For some time now I have been renting.  This is not my preferred choice, it’s my only choice. I simply want to say this: some professions require you to be dishonest and compromise your personal integrity in order to make it.  In my understanding, telling your tenants, “you will help them” or “you will look into it” is lying.   Don’t say one thing and then do another.  That’s deceitful.

My recent decision that most real estate agents can’t be trusted comes off the back of a lease arrangement.  When I first rented the house I have now, I had two pets.  One died.  Fast forward twelve months and we now have one dog and are looking to get another.  A simple thing isn’t it.  I mean really, It’s a dog.  I am not asking for a new fence, a back door that closes probably or a light in the kitchen am I?  Neither am I expecting them to continue a committment that the law says they should honour.  Far be it from me to ask for something so commonplace as that.

What I want is what they agreed to in the first place.  Two pets.  Six months of negotiating, two or three phone calls to the most useless rental tenancy agency in the whole damned world and alas no second pet.  I mean really why do we have the RTA anyhow?  The amount of times I have called them and told them what my current real estate are up to and nothing.  You know what they told me last time I called them, negotiate with them.  That’s why I rang the RTA in the first place!  Renters rights in this state are a joke.  A living joke.  I know we have it a lot better than a lot of other countries.  Still, the tenancy agreement contracts you sign in this state are not worth the printed paper they are scribbled on.

Now to my point.  Let’s play the imagination game shall we?  I ring you and ask you something which you say you will look into and I rest my phone comfortablely in it’s socket, eagerly awaiting for you to call.  Two, three weeks later nothing.  I call again, same deal.  Fast forward six months and still no response.  It’s a dog, damn you, a dog!  I had two pets on the original lease WHY CAN’T YOU GET YOUR BLOODY ACT TOGETHER AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!  I will tell you why, because you find it easier to lie and continue to feed me grain fed BS.

I have all together lost faith in the rental system.  Over the past six years I have been constantly lied to, tricked, had lease conditions changed and told by the very body that protects the tenants in Queensland that there is nothing I can do.  I no longer have any faith in real estate agents and so help me God if I ever get the money to buy a house, I will do so privately.  Why? Well I would rather eat broken glass then put my money in the hands of real estate agents.   Over the past six years I have been burned more times that I could ever hope to write about in one sentence.

Having said that, I am simply relating an experience here, I am not generalising.  This is my experience.  I have heard of people who love their agents and get on famously with them.  I try.  If I learned anything from fishing it’s this:  don’t put your hand back in the mouth of a fish that just bit you.  Yes, it’s an obscure metaphor but it works for me.   I am sorry but I just don’t trust real estate agents anymore.

* Image Credit: Shiny Binary

Recently I have been in somewhat of a funk.  I thought as time went on that I would get better (like how I used to loose weight during winter… whoops!).  You know what?  I think I have finally worked out that if you don’t pay attention to your secret heart level desires… you get sick.  I had previously known that I had pushed myself a little too hard… but seriously… was I ready for this?

Your sleep patterns may become erratic

I have noticed that when I put my head on the pillow part of me is still awake.  No, not that part!  I am talking about my heart.  The creative essence of who I am.  The lesson I have learned is that if you have a heart led desire you need to follow it to it’s conclusion.  Yes, even if it pays nothing and yes even if it doesn’t work.  In my case I found my sleep deprived from me on a regular basis.   This doesn’t mean it will happen to you but it did happen to me and is still happening.

You get random diseases

I found that this recent slump in creative output has also declined my health.  Ok, so I may be drawing a strong long bow here.  Ahem.  BUT! Yes, that was a random conjunction… however it serves the purpose for what I am about to say next.  And, that is this… I got sick a lot more often when my creative output declined.  Now, I am an academic so I know enough about ‘peer review’ and so on so I am aware of this thing called research.  I am choosing to ignore it in this instance because I am speaking about my personal experience.  I got sick a lot more often then I used to when I was writing more fiction and making films (my hearts desire… incidentally).

A general sense of restlessness

I found that without the creative output in my life I have become really restless.  More so than usual.  I find that on a day where I don’t have to do anything I will sit around and basically let my ass grow fatter.  You feel like you haven’t done something… you know you should be doing.  Those creative urges can’t go unchecked.  You have to make sure you have them in check so that they don’t scare you into doing nothing!

So what does this have to do with your hearts desire.  You have something in there that needs to be developed.  Even if you make no money, even if you get nowhere, even if you are a total failure at something you really want to do… if you don’t do it… this may happen to you.  There is a discreet link between our spirits and our body that I am only now becoming aware of.  If you don’t listen to your spirit and follow it … you may find your health leaving.  If you ignore your health, your spirit may let you know that you are being an ass… through making you think differently or by making you violently ill.  It’s a two way street.  Going both ways at once.

