a brain the size of a walnut that is incapable of the ability to imagine an ice age, or adapt to any dramatic changes.

Unattractive, by contrast the smart kind of dumb, the archetype idealised in movies like 'Forrest Gump' don't really need to know anything specific, are not particularly invested in any idea or way of life yet show remarkable wisdom and an ability to surprise that facilitates the much more attractive quality of 'humor'.

One of the most attractive people in the world to me thought that if I left the fan on at night all the oxygen in my room would be eaten and I'd die and that if my fever reached over 100 degrees my sperm would die forever and I'd be unable to have children. The dubious medical knowledge was hilarious and relatively unimportant (neither I nor my future children have died yet) but she is one of the most intelligent people I know, whom I would readily go to for advice on numerous topics.

For one thing, I am attracted to people who posess critical thought and a healthy dose of skepticism, that can entertain the possibility that their knowledge is incomplete, that they are able to be surprised. They need not be obsessively so, like on the point of some mental breakdown wondering how to truly be skepticle about skepticism, it is more the attitude that they operate on assumptions much of the time not real knowledge. They don't get offended when the stark truth of reality crushes some belief of their's underfoot.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. ~ Mark Twain

I have been told that I often comport myself with much epistemic arrogance, or at least don't show enough epistemic humility, I blame it as a hangover from debating which teaches you to speak authoritatively on subjects you know nothing about - but this was told to me by people who show a great degree of epistemic humility, and these are people I would describe as the elusive and rare 'smart kind of smart'. This humility as regards ones own knowledge (epistemic is the shmancy greek word for knowledge) is an attractive quality to possess.

Another trait that is intelligent is simple curiosity if for no other reason than curious people tend to find you interesting. Think of the last party you were at where you were talking to somebody with an occupation completely at odds with your own (or perhaps the appropriate term is 'irrelevant'?) that really grilled you on the nature of your profession, what you enjoy, what the challenges are etc. You liked them didn't you. You were flattered by their fascination. You found it easy to suddenly talk about how fascinating it is to try and find an open source program that can be adapted to ship unique warehouse items without RDI tags.

I'm told I am bad at flirtation, largely because my mindset is 'what's the point' I had an incident with Shonesy at a chinese restaurant where a girl I let out from the table our party was blocking was flirting with me and my witty banter. But I was all like 'alright, goodbye' with my back to her. Thinking that was nice, but you never pick up anyone who is leaving the restaurant you are still eating at. (which in the spirit of epistemic humility probably isn't true) And Shona told me off, I was like 'what's the point? I'm not going to pick her up?' and Shona rightly pointed out that that's not the point. If someone is flirting you flirt back, even when nothings going to happen.

Curiously and inconsistently, I am always interested in other people's work, even if it has nothing in common with mine. I love talking with people about their field of expertise. I don't go 'what's the point? I'll never have to weld boilers.' as a devotee of Heiho (the shmancy Japanese word Musashi uses to describe 'the way') my knowledge is largely generalised and analogous and I'm always looking for new ways to connect ideas and convince myself that the premis of heiho: by truly knowing one thing, you know all things, is true or at least plausible.

So curiosity and skepticism I find attractive, even from illiterate and inarticulate people. But there is a third aspect in the tri-force of what I would call 'intelligence' if it were to be interpreted the same way by everyone else that like Link's courage perhaps overcomes the other two -

Reason, and specifically a persons ability to learn. It is the most attractive aspect of intelligence, it's something ideally you would want not just in everyone you've ever met, but everyone you haven't met as well. Reason is attractive because it allows one to adapt their behaviour, it makes a person capable of change, it is the very opposite of the walnut-brained dinosaur. These people are worth giving a second, third, fourth and fifth chance.

People capable of employing reason, to overcome their emotional brain when it is letting them down, these people can entertain hypothesis, project them into the future and learn from the deviations (mistakes) they make. If past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, people who can give over to their rational mind and overcome their fears, addictions, misconceptions, assumptions etc. are the most capable of surprising us and delighting us.

This, this tri-force of skepticism, curiosity and reason - that's what intellgence should mean in your mind but doesn't. We confuse the details with the picture. Intelligence is an approach rather than a body of knowledge, if they have the bookshelf and the means to stack it, I care little about the poxyness of the current collection.

Humour

Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. ~ Mark Twain

To me a persons ability to laugh and make me laugh is so obviously attractive it barely needs to be extrapolated upon.

Did you know children are naturally drawn to adults who will tickle them?

Probably the one great force that threatens us most often throughout our lives, threatening to crush us into our graves is boredom. But when you are in the presence of somebody funny, the most dreary godforsaken shit hole can be fun.

I didn't even know I had a 'type' until I was already 18, that was when I dated the first girl that made me laugh. I fell in love with her so quickly, she called me up to ask me out and then I asked where we should go out to. She said 'The Pancake Parlour?' and that was it.

She called the remote control 'the travolta' and acted if it made sense, and her peadophile name was 'Mrs. Bubbles' which may seem disturbing, but we lived in Ballarat and you never know when you'll need one of these things for a job interview.

Then there's people who just appreciate humour. One girl I loved made me truly laugh only a handful of times in the 3 years we dated. One involved her impersonation of a Cornish woman, you would have had to be there. But still it was good to just sit around in the mornings watching cartoons, and homestar runner and we still share a mutual appreciation of the innocent childish humour that populates the better offerings of TV and the internet.

I don't find myself funny as a general rule. It's impossible like tickling yourself but I have picked up older pieces of my writing and glimpsed what other people seem to see in me - 'a magnificent douchebag' maybe. But being able to make somebody else laugh, I mean we are surrounded by sultry come hither looking models on pages of glossy magazines, it is not the look I enjoy evoking most, it is not the look that I find most attractive. Laughter is.

And having said all that could be said on this topic without going into a very, very white analysis, there is nothing so important to me in seeking a potential partner than their effortless ability to make me laugh.

Honesty

Perhaps I should have clarified earlier that I don't hold myself up as a paragon of any of these qualities I've been writing about, I do aspire to have them though. For example my views on religion often bring me into the sphere of intolerence, as with my views on economics and finance, my kindness I feel is nurtured rather than my nature and a relatively recent development of the past 5-6 years. But honesty - this I feel I can say is part of my nature and something that I (often painfully) beholden myself too.

And I find it attractive too. I find dishonesty unattractive, confusing and upsetting. I do talk a lot of shit, for example I often grossly misrepresent Ballarat's character as my home town, being a place where white folk marry their cousins, brush their hair with a fork and 'chaw tabacco. Whereas Ballarat in reality is a beautiful mono-cultured town more akin to an Eastern Suburb of Melbourne than a set of Deliverence.

So hypocritically, I tell tall tales all the time. But honesty for me is about maintaining the essential integrity where it counts.

