Tag: art

Behaviorism

mind
So it turns out that this blog, like many others just like it may actually be hindering rather than helping me on my crusade to become a published author. I started this blog a long time ago to overcome a few negative influences on my life and through outlining my problems I managed to triumph over the depression that was clinging to my heart and mind and become the man that I am today. Yet over time the purpose behind my posts moved away from overcoming the past and I set my sights towards the future.

I started to blog about my desire to become a published author and outlined the hurdles that stood in the way of my success. And when I did I felt great. With each successive view of my works by my followers or passer-by’s that stumbled across my site I felt a growing sense of success welling within me. I felt great when someone took the time out of their life to view my work and in that sense of elation lurked a hidden danger that could very nearly have derailed my journey to success.

I’m a TED fan. I enjoy watching videos of some of the world’s greatest minds as they stand before a congregation of their peers and share their research, their theories and themselves. Often times the talks I watch bare no direct correlation to my own life; I don’t have the capacity to see beyond the limitations of my own world, but I do enjoy watching others broaden my horizons ever so slightly. Yet every now and then a talk’s message will resonate deep within me and have me re-examining my writing, my actions, and my world.

Today I watched a talk by one of my favourite presenters: Derek Sivers. During the incredibly brief talk Sivers completely debunked conventional wisdom that sees us sharing our goals and ambitions with others – Just as I do on the pages of this blog. Sivers through the studies of social psychology’s founder Kurt Lewin (and subsequent theorists since) posited that through having another acknowledge your goals it created a social reality that tricked the mind into feeling as though the hard work required to achieve said goal was already done. But what the fuck does that even mean?

It means that when we experience the affirmation of our peers just for stating our goals we are less likely to actually follow through and actually achieve.

Take me for example. Every time I post a new entry I receive an influx of viewers to my site. They all read my works, and some choose to like a post or even send me a private message to tell me as much. When this happens it feels great. I feel as though I am succeeding and that my dreams of becoming a published author are within reach. But then after that sense of elation and success comes a dangerous slump; I get lazy. I become convinced that I’m getting closer to my dreams and can almost taste the success and further affirmation of my peers. I’ll receive a bunch of emails as testament of my small following growing in numbers and I’ll tell myself that rather than waking at the crack of dawn the following morning to write, I deserve to sleep in and give it a miss for a day or two.

But do I really deserve to take a break? Have I really achieved anything? Or is the mere affirmation of my goals by my peers creating a damaging behaviorism that if left unchecked will become the downfall of all my hard work? And if so, then how do I overcome it? Well, like any affliction the first step to overcoming is accepting. By accepting that I am allowing myself to fall into such a destructive thought pattern I can effectively neutralise the effects by making a conscious decision not to allow myself to feel accomplished through affirmation. That’s not to say that from now on I’m going to be a joyless prick, but rather I’m going to be acutely aware of the effects that positive reinforcement has on my craft.

Complacency has no place on the path to success. So with that being said I’ll be making sure that I set my alarm for tomorrow morning and wake up extra early to start pouring my mind out onto pages once again.

Singularity

Universe
Sometimes in life no matter how pure our intentions, or how significant our compulsions, we still manage to lose track of who we really are and what we are trying to achieve. Sometimes we become so concerned with what we are doing that we fail to recognise or pay homage to why the fuck we are even doing it in the first place. It’s a phenomenon as old as man himself. We take ourselves and our talents for granted, and often something we love, or something we aspire to, becomes a monotonous or menial aspect of our lives that we derive little enjoyment from. Continue reading “Singularity”

Wanderlust

gothere
Ever since I stumbled upon New York Hardcore outfit Every Time I Die’s 2009 album The New Junk Aesthetic I’ve been in love with the word Wanderlust. As a writer it’s not uncommon to fall in love with a word, phrase, or quote; my iPhone, laptop and notebooks are full of various screenshots and scribbles of words that inspire me to create. Yet few have ever managed to illicit the kind of reaction that the title of track four on the aforementioned album does. Wanderlust: Just the way it rolls off of your tongue ignites this writer’s desire to create. But what does it mean? Well, to summarise about a million different dictionaries and websites, a state of wanderlust is:

A strong desire for or impulse to wander or travel and explore the world.

Even its meaning gives me goose-bumps, and yet seems so inherently simple to grasp. A strong desire to explore the world: wanderlust is that impulse we feel to travel. It’s that compulsion that tells us to save up our pennies and jump on a plane, train or bus and venture to areas a new so that we may increase our awareness of the world around us. That impulse; that urge to travel is what has led me to be sitting on a deck chair in Thailand as I pen this very entry. My own desire to explore has seen me travel across boarders from my humble home in Brisbane, Australia to a world vastly different from where I live.