For the love of GOD spend time developing a heart’s desire.  I am not talking about ’selfishness’.  I am talking about the thing that resides in the middle of you that you have a sense of goo about.  A sense of inner goo.  The substance of substances.  In your guts you know that you have to do it… so you should be doing it.  DO IT!  I am imploring you through this post.  I am not talking about sick desires either, so take that hat off.  I am talking about the desire you think you were born with.  That one.  Right next to self-preservation.  I think the world would be a better place if at least 10% of it’s residents… no 5% would decide to follow that desire.  I know, people need to take out our garbage… who better than the garbare person who loves what they do?

* Photo Credit: Kicks on Fire

Lately, I have noticed a couple of emerging trends.  My ideas and opinions always seem to be on the fringe of what’s popular and as a result there has been an increasing degree of fragmentation in my life.  What do I mean by Fragmentation?

I find myself unable to relate to what other people are going through as my life experience is anything but normal.  Yet, I suspect there is no normal to compare myself to… neither do I find the measuring stick of “this is what should happen”.  No, I find this disconfirming.  That isn’t even a word… I hope my point is clear.

Have you experienced this?  Fragments?

Fragmentation is when you find yourself disassociated from the whole.  In systems terms it means you are a loosely disjointed from the group, moved into a space where you find yourself disengaged.  I must admit, this is probably not an intentional move on my behalf… yet it is increasingly so.  Some of us look at big trends whilst others of us find the bits that sticks the glue together in everything and wonder why we pretend it’s not there… is it a conspiracy of silence… I can’t say.

Fragments.  Yeah fragments.

I wonder often if my mind is able to deal with disassociation.  My grandfather was like this too… he spent a great deal of time by himself.  Isolated… and loving it.  The end result?  He died.  I am not sure however, if this isolation and his death are related… though I am sure I could manufacture some statistics… if I knew how to count.

Fragments…

I think that the idea we are joined together in the human race is an interesting one… if not a little misguided.   We are joined by common things.  Yet in all the joining we are not joined.  In our lives we are largely disconnected.  We participate vicariously in our actions and our real selves are hidden even from our partners.  Yet, this won’t apply to everyone because a fragment is a small piece of something that fits somewhere or nowhere.  There is no generalisability in fragmentation… except that the disjointed nature of things is highly inconsistent.  In that we can generalise.  I think or not.  So we can say that disconnections are general but there shape is novel in each incarnation?

Ok, I am going to watch Australia’s funniest videos to cheer myself up.  I tend to laugh at the bits that nobody laughs at.   So maybe I should watch Robocop 3?  No, that would make me cry.

Have a go at these lyrics:

Tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen;
pour myself a cup of ambition,
and yawn, and stretch, and try to come to life.
Jump in the shower, and the blood starts pumping;
out on the street, the traffic starts jumping,
with folks like me on the job from nine to five.

Nine to five, what a way to make a living;
barely getting by,it’s all taking and no giving.
They just use your mind, and (depending on verse) “they never give you” or
“you never get the” credit; it’s enough to drive you crazy, if you let it.

They let you dream just to watch them shatter;
You’re just a step on the boss man’s ladder,
But you’ve got dreams he’ll never take away.
In the same boat with a lot of your friends;
Waitin’ for the day your ship’ll come in,
And the tide’s gonna turn, and it’s all gonna roll your way.

Nine to five, for service and devotion;
you would think that I would deserve a fair promotion;
want to move ahead, but the boss won’t seem to let me.
I swear some-times, that man is out to get me.

Nine to five, they’ve got you where they want you;
There’s a better life, and you dream about it, don’t you?
It’s a rich man’s game, no matter what they call it;
And you spend your life putting money in his pocket.

You have to admit this song paints a depressing picture doesn’t it?  Working all your life “for the man”.  As a wise man once told me… they can take your life but they can’t capture your spirit!  Keep your head up people… don’t let the man steal your joy.  You are not your job!

Rant over.

A key idea that emerged in recent years for as meaning something to me… is this strange idea of ‘pragmatism’.  In a very dirty definition this has to do with a description of events and things that involve practical elements or what kind of knowledge we think is useful.  So a pragmatic question might be what is useful as opposed to what isn’t useful to say or do.