Genetically I owe my very existence to my ancestors and for better or worse every coupling that preceded the birth of my parents created the opportunity for me to be alive, but as it's told my maternal Grandfather when courting my Grandmother promised her diamonds and pearls and all manner of luxuries he could never deliver to win her hand in marriage. Once one he slapped her on his wedding night and told her he was the boss, and thus my mother grew up in a miserable and disfunctional household thanks to a time and place where to accept somebodies misrepresentation of themselves was an intractable error that severely reduced my Grandmothers quality of life for some half a century.

But the genes at least can recover and I grew up in a happy home. But my Grandfather's attempt to make a lie of himself probably still effects me even though he is a distant stranger of time to me and subsequently the one time I proposed to somebody I made sure I fairly represented that I have nothing, and can't guaruntee I'll have any more. (She said no, but probably not because of that and reasons more cultural/geographic in nature her own father was a house husband - that's the life for me, alas).

Similarly looking outwards I was fortunate to be born with a straightforward sexual preference, and given the tragic intolerence of the world was not presented with probably the most justifiable reason for living a lie across the developed world. I used to feel insulted by closeted homosexuals, bisexuals etc. as far as I felt I could know better their sexuality than they did (which sometimes was possibly true) and it was a long overdue lesson that the feelings of a liberal snob like me are insignificant compared with the consequences of staying in the closet or coming out to a person's relationship with their parents.

My personal values, and if I had a personal choice - the threat of disownment that might serve to keep me in the closet would be pointless, if my family couldn't live with me as I was and expect me to live a convenient lie for them, they were disowning me anyway. Of course their are concerns that are practical as well... but any lie is a problem, it needs to be fed in order to be maintained.

This is equally so for lying about your capabilities or qualifications in your job interview, or about your interest in cars for the sake of a friendship, or about taking a sick day. Honesty simultaneously makes life more effortless and harder.

There is something fundamentally courageous about honesty, being willing to lose a job rather than promise something you can't deliver, or lose your parents rather than restrict your social and sexual preferences, or lose a friendship rather than lie about the nature of it. And it's hard, it exacts a toll financially, physically and emotionally.

But the decision making is easy - tell the truth. I asked one of my bisexual friends whether he'd come out to his parents and how they had reacted, and he illustrated the hardships and benefits of honesty beautifully 'I have, and now that's their problem.'

I guess that is one line you need to draw with telling the truth - you are responsible for what you said. If you tell your boyfriend you don't love them anymore, you are responsible for telling them that. How they (and the world) reacts is their responsibility.

But people who show such integrity when it is hard to tell the truth shall ever be cherished by me. Honest people's words have currency - their compliments mean something, their feedback is instructive and their nature cannot be denied. You can lie about a lier, but somebody honest is hard to not accept.

Furthermore people who are honest with themselves carry the hope that they can actually change, people who lie to themselves don't inspire this optimism in me. I take the view that no matter how rosey somebodies life seems, they will have problems and in some way we are all broken by something. We are social animals and the web too intricate for any tragedy to happen in isolation.

The key difference between the friends I cherish and admire and the friends that remain mere aquantences is whether they have acknowledged themselves as broken and are trying to fix it, or whether they think the world is broken and collapsing on them.

Lastly, you can only really appreciate the value of an honest friend when you do not trust yourself.

Tolerance

Okay an easy and thus potentially boring post. Let's be optimistic shall we and spice things up with an ANECDOTE!!!

So once riding shotgun in the car of a friend and boyfriend of a friend I overheard a semi-passive aggressive conversation/makings of an arguement. I being one of those blessed people whom know that people always want me to volunteer my opinion even when unasked for gave my friend (and friend's boyfriend) some advice on picking battles and giving feedback taken from management advice dispensed by manager-tools podcasts.

I recieved several opinions in return and some feedback on how relationships aren't management. To which their are many merits to this point - management is pretty unromantic, unexciting and rote. I would never advocate a relationship be 'managed' per se. Perhaps my mistake was in revealing my sources.

The manager-tools podcasts could be described by a pie-chart I can't be bothered drawing as consisting of 80% feedback the 'breakfast, lunch, dinner of champions' and given so much airplay I can't help but have the feedback model and 'behavioural' approach to relationships dominate my world view.

Why I offered the feedback model up as unsolicited advice was that it describes behaviour, and not attitudes, intentions etc. Thus it neatly removes 'judgement'.

Can you see yet, why I raise an anecdote about confusing management and relationships yet? Particularly in a post on the attractive quality of tolerance.

Early in my working suit days I had the revelation that the real first hurdle of 'management' was whether you could accept the notion that other people think differently than you do. Many are called managers in this sunburt country, few are. Again there's an importance in not confusing behaviour with titles.

And that's the essence of tolerance, it is being able to recognise that other people have different priorities, circumstances, beliefs etc and that its okay. I don't like going negative but it is easier to make a point of how unattractive intolerant people are by contrast though tolerance is a positive quality to be beheld.

One sure fire way to disenchant yourself to me is in how you treat the help, more so than any other situation that arises, when I witness people abusing a waiter (or if you are an intolerant person you may refer to this as making a 'resonable complaint') over some inconvenience I say 'never again' and have generally stuck to it. I am myself fairly non-confrontational in customer service situations, but people who abuse airline clerks, waiters, fast food employees and the like evoke a super un-sexy sense of entitlement and overinflated sense of self worth.

Intolerant people interpret slights against their honor and violations of their rights where there are none, and work up emotions in themselves that are unwarranted, who wants these people around when there is really bad news.

There is a stupidity to intolerance as well, they are the person who bleats out what we are all thinking, not in a courageous manner, but when we are stuck in line for hours feel the need to make a show of saying 'this is ridiculous'.

Enter the hero of this piece, the tolerant person. This person makes an effort to empathise, to understand and does not judge. They don't impose their internal reality on the external one. When the map doesn't match the ground, the map is wrong. These people you can productively have an argument with, because they are willing to accept that they don't know everything.

In practice tolerant people are incredibly hard to have an argument with, because they don't wrap their ego up in their position. They create a space for interpersonal movement, they remove conflict from your environment, it doesn't mean they are a pushover they just create a means by which you can give and recieve kindness.

Tolerant people are the people to go travelling with, they bend like a reed and don't snap like a twig. They can forgive a place for not meeting their expectations and go with it. They will try new dishes, eat with their hands, and take their shoes off in holy places, even if they are vested in not believing.

A tolerant person is an attractive employee, they are the ones who will notice that some folks are listeners and others are readers (think about whether your friends prefer phone calls generally or whether they prefer texts and emails) they will know that some people care about tasks and some people care about people. They will know some are boisterous and outgoing and some are reserved and observant. And they will accomodate all as much as they can.

I mean a relationship is not about 'settling' or compromise, nor should it be based on some kind of give-and-take power struggle. Like tolerance is not about overlooking the things that make somebody unpleasant to deal with. Tolerance needs it's limits, it is not passivity, it is not 'roll-over-and-tickle-my-belly' it is simply an expression of confidence that you don't need to defend and enforce your world view from a hostile world. It is a refusal to be hostile. A tolerant person generally I have observed won't tolerate intolerance. That is one battle they tend to pick.