It seems so straight forward, doesn’t it? If one experiences a sense of wanderlust then they feel an urge to travel and explore the physical realms of this world. We commonly refer to this sensation as the travel bug, but what if there is more to it than that? What if this form of the sensation is merely skin deep? What if there are two levels of wanderlust that we can feel? Surely if this were to be the case than what I have just described could only be defined as feeling the emotion on a macrocosm level. My desires to travel to Thailand are universal; everyone at some point in their life is exposed to that unrelenting urge to travel, or to start afresh in a new or foreign place. It’s this feeling that inspires us to broaden our horizons. But there is so much more to our world than just the physical and the tangible.

Part of my journey overseas was to satisfy this feeling of wanderlust and itchy feet that has been growing inside of me since my last international journey. But for the larger part my journey has been sparked by a yearning to overcome the angst within the microcosm that is my heart and my mind. Confusing right? Well, let me simplify it for you: I’ve travelled overseas not so I can explore the world, but rather so that I can explore my own mind. I’ve taken a journey through the macrocosm of our globe so that I can better understand the microcosm that is me.

For as long as I can remember my heart and mind has been a volatile mixture of pure love and unrelenting hate for everyone and everything around me. If you’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of meeting me, you will be acutely aware that I am quite a placid person. There is very little that seems to faze me on the macrocosm level. I try each and every single day to only expose my positivity to the world; yet internally there are fires raging that if ever unleashed would turn so much of what I love to ashes. My microcosm is a fucking nightmarish world of pent up creativity and frustration at a world that refuses to take my craft as seriously as I do. Most days my aspirations of becoming a published author are stifled by the mundane tasks of a man failing to live up to his dreams. I live in this bizarre world where I project a positivity onto others that I fail to project internally to myself. Shit, if you asked me to paint the insides of my mind you’d end up with a fucking dystopian image reminiscent of Botticelli’s Map of Hell. And the worst part of my mindset is that as of late it’s getting progressively worse.

For a few reasons outside of my control I’ve spent the past couple of weeks living in a state of high stress and constant anger, and if it weren’t for my current holiday I’d probably have fallen apart by now. The wanderlust that had been growing inside of me, urging me to travel, to explore, to understand is the very thing that has kept me from exploding into a tirade of uncensored rage. My journey into the world so that I can better understand myself could not have come at a better time. It allows be to take a step back from the life that sees me constantly putting my dreams second to someone else’s and reassess where I am in my life and where I truly want to be. Wanderlust is that feeling, that urge to travel and explore the world. But that doesn’t necessarily restrict us to the physical world. It also urges us to explore ourselves, to understand the catalysts and compulsions that drive us towards our inevitable success or eventual failure every single day.

With that being said, the next two weeks of my life are going to be extremely engaging. As I venture through a land foreign to my own I will also strive to do so from an internal perspective. I’m not trying to be the next Buddha, I’m not going to sit underneath a Bodhi tree and wait for a moment of divine clarity or an epiphany that suddenly sees me racing down a path to success or enlightenment. I’m just trying to better understand myself so that one day my dreams do ultimately become my realities.

Suffering

To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

Today’s post begins a little differently than most. Today we open with a rather simple, yet incredibly profound quote from Buddha. But before you misconstrue this latest post as a misguided religious rant oozing with theology and profundity, let me remind you that I’m far from an angel and probably not the right person to be lecturing anyone on their belief systems (that’s a topic we might hold off on for another time). Instead today’s post opens with a quote by one of the holiest men to ever walk the earth because of one reason: I wanted to back up what I plan on saying today with the credibility of others, and the guy summed up what I’m about to say perfectly – and there are few people more credible than Siddharta Gautama.

We have all heard the adage Healthy body: Healthy mind. It’s a rather simple concept that to this writer seems to draw a startling resemblance to Laozi’s infamous Ying-Yang theory. That is to say that just as there is a little evil in every good, there is also a little cerebral function in every physical action and a little physicality in every thought process and synapse that bursts into our consciousness. But how many of us actively practice this incredibly simple ideal? How many of us actively move our bodies on a daily basis as a means of not only achieving aesthetic goals but also to improve cognitive function? Having faced off against depression on a bloody battlefield laced with trenches and shell casings once or twice before, I understand the importance that leading a physical existence has on my mental state, and continuously make a conscious effort to move my body in any way possible.

