I normally write these long-winded introspective posts on Friday to have something to add to my weekly flower pictures but today I’m feeling more thoughtful than usual, being unwell does tend to trigger that so I thought since there isn’t really that many of you reading this I would indulge in some self-reflection about the things I like, or think I like and what I could do to declutter my life a little bit.
If you ever went to check my Twitter profile, it contains a long list of ways I tend to define myself. The list is not even exhaustive due to the character limit that Twitter imposes. For a long time it’s been something of a pride of mine to dabble in lots of things. It’s good to expand your perspective, learn new things, meet new people (sometimes). But the reality is, the more things you do, the less time you have to dedicate to any one single thing.
So I wanted to take a look at what I do, what I enjoy, what I think I’m good at (in no particular order) and where I want to be in as much an honest way as I can be with myself. I don’t know what the conclusion to all this is going to be, but that’s the whole point.
Fencing
I’ve done historical fencing since, technically 2002, more seriously since 2006 and between then and about 2012-ish I was very active in my hobby. Now I haven’t really lost interest in it and fencing, or the art of fighting with the rapier to be more specific, is something I would say I know a few things about. Sure I don’t do it professionally, but nothing I have seen has ever given me a reason to try and turn this into a profession.
So why have I stopped? Or seemingly stopped. Well the trouble with fencing is that you always need someone to fence with (or against, depending on your point of view) so as the saying goes, it takes two to tango and winning duels by forfeit isn’t fun at all. In other words, there has been fewer and fewer people interested and active enough to practice and study the art of rapier for me to continue. I’m not trying to blame anyone here, we all have our own reasons to drop out, health – mental or physical – being the usual culprit here. Damn you old age!
I remain a member of my club because the other members are all a bunch of great guys (and gals) I want to be able to spend time with from time to time, even though I’ve not got much interest in wielding a longsword. But I don’t have much hope that there will be a revival of interest in a large number of people wanting to learn to fight with a rapier. And let’s face it, I suck at teaching. I’ve lost enough students along the way to know this. And now that I have even less energy (and delusions) than I used to, it’s hard for me to teach in a way that promotes a passion in playing with the weapon.
So as long as my knees and health will allow, I’ll keep my eyes open for opportunities to train again (not sure I have the stamina for an actual duel anymore, really) but this can’t be a priority.
Music
I love music. I also hate it, ironically enough. Music is the one thing that will connect with whatever brain activity constitutes emotions, which is why I absolutely cannot stand certain genres. I’m not the tolerant type when it comes to music that doesn’t connect with me. Some people are rather indifferent to music. They might get slightly annoyed if it’s too loud, or too screechy but for me it has such an emotional connection that I either love it or hate it… Well that’s not quite true there are songs and genre that will fit somewhere in the middle but my point was more about the fact that there are those which exist in both extremes.
So I have learnt to play music since I was 8 (I think) when we were taught it at school. I didn’t really like it then because the music lessons were very rarely placed into a context that spoke to us pupils and the music we connected with at the time. When I picked up the guitar at age 15, I knew there was something special there. Unfortunately lessons were far too expensive for my parents to even consider and so I had to teach myself as well (or not) as I could, in an age without YouTube and its myriad of educational videos. VHS was the best I got but because I was never taught a proper sense of discipline in practice, I always ended up playing the same 3 songs (badly) pretty much any time I picked up the instrument.
Then I had to give it up altogether for about 8 years while I moved out of the country and was too broke to be able to lug an electric guitar and a 20Kg amp around. In 2006 I was finally reunited with my instrument and I was able to practice again. This time I would take it seriously and take lessons.
I’ve now been having fortnightly lessons since August 2006 and while I can say I have improved quite a bit since then, it never feels like I have improved enough to be satisfied with my own music. I also don’t just play guitar anymore, I have a fiddle that sounds horrible, a keyboard I keep wanting to be better at but never quite manage to compose anything more than 2 eerie chords on it, a kantele, which I really like but doesn’t really fit with anything else and technically other instruments I once played for a short while eons ago but never really poured my heart into.
I am aware that I really ought to go find other people to play with but it’s been so long I can’t possibly imagine that will ever happen. Every now and then I contemplate placing an ad on Gumtree making myself available to “anyone who just want to jam and not take themselves too seriously” but let’s be real. People want to gig, and rehearse and be performers, not some garage-based losers with hardly any skills to show for themselves. No I am not being kind to myself but my music is, repetitive, it’s bland and soulless. It’s not the grand form of expression I so desperately want it to be and I don’t know that it will ever be.
But I love guitars, I want to build the one I have in my workshop, turn in into a great instrument and then do it again. We’ll go back to making things in a moment.
So what do I do about music? Well in stark contrast to the 90s I now have a wide range of materials to learn from on top of my fortnightly lessons, which can be overwhelming. However I have tried the whole “right let’s just focus on blues and nothing else” until I crank up the distortion and get sucked into playing some metal again because that’s fun. And believe me, very few things are “fun” for me these days.
And perhaps I will write this one song some day. Or maybe I won’t but until I’ve come to terms with the fact that I may never do, it will always bug me that I can’t seem to be able to in the first place.
Photography
My problem with photography is not too dissimilar to the problem I have with music. While I typically can pick up my guitar and don’t have a clue what to play, I more often than not will take my camera on walking trips and really struggle to find things to photograph. Images that resonate with me which are not mundane and colourless or just boring. Sound familiar doesn’t it?
My photographic journey is very much centered around the equipment I’ve owned over the years. I had great fun learning to develop photos in a dark room this one time with a fellow French exchange student back in the old Finnish university (not that old actually) camera club. This added to seeing the northern lights for the first time in October ’98. It took me 19 years to finally take decent pictures of the northern lights but I got there in the end. Oh but that wasn’t the end of the road, just that because I started out with such a rare (in this part of the world) and technically challenging phenomenon to photograph, it’s possible it made everything else too mundane.