Perhaps the best way to surmise the admirable and attractive trait of tolerance is to really look hard at the sentance: they have a sense of priorities.

That is tolerant people can sense others priorities. They will understand when somebody is berieved that that is the focus of their world, just as they won't cut in line because they can sense that everyone else has the same priority to get themselves served. Most importantly their sense of your priorities means they don't take things personally, even when they perhaps should.

Furthermore they have a sense of their own priorities. To the intolerant person I suspect their priorities are hard to rank. All priorities are one, a tolerant person can at least differentiate between their wants and needs. 'I would like the last piece of pizza but I don't really need it.'

Tolerance is subsequently easy to understand as an attractive quality in a manager, friend or partner - would you rather choose to spend time with somebody who knows they want you or with somebody who thinks they need you?

Loyalty

As alluded to in the first post on Kindness, this list of values is not my own, and todays topic - Loyalty is probably one of the more contentious ones yet nevertheless hopefully is therefore ergo vis a vis of some interest to write about.

To me it's contentious because I generally don't advocate loyalty as a life plan - particularly to: organisations, disfunctional families, religious institutions, sporting teams and shitty bands.

My problem with loyalty is that often it is sold as this one way virtue - you should be loyal, a philosophy that permeates Japanese culture, devote yourself to the company/country because that's what good people do and we won't necessarily give you anything in return. It also happens to be this very manifestation of loyalty that is buffetting the countries culture currently with the advent of generational change.

Yet fundamentally loyalty is desirable, security is experience tells me an illusion, yet the optimist in me drives me to seek it somewhat. You want a relationship that is at some fundamental core, reliable and predictable. It's this brand of loyalty that kind of underpins the Classical Economists vs. Keynesian debate.

For example, classical economists being rational morons always expected prices and wages to be flexible, Keynes observed that generally people are reluctant to lower their wages or their prices - that seems a backwards step and they are trying to move forward. The Keynesian promoted reasons as to why prices (& wages) were rigid downwards (that is they can move up easily, but never down) and one of them was the fact that all people need to make some kind of plans for the future.

So rather than renegotiate the terms of our employment day to day, not knowing if we will earn tomorrow what we did today (and thus not being able to form any long term plans) we enter contracts that stipulate our hourly wages, our term of employment how often our wages will be reviewed (implicitly upwards) etc. thus enabling us to take loans, have children and other long term plans that require at least an illusion of security to take those risks.

Sticking with the economics debate analogy for one more paragraph - the Classicists do have a point though, many recessions theoretically would be easier to deal with if prices and wages and everything else were perfectly flexible, that is if we didn't look for loyalty and fairness in our institutions and employers and instead could meekly accept sacrifices for the greater good. Such flexibility is more able to deal with the inevitable change that volatile markets and unpredictable environments bring, the fundamental unpredictability that makes all security an illusion - but to draw the lines for you - just as there will ever be a debate about flexibility and security in how we structure our economy, the debate between being loyal and self-respect (or not being exploited) is an ongoing personal one we all have to answer for ourselves.

But I have to concede there is something magnificent about those who choose to be loyal, security may be an artificial intellectual construct, but we live in another one anyway - society. Both are illusions, but illusions and dreams are where the party is at. Think of people you know that are loyal, there is that lovable stupidity of optimism in loyalty, they assume their loyalty will be rewarded BUT they don't necessarily expect it. And that's courageous, another correlation, the loyal's heart is made for breaking, they trust enough to be dissappointed and exploited.

With a healthy normal level of narcissism, you can't help but love the loyal, and feel guilty at any inability to reciprocate. The people that consistently make an effort to turn up to your crappy parties even though they aren't the person you were really hoping would come. Those that allow your workplace culture to get a foothold and grow into some kind of surrogate family. Those that are simply present.

Loyal people are dear, and precious and rare and should be looked after.

Courage

Ooooooooooooooooooooohh tough one. It's easier to launch into a diatribe of wht doesn't constitute courage, which I mean may be valid because I can think of plenty of contexts where courage is overused - say newspapers, sports broadcasts and the military.

A lot of currency has probably gone out of this word as hero status is bequethed on people who undertake the normal risks to be expected of their job. Some jobs contain more risks than others to be sure, but that is not really a quality of character that makes somebody attractive so much as a fetish for somebody in uniform.

So it's voluntary courage, a demonstrable ability for somebody to step out of their comfort zone and do something with no particular compulsion to do so.

Our society cannot ask the person on the street to run into a burning building on the chance somebody might be trapped inside, it can put this down as an obligation in a job description and that is a chief distinction between real courage and a tough job. An extreme distinction to be sure.

I am attracted to people who are courageous in their principals, who apologise when they are not obliged to. Who stand up for people that are unpopular to defend, who risk social scorn and embarassment to do what is right.

A simple but effective model of learning is to draw two concentric circles one within the other, the small inner circle is the comfort zone. The larger outer one is not, we learn by occupying the non-comfort zone until it becomes comfortable and then both circles expand.

And similar to kindness, courage makes life easier. I like people who stick up for themselves almost as much as I like people who stick up for others. There's no time I loath myself more than when my moral courage fails, there's no time I love a girl more than when she is telling me what I did wrong.

Just as everyone wants some kind of shelter to sleep in, somebody with courage breeds courage in me. Courageous people are good to have around, to set examples.

Furthermore like the optimist (and all these traits tend to correlate) they make things possible. No two people on earth would ever get together if one didn't have the courage to approach the other. In that way it is one of the most fundamental qualities of attraction.

Optimism

I recently wrote about optimism already this month possibly. I don't know. I'm optimistic though I can revisit it again because it's in this series of ten most attractive attributes.

Pessimists are rarely dissappointed and a source of almost constant dissappointment to me. Largely because they pretty much gauruntee failure. My life recently and rapidly progressed from exciting to daunting, and I was going to have micro-meltdown when in a timely and serendipitous matter I had Mark Twain's quote shoved in my ears 'Often I have felt sad at my lack of success, but never have a I felt ashamed of trying.' this is the cold hard beauty of optimism.

Easily dismissed as unrealistic, optimism has as its price dissappointment. The fridge of my soul is stocked to overflowing with the ingredients of dissappointment and heartache, but these are also the same core ingredients of great joy and accomplishment.

It makes sense that our evolutionary history has allowed indivduals to survive that greatly overestimate their odds of success. People who opperate on the assumption that they can and will succeed carry their own kind of exciting energy, momentum that crushes dissappointment under foot.

I used to be obsessed philosophically with 'why?' until one of my more influential mentors pointed out the really exciting concept was 'how?' and my life permanantly shifted for the better in the direction of how. The mentor was Rod the training manager at my former job, and conversations with him were some of the most humbling I ever enjoyed.

