The way we act and the way we behave is often influenced by the people we find ourselves in the presence of, so much to the point that we can be perceived to be completely different people when in their presence. It's easy to build up a perception of another person that is incomplete or even inaccurate if we only ever see them in the presence of a certain type of people. As a gay man this is perhaps best illustrated by the disjunction between other gay men's behaviour when they are in the presence of straight people as opposed to when they are in the presence of other gay people.
This is not unique to the LGBT community however, it transcends such social constructs and divisions and applies to almost everyone you meet. The personal versus professional mentalities, the social versus familial mentalities, the romantic versus platonic mentalities, all of these demonstrate the juxtaposition that can exist between how we behave in one situation versus another. There inevitably comes the question of which of these is your "true" behaviour or the one that comes most naturally to you. This question is perhaps best answered by identifying which environment is the most comfortable for you, where you can feel little or no inhibitions.
Having said that, there are behaviours we can exhibit in the right conditions which aren't an indicator of who we are or how we act in any given situation. There comes a point where you have to draw the line between what is easy and what is right. The easiest choices to make in life are often the ones that require the least deliberation - in other words those where a default choice exists often result in us making the default choice, not because we want to but because it's the least effort for us to put in.
When it comes to identifying what your "natural" behaviour is then I would argue that the actual answer is whatever is the modal behaviour, in other words the behaviour you exhibit most often. If you rarely behave in a given way then that behaviour is not an accurate depiction of you in general. To use an analogy, the odds of winning the lottery, anything at all not just the jackpot, are quite low, the majority of times you play it you will win nothing at all. It is only in the minority of cases that you will actually win anything at all. Is it fair therefore to say that winning something should be described as the default when trying to explain it, or use it as a template for future behaviour? The answer whilst marketing and advertising would agree it is fair, in reality it is not. A truer explanation of the lottery is to say it is a game that the majority of people lose, and that if you play it you will most likely lose and win nothing at all.
Identifying a default behaviour is as much about numbers and consistency as it is about comfort. Default should by its very definition be the behaviour you expect to see most. How then do you determine if the way a person behaves around you is their default? The answer to that is rather simple - you need more experience of their behaviour over a longer period of time in the presence of other people in order to judge it. How can you use this knowledge to your advantage? Well for one if you want to get to know a person quicker then you need to learn more about the way they interact with others. If you want to date someone and get a more accurate depiction of them as a person, despite being counter intuitive, intimacy should actually be avoided. In a one on one setting you experience only how they behave towards you. The sooner you see their interactions with others the sooner you see who they are in a more general sense. In most cases when you date someone or start a relationship with them, in time the intimacy wanes and you start to see more of their life, not just the time they spend with you. The same is true for professional environments and any other situation where you are in the presence of a few people but never in the presence of others. The sooner you can expand the number of people the sooner you can see interactions.
The End Result
Almost everything we consume is a final product. You are given something that has been built from bits and pieces through a process that can take a very long time. When you see the final product you see it for what it is, not what it was. You see the product in its final form, not the iterations that came before. When I wrote about pilot episodes to TV shows I said about the fact that they represent a rare opportunity to see something the way it was before it was developed and polished. I also said that pilots in this vein have been dying off as the expectation of a polished production has increased to the point where the pilot is now expected to be a final product.
When you read a book, you often explore the thought processes of characters as they appear and wonder what motivates them and you have a desire to know more. The secondary content is becoming as important as the primary. Supplementary publications that take the world created in the book and expand upon it have proven popular. Despite this growing trend, even that supplementary content is expected to be a final product. People are interested in the development process to a point. They want content that they can actually consume. Using the example of a book, seeing the iterations thereof would make very little sense. Things that are cannon in the final product would not have been in the iterations as they would often have relied on plot points or details that were eventually removed. Entire characters can end up being removed in the editing process.
Whilst it may be interesting to see some of these iterations, for other mediums and for other creative works, like cooking for example, often the iterations we go through can't be consumed at all, and serve only as something to look at and think about. The Mona Lisa is perhaps one of the most famous artworks in the world, but would you visit a museum other than the Louvre to see previous versions of the painting that were abandoned? It is often the case that the canvass of a famous artwork once examined in detail with the aid of computer imagery can reveal earlier versions of those masterpieces. There comes a question of whether or not your curiosity overrides the desire of the creator. Those great masters who painted those works of art clearly were not happy with the iterations that they washed over, so do you actually have a right to see them?
There's a balance to be found here somewhere, somehow, between wanting to know of the work involved and the time it takes to get from point A to point B and desire of the creator for you to consume only the best version. There is of course the argument that seeing iterations that demonstrate mistakes would allow us to see the creators as being more human in nature, to introduce flaws to our images of them to make them much more believable and their status that much more attainable. By extension this would also negate the immediate reaction we often have when we see the final product and think "I could do that" or "That looks easy enough" because we do not see the work that went into it, and the practice that was involved in honing that craft. Ask yourself how many paintings were created by your favourite artist that never saw the light of day? Not only those that were washed over, but those that were destroyed, those that served only as a means of practising their craft. No artist no matter how great created a masterpiece every single time they painted, neither were they born with that ability, it took time and effort and above all else practice to reach that point, but you don't see that, you see the the end result.