I’m not going to list all the various types of photography and why I don’t do them, that’s not the point of this post. The point is more, why don’t I grab my camera when I get some me-time and go for a walk trying to find something to photograph. The answer, apart from my usual laziness, is that I don’t know what to photograph that in my eyes is worth photographing. And that makes me feel a little out of touch with the world around me.
Yes I have accumulated a semi-decent portfolio over the years but whenever I flip through it, I tend to be more disappointed than proud of my own work. Sure I have improved over the years, and better equipment will help with that but I don’t know that there’s really anything worth selling for example. (Side note: I’m not fishing for compliments here, if you have comments on any of my work, please be as honest as you can, that’s all I ever want).
On the plus side, I’ve joined the local photography club. Now being a newbie is always a bit awkward anywhere you go for the first time but I’m hoping being part of this club will help me find a new wind for my own photography.
I also know what I need to focus on (pun semi-intended): finding subjects to photograph. Often my images have little of interest in them and no matter how much post-processing I do, I can’t make them any less boring than they already are (well maybe a little less … sometimes). My only redeeming knowledge is being aware of some composition techniques which sometimes help make some things interesting… sometimes.
Making
I have been “making” things on and off for, I don’t know, about 18 years, maybe more but it’s only been recently that I’ve taken it more seriously and now that I own a workshop, it’s become a lot easier to have the right space to make the sorts of things I want to make.
And I don’t (yet anyway) feel the need to measure up to anybody. That’s not to say that making things is easy but I enjoy every aspect of it: the planning, the working out materials, the learning along the way and the cutting and putting things together. Still trying to enjoy painting at the moment but my current project has so much painting that it’s not terribly surprising.
So making things is something I intend to do for the foreseeable future. I love coming up with ideas for things to make for people specifically. No matter how small, there’s something really nice about something someone makes for you. As a side note, I do include wood carving within the broader “making” category, though I probably should be its own section. And again, as much as I enjoy the feeling of a blade against wood, slowly sculpting away some shape I’ve vaguely managed to imagine, I don’t quite know why I don’t indulge in it as much as it feels like I ought to. I think my issue here is not taking it slow enough and slowing myself down by being too ambitious. Baby steps are key to any new activity.
The hard bit about making is presenting it out there. Taking pictures about the finished product is easy enough, as well as doing some kind of write up about it but let’s face it, nobody reads blogs anymore (if you’re reading this congratulations, you’re part of a dying breed). The problem is, I have no idea how to enjoy filming and putting a video together. It’s kind of a drag to film just enough to make it interesting and splice it in a way that makes for compelling viewing. Attempts so far have been … disappointing (there’s that word again). I definitely see why some more well-established makers have others film for them or do the video edit for them. I’m procrastinating about editing my next video because I don’t know if there’s too much or not enough footage to go through and make an interesting video. This definitely feels like work.
Work, IT and other tech-related stuff
Well this is a nice segway into talking about work stuff, careers and what-not.
I work in IT not because I have an undying passion for it, but because I am good enough at this stuff that I can make some kind of career out of it. All the same, not a day goes by where I question whether I made the right choice and every day my imposter syndrome keeps telling me I shouldn’t be doing this because I really suck at it (but don’t tell my colleagues that).
So am I self-imposing some form of misery. Well yes and no. In some weird way, IT can be a form of making if you’re a developer. The trouble is, you don’t always have a choice of the tools you can use to achieve your end-product, and that can be detrimental to enjoying the process. Of course, it can also be helpful as oftentimes new tools and frameworks and packaging methods can take so long to learn that by the end of the day you’ve spent 3 times as long as you’d have needed to finish something. And yes, I did say that I’m not very good at this, if you are, good for you, please teach me how you learn so fast!
I won’t go into the specifics of my current job but suffice to say that while there is a structure in place for “going up the ladder”, much of it relies of switching to certain tasks that can take you away from why you’re doing that job in the first place. So where does that take me? Well not very far up I’m afraid, which is why I either have to make peace with that or do something else, which is likely going to not pay as well.
Other forms of art
Believe it or not but there are other art forms I would like to learn. I’ve been semi-learning how to draw for example, though when a year and a half later you’ve still not finished your “learn to draw in 30 days” book, you gotta question your level of motivation.
Strangely I used to love to doodle when I was at school. But then we didn’t have smartphones to kill time back then, so who knows whether I’d still do it if I was free from the clutches of technology.
I also have a not-so-secret desire to learn to paint some day. This might have to wait after I retire but I blame Bob Ross for this, most definitely… Right now I’ll hold off on stocking up on paint, brushes and various sundries because they would just sit in a corner unused
So what’s with that title anyway?
Sometimes you read things which can turn into a real wake up call. For me it often happens when I am reminded that all of the above is nothing more than a fictional story I try to build around myself. It’s a harsh reality that no matter how much I want to invest myself in all those things, after I’m gone none of it will matter. I’ll never be remembered more than a footnote in a proctology journal would be so why bother?
Well while we live we really only have one thing: this moment. So how do we make the best of it? Be better people, educate ourselves, fight for what’s right and surround ourselves with good people. Or, at least that’s what I try and do but it doesn’t mean that I don’t end up wondering whether I waste this moment by worrying about the past, the future, or someone else’s present I have zero control over.
Right now I choose to take advantage of the fact that I’m not feeling 100% (do I ever?) and put down those thoughts, not worrying about whether or not they’ll have an impact on anyone but myself, which is the whole point really. A bit selfish perhaps but that’s my blog after all.
If you’ve made it this far thank you because I don’t know that I’d have the fortitude to read that many self-deprecating thoughts from anyone else.