Coming down out of the academic ’stratosphere’ for a moment I realised when I was reading something for a piece of work I wrote on strategic thinking (unpublished paper … so far anyway) that for the best part the desire to focus on the pragmatic means a desire to focus on that which is observable as ‘evidence’.  Or in my own words… stuff that works well and is seen to be ‘of use’.  Here is my key problem:

How will you know what works unless you try it…

I am in no way a philosopher of any sort.  Neither would I consider myself a bare bones pragmatist… it’s just a bunch of books and words.  However, this struck me about problems and how we approach them when I was writing and reading with my colleague had written.  How can something work and you not know it?  I give you the Campbell “Old Spice” Paradox:

You need to have experience in order to know what works.  However, what works doesn’t always (if ever) work the same way as things do in other contexts.  So, as I found Roy Bhaskar to explain in a round about way… philosophy fails to explain a lot to me.  This could be my remarkable denseness or the fact that I have come to find it a tiresome bore to interpret and try and decode the dense philosophy territory of philosophical works.  The exclusiveness of the language is my main concern… secondly the oversimplification of things to the point of sheer ignorance is the other.  But I digress… back to the main point.

Being too pragmatic, means I am not willing to try something because I don’t know if it’s going to work because I can’t establish it’s usefulness!  It reminds of what Horst Rittell said of wicked problems… you only have one shot to get it right.  We often don’t know what’s going to work so we model, test and fail… often.  The key thing to pull out of this is that often in life, love and the imagination there is a place beyond analysis.  A place where the most obscure of ideas has a home.  Call it irony, confusion or plain stupidity… my experience tells me that things in life often are confusing.

In closing this note on the key problem of being too pragmatic I want to deliberately confuse you by saying that it’s also one of the greatest strengths to recognise what works well, even if you don’t know it’s useful to do so.  What works well, often isn’t what works well.  This makes you hated.  But if you manage to convince people that it works well and they believe you… when you are dead they will say “nice” things about you, name halls after you and create bronze (well puter) statues in your honour.   Remember, if you have one shot to get it right be prepared to fail and succeed at the same time… it’s what I do!

Recently I heard somebody say that they thought Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was crap because people trade things for security at the different levels they are at.  One thing that struck me was that the argument that it’s crap rests on the idea that self-preservation is worth more to us that our needs.  What do I mean?

Well, most people will trade off a certain amount of personal security to gain money and often vice versa.  People will solve a problem that makes more problems for them, simply because they don’t want to solve the key problem.  This is a form of self-preservation and I think it poisons us.  It’s a problem that I think we really haven’t found an easy answer to at any stage.   You could say it this way, “self-preservation is a problem because it makes us think, act and behave in ways that gives us an illusion of security”.

This illusion of security presents to us a false belief that by having a stable source of income now I will be more secure later.  That is, security is formed around concepts of self-preservation… which may or may not be a good thing.  In a made effort to preserve ourselves we can destroy our true potential because we may protect ourselves from growth because it may “hurt” or “cause problems”.  The question I will leave you with in this short post is this: How do you know that this pain you may experience may not be precisely what you need to grow?

It’s true.  This blog has been in operation for over a year.  What have I achieved in this time?  Several things:

1. Grown from a readership of zero until I broke the psychological “65″ barrier.  Thanks to all my feedreaders!

2. I have managed to keep the same template for 12 months.

3. Written over 170,000 words

4. Nailed 250 posts!

5. Received 182 comments (by some standards that’s lame… not by mine though… I have LOW standards).

Have these five things made my blog what it is today.  Of course not.  What has made it worth while… the odd flame?  The comments?  No.  The fact that I have spent a year talking about what I love to talk about and I am still going.  I worked fairly hard to get 65 feed readers, and I am not finished yet.  Mind you I wish I had more time to plug into this… because it’s been fun.

Some Highlights…

Believe it or not my post on failing has proven to be the most popular by a long shot.  I would say that it has more to do with my selection of picture that the actual article itself.  You have to recognise that failing is what you do most of the time.  Success is the one time you tried and it worked out for you.   Writing this post on failing was a highlight but not my personal favourite.  I don’t have a personal favourite.  I tend to like the one’s on the heart.  You don’t really get to teach that stuff.

Low points…

Too many to mention.  The forum.  That sucked.  Getting flamed out by some random on stumbleupon.  I was labelled a spammer!  Me… yes that’s right… gratitious self-promotion has it’s downside.  The lowest point I think that made me question whether or not I could continue believe it or not was not whether when my forum concept didn’t take off.   You get over things like some weak coward calling you names on the internet.  What makes up for it is the lovely people who leave meaningful comments.  People like this one and this one. These make it worth while.