I grew up near the ocean and spent much of my youth swimming and surfing as a means of exercise. The water was an escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life and an extraordinary physical outlet that quelled the darker impulses that lay dormant within my heart and mind. I was moving my body almost every single day and in that time could write with ease. However when I relocated interstate in a quest to chase my writing dreams I suddenly found myself landlocked and robbed of my physical mechanisms for coping with stress. It was around this time that I started to fall into a world of depression and anxiety and after a seemingly never ending hailstorm of shit I almost gave away writing forever. (For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of reading about some of my lower moments skip over to My first foray into the world of weblogs) So I changed tact, and instead of diving into the water to clear my mind I began frequenting gymnasiums and at one stage even took to running through a few local bush walking tracks until I found myself doubled over, out of breath and on the verge of spewing having pushed my body so far.

Thankfully as I began to return to a life of consistent exercise my flair for writing and my unique and rather obscure sense of imagination and creativity returned. Ever since then I have always been a firm believer in the fact that if I want that healthy mind I so vividly desire I really do need to have a healthy body, and by continuously exercising I have managed to continue to create. But as is so often the case in life, I took my creativity and my health for granted and until just recently I was beginning to think that I was indestructible. Then a few weeks ago I managed to damage the facet joints that connects my cervical spine to my skull and suddenly my whole world of physical activity and subsequent cognitive stimulation came grounding to a halt. I went from writing every day and being quite active to someone who suffered a migraine if I tried to bend down to pull on my pants in the space of a day and my imagination seemed to cease up just as quickly as my body did.

We often say that we suffer for our art, and after seeking the help of a physiotherapist I learned that that was exactly what I was doing. All my long hours slaving away over a computer with poor posture had literally left me incapable of repeating the action without the onset of a migraine, and nigh on the point of being incapacitated altogether. So began three weeks of headaches, continuous stretching, trips to the masseuse and physio, and a few fucking pathetic attempts at writing before the injury finally managed to subside. Thankfully I can now resume where I left off prior to my brief stint of injury; although nowadays I’m really focusing on my posture and am trying to avoid slouching over my computer screen.

So why am I telling you this? Why should you actually give a shit? Well… You probably shouldn’t. But nevertheless there is a lesson to be learned from my little tale of agony and inactivity. The mind is a powerful tool whose capabilities are virtually endless, yet the body itself is an integral component of the machine that is man. If I want to write, and write well, then I have to continuously stimulate the mind, and a large part of that stimulation comes from physical activity. I’m now exercising again and feel as though my creative flair has come flooding back; so much so that I’m considering attempting NaNoWriMo as a way to really test myself as a writer once again. I’ve only got a few more days to make a decision as to whether I will attempt the momentous feat and if I do I’ll probably spend the vast majority of next month at my laptop tearing at my hair as I try valiantly to produce fifty thousand words over thirty days. But hopefully with a little physical activity to keep me sane and keep my mind firing I can survive to ordeal and maybe even have a little fun at the same time.

Appeasing the Ignorant

Have you ever watched that scene in Joss Whedon’s theatrical adaptation of Marvel’s The Avengers when Bruce Banner reveals that the secret to controlling his rage is that he is always angry? I like the idea of concealing a deep rooted issue in plain sight, and in many ways my own anger and frustration operate in a fashion similar to Banner, aka the Hulk. For all of my talk of positivity and being the best damn person you can be, there will always be an angry arsehole living just below the surface of my friendly veneer. I’ve talked about it before in this very blog; I write better when a part of me is seething with rage, so I live in this strange limbo where I try to project positivity into the world whilst secretly stoking my own fires of angst and aggression.

But a couple of days ago someone else was stupid enough to stoke those fires for me, and now all that positivity and happiness has turned to ashes as my aggression rips across my soul like a fire through a dusty field. You see, at the risk of sounding arrogant I feel like I need to let all of you know that I’m actually a highly intelligent, aggressive, and incredibly unique individual; and much of my life is spent dumbing down my personality so that all the fucking knuckle draggers in this world don’t feel threatened or uneasy by my presence.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to dumb down one’s own intelligence and pretend that those around you are more intellectual than their I.Q actually suggests. Most of my days are spent appeasing the ignorant and manipulating those around me into believing that I actually give a shit about the nonsensical garbage that forms the cornerstones of their day to day lives. And for the most part people are happy to live in this fantasy world where they can wallow in their own inflated sense of importance. But every now and then my little social experiments go awoll and some fucking halfwit actually thinks that he is better than me, or smarter than me, or he catches a glimpse of what I am truly capable of and suddenly his bullshit world of self-worth is threatened by a man he once considered to be his lessor.

