Nomadding – Living without a ‘home’

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Since Valentines Day, 2009 I’ve been performing an unplanned simplicity experiment – to live freely without the encumbrance of a fixed place to live – at least not in a place I planned to stay.

I never imagined it would be for so long – instead I’d presumed that my intransigence would lead to something permanent when the time was right… But I just kept going. Partially because I was having fun and enjoying the experience – partially because even though this kind of lifestyle lends itself to spontaneity, I tended to plan ahead, which kept me moving, and in rather nice/random places.

These included: i) a modern place overlooking San Francisco in Twin peaks ii) a flat with 3 mad ladies in the lower Mission – iii) my parents home, London -iv) June Lake, the Sierra Nevada – v) Corona Heights SF – vi) Castro, SF (Harvey Milk’s old flat) – vii) The Mission, SF – viii) my van – all over California, ix) my parents, London, again – x) A beautiful place in Watamu, Kenya with my friend Tim, xi) the house I built, Kenya xii) my parents… now starting to wonder why they’d spent that education money.

I’ve mostly loved being free from leases and mortgages. I’ve lived in houses with people I’d previously not met to a stint with great friends in a beautiful house in Kenya and also, as part of the boomerang generation, a good few months with my long-suffering parents.

When I returned from Kenya, I wasn’t ready to settle – despite being away for a few years, I still wanted to be free – hence a stay in Berlin and beyond…

Over the last few months that has changed. I want a home. Writing this on the plane on the way back from San Francisco, tired having spent the last week crashing on friends floors, sofa as and in spare rooms – I can happy say that I’m done for a while. I embraced my free-living spirit but it is time to settle, at least for a while.

[Written later - I met a rather beautiful Dutch lady on the plane after writing this above, who told me she'd been living as a nomad for 5 years, spending 6 months walking the Pacific Coast Trail and teaching sustainability at Universities. I suggested that nomadic living meant not having a community or developing lasting friendships. She said that although there are lots of goodbyes, there were also lots of hellos. She was clearly finding joy in her arrangement, despite the drawbacks].

There is something hugely empowering about feeling free of a need to have somewhere – to be able to explore without baggage.

But I never achieved the monk-like status. Regularly, I felt attached to those places. Despite the whirlwind of environments which sounds fun, exciting and non-stop – I actually spent a lot of time alone.

I’m not great at week-night activities like salsa, theatre or courses. Continual movement means that in order to maintain a healthy social life you have to be gregarious and head out to engage, which isn’t always my natural inclination – especially when working hard during the day.

On Tuesday I move, again, to Bristol. This time I hope to stay put a little while. There’s something to be said for putting down roots and having a place in the world. I know that my feet will begin to itch after a while, but I might try to recognise the propulsion isn’t always healthy.

I’ve learned from these many moves that it’s not about accumulating things around you. The three suitcases in the hold of the plane are testament to the fact that It’s better to shed as much ‘stuff’ as you can, whether permanent or temporary and to invest in the people, community and culture of a place.

For now, I will travel light to Bristol – in terms of what I’ll take with me, but I’ll try to invest in the place when I’m there – in the community and in friendships.

(written a few weeks ago, a ‘Westcountry loving ramble’ will be posted shortly).

My favourite bedroom in the last 3 years with the smells and sounds drifting into my mosquito net each night

My favourite bedroom in the last few years - with the outdoor smells, sounds and sometimes insects cruising freely through...

The New Scheme – 3Desk

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I’ve been working on a new business for a while now – it’s just birthing as I write this (www.3desk.com). Here’s the first blog post, which explains why and hopefully ties back to simplicity:

—

It’s rather strange that in the interconnected, multicultural, permeable world in which we live, most companies have permanent employees and most people a job with a single company.

Employees tend to work full-time – often in a single location, with a set team usually chosen by others and salary that mostly changes yearly and incrementally. The corporate ‘culture’ is often dictated, projects pre-determined, set holiday allowances given and rules and regulations created to enable the managers to manage.

Those lucky enough to be able to choose their employers tend to make their decisions on the basis of a combination of factors that make certain organisations more attractive than others.