Blog earnings…

I am happy to say that my blog earnings thus far less than what I would like.  As matter of fact I thing I have cleared $30!  Mind you I have made no real effort to commericalise this… well I have.  Every time I try I seem to get so far and then time and other matters take over my life.  I know that if I had more time and drive I could make a go of this.  But in truth… I think I am just too comfortable where it is at the moment. The forum concept was appealing… but I had no idea what I was doing.  Mind you, I haven’t given up on that yet… I am still interested.  I am just not sure where I can take it from here.  Hey, if anyone is reading this give me a shout with any ideas… I would love to hear them.

Meeting new people…

At the moment I am not really firing on all cyclinders.  So, I had considered last week… closing the blog for ever and just going back to the drawing board.   The main reason for this motivation was to try and find a way forward that didn’t involved copious amounts of time and energy in my already fairly full life.  What dawned on me was that I had met some interesting people through this blog.  Namely, Alan, Jamie, Fazrul, Tristan, Lorraine, Gamy, Lola, John, Dr Purple, Ellese, Corey Smith, Sir Jorge, Lawrence, Peter, Erica, Chris, Jonathan, Alex Blackwell, Al, Robert,  and heaps more just through having this blog. And of course all the people who have read my stuff, stumbled, dugg or delicioused me… I am forever grateful.

If you are a reader please stay with me.  I intend to keep writing for at least another year!  Jokes aside… I enjoy my little space on the web and remember… the best is yet to come!

Recently there has been a growing concern about being “spiritual” at work.  It seems to me that a lot of this talk is about religious tolerance… and the irksome concern of making sure everybody stays happy.  What I have learned by applying spiritual principles to work is that often there is a box called, “my spirituality” and then there’s “work spirituality” where I have to be more serious.  So serious is fact that my soul is left at home.

I think true spirituality is marked not by a sense of obligation but by a sense of heart.  That is, you can’t fake real spirituality.  You either choose to live by what you believe… or you choose to make what you believe a Sunday or Friday or Saturday thing.  Say you love animals… that’s a spiritual thing in my books.  Why not work with people who help animals… then your work becomes an expression of your spirit.

Selling out is sometimes a necessity but…

I was reading Stephen King’s short story The Mist and there was this section that Mr. King used to great effect (taken from Skeleton Crew, p.107):

“The picture was titled Beans and False Perspective. A man from California who was a top exec in some company that makes tennis balls and rackets and who knows what other sports equipment seemed to want that picture very badly, and would not take no for an answer in spite of the NFS card tucked into the bottom left-hand corner of the spare wooden frame.  He began at six hundred dollars and worked his way to four-thousand.  He said he wanted it for his study.  I would not let him have it, and he went away sorely puzzled.  Even so, he didn’t give up; he left his card in case I changed my mind.”

What emerges is that the artist felt it was the best picture he had ever painted and it wasn’t until later when he took the picture that he realised that it was of commercial value only… there really wasn’t much more to it.  He sells the picture:

“Then I happened to show Ollie Weeks one day last fall.  He asked me if he could photograph it and run it as an ad one week, and that was the end of my own false perspective.  Ollie had recognised the painting for what it was, and by doing so, he forced me to recognise it too.  A perfectly good piece of slick commercial art.  No more and thank God, no less.”

Yet, in the selling of the picture the artist makes a living… albeit off what he calls ‘commercial’ art.  In spiritual matters it’s no different.  You can’t have a logical perspective about something that is as rich with meaning and say you don’t feel what you mean?  As an artist, you can sell out if you are afforded the opportunity… as to survive.  Yet, spiritually speaking you have ‘talent’… you have expressions.  These are spiritual things.  What kind of expressions do you have at work?

Work as a place of spiritual death

The divide between what is sacred and what is secular is something I don’t wish to attack in this post.  What I do want to discuss is how our values are often not embedded in what we do at work.  One might say, that our spiritual sides or that underlying and intersecting heart weaves through what we do.  Why do so many of us act ugly then when it comes to work?  What’s that about?  Do we not believe what we say we believe when we come to work?  Ambition makes a false perspective for us all and centres our status on ourselves rather than that work of others and ourselves.  Why do we not shake this off?  Pragmatics.  Yet we say our workplaces have a degree of spirituality yet in that we have none.  We fight, and strive and really at work we can get caught up in the ’spirituality of self’. Yet if we are to contend the existence of something greater and we are expressing it… it is ourselves we are expressing.