My recent instance of such a situation has left me scratching my head at where things went wrong after someone dared to question my integrity. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, some of which haven’t been too nice, but until now I’ve never had anyone question my reliability and deem anything that I have done as unsatisfactory. I’m not just any run of the mill fuckwit; if I commit to a task I give it one hundred and ten per cent, and you can be damn sure that I will succeed in whatever I do. Which is why I find myself somewhat blown away that some fucking simpleton actually believes that he has the right to question or judge anything that I do.

Right now as I write this one half of me wants to remain in my passive Bruce Banner mode and continue down the honourable path of remaining the better man in this situation. The other half of me however would love to figuratively turn into a raging green beast and tear down the world of the ignorant misguided dick who actually thinks that he can compete with me on any platform. I know that the reason behind my aggressor’s recent dig is nothing more than simple jealousy; when a man as weak as he is threatened he often resorts to petty torments as a means of justifying his own worthless existence. So rather than let another’s petty bullshit bring me down I’m making a conscious effort to be the bigger man here. I’m making a conscious effort to walk away.

Sun Tzu said that ‘in ancient times skillful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then watched for vulnerability in their opponents.’ So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll make myself invincible, and when I have, and when I’ve achieved everything that I deserve, I’ll run the little piss ant into the ground and turn his entire world to ashes.

Sheep

Haruki Murakami once wrote that ‘If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.’ Powerful huh? And it’s actually scary just how profound and factual this simple sentence is. If we were to live our entire lives consuming nothing but the literature, music, and films that everyone around us is, then how can we realistically expect to be original and creative in our own existence? Yet nowadays in society we have created this whole creative bubble for ourselves in which we consume merely a small portion of the wonderful and ingenious innovations that our poets, writers, musicians, and artists bestow upon us.

But why? Why do we do this? In a world where we are forever pleading the importance of individualism and the power of self, why do so many of us blindly fail to actually allow ourselves the opportunity to cut through the film of that creative bubble and experience the true meaning of individualism and creativity? It’s because we are fucking ignorant arseholes who seem quite content with turning ourselves into sheep. That sounds harsh doesn’t it? But think about it for a moment. Out of the last ten novels that you read, how many of them were in the best sellers lists or came from the staff recommendations section at your local bookstore. Of the last ten films you watched, how many were as a result of what you were told was great. And music… Well let’s not even get started about the fucking travesties filling the sound waves of commercial radio.

The point is to be different. My posts are usually long winded affairs in which I try to slowly build towards something of meaning, but today I feel as though short and sweet is really going to drive home the importance of what I’m trying to say here. If you want to write, or if you want to create you need to be different; and you’re not going to be different if you are thinking the same way as those around you. Different doesn’t mean weird. I’m not saying that you should start dressing in strange clothes and sacrificing livestock to the gods in order to find a new creative path. I’m merely suggesting that you step outside of your creative bubble and consume something totally left field. You might hate it (and on your first attempt you probably will) but give it some time. Allow new thought patterns to ferment inside of your mind and allow yourself to open up to the ideas of being truly unique and not just another misguided sheep who thinks that his coat of wool is somehow profoundly different than the next.

There’s an old cliché that says ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life’ and it really is. Today is the day when you stop pretending and truly embrace creativity and individualism. Put down your popular literature or turn off that fucking cacophony of shit on the radio and consume something new. So often we bitch and moan about a world who has lost its way yet we so blindly consume the second rate trash that we are told is great. Let today be different. Let today be the day that you shed that coat of consumerism wool and become more human than sheep.

Oh the irony! (Social media & whingers)

Here it is; the post where I wallow in my own self-importance and hypocrisy and take aim at well… pretty much everybody. See I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment and it’s all because of a little thing called social media. Now before I start my completely one sided degradation of the entertainment medium, I will acknowledge that a great deal of my followers have come from social media, and that in its own bizarre way social media actually has a place in modern day society. However, there are limits to what social media can offer society, and it’s only so long before mankind takes a good thing and devalues the living shit out of it to the point where it becomes just another soap box for us to preach our own ignorance and self-indulgence from.