Yet employees still work for ‘a’ company with all of its quirks and features. People can spend years in atmospheres which, left to their own devices, they would never have designed themselves. There is often a disconnection between someone’s desires and what they are forced to accept and yet many of us spend most of our waking hours within this system.

Savvy investors would never invest all their savings into one stock and yet the norm is to work for one company.

Try to get a mortgage as a successful freelancer with multiple sources of revenue and it’s highly likely that you’ll find the bank less willing to lend you money than if you’re employed by one company. Which, given you’ve got more sources of income, surely is less risky?

People are either in, or they’re out. Employed or unemployed.

At least that’s how it’s been and is… mostly.

Given the recession, technological advances and mobility, things are changing. A recent article stated that as many as 35% of the US workforce will be freelancing in the next 10 years.

I’ve just picked up a book by Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, called ‘The Start Up of You‘. It’s a manifesto to self-reliance and becoming more entrepreneurial about work as more and more of us turn to ‘portfolio’ careers.

In the ‘further reading’ section of the book, ‘Free Agent Nation‘ is the first book mentioned – a book ahead of its time, which promotes being a ‘free agent’, another way of describing a freelancer, or contractor.

The employment landscape is shifting. With online freelance marketplaces, like Elance and Odesk, more and more people are able to work remotely, choosing their projects.

However, there are many more freelancers who work face-to-face across the globe, from contractors on building sites to those working for the UN in refugee camps, to designers of high-end technology.

At 3Desk, we believe that the future of work will be freer, more flexible. People will be ‘agents’ rather than employees. We’d love for people to be able to have more choice.

Imagine a liquid market for talent, in which someone knows their value. A market in which people choose who they work for, when they work and for how much.

Our dream is that in 20 years, the Harvard MBA graduation class will predominantly choose to freelance because of the advantages that this brings – like taking time off when they want to, work with people they liked, setting their terms or choosing a 3-day week to spend time with their kids because they can earn enough that way.

Sure, there are advantages to the safety net that a company provides and the hassle that is removed through collecting people to together for a singular goal. We’re not extolling the removal of organizations, but instead making them more porous.

Imagine employers being able to choose the talent they need as and when they need it. Instead of bringing in a big consulting firm to work on a project, what if they were able to select the best 12 people in the market, who’ve worked together before on other projects and have chosen one another. Imagine hiring them directly for their skills, without having to pay for the centre-of-town offices, marble receptions and other costs associated with creating a ‘consulting brand’, which really is a way of trying to collect the greatest talent ‘within’ a business, because that’s ‘how it’s done’.

Imagine if the unemployed could find pieces of work in their neighbourhoods, to help bring in small pieces of income and reduce the feeling that a full-time job is the only way.

Although a long way off, that’s why we started 3Desk - because we believe that both employers and employees want more security AND more flexibility – and it is only through creating a liquid marketplace, where people understand their true value, that they are able to work the way they want to.

It’s early days, but in time we’d love to try to help people feel that being an independent agent had all of the benefits of a full-time job, with less of the negatives – as well as reducing the loneliness, or problems that being an independent currently causes – from pensions and benefits, to ensuring people feel part of something bigger than themselves.

—

Tech Startups and Simplicity

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Over the last few months, I’ve immersed myself in the world of the internet startup, funny little world that it is (to many within, it is there whole universe – please remind me of this as I delve deeper into the labyrinth).

Never has so much money and time been spent on so many lines of code that to most of us, make absolutely no sense at all.

Those that win, win big and fast – creating young billionaires/millionaires. But like every ‘hot’ market, the higher-profile-characters are a lucky few – many, many more toil unhealthy hours in the pursuit of e-recognition and riches.

There are obvious challenges to the simplicity-seeker here, for example:

- The reduction of in-person interaction, relying instead on the virtual

- An unhealthy desire for riches which, when obtained quickly, result in a lottery-win style appreciation and mass envy even though there is evidence of little contribution to overall happiness and some rather outrageous spending habits

- Building technology to solve problems that before we built all this technology weren’t problems – solutions layered on problems, layered on solutions

- Waste – mind-boggling amounts of people working on algorithms and sites that serve no purpose initially or eventually – the Mary Celestes of the web, of which there are many millions more than there are Facebooks. Although in fairness, the same can be said of many other areas of life

- The work ethic, which seems to promote the ‘every-waking-hour-in-front-of-a-screen-is-the-only-way’ approach

Yet there are also some fascinating lessons for simplicity:

Today, simplicity rules when it comes to web startups – in design, user-experience, products and even methodology.