That's the audacity of how, the energy that is exciting and enamouring and beautiful to be around. It springs from kindness too, for to suspend your disbelief that something can be done or not and just assume it will is one of the kindest and most reassuring things people can do.

Almost daily I encounter people who hold far more belief in my abilities than I do, and it feeds me. It makes me doubt my doubt, and if you have never had the experience of walking into somebodies office with a seemingly insurmountable problem and just had them launch into a discussion of all the options and possibilities and how to get it done, you have been missing out on the sexiness of optimism.

Then there's the simpler and more pragmatic view of being optimistic about people, it is probably the easiest thing in the world to find fault in others, to do so astutely and expect the worst. It is as such not an admirable skill.

It is more difficult to find reasons to believe in other people, to expect the most and be confident in them. I have friends that reason makes me feel that they will ultimately break my heart. There is no profit though in expecting this, so I hope for the best, I look for the signs that they will in fact turn around. I have one friend I spoke to recently that I could have written off years ago, but those qualities that first drew me to him won out in the long run and now it makes me intensely happy to see what he has done with himself.

Profit = Reward for Risk, and where risks are highest is where the profit lies. The optimist ultimately has a loveable kind of greed, an insatiable appetite for the big profits and thus ignore the collosal risks - except they aren't even.

Optimists don't take the kind of mindless risks that may hurt some body, they are more the people that humbly bet pennies to win dollars. Pessimists fearing the odds of failure tend more to bet their dollars to gain a slow trickle of pennies.

Tomorrow belongs to the dreamers, it always has. Many optimists will enjoy a steady diet of dissappointment, but this is more than counterbalanced by the sheer infectious joy of living in a world of dreams.

Kindness

In an attempt to gather momentum on writing again, I'm going to write a post about 10 of the most attractive qualities people can have. It isn't my own list, but just my reflections on them.

Starting with kindness. There are many and varied views on kindness, altruism and why as social animals it seems important to us and why those who wax nostalgic about the good old days seem to feel it is short supply. I find the pursuit of genuine 'altruism' the purely selfless act a pursuit not worth bothering with. Just be kind, be kind, make an effort to be kind.

There are two broad views on kindness and generosity. Here they are in summation:

"The only true generosity is that rendered on an ingrate" these words I paraphrase from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose book I read recently, not recent enough to remember the exact wording, and I'm too tired to go look it up. But basically this is the view of 'pure' altruism, not giving to recieve. But I have to say when I am kind to an ingrate or in a more long term sense have to dish out tough love, the kind of treatment where you have to refrain from the condescention of 'one day you'll thank me for it' I still get a satisfying sense of bemusement. I think even being nice to somebody rude, reprehensible or worse is not truly a selfless act.

The second type is garden variety altruism, it is where you do a favor to build good will and you can assume, (but not expect as granted) kindness in return.

Overarching this you can take a type of Karmic view that kindness and altruism will be rewarded through a vast web, and not necessarily directly by those aspects where you exerted your good deeds. Thus you be kind to somebody awful who doesn't appreciate it, and be rewarded by somebody else who does, for observing your efforts. Or you can be kind to somebody who does appreciate it, but cannot practically return the favor and be rewarded by somebody else who can.

I probably take the view of all three, just to be safe. But I will refrain from any further talk about being kind, generous, charitable or altruistic for the positive returns it may generate.

Fact is every interaction you have with anybody will leave you feeling either a little better or a little worse. Kindness is the conscious effort to make sure anybody who interacts with you feels better.

Because life is hard, life is fucking hard and brutal and unfair. Life has a way of stressing and burdening people who enjoy abundant material resources, our social dependance and need for interaction means no matter what company we keep we are never in control of all we care about.

But we are in control of ourselves, and we can direct our behaviour to make other people's lives easier. Where and when we find opportunities present themselves.

Take for example a bus ride from a city to a country town. You sit down next to somebody, you can pretend they aren't there, aren't a person, don't exist and absorb yourself in a book, shut out the world with head phones or just gaze out a window at the country side. Or you can acknowledge them. It doesn't require a conversation, nor much energy, nor does it come naturally to all of us. But it can be done. And it is a kindness.

Or I recall Brenton taught me in year 8 or 9, in an enlightening lesson to be kind to employees of a business. I always put my notes and coins down on the counter, the employee of McDonalds or whatever would pick them up, count them out and put them in the register. Brenton one day told me 'pick it up, and hand it to them.' and I have done so ever since. A small kindness.

Shona taught me that people are interesting, and started me on my path to learning how to actually listen (I am still in the steep part of that learning curve), unlike Brenton there was no direct incident. This was the product of years of observing. I could never get why Shona enjoyed socialising so much, always wanted to go to parties. If I suggested we catch up, inevitably it would be seized upon and hijacked into some multiple social engagement rather than one on one, as I intended. Eventually I deduced that while I could stand back and deduce whether I was interested in somebody or not (I don't mean romantically, I mean, interested-period) it was actually far more interesting to ask people what they thought of themselves. There is a disparity between what can be observed and overheard about a person, and who that person thinks they are. And no part alone makes the whole picture. Giving people a chance to speak for themselves and contribute to your impression of them again is a (not so simple) kindness.

Then there are the more obvious forms of kindness: helping somebody move house evidently makes their lives easier, less stressful and more social. Bringing cake to work makes people momentarily happier. Raising money for charity, makes people feel noticed, feel good and helps a charity. Volunteering etc.

But what is the attraction to kindness? 5+ years ago, I thought it was always obvious who I was romantically interested in - they were the only person I was nice to. It was better than being an arsehole to everybody, I guess but insufficient. The attraction to kindness for me, is that it breeds energy, it is easier to interact with somebody kind. Selfishness and other negative traits take energy, defences need to be beaten down. Kind people may be vulnerable to exploitation, but like discovering a really great hole-in-the-wall eatery, inspires in me the kind of energy to protect it from exploitation.

And everything else flows from kindness, the ability to empathise makes argument less frequent but more constructive, it builds friendships that produce diverisity and entertainment to break up the monotony of life, it generates tolerance, and honesty and patience and beauty and humour.

It makes my life easier, the more kindness I recieve. One of my early mentors that I haven't really stayed in touch with made the point 'use your friends because they are your friends. Don't make friends to use them.'

I once said to another mentor after paying for a meal one time, 'You'd be surprised at what a generous act, accepting somebody else's generosity can be.'

So be kind. It's hot.

Who am I trying to impress?

One would rather have the warm tongue of a critic licking his asshole than the tongue of his spouse. It gives him a sense of validity and power. He seems to defy gravity. ~ Mike Patton

"The costs of specialization: architects build to impress other architects; models are thin to impress other models; academics write to impress other academics; filmmakers try to impress other filmmakers; painters impress art dealers; but authors who write to impress book editors tend to fail." ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There are no easy answers, or perhaps there is a whole spectrum of easy answers... in fact for my question there will be an answer certainly that is observable by my behaviour. 'Who should I try to impress?' is perhaps the most valid question, but do you ever hear anybody verbalise that? I don't know.