There’s a lot of rubbish associated with social media. There always has been and there always will be. From people’s continuous need to post endless torrents of pictures of themselves, or to update their status so that the world knows every miniscule detail of their (mundane) day to day lives, and I can deal with that. I’ve resided to the fact that we live in a very superficial world where people can justify their own existence by gaining the approval of others through likes. But the thing that really frustrates the living shit out of me is people who feel the need to air out all of their problems on a platform where the whole world is privy to their self-pity and babbling bullshit.

The thing is… I don’t care about your problems. If you are fighting with a significant other or an ex-lover, or are just having a bad day, then that’s not my fucking concern. So stop force feeding your miserable updates down my throat every five minutes. It really is that serious. Sometimes my life is so overcome by the incessant whining of others that I feel like my eyes are on the verge of bleeding out, and all it would take for them to do so is one more ludicrous post. Social media is a form of entertainment. We check our Facebook, Twitter, or whatever else as a means of amusement, meaning that when we venture into the world of social media we are searching for light hearted posts and pictures. We want to see our friends (and I use the term loosely here) enjoying themselves so that we in turn can feel good about our own lives. But lately there are more and more moaning whingers taking to social media in an effort to have their opinions heard. And what’s worse is that other serial complainers are actually justifying the existence of these fucking depressing posts by liking them or commenting with even more heinously pathetic shit.

I do realise how hypocritical and ironic this all sounds. I take to this blog every so often in a fit of rage and unleash my frustrations at the world through a tirade of words that leaves the reader feeling like I should probably seek professional help. But I justify my own rants by following the train of thought that what I do on this blog is creative and a form of art. The readers who view my posts actively seek out my page and settle in for a thousand word slice of what’s on my mind at any given point in time. When I post an update I aim to provide posts of substance rather than merely producing useless entries that are only skin deep. More often than not I pour my very heart and soul into what I post and at times I can be left shattered by the lack of response from my reader base (although more often than not the response does surpass my meager expectations).

So why do people do it? Why do they feel the need to take something like social media and turn it into a fucking soapbox where they can hang their dirty laundry for the entire world to see? The answer is never going to be simple. But one of the biggest reasons behind this is mankind’s own insecurities and yearning desire to feel accepted. In days gone by when we felt down we would call a friend or seek them out to talk through our issues. Nowadays we live in a world so vain that we no longer feel satisfied to divulge our hopes, dreams, frustrations, and angst to our closest associates; we need the acceptance of the world as a whole. We need everyone to know just how miserable we are so that they can offer their condolences and justify our desires to be heard. And we have created the ultimate platform to achieve this: a little thing we call social media.

But the truth is that the only people who respond to these trashy posts are people of the same intellectual mindset. Damaged is as damaged does. Life is what you make it and if you choose to whittle it away complaining endlessly on social media in a desperate attempt to be noticed than you’re probably going to end up a sorry state in your later years. Take it from a guy who has been through the whole depression rigmarole; life can be hard at times but all in all it truly is an enjoyable experience. For those out there who feel the need to constantly clog up social media walls with their petty gripes against the world I want you to really stop and think for a moment…. Right now there are children in third world countries who are starving. There are countries at war, where the constant threat of death has the population in a state of perpetual fear. Even closer to home there are men and women sleeping on the streets within a five kilometre radius of your comfortable house because they don’t have the means to support themselves. Your problems: your fights with your partner, your inability to afford that holiday you want sooner, or your overall stance that the world is out to get you, are so insignificant and often so self-centred that if you were to view them from an impartial viewpoint you would probably laugh at your own shallowness.

Life is a gift and social media is just a form of entertainment. So next time you wish to take to your keyboard to bitch and moan about your life I want you to remember this: shut the fuck up, turn off your screen and if you have a problem go and face it head on. I know that sounds ironic for me to say, if it wasn’t for this blog I’d probably still be the emotional wreck that I was twelve months ago. But the truth is that I just don’t care about your depressing posts and updates. Show me light hearted, show me life. And please, for God’s sake stop force feeding me your negativity.

Lend me your ears….

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As an aspiring author I am constantly devouring as much literature as humanly possible in an effort to continually expose myself to the endless world of words. Through my constant exposure I have read, listened to, and watched more wonderful stories than I could ever attempt to list here, and I am truly blessed to have had a chance to devour such an array of writing. Obviously in my journey through the wondrous world of words I occasionally find myself let down by an author’s craft; feeling jaded when a novel falls apart in the final chapters, or when a song or poem completely misses its mark. But then, every so often you stumble across a piece of writing that completely transcends itself above its author, genre, and medium and ignites a fire inside your heart and mind, leaving you physically and emotionally stunned at its beauty.