The advice of the moment is to build only what you need to – be lean, create only a minimum-viable product (MVP) before you launch. My favourite simplicity quote, ‘perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but nothing left to take away’ (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) is never more relevant than in the tech scene at the moment, where people are being encouraged to kill features, rather than add them and to make startups as simple as possible in order to test assumptions.

Entrepreneurs are being advised to run their businesses like a meditative mind – removing all unnecessary noise and focusing instead on the present moment.

Consumers too, are demanding simplicity in terms of user experience (UX) and some of the greatest successes are those that have enabled us to simplify.

Google – their home-page design is one of the simplest of the web (and the most popular)

Dropbox – as simple a file-sharing service as possible

Apple – a UX which works, is intuitive and has a simple elegance

This article, which I mentioned long ago in a similar post, talks about simplicity as a source of competitive advantage:

Technology is good. But my sense is that many people are developing it for all the wrong reasons in ways that are unhealthy and make little sense.

Over the coming months, perhaps years – if things go according to plan – I will be further immersing myself in this somewhat bizarre, much-feted world and, I hope, retaining an iota of my simplicity ideology and a balanced life.

Technology enables me to work almost without interruption from my house (although I write this from London) – the question is whether or not I’ll get there as often, whether I can build something that makes the world a little simpler and whether or not I can achieve a balance in my own life as I go.

Beautiful Technology

Start Down

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The Dalai is a wise man. I shall be remembering these words as I continue to keep my head down, with my start up.

This will be a bit of an update post, rather than an amazing-tips-for-simplification-post. Please forgive the self-indulgence, but hopefully it explains my absence and current perspective.

What a few weeks… I’ve been in beavering mode, working hard to pull together the pieces of this new business.

There have been many moments of ‘flow’, enjoying the focus and singlemindedness that it brings. There have also been intense frustrations, my forehead metaphorically connecting at high speed with my desk. I’ve both lots to show, yet very little concrete for months of relentless graft. Generally, however, I’ve hugely enjoyed the creativity (people forget starting a business is a massively creative process), the intellectual stimulus and the feeling of building something bigger than oneself.

Ironically, or usefully, the main focus of my attention has been trying to find a technical co-founder, which means for all the claims of doing something ‘new’ I’m essentially doing exactly what I used to, but for me instead of a client.

That should stand me in pretty good stead, you might think. Yet it is still proving the hardest search I’ve conducted so far. I got to within a hairs breadth of taking on a dynamic duo, but for technological reasons we decided it wasnt quite a fit. So I continue, day and night, to scour for this elusive beast – the technological wizard with a business brain.

I’ve learned so much these last few months – about co-founders, internet businesses, strange computing languages, investors, negotiations. All of which, of course, I will be distilling into simple observations in short order.

I’ve also taken moments aside to live and enjoy – tobogganing, a blustery hike, ales with friends, an aborted attempt to build a snowman on account of snow that refused to roll itself into convenient ‘snowballing’ balls. Yeah, I know, ‘bad workmen…’

So, forgive me if I’m not as present as the Dalai would want. More shortly… for now, I present the rather pathetic snow nipple:

It was cold out there...

Simply Solitude

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Like many a seeker I found, lost, found and ultimately lost myself in Dharmasala.

I remember thinking that if I was to get a tattoo at that time, as a 19 year-old is want to, it would have been of a traveller with a cane over his shoulder, with all his worldy possessions tied into a handkerchief.

Fortunately I didn’t. It would have been a shit tattoo.

No, I wouldn’t have actually got this one, but you get the picture.

The reason – I was musing on self-sufficiency. I had been reading a load of the requisite ‘eastern’ literature. I’d realised, as so many had before me, that to be in control of one’s own emotions enabled freedom. To have that type of control enables one to deal with any situation, anywhere, with anyone.

For years during my youf, I never liked to be alone and chased company. Today, I love solitude – albeit it in moderation. Or at least I prefer no company to bad company.