Bringing our values to work

What do you believe?  Are you like most people and want a bigger house, a better car, more money and a better life?  What about spiritual things?  Do you believe in love?  What are you doing today (Sunday) and what would you do tomorrow in some small way to express your spirit?  Let’s move beyond  the world of self satisfaction for a moment and ask the question, ‘What’s in it for us?’ After all, what we share and build together has lasting value for all of us rather than the one who stands on the shoulders of others to be seen by executives.

In closing this post I want you to read a great short story that takes these issues seriously and inspired me to write this.  It’s called in the Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells.  I read it in less than an hour and I realised that a lot of my own beliefs are somewhat constrained due to the way I perceive things.  I have indeed underestimated the power of workplace beliefs and there impact.  Thanks for reading and remember just by showing a little bit of grace or love to someone you can make a huge difference in your workplace.

*Image Courtesy: http://www.ultimatestreetcar.co.uk/wallpapers.php

I have heard it said that there is more to life than work… sadly not for most people.   In Western society I have noticed an emerging desire for work that goes beyond common sense.  I could blame organisational psychology or whatever but in my opinion we have developed a “job=life” attitude.  This has to stop… it’s not healthy.

You are not your job

When you ask most people what they do for a living, the answer most offer is that, “oh I am a lawyer” or “oh I am [inserted job here]“.   The often cited unbalanced measuring stick called, “work-life balance” consists of working too much and then burning out.  You may like your job and enjoy doing it… but it’s just a job.  I don’t think we should make the mistake of selling our souls to a world that largely is run by people who have so much money that people have stopped meaning anything to them.  When you say that you are your job and your identity is wrapped up in what you do… then you are saying that you are that job.  Your priority in life is your ambition.

I know most people have nothing wrong with ambition… I have a big problem with it.  The ambition you have will often cause you to push people aside, make irrational judgments and enter into a reality of self-promotion which even the most deluded narcissist can see is wrong.  There is nothing wrong with goals neither as there anything wrong with trying to make a living… there is something very wrong when work becomes the centre of your life.

Working too hard is poison for you and your life

It’s sad to say but 4 billion people in this planet live on a dollar a day or much, much less.  The main assumption we have that these people need jobs.  I bet they already have one in most cases.  Perhaps they are working already for a big multinational?  Where did that get them?  Selling organs?  This point can’t be overstated … those who are working poor know exactly what I am talking about.  We work and work and work and work.  Where does it get us.? Sick, burned out… dead or dying.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

What have we got wrong about work?

From the day we hit pre-school (prep now) until the day we retire… we are working towards some kind of invisible goal.  As a matter of fact we become so used to it that when we reach our old age all we have to show for it is a house… if we are lucky.  Somewhere along the way we have bought the lie that work is what life is all about.  Work is what we do because we have to. If there was an alternative to work… I’d be doing it… sadly there isn’t.  I understand that some people love their work and there is a path where you can take that thinking.   Still, that “job” should never be given the status symbol of “identity” in your life.  Doing that only ever makes you realise that you are a slave to some invisible form of ambition.

So we work.  Like a stream of ants lining up to serve society.  Why do we do this?  Because we have to.  I was told that the university where I work runs off the good will of people who work there.  Indeed, it does… good will that is bought with a price.  That price is very high.  If I were to ask you to exchange your life for work at the age of ten or ask you to sacrifice your teenage dreams to do the right thing by your wife and family would you do it?  I bet you wouldn’t.  Why then do we act as though our jobs, cars, houses and the life give our lives meaning… when they don’t.  Clearly, if life was meant to be about work so society could advance… I am not seeing the advancement.  We still have all the same problems they did thousands of years ago… when evil landlords invented this work business.

Where is the greater good?

I have heard it said that to work is its own reward.  What is that reward?  Money?  Money that is gone before it hits my bank account.  Money that evaporates fast these days.  I am constantly reminded that my wife and I’s choice to have a parent at home is costing me dearly.  Yet, these are values I choose to live by.  A tough call?  Not really, if living purposefully and intentionally means I have to suffer to maintain my values than so be it.  I would rather live one day by what I believe and pay for it, than a thousand working to reach some invisible goal. That doesn’t mean however that it’s all smooth sailing or happy days.

So, what’s wrong with work?  Nothing.  If your work is fulfilling to you and meaningful and supporting of your values… then you have found a rare treasure.  What I think we have wrong about work is that it’s all life is supposed to be about.  Your life is your life.  You are here for a reason.  Yet, in finding that reason you do not have to sell your soul to make another person rich.  What I want you to take away from this post today is this: don’t let “work” become the end all and be all in your life.  The end result is just not worth it.