They say that inspiration often comes from the most unlikely of sources, and as someone who is known for disappearing into my own imagination at the most impractical of times I know this better than most. – If you need an example of this I recently had a massage to help with a sporting injury. While most people on a massage table try to relax and enjoy the experience, I spent the entire time crafting the blueprints of a murder mystery tale that commences with a man meeting his grisly end on the masseuse’s table. – But recently I was left stunned and quite literally lost for words by the incredibly beautiful, moving and downright brutal lyrics of a metalcore band.

For those of you that don’t know me personally I am a huge fan of music that falls under the banner of metal/hardcore/metalcore, and can regularly be found lost in a cacophony of manic drums, heavy guitar breakdowns, and lyrics growled, screamed and sung over rip roaring sonic compositions. But contrary to popular belief I don’t indulge these forms of music because I am full of angst or anger (at least not anymore), or because I am different or weird. I do so because popular culture no longer values true musical and lyrical genius anymore, yet some of the bands that I listen to have the most powerful, emotive, and downright beautiful lyrics I have ever heard. These days true musical genius isn’t found on the radio or on those bullshit talent search shows; it’s found in bars, mosh pits and garages.

The song that serves as the catalyst for this latest post is from Sydney based metalcore outfit Northlane. The lyrics penned and sung by vocalist Adrian Fitipaldes are among the most honest and emotive I’ve ever come across, and one of the reasons that I have chosen to blog about them is that through the bone crunching breakdowns and guttural screams Fitipaldes strikes a chord with this particular writer. With lyrics as open and unrestrained as ‘Here I am with all my insecurities, and imperfections, crying out to a world that just won’t listen’ Fitipaldes words really hit home. As a writer relentlessly trying to break into the industry and see my work in print there are times when it feels as though no matter how much blood, sweat and tears I pour into my craft (through blogs, novels, novellas, university essays, and writing competitions) I seem to be faced with a literary world that just won’t listen. I’m faced with agents, publishers, and fellow literary hopefuls who refuse to pay attention; who refuse to let anyone of the hundreds of thousands of amazing writers across the globe break into the limelight that they so truly deserve.

When Fitipaldes bears his soul to the world he asks his listeners to ‘lend him their ears, their hearts and their minds and discover what’s missing’ he exposes his strengths and vulnerabilities, his hopes, dreams, and shortcomings to a world that so often chooses to judge rather than understand. In many respects the manner in which he approaches his own failings and ambitions is similar to what I try and do here every single time I post. When I first started this blog I was a mess. My head was full of so much negative shit that it was literally impeding my ability to write or even function. My entire outlook on life was warped, relationships suffered, finances failed, and my self-confidence hit an all-time low. But through exposing myself, through allowing myself to become the test subject for the age old sink or swim philosophy, I’ve learned that not only that I can swim, but I can do so with the best of them.

Nowadays I’m emotionally, physically, and linguistically stronger than I have ever been, and the whole reason behind my transformation is my blog. Through taking a leap of faith and opening up my soul for the world to see, I’ve not only healed old wounds, but also learned some truly amazing things about myself and pushed my writing to new levels in the process. My original inspiration for creating this was to overcome obstacles, yet as I’ve grown and progressed as a writer my catalysts have changed to the point where now something as wonderful as a song, a picture, a quote or sporadic thought can trigger my desire to create.

Inspiration really does come from the most unlikely places. When I first started listening to heavy music I never thought that I’d end up blogging about my love for it. But then I never expected to stumble across a writer so honest as to acknowledge when he is ‘pouring his heart and mind into a world that doesn’t listen.’ Yet here we are.

So with that being said, my hope for all of you out there who read this blog each and every post is simple. For those who have stuck with me from the very beginning, and those who are reading my words for the first time, I hope from the bottom of my heart that my words have managed to inspire just one of you. For if it has, than my purpose as a writer is justified, and all the countless hours I’ve poured into this blog have been worth it. If just one person in this world listens, than that’s more than this writer could have ever hoped for when he first started out.

Smokescreens

In my humble opinion one of man kind’s greatest flaws is our constant acceptance to settle for the mundane, or for far less than we are truly capable of achieving. Sometimes our greatest failings are our own shortsightedness and inability to break free of the shackles that we cast upon ourselves through fear, uncertainty, and downright laziness. Right across the world right now men, women, and children of all races are pondering over their own dreams and ambitions, wondering why they always seem to fall agonisingly short of their ultimate objectives. Their stories will always be inherently different; the composition of their life experiences and their basic genetic makeup will always be uniquely their own, but their fundamental goals and ambitions as members of the human race will always revolve around one basic function. They want success. Mankind as a species yearns to succeed.