Yet a while back I posted about not starting a business with partners.

My opinion has changed. I was wrong. Again.

I’ve spent the last 9 months working alone and achieved many things. Yet in the last few months as my business pivots, I’ve realized I need a partner, partners even. And as I begin to work with people, I remember the benefit they bring.

It’s possible to be effective alone, but as a social being, I believe that partnerships actually bring out the best. They help you to monitor your own mad thoughts, they create expectations and they keep one from disappearing into another rabbit hole of thinking.

The same could be said of my love life. Fiercely independent, I’ve preferred to remain alone rather than compromise. Yet I wonder if a relationships is, in fact, a more powerful place from which to grow. Scrap that, it almost certainly is. It’s easy to be alone – it prevents contradiction and challenges to one’s ‘way’. Yet, I’ve watched my friends become better people through the rounding that a relationship brings.

That’s the easy bit – realisation – now to find the balance, day-to-day.

A great friend enjoying a moment alone...

One of These Things First

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One of my favorite songs is by the great Nick Drake, called One of These Things First.

It’s a wonderful tune about ‘could haves’ – Nick’s fragile, angelic voice tells us that he could have been many things. The full lyrics are posted below. Hear the song on YouTube

Nick could well have been many of these things. Tall, bright, and good-looking, he got into Cambridge and had huge potential.

Sadly, he became more and more a recluse and finally died of an overdose – whether deliberate, nobody knows. He leaves a magical legacy,  in the form of the three albums released, and the sound of his voice lingers, like a wisp of smoke from a past fire – daily he is still able to add value to peoples’ lives through his melodies, extraordinary finger picking guitar, and haunting lyrics. However, be never saw his success, nor will be the things he could’ve.

As the New Year begins, we turn to resolutions. I have mixed views – part of me believes that resolutions lead to unhappiness and are rarely fulfilled. The other is that they help sharpen the mind and retune.

I’ve also noticed some regret creeping into my thoughts recently. I’m fortunate enough that I could do many things I’ve dreamed of. Yet much of my reminiscing is tinged with regret – that I didn’t continue with the piano, or that I never worked at languages – of the times when I’ve  let fear get in the way of approaching people I’ve fancied.

I could have done so many things better and I have wasted so many situations – when I failed to carpe diem as I wish I had. There have been times when I’ve taken the easy route and let laziness take hold.

Yet regret is a waste, unless we use it. We learn from our experiences and our regrets and try to make small increasing changes. That’s why we make resolutions – to accomplish little changes in our lives to try to regret less, and live more.

The smaller they are and the more we enjoy them, the more likely we will keep them.

For me one of my resolutions is to try not to regret, but to move forward. To try to achieve the readily achievable, and ignore the rest.

Happy 2012

One of These Things First Lyrics   

I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook
A real live lover, could have been a book.
I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock
As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock.
I could be
Here and now
I would be, I should be
But how?
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

I could have been your pillar, could have been your door
I could have stayed beside you, could have stayed for more.
Could have been your statue, could have been your friend,
A whole long lifetime could have been the end.
I could be yours so true
I would be, I should be through and through
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

I could have been a whistle, could have been a flute
A real live giver, could have been a boot.
I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock
As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock.
I could be even here
I would be, I should be so near
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

Starting to Finish

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One of the tricks of meditation is to gently bring one’s mind back from the various thoughts that seem to spring eternal, as if from some internal thought fountain, each time they wander. The goal (if tricks and goals can be applied to meditation) is attentiveness. To be fully conscious of the moment – without letting thoughts break that attention… such as what you’re going to eat later, or if that’s your car alarm going off, or whether you’ve managed not to think about anything for longer than ten seconds.

Meditation is about focusing and developing that initial desire – it is about calming the mind. It is about bringing yourself back to that simple starting point whenever you stray.

We should remember why we began…

I often look up an important article on the web then see an interesting link, which reminds me to share something on Twitter, then Facebook and before I know it, I’ve entered into a half-hour loop, which has taken me further and further from the initial intention. Many sites, advertisements, applications and so on are designed exactly with that in mind – to capture your attention. It is no wonder we find it so hard to focus and concentrate when billions of dollars are spent to try to seize morsels of our consciousness at every turn.