What? Oh yeah, the first quote by Mike Patton is one of my favorites and most memorable, in his essay 'How we eat our own young' and it's relevant, I assure you. The second one put me in this mindset from the bed of procrustes it is an aphorism I will stretch and cut like the books legendary namesake to suit my purposes.

I have a deviant-art account which has no artwork on it. I have a facebook account which has most of my recent artwork on it, and I have some webcomic pages. Having studied marketing and economics and finance and gone to a school where the year twelve art class students could be counted without taking your shoes off, my social circle consists of few practicing artists. Thus thusly, my facebook page exposes me to an audience of 'lay' people when it comes to art.

I used to think that I could be encouraged by the positive feedback I recieve and then 'graduate' onto DeviantArt an online community of artists once I was producing artwork I was happy to share with other artists. That is my personal question - should I be making art to impress people, people with jobs and money and their own distinct lives? Or shoud I be trying to impress other artists?

As John said to me when discussing our gestating-foetus of an art project "I definitely get that you need to find the balance between masturbating onstage and giving the audience the reacharound now and then." because we are pursuing a holy-grail type challenge.

That's me. I see a lot of live music over the course of a month, and look at hundreds of pieces of art every day. The question of who to impress informs how accessable our work will be. I have been trained in public speaking and presentations, and most processes (at least all the good ones) emphasize that the first step of any presentation is to identify and analyse your audience. The most recent presentation I did was preaching to the choir, and thus almost a complete waste of time. It's objective was to reassure in essence that we were still doing stuff.

But broadly speaking, before performing in any capacity you need to know who the audience is, who matters and who doesn't. Magnanimously you could say 'everybody matters' and yes they do, due to the unpredictability of life in general, but then it also depends what you are trying to achieve.

For me I adopt Seinfields attitude 'I just want to be one of those guys' for me though I'm not so sure if it's about impressing artists and performers as being accepted by them and identified with. That is what I am working towards.

At the same time researching for an exhibition sort of fills me with resentment, that it's almost obligatory that I become part of an 'artistic community' here I am at my most hippocritical. I exert a lot of energy trying to lure collaborators into becoming part of a scene, but my ego prevents me from trying to join an established one. Maybe I just need to lead, and it prevents me from following. I have to reconcile this, but not here.

I see bands though where they are sustained by gimmick, but that seems to judgemental. What they do well is perform. PERFORM. Seeing them play is not like attending a recital, which is a recitation of music, music that was composed by some of the most gifted improvisers in history now forgotten due to the formality which constrains 'classical music' which is the other extreme, still a performance but so formalised that the audience is part of the performance in a way that standing on beer stained carpet in Pony trying not to collide with a skinhead is not.

That is to say, that music aside if I was (and I will kill myself the day this actually seems like a good way to enjoy music) to draw up a scorecard, technical ability, composition, execution etc. would be criteria alongside banter, stage presence, costumes etc. That is I see bands that get some of these things right, some that get none (though this is very rare) and some that get all, and they are usually bands I have to line up at 7am to wait for a ticket vendor to open at 9am and hope my order can get processed in 30 seconds before 50,000 tickets get sold out.

The point being that performance is holistic, and in this context it is easy to distinguish between 'musicians' musicians' and I don't know how to articulate the alternative. But I have seen performances where the performer takes the attitude 'let my music speak for itself' and then literally not spoken to the audience. Sometimes, given some peoples ineptitude at banter this is appropriate, some times it actually destroys the performance. Much like watching somebody eat a snickers bar between courses at an accliamed restaurant would.

I've also been to exhibitions where I spent most of the time reading the explanatory plaques on the wall, because they were sadly more interesting than the artworks. I've also been to exhibitions where there was no explanation whatsoever. I don't know which is better, or which is which but there are elements of holistic performance even in gallary spaces and exhibition layouts.

Everything effects the impression we give, and we should tune these elements to the people we are actually trying to impress.

Who am I trying to impress? I still don't know yet. I would like to say myself, but that would be dishonest. Probably some girl.

Enough Preaching

Some art, I'm looking at doing get going on some animation projects.

For some reason I like taking on lost causes. I don't think it's masochistic as such, though I do think I certainly have masochistic tendacies. But I mean there are these 'Holy Grails' out there, that just the dreaming of achieving fills me with excitement.

For example, drawing a cute girl with a prominant nose. Leonardo managed it, once and I can't be bothered inserting a picture of the sketch where he pulled it off. At any rate I feel a little defeated everytime I have to go back and erase the bridge of a girls nose in a picture to 'fix' it. It's a challange that captivates and perplexes me, because in my time I have met many beautiful women with quite defined noses.

Another is doing good animation with realistic characters. In many ways the 3D computer animation is 'catching up' with 2D because they build models with realistic proportions and it is only the past couple of years that most have realised they should go back to the simple geometric constructions of traditional 2D animation, particularly Golden Era.

But if anybody came close to pulling off that holy grail, it was Milt Kahl with his dance sequence in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The old school Disney Animators were the fucking shit, and I've read some of them wound up living in caravans and stuff, which is a tragedy given the lasting legacy and beauty of their work.

But I mean that's what I love about Art, we've been drawing on cave walls for over 32,000 years or something and there's still all these frontiers with something as simple as putting lines on paper. Since everything in a 2D image is an illusion, as pointed out beautifully in the below Magritte painting:

The french reads 'this is not a pipe' which is true, it's a painting of a pipe.

I remember seeing maps of the world as a kid, and as was replicated in the Truman show, thinking 'man, everywhere has already been discovered.' and you know looking wistfully at history when you had frontiers of the unknown, trails to blaze and a whole 'New World' as stumbled upon by Collumbus. That's the when I wanted to be in (though not to butcher and infect indigenous populations) but just to go somewhere where you had literally no fucking idea what was over the crest of the next hill.

When I look at all the artwork I want to do, it's full of Holy Grails, and Everests that I must attempt to climb 'because it is there'. Simple things like drawing a nose on a lady, or animating somebody that is built like a real person, it is a wild and untammed country.

Decider

This is no post for false modesty, in my brief working life I have recieved advancements and promotions relatively quickly and frequently.

I have in my time turned down two promotions, one recently and one many years ago. And in both cases I made the right decision.

I'm thinking about these incidents because today I decided to take my dog for a walk and read this:

"You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept." ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

I have a feeling NNT wouldn't like me, or my blog. But I do feel rich, there are times when I contemplate seeing a psychologist about money's inability to motivate me. I have read somewhere else that people enjoy being flattered even when they know they are being flattered. In a similar manner, I think many people enjoy taking a promotion without really thinking about whether it would be good firstly A) for them, B) for their career C) for the company.