Now success comes in many shapes and forms. To a mother success means watching her children grow into respectable members of society; for a business mogul success is accumulating a sizable portfolio of companies and collateral. And for someone like me, success is the elated feeling of having anyone read my work and deem it worthy. I experience success every single time I update this blog. I feel an incredible sense of elation each time my Iphone pings with an email to say that I have amassed another follower, or that someone likes a singular post. To me success is measured in the knowledge of knowing that my creative workings are ever so slowly weeding their way into the worlds of blogging and publishing through one reader’s mind at a time.

But sadly for all my minor successes, I must say that I am becoming increasingly complacent with my craft. Each time I accomplish a small achievement on my path towards becoming a published author I feel a breathtaking rush of adrenaline and a renewed sense of focus towards my craft. But once that wanes it can be incredibly difficult to return to the mundane act of waking at 5:30am to write in the pre-dawn light of my lounge room once more. In my current workplace I would refer to this as the Yo-yo effect; when mankind notices a positive emotional or physiological change within them they are at their most vulnerable point in their journey towards success. The Yo-yo effect is what happens when complacency kicks in and you take your foot off the gas pedal, and all your hard work and dedication unravels, leaving you right back where you started.

So why does this happen to us? Why do we aim so high, only to shrug our shoulders and throw in the towel not because we are unable or undeserving of the right to achieve, but because we are unwilling to strive onward to what we are truly capable of? Why is it that the vast majority of us will never achieve what our heart desires purely because we refuse to cast aside the metaphorical shackles we bind ourselves with? The truth is that many of us do so because of fear. We fear that we are undeserving of our dreams, and we fear that once we achieve everything our heart desires there will be nothing left for us to pine for. But rather than acknowledge this we hide behind the idea that it is simply too hard for us to succeed.

Shit, I’ve said it to myself so many times over my life that one could almost be forgiven for believing the world is a terribly abrasive and bitter place. It’s too hard, or I don’t have the time, or any variation of that utter bullshit is exactly the kind of tripe that I’ve said whenever I felt like giving up. However I’m now coming to the realisation that these answers were nothing but smokescreens to hide the fact that I was giving up simply because I told myself that I didn’t have the will power to succeed.

Thanks to a never ending torrent of talent contests and instant fame programs assembled by the mass media, one can be forgiven for viewing themselves unworthy of success if we don’t stumble upon it immediately. There were times when writers, athletes, singers, actors, and whoever else were forced to toil away endlessly at their craft until it was perfected before they even had a shot a finding fame. Now however, in a society where everything has an expiry date of five minutes we expect immediate success and notoriety in everything that we do. We view ourselves unworthy or simply not good enough if we’re not the one per cent of people who blindly stumble into success or strike it rich.

So where has this whole rant stemmed from? Recently I awoke early to write, only to find myself seriously contemplating returning to the warmth of my bed over the laborious task of creating something with a mind recently shocked out of sleep. It would have been so easy to give up, to hit the snooze button on my alarm and try again the next day. But I forced myself to get up; I forced myself to sit in front of the computer and at least try to produce something. It didn’t go well. I wrote about two hundred words before I started sifting through the internet, searching for nothing in particular as a way to kill time and procrastinate rather than remain focused. But thankfully I stumbled across an article entitled Famous Failures and suddenly I began to understand the difference between the vast majority of us who fail and those who transcend above the odds and ultimately succeed.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for ‘lacking imagination.’ Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as a news anchor after being labelled ‘not fit for television.’ And Albert Einstein’s teachers are famously quoted as saying that the boy ‘would never amount to much.’ Yet every single one of these famous failures managed to rise above the doubt surrounding their abilities and become the very best in their respective fields. Their achievements aren’t the result of luck, but rather the result of hard work and a steeled determination that saw them push themselves beyond what was thought to be possible and overcome the adversity standing in the way of their success.

Every single one of us faces adversity, but the names above have proven that adversity is nothing more than a hurdle on our own individual races towards greatness. The only real limitation that we ever truly face is the limitations of our minds eye; the limitations that we place upon ourselves. The negative energy we project upon ourselves or the complacency we feel when we begin to scratch the surface of our own greatness really is the only thing standing between us and achieving more than we could ever imagine.