It’s not just the micro-pieces, but also the macro. Sometimes we forget why we started dating someone, or why we left a job to begin a new business. We can be so caught up in an argument with a partner, or the desire to reach the next level of our business targets, that we even forget the reason for our being there.

To a CEO trying to buy another billion-dollar business to be the CEO of an even bigger business to achieve even greater profits and even greater cost reduction – you have to ask, “Why?” Why did this character first get into business? Like our friends in the book Barbarians at the Gate, have these titans of business, or ‘big swinging dicks’ become so lost that they’ve forgotten that they started in business to earn a fair wage, or change the world for the better?

In the tech start-up world, valuations have created billion-dollar companies within a few years – yet how often do the creators of remarkable programming languages, or social media platforms stop to wonder about the why? Why did we start inventing things? The fastest growing company in the world EVER was Groupon, a company that helps sell things you never knew you needed more quickly. Is that important? Surely, a company discovering a cure for tuberculosis, or a social enterprise should have been a quicker hit? Sadly not.

When you get on a plane and you wander through business class into the rabble at the back, past the overweight people trying not to feel self-conscious in business class, you have to wonder if they are there because it’s important that they’re there, or because they’ve become gently accustomed to the luxury, like the proverbial boiling frog.

As my new venture takes shape, please come and twock me round the head if I start talking about wanting to be the ‘biggest’ if I cannot substantiate the statement with a rationale that make sense from a world-improving, spiritually-conscious point of view. I want to make a difference to people’s lives, my own included. Yet I hope I never lose sight of why I begin / began, because:

  • I love building things (but I’d make a crap architect)
  • It’s wonderful to conceive of something that can change the way things work and actually create it and see it grow to be bigger than any human part
  • A ‘good’ business has more potential to make an impact than a ‘good’ charity (in my view)
  • It pays the bills and it’s fun. Bonza. My first business, was begun because we’d been enjoying doing it free and wanted to do it for longer
  • I like to break bad rules / traditions
  • It’s good to hire people better than yourself
  • You can be free to set your own direction
  • It’s hugely challenging

So take some time to focus, harness that attention. Set your direction then continue to realign it so you’re not distracted by the news, your peers or marketeers. Rather than hit targets, realise your intention. Unless of course you started to beat others and get rich, in which case start again.

One of the most amazing things ever finished on the misty morning I saw it... The beginnings of a black marble Taj sit the other side of the river which was never finished. Still - good job!

Finishing – A Simple House

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Those of you following closely (thanking-ye) will know I spent 11 months in Kenya with my best mate Tim designing and building a house, called Ruby (my late Grandmother’s name). Photos below.

Here’s a couple of my previous musings:

Those following even more closely will have learned that it ended up being not quite as simple as intended. I think that my original design brief was along the lines of a treehouse and I now have something that is more like a palace – costing three times as much as we intended and, perhaps, being a third-as-green.

Was it a lack of realism, over-optimism or an inability to keep things minimalist that caused this over-egging of the simple pudding? Who knows?

Is it worth going back over and analyzing what went awry. Probably not.

Either way, I’ve just spent three weeks living in Ruby for the first time and, despite (or owing to?) the fact she’s fatter and grander than intended, I loved every minute. It’s wonderful to be able to ‘live’ what you’ve dreamt. Despite the fact that there is a disconnect between intention and reality, I am immensely proud of what Tim designed, what the builders managed to achieve. In fact, I think she’s perfect.

A reminder that nothing ever ends up as we intend it – and sometimes things end up even better. In Ruby’s case, it’s not very difficult to learn to love what I have.

I hope to show Ruby to my grandchildren and one day to be unable to make it up the spiral staircase on my own. Given that many of my friends are slapping up photos of their new babies, I hope you’ll excuse my doing the same…

I hope that many of you will get the chance to come visit, with or without me. If you or friend want her, check her/share her here:

http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/173098 

For those that I know and love, please borrow her at no cost.

I’m also interested in exploring cool ideas to make her a little different from most. If anyone’s got good thoughts for running a week-long retreat, becoming a temple of simplicity, or wants to stay for free in exchange for some permaculture or renewable energy expertise, let me know. It would be great to find new and innovative ways of making sure she is used and loved.