The first one is distinct for the second because it is holistic, work is but a facet, an important one for life but as it starts to usurp your time outside of it you need to consider that even though my career may advance my life may be deteriorating.

The first time I turned down a promotion it was at hurdle B, and admittedly A, and probably C as well. The company needed somebody to fill the role of shipping clerk, which for an importer was pretty crucial, and the departing employee was highly valued for their expertise and intimate knowledge of a crucial excel document. (That I hope has been replaced). I was in the sales department, sales is not my natural forte (I am an introvert and find social interaction exhausting, though I've gotten better at it), and this may blow your mind, but most companies are organised in a pyramid. Slow down egghead! What's with the geometry, well if you built a highway like a pyramid it would be very ineffecient at getting people to where they want to go.

There is the lane though on this pyramid highway that goes to the top, and that lane ran through the sales department, not shipping and logistics. So while the promotion was genuine, it was a dead-end one. After that there was one more step for (logical) advancement. There were other factors as well, it takes time to build up relationships with customers. After 6 months in sales, I still recieved calls from wholesale customers that weren't aware I had replaced 'Nic' my predecessor. The sales mangers were happy with me, and shifting me after only 6 months and forcing them to have to get used to a new person was possibly not in the best interests of the company.

The point is, companies can make mistakes when offering promotions as well. In this case I think they saw an urgent, but in the long run, unimportant position to fill and felt I was the quickest fix. But really it was a job where you talk to almost nobody and quietly dick around with an excel sheet in a corner and your view is of a wall. It would have been bad for me straight out. I remember helping them for a week and it nearly crushed my soul completely. I was ill suited to the work, and the work was ill suited to me.

More recently, I was offered a promotion that for most people would be an easy decision to take it, and subsequently was difficult for me to turn down. The thing is, that I didn't need extra money, and thankless (actually that's not true, you would be amazed at how many people thank me during the course of a shift, the ratio between thank-yous to 'fuck-offs' is in excess of 100:1, I've never really thought about that before) though my job is it has its advantages. The first is that it rotates me through interactions with amazing people that in perhaps one of life's greater mysteries even a prestigious job would struggle to recreate. I don't know whether I will be sitting next to an actuary or a musician from one shift to the next and sometimes a person can literally be both.

Before I got this job I was in a slump of an existential crisis. I had no direction or structure to my life and was living off the considerable savings of my former career (where I also turned down a promotion). The primary benefit of my job is the social opportunities it provides. In the context of the actual job I do, looking at the base isness of what it is - conducting repetitive surveys it is easy to dislike. The benefits and enrichment the work environment brings my life, more broadly I find hard to ignore and thus it is hard to resent my job.

In a sad irony, working in a call center has brought me more opportunities for happiness than the supposed 'real-job' I had. I am fitter, more social, happier (whatever that means) and more relaxed than I was at 23. I am more productive and achieve more of my won goals. In my particular case I identified my own needs and found the job that suited them. The dream can't last forever, I know, but it would have ended prematurely and foolishly had I accepted a promotion that isolated me from the primary benefit I recieve.

The promotion was real, it was more pay, more responsibility, more job security etc. But I don't have my job because of the pay (I can earn more full time), the responsibilitys make it harder if not impossible to overcome alienation from my peers and the job security is false because security doesn't really exist.

These decisions I have made, and I can never really know the features of the road not taken, but the money I refused tasted delicious.

Optimism

A friend at work gave me this sketchbook she'd hand made using tracing paper instead of regular paper. It has 48 pages, and I have this idea of how to fill that many pages with a coherant illustrated story.

I don't wish to give too much away but in essence it will progress from page 1 to 48 going from my shallow superficial facade into my depths and what they are and how I try to represent them visual. Like a metaphysical anatomical guide for an aspiring surgeon of the subconscious. I probably gave too much away.

Anyway of necessity I am going to have to include those aspects I don't like about myself. My negatives. I am as prone to engaging in irrational behaviour as probably everyone, and by everyone I mean 'the norm' probably not say substance abusers or peeps with actual personality disorders. The substance I do abuse is food, my diet is aweful and I probably should arrest the behavior that has me consuming my own death.

That is a negative I possess that I could get rid of and not really bat an eyelid. Sure maybe once a year I will be drawn to Sydney Roads KFC for the artistic installation it's bad service and worse food is, but I can probably live quite happily without junkfood in my regular diet.

There are other negatives though I find curious as to why I keep them, I mean I keep them suprressed, I don't act on them (any more) and in accordance with the two-dogs proverb I learned from a Daredevil comic 'There are two dogs fighting in each of us, one that hates and one that loves. Do you know which one wins the fight? The one you feed the most.' my 'bad' nature I haven't fed for years. Yet I can't bring myself to kill it, nor am I sure I can. Maybe controlling our worst behaviour is the best we can do short of a lobotomy.

But I'm in a strange looping loopness of negativity. One part of my negative nature is that I can be quite ruthless, and I have been kind of ruthless in removing negative influences in my life. And by 'remove' I mean 'not spend time with' but I'm not sure if fighting negative with negative is the right way to go.

Some clarification, by negative it is based purely on how somebody makes me feel, I don't mind if people are arseholes to me (it is literally part of my job) and I subscribe to the view of conflicting emotional states, that the most consistent state wins out. At work when I call somebody who is pissed off, I am more or less constantly in a positive frame of mind, and I find that people come up to my positive state almost 99% more often than I sink down to theirs.

The qualities I'm talking about are people that are infectiously pessimistic, selfish, angry, boring, foolish, distrustful etc. it is not just that they are in a bad mood or act annoyed when I annoy them, it is integral to their world view.

I am optimistic when it comes to people including myself. Optimism lends itself to dissappointment sure, but what of it? Finding reasons to dislike somebody is the easiest thing in the world. I am not naive enough to think that people have any difficulty finding reasons to dislike me. What is not much harder though and infinitely more rewarding is finding reasons to like and love people.

Miki taught me this, and is truly master of it. Within 10 seconds of meeting Miki you are gaurunteed to recieve some massive compliment and find yourself feeling warm and fuzzy inside. I remember her meeting my former housemate Sabine and after the usual formal introduction 'Miki, Sabine, Sabine, Miki' she turned to me and said 'Wow! you are SO lucky to have her.' Such exuberance I am unlikely to be able to pull off and sound genuine like Miki did. And certainly Miki is capable of having negative opinions of people, however she is never and I mean NEVER particularly invested in them and these are deviations in her nature that always trues towards her entrenched habit of finding reasons to like people.

And getting entranced by sentimentality is also a trap, Miki has shortcomings (that like everyone else are easy to spot) just as I do. But what I admire about her is that she also possessed a tough, ruthless core. I am starting to suspect this is the secret.