So with that being said, it’s time to cast aside the momentary complacency plaguing my mind and begin to immerse myself more fully in my writing once again. The minor successes that I have experienced up to this point in my professional development are accomplishments to be celebrated, but they are also just the beginning of a very long list of achievements and goals that still lie before me. To use the one of the world’s most quoted clichés; Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m not going to become an overnight success with my writing and I’m ok with that. When I do succeed all the toiling, and the early mornings and late nights spent slaving over an illuminated screen and a notepad will be worth the wait.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth…

lear

Wait. Slow down a second. Did this post really just begin with a nod to one of history’s greatest play writes? Do the illustrious words of King Lear really belong on the landing page of a blog based primarily around depression and my own artistic shortcomings? To quote an artist as prolific as the great William Shakespeare on this page seems to almost degrade the celebrated writer. But nevertheless for lack of a better title I thought that King Lear’s acid tongued dialogue directed at his thankless daughters seemed somewhat appropriate for where we currently find ourselves.

So why does Shakespeare’s delicately constructed dialect resonate so strongly with my own writing right now? Well… I think that I’ve been plagiarised. I think that someone has taken my works laden with my own flourishes and imperfections and tried to reproduce them and label the knockoffs as their own. I know that it sounds rather arrogant to assume that a writer would want to take what I have created and re-brand it as their own creative masterpieces, but sometimes shit just doesn’t add up and one can only wonder just how another aspiring author can suddenly produce a blog entry so similar to my own. The idea of plagiarism like this is a rather intriguing concept, and one that forces a writer to seriously contemplate the ramifications of such a dastardly deed.

If I have indeed been plagiarised then I certainly wouldn’t be the first author to ever have this happen, and I’m pretty damn sure that I won’t be the last. J.K. Rowling must have inspired plenty of Harry Potter knockoffs; and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code would have undoubtedly sent writer’s desires to produce historical thrillers into overdrive. But what am I to make of this potential copycat? Am I supposed to feel jaded like King Lear? Am I to feel as though I have been betrayed by a thankless child? Or would a better title for this post have been the finest form of flattery?

Because there really is no finer form of flattery than to have a fellow writer attempt to reproduce your work. If a writer has actively gone out of their way to indulge themselves in the stylistic nuances that make your own pieces unique, then surely that means you are doing something right? Doesn’t it?

The article in question arrived in my emails a few days ago. I follow quite a few blogs and my Iphone is always pinging with arrival of another author’s works. But with this particular page I seem to have developed a bit of an unspoken mutual agreement with the aspiring author who produced it; it’s nothing too complicated. He follows my blog and I follow his. We have never met, never spoken, and in all honesty we never will. But we have found each other in the immense cosmos of online web logging through our mutual love of writing and desire to find acclaim.

This young writer is good. His pieces have always been fetching and unique. But our writing styles have always been inherently different. -Which would probably explain why his audience is roughly 50 times the size of my own- But recently he released a piece that was rather unexpected, unprecedented, and so unlike anything he had ever produced. Suddenly I found myself reading a post that had me seriously questioning whether or not I had been given a guest editors spot on another blog. I am fully aware that I still sound incredibly childish here. How arrogant it is for me to assume that anyone would wish to rip off the deranged fragments of thought that clutter the homepage of this site! But what if I’m right? What if I am King Lear and I’m being unwillingly usurped by an author who wishes to claim my workings as his own?

The truth is that I’ll never know for sure whether my writing has been reproduced. All I can base my theories off is the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I read an (unusually) sloppy post that sounded striking similar to my own story. And the strange look of my partner as she came to the same realisation and asked if I had indeed been the catalyst behind the unexpected entry. But I guess that is the world we live in. So often in life we are overlooked or outshone at something that makes us truly unique. It can be easy to take what you do for granted and to never find the recognition you deserve for your talents. It can be easy to give up and never push that little bit harder in order to be noticed. Yet feel defeated when a lessor opponent finds notoriety for doing so.

The young man who reads my wares and (possibly) feels the need to reinterpret them and label them as his own truly is the thankless child that King Lear spoke of. He has taken my ideas and idiocies and claimed them as his own. But rather than feel anger towards him I can’t help but feel like there’s a lesson to be learned here. I now firmly believe that when our talents are laid out and compared, I am the stronger writer; however I do need to apply myself a little more to this whole social media thing and establishing (and maintaining relationships with) an audience. And while it does sting to see someone else finding fame through pieces that are questionable in nature, there really is no finer form of flattery than to have someone try to reproduce what I create on the walls of this very blog.