Before:

How to make a beautiful field look ugly...

During:

Getting Ruby's hair in order

After:

The 'finished' Ruby 11 months on

And a few more:

Tim's day beds in the 'snug'

Ruby's security

The 'tower'

Half-way up - the sunset view from the top bedroom

Why we decided to make Ruby so tall - worth it even for the first starlit dinner

Ruby being enjoyed

Finally found a suitable place for the hammock I picked up on my gap year

Ruby on the day she put on her red skirt

Ruby gets attacked by giant design genius

Simple Venturing

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What heats up must cool down… From the baking heat and relaxation back to London.

Trying, oh so hard, to retain the best bits of London in Kenya and the best bits of Kenya in London.

Spying on myself in each place – using the juxtapositions to explore the essence of Simpletom, to determine what is me and what is my surroundings.

In the last couple of months, there’s been the beginnings of a turn in my professional life.

I was reminded, with the help of a successful entrepreneur who took an interest in my work, that for all the dedication, there is an opportunity cost of working that’s not only about what you could be doing if you weren’t working – but also what other work you could be doing.

What if you’re doing just fine, but that your skills would be much better suited to a different pursuit?

Much of life is about trying to discover what you’re best at. But even then, you might be a good entrepreneur with a shitty idea. You can do all the things an entrepreneur would normally do and still finish frustrated, dissatisfied and perhaps bankrupt.

Yet if we always look onward and what ‘might be’, we may never give our current pursuits the momentum and graft they need. What’s right for you might not feel easy. At what point do you twist, or stick?

Where does simplicity fit into all of this? If we maximize our potential, are we enabling simplicity? If we think simply, might we not invent, or push ourselves to maximize the social good of which we’re capable? Might we regret what we didn’t do, might we resent simplicity for holding us back?

Jeff Bezos of Amazon stated that he started the company because of a ‘regret minimization framework’ – namely that if he didn’t do it, he might always regret it.

Regardless of whether the world is better with or without Amazon – if he’d opted for simplicity would that have meant not bothering?

When I got back from my adventures in Kenya 6 months ago, I was committed to building a new business. So off I trotted and worked hard and devised innovative methods and made hundreds of calls and worked myself to the bone. Yet nothing much happened. I’ve managed to bring aboard a few clients and see some inklings of movement. Admittedly, at six months in, it’s still early in the process. If I continued, perhaps things would start to gain traction and fly. However, it’s been a whole load of effort with little reward.

Do I continue? Or is it better to use the relative flexibility that a small business enables and u-turn before it’s too far gone, with a slight knock to ones pride?

I think the latter.

I’ve decided that I need to shift the business for several reasons. The first – that I’m not sure I’m enjoying it. Second, the market is dead and looks like it will be for some time still. Third, the ‘old’ model of recruitment is also dying, or at least isn’t prone to flashes of creativity. You put in X you get our Y. Simple, perhaps, but in the world of the Internet and technology, there are other businesses where you can put in X and get 100Y. Not that the X=Y work isn’t important and perhaps truer and purer. I’m thinking of a carpenter or gardener here, for example. Nevertheless, if you’re not enjoying it and it’s not producing results (other than the wonderful lessons we learn) then the X just doesn’t add up. In addition, only a few businesses finish the way they started – rather than being stubbornn, or seeing the initial slow start as a failure, should I optimistically see it as a learning experience, or a fertile bed for new developments.

My only concern is that it’s happened a lot.

I have a new idea I’ve been working on. An exciting one. One that requires a change of direction. Perhaps not a complete U-turn, but one that does require a healthy sidestep.

Moreover, I’ve remembered what it is to be an enthusiastic entrepreneur, full of ideas and passion, instead of someone flogging a semi-alive donkey.

Prior to working on this idea, it’s been hard and I’ve been excusing that resistance, believing that it’s essential in the pursuit of doing something well.

That’s still true, but if all of it’s difficult, you have to wonder if you’re doing something wrong.

With this new idea, things have fallen into place. Investors are interested. People want to join  in and potential clients want to hear more. Suddenly it feels less like a fight.