What I mean is, if you take a pessimistic view of people, 1. it's easy. 2. you expectations will almost certainly be fulfilled. Reliable people are rare, but that doesn't mean some slim minority is worthy of your optimism, people let me down, even people that I love. But what of it, I'm not going to deny them the chance to come through for me, and when people do let me down...

it's no big deal. They will have their reasons, and fundamentally - I am optimistic enough about myself to know I will survive and thrive despite let downs. That's the secret, true strength isn't erecting an impenetrable barrier of defence against harm in life, it is being open to attack and just not caring. These are the people who cannot be hurt, those who cling to the defence of pessimism I have generally found to be much better at hurting themselves than almost anybody* else could be.

*the exception of course being dictators, tyrants and sociopaths.

The Oath.

Kate was the first I heard to believe in me. I heard it third hand through our mothers gossiping mouths.

She and her mother had been walking the lake and she remarked 'Tom's* going to be famous isn't he?' with as much fidelity as three people's memories can provide.

And her mother said 'Tom* is famous he is on R#$e Ar&^nd the C#rn@r.' and then Kate said 'No. I mean really famous.'

I'm not sure if fame is what I seek or something even worth aspiring to, but I took that as a faith that I was worth paying attention too.

I woke up today to my first Monday as a full time aspiring artist, the day has been mostly clerical but I did make a list a few weeks back when going through a down faze of the people that really, truly believe in me and want me to succeed.

I'm sure it's not an exhaustive list, but it is list enoough to start with and more than any individual has a right to in ten lifetimes let alone one.

The number and calibre and amazingness of the people that believe in me humbles me. I am conscious of your support and thus this is what I swear to you:

I vow I will do my all to do your faith in me justice.

From this day forth I am going to dedicate my energy to realising your belief in me. I am going to believe in myself. I believe in myself as you believe in me.

*this was what I used to be called.

Tough

I drew up a list of positive and negative influences in my life. Thankfully for me and years of working at it, my list of negative influences is very very short. My list of positive influences is inexhaustibly long. So for the most part it doesn't represent a dramatic reorganising of my life.

Just before Christmas last year I had the unpleasant task of telling my mother she was borderline negative influence on my life. She had returned home with the impact of an atom bomb, I can only speak for myself but I had survivors guilt (I moved out of home for the summer) and decided the only right thing to do was address it directly. So I told her she was a borderline negative influence.

She took it well, she approached me shortly afterwards to tell me it was the single most hurtful thing she'd ever heard in her life. I gave her a hug. I didn't get upset though to see her distress, the fact was that she had well and truly picked up the 'vibe' of it anyway.

Anyway that's in the past and now is now, after 4 months back overseas my folks have returned yet again, this time for 10 days. It's pushed me to the brink of sanity. I was going through a down period anyway and am in the middle (quite literally) of completing assignments. Because they are here only a brief time I am stuck in a dilemma.

Ideally I would just be able to suck it up and wait it out. Except Janice is in my hair, I can't live like this. I can't hack it I can't take it, it's killing me. Within 6 hours of her arrival I was ready to get all Meatloaf to her Gary Bussie.

I need all my self control to study, not stop myself from telling Janice where to go. She senses the cold shoulder though (which is as good as I can manage. Emotions are hard to hide) and has an almost pathological need to confirm it is there. By asking me inane questions which in turn is more infuriating and distracting and...

and...

I have tried being direct but nice and informing her I have assignments to do and if she would kindly leave me be, get out of my hair I would appreciate it. That didn't work.

I've fallen back on passive aggressive tactics, like describing how much I appreciate unsolicited advice. That was met with unsolicited advice.

I don't know what to do, but I'm afraid I'll do something, and it won't be pretty.

Ted Talks

So where's my life at right now? Let me tell you with the words of Theodore Roosevelt (See what I did there, with the title Shonesy knows what I'm talking about)

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing.

mmm...thematic.

...

Today I went to Slutwalk, and I was thinking as I walked along 'I really should do more research into who organises these protests and what they are actually about' I specifically had in mind the 'International Draw Mohammed Day' campaign, which though I fully believe in artist freedom, freedom of speech and that no body has the right to enforce their beliefs on others with violence, it was also a platform for hate that the organisers tore down (from facebook).

So I felt a bit worried I might be turning up to a protest that was endorsing the wrong brand of feminism - the sexuality is our power - type of feminism that isn't really feminism at all but an apology for the porn industry, run largely to benefit men (Hugh Heffner comes to mind).

But it was one of the best protests I've been to. There were good speakers and no terrible ones. What was said effected me. That I think is why I go, to learn and be affected, many of the causes I supposedly support I am actually woefully ignorant on.

I also just think nobody on earth should have to endure a substandard of life, not by design anyway.

There were a lot of women there. And there's something about standing in a crowd full of women that makes it different when you hear '1 in 5 women report having been victim of some form of sexual assualt by the time the are 16.' or something like that, I'm not sure about the age but I am certain of the ratio. Anyway, it made me realise that I was in the presence and probably always am, of women who have been sexually assualted in some way.

I can think of only one time in my life I called a girl a slut, and I didn't use the words just implied it to her. I loved her, she wasn't a slut, she was a cheater that was all and unlike most victims of sexual assualt I had brought that upon myself. So I really regret even implying that, that time, and that was the only time. It hurts me to think about it, but even then I don't think I ever actually believed that such a thing actually exists.

That is to say that somehow a woman's worth is diminished by how 'promiscuous' she is, that she loses something with every partner she takes on. It doesn't make sense to me, we gain something from every partner we have in some form or another.

I think a search of this blog may also turn up a post entitled 'something something insecure sluts' but even then, that word doesn't exist, that was a description of a self destructive emotional trap. Man or woman could easily stumble into such a trap, the trap I described was an abortive pursuit of love.

Slut's not a thing, it's a fairy tale. I apologise, for what it is worth, to everybody.

Assignments

I'm fucked. I'm completely fucking fucked. I'm totally fucked. I am, absolutely, fucked.

I've always claimed to never get stressed, yet I find myself now having to calm myself. But what are the symptoms if I am stressed?

I get hit with an intense wave of fatigue, I just want to give up and accept the negative consequences of my inaction feeling certain they cannot possibly be as bad as doing the work.

I look for distraction, 'productive procrastination' something to watch or read or anything that will allow me to avoid sitting down and doing the work I need to do.

Eventually I will sit up, take stock, maybe take some of the fallout on the chin, the consequences will not be so bad, I will gain a sense of purpose, of forward momentum and then just stop.

When I took my dog for a walk this morning the song my ipod was on was 'Falling to Pieces' by the time I rode home from work last night I evidently had lost all consciousness of what I was listening to.

Yet the song is entirely appropriate, my life is falling to pieces, I want it to fall to pieces, I want to get this last chunk of assignment done and out of the way.

But it is a crushing, brutal obstacle. For a subject of dubious value and a task that reflects a career path I have no desire to pursue (researching financial models) I have to reference and write and justify my point of view. These are just some of my most hated things.