Starting a business is difficult, but if it’s too difficult – maybe something’s wrong. Like a good relationship – there will always be difficult parts, some extremely difficult. However, there are relationships you want to stick with. They’re the ones where your commitment pushes you through the most difficult times and give you the energy to carry on. On the other hand, some relationships just won’t work, and you don’t have the energy to continue. At the beginning both look attractive, but I guess it’s only through exploration that you truly discover where you’re heading.

We’ll see… but for the moment, I’m enjoying this traction and movement and loving the fact that progress is easy, rather than a struggle.

More shortly!

Bettering

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I remember sitting by a pool in Bali (the struggles) on my gap year and writing in my diary that I wanted to become ‘a better person’. I had read the requisite amount of Dostoevsky, Hesse, Eliot and Somerset Maugham to know that my previous aspirations – to become rich, successful and renowned – would likely lead to discontent.

I was traveling on my own – to see and experience the world solo. I had dreams of returning tattooed, wise and rich with confidence and tales. Alas, I wasn’t ready. Still painfully shy or at least awash with self-doubt, I found it hard to wander up to strangers and forge new relationships. A lot of time was spent ‘trying’ to overcome these insecurities, or passing time alone, without much of a sense of direction. Certainly, there were moments of joy and discovery – trance parties on the beach, tropical hangovers and characters met – but I was overly-aware of the difference between my own abilities in seizing the day, and those of others who seemed just bigger, more confident and charismatic than I. So ‘becoming better’ became my focus.

There were a number of ways that I realised I might ‘become better’. Through studying, reading, discipline, awareness, compassion, hard work and the rest. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at these either. And so time passed, as it’s want to. My gap year wandered on. Then university and ‘real life’.

14 years on, I still have aspirations of becoming a better person. If I remove the improvements gained by time, experience and wisdom, I wonder whether, in fact, I’ve become any better at all. Perhaps I’ve even gone backwards. Certainly, I’m not too bad. I’ve done a bit of work that has had lasting impacts, here and there. But I’m still driven, or is that haunted, by the idea that there is so much more that can and could have been done to ‘improve’ – my aspirations, fueled by those ‘big’ people met, and literary characters witnessed, seem bigger than my abilities.

Despite all these years of trying, I seem to get no closer.

This morning, after reading a couple of chapters of Kane and Able – (people forget that Jeffrey Archer, despite being bit of a dubious fellow – or perhaps because he is one – can spin a gripping yarn) I went for my morning swim in the lagoon in front of my house, determined once again to make this a ‘bettering day’. How much can I fit in? Is there time to write a blog post (yes), write a bit more of a new song on the piano, to do some work, learn some swahili and do some exercise. Can I fit it all in and do it well? Can I leave myself an iota better at the end of today and turn that corner that I’ve been trying to turn for 14+ years.

Or, as it occurred to me as I swam – given the 14 years and lack of progress to change my fundamental being, should I come to terms with my deficiencies, know myself, and embrace what I have rather than what I believe I should have. Surely that is more Simpletomian. Why is it, after all these years of high-expectation, have I not learned the truth? I’m always optimistic about what could be achieved, that what usually is.

Which brought me back to some of the fundamental tennents of my Simple journey – not to be lazy and give into sloth – but instead to embrace natural inclinations. To be gentle with oneself, whilst at the same time making considered improvments, being mindful of patterns and trends and implementing some discipline. Rather than waking up frustrated by a previous lack of progress and expecting that energy to propel toward a new lease of life – to gently accept the way things are and work with them to improve the self, just that little iota needed. With compound interest, those iotas may indeed add up.

Most of us have an inherent ability to improve ourselves that doesn’t need to be forced or cajoled through guilt or self-lamentation. The happiest times in my life have not been when I’ve had a Franklin-esque day, but instead when I’ve cast aside concerns and just been. I still get things done.

I need to trust myself – to be confident that the process will unravel, rather than force the issues. The frustration, rather than compel me to be better, instead initiates guilt, which is deconstructive.

I’m still mostly a nice person. Plus I actually tend to be better when I’m not trying than when I am – without the pressure, or stress, of self-flagellation, I tend to think and worry less and do more.