And it's onerous, and complicated, and I just don't care. That's the worst part, my only motivation is to pass this subject. Every other subject I learned something from, found interesting, pleasant. This one was vague, demoralising and confusing.

It is eating my soul.

This is the melodrama I am sitting in right now, like a shallow bath that has turned cold.

Experience tells me I will sit up, pull myself together, remind myself I'm smarter than the average bear, put pen to paper get my momentum up and at the exact moment my confidence is restored I will take a break until I am stressed again.

But fuck it. I don't care. It has helped me realise what I actually care about in life, and studying the behaviour of other investors in order to try and make a profit off them is something I just don't give a flying fuck about.

There goes my hero...

The calibre of people that believe in me sort of obliges me to become something. Anything less would be to injure them, and they are amazing people that unprompted seemed to come forward all at once and tell me that they believed in me.

Having said that I went to check if Takehiko had given up on Vagabond which hasn't gotten past it's 300th issue. So I went to his website to see if he had announced any definitive break on the project and found his journal of working on a commission to draw a large folding screen portrait of a famous monk for a famous temple.

have to finish by tomorrow morning.
But it's already later then expected.

There was no more time to wait. Upon viewing my painting and realizing my
own shortcomings, I was extremely angry.

That's ego. My ego is not confident and is lashing out. I can do
something better. I have no time. I don't have enough experience. Leave
me alone when I'm drawing. I really can draw better. (I don't think)
that's the right image. It's somebody's fault. It's something's fault.

...

My lack of confidence is running wild. The design is messed up. I can
see all sorts of things wrong with it. My pride is telling me that my
skill will be questioned. Won't they laugh at me? Won't it embarass me?

That's ok. This wasn't to be called skilled. People can say what they
want. I don't know the rules. I drew with my own rules. Revealing the
person behind it is all that was done. Is that the type of person he is?
But that's ok. But if I do have my own true essence, deep inside, it
will be connected to other people.

There's only a little bit left. I'm excited. There's nothing like it.
Only I can complete this painting. I can make it even better. Only I can
do it.

I call for help from my pride. There's not much time. My ego is where I
get the power to make it through times like these.

I don't need a beuatiful painting. But one that will reach people's
hearts.

I'm going to work on the painting. The answer has appeared from within
the drawing. It doesn't matter even if it doesn't look too skilled. It's
a start.

If I worked twice as hard as Takehiko Inoue and wound up half as good I would not consider my life wasted. It's such a relief to know that an artist like him goes through the exact same emotions as I do when drawing a piece.

Thus like he, and the amazing people that believe in me, I have to start believing in myself.

How to succeed?

All advice is autobiographical.

My degree is coming to an end, and I have quite literally 0 motivation to even look for a job in the profession. I just look forward to having time up my sleeve after graduating that I may draw, draw and draw some more.

The best advice, the advice that works for me actually has mostly come from Jerry Seinfeld. I'm not a particular fan of observational comedy, I was a big fan of the show, but mostly for George Costanza. Nevertheless Seinfeld has twice given the best advice I've heard in how to succeed.

A large part of what advice is right for you depends I guess on your definition of success. My definition of success is wanting to get out of bed in the morning and do your work and dreading the approach of retirement. If I could have that mindset on waking regularly I would call myself a success.

Money, fame etc don't really matter so much to me. The way I figure it, we are going to spend most of our waking hours in life at work, if you can enjoy most of your time in life (by enjoying what you do) then you don't really need much else.

Seinfeld first articulated this for me in his documentary 'Comedian' where he came into contact with Andy Orr the young aspiring comedian the documentary also followed. Andy was telling Jerry he was starting to question his career choice when he saw all his friends getting married and buying houses and stuff. Jerry couldn't believe it and told the story of some 'Big Band' group that were flying to a gig somewhere in winter and their plane was forced to land out of town in a snow covered field. The band dressed up in tuxedos had to tramp through the snow to the road and try and hitch a lift to their gig in the freezing cold. On the way soaking wet and freezing they passed this farmstead and looked in the window, there they saw a man with a beautiful wife in this Rockwellian scene cooking up a big family meal for their kids in their nice warm home and one of the band members commented 'man, how do people live like this?'

That's an anecdote I'll probably take to the grave. For me when I realised I want to draw, I also realised that to pursue any other path is moot. I cannot be happy, I could have a pleasant, comfortable life, but I can't be happy. Spreadsheets will never excite me the way drawing does. A nice home will not be enough consolation for having to leave it and go to a job I hate or worse find boring. Even if I love my children, I will never consider myself a proper role model if I hadn't pursued my dreams. They say 'don't have a plan B' this is generally good advice, I would only contend that you can't have a plan B.

I have described my failure in life as being a future where I have a high paying job in the finance industry. This isn't a plan b. This is failure for me. I'm not making a joke, I believe I can be well paid and a failure.

But can I be poorly compensated and a success? Here was Jerry's pearl of wisdom number two, on the HBO special 'Talking Funny' hosted by Ricky Gervais, Jerry was talking about his motivation for becoming a comedian. Specifically how after dying on stage the first time, how he got the motivation to go back. He said that he 'just wanted to be one of those guys.' He wanted to be a comedian, he wanted to associate with the group. He didn't care if he was a good or a bad one, he just wanted to identify himself as a comedian and that meant he had to perform stand up comedy.

When I look at Cheeks Galloway, Humberto Ramos, Francesco Herrara, Scottie Young, Takehiko Inoue, Eichiro Oda, Tim Sale, Bill Pressing, Matteo Scalera, Jake Parker, Alberto Ruiz, Alessandro Barbucci ... etc I just want to be one of those guys. I don't really care how good or bad I am, I just want to call myself a comic book artist. Or pin up artist, or even visual artist, illustrator.

You can make money being a 'bad' comic book artist. That is drawing one of Marvel or DC's lesser known titles and not blowing anyones mind with your artwork or style. That lifestyle would be success enough for me. Just to know I'm going to get up and draw a comic tomorrow, even if it is a contrived and poorly written 'Green Arrow' spin off series. Okay, maybe I misrepresent myself, what I mean is, so long as I'm drawing artwork to a standard I am proud of, and can live off that, that is success. I don't care if I'm not the greatest in the world, or most popular etc.

I just want to be one of those guys*.

*women can be comic artists too, they can even be phenomenal comic book artists, they just coincidently don't happen to populate the style of illustration I aspire to. I would like to be associated with women as well.

And What To Make of It

Looking at the crowds gathered outside the white house triggers memories of newscoverage of Palistinians celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers back in 2001, if I were president I'd find it hard to take pride in an office bestowed upon me by a people who rejoice in death whoever they are.
Another pointless war where two sides expend considerable human costs to trade symbolic victories and go nowhere.
I hope it means the relative non-threat of terrorism can begin to be forgotten today.

Obama's speech was neither stirring, inspiring or moving. It was clinical, which is probably appropriate.