When you read a book, you often explore the thought processes of characters as they appear and wonder what motivates them and you have a desire to know more. The secondary content is becoming as important as the primary. Supplementary publications that take the world created in the book and expand upon it have proven popular. Despite this growing trend, even that supplementary content is expected to be a final product. People are interested in the development process to a point. They want content that they can actually consume. Using the example of a book, seeing the iterations thereof would make very little sense. Things that are cannon in the final product would not have been in the iterations as they would often have relied on plot points or details that were eventually removed. Entire characters can end up being removed in the editing process.
Whilst it may be interesting to see some of these iterations, for other mediums and for other creative works, like cooking for example, often the iterations we go through can't be consumed at all, and serve only as something to look at and think about. The Mona Lisa is perhaps one of the most famous artworks in the world, but would you visit a museum other than the Louvre to see previous versions of the painting that were abandoned? It is often the case that the canvass of a famous artwork once examined in detail with the aid of computer imagery can reveal earlier versions of those masterpieces. There comes a question of whether or not your curiosity overrides the desire of the creator. Those great masters who painted those works of art clearly were not happy with the iterations that they washed over, so do you actually have a right to see them?
There's a balance to be found here somewhere, somehow, between wanting to know of the work involved and the time it takes to get from point A to point B and desire of the creator for you to consume only the best version. There is of course the argument that seeing iterations that demonstrate mistakes would allow us to see the creators as being more human in nature, to introduce flaws to our images of them to make them much more believable and their status that much more attainable. By extension this would also negate the immediate reaction we often have when we see the final product and think "I could do that" or "That looks easy enough" because we do not see the work that went into it, and the practice that was involved in honing that craft. Ask yourself how many paintings were created by your favourite artist that never saw the light of day? Not only those that were washed over, but those that were destroyed, those that served only as a means of practising their craft. No artist no matter how great created a masterpiece every single time they painted, neither were they born with that ability, it took time and effort and above all else practice to reach that point, but you don't see that, you see the the end result.
My First Job
A while ago on twitter there was a trend where people would list their first five jobs, I found it difficult to answer that question as I've had a lot of jobs that I wouldn't consider my "job" as such because they were part time or because they were things I did temporarily. To make a list here of everything would give away a lot about my personal life which I'm not willing to do right now, but I wanted to take the idea and make a post inspired by it. This post is about the first job I ever had, and by that I mean no excuses no exemptions, literally the first job I ever did for an actual employer.
I can't remember how old I was at the time but I was still in high school, nearing the end of my time there, as part of one of the core subjects we had to complete we needed to find work placements where we would spend time working full time rather than attending school. I was probably 15 at the time and the company I went to work for was a sign-writing company.
The first thing I learned how to do when I worked there was how to design, print, and apply a vinyl transfer; this involved using Computer Aided Design [CAD] software that would create a template for the sign by using colour layers to build the sign on screen. The template would then be cut by a cutting machine that would scour the coloured layers into coloured sheets of vinyl. Each vinyl sheet then had to be stripped of the waste which was done by hand using an etching knife to peel away the waste vinyl. You'd be left with a sheet of vinyl that only had the parts of the sign in that colour still on its surface. One by one you would align each sheet with the surface it was to be applied to, spray it with adhesive, smooth it out on the surface then peel the vinyl off again which if you did it right would leave the coloured vinyl on the sign.
I've always been interested in using computing in different ways, and seeing the combination of design and application fascinated me. This was really something that drove me towards software development as I wanted to create that kind of software. In the end I didn't pursue that career path but it was interesting to see.
During my time working at the sign-writers I also got to work with metalwork, designing and assembling the metal frames for 3D fabrications that would be the basis for more elaborate designs. I also got to work with engraving machines and gained a better understanding of how everything was done that I really had never actually though about up until that point. I've written before about the nature of design, and how everything in our lives has been created by design right down to the letter T you see on your screen right now, that font had to be designed and much more effort goes into it than you would think. This moment was rather analogous for me to the scene in Devil Wears Prada where Andy is shot down by Miranda for thinking she's exempt from the influence of the fashion industry when in reality everything she was wearing was the result of millions of dollars of industry. I gained an understanding from that young age that nothing you use that has been manufactured is exempt from the design process, someone somewhere had to think about it and design it before it could be made for you to use.
If you've ever endured the countless courses and training programmes designed to help you find a job, one of the things you probably hate hearing is the idea of transferable skills and non-transferable skills, mostly because it seems like a concept that is so obvious that you don't feel like you need to spend hours sitting in a classroom listening to someone explain its importance to you.
What those concepts teach though is something that some of us embrace and some of us fight against, and that is the idea that everything in life happens for a reason. Some people feel comfortable with that idea but a lot of people don't because they feel that accepting it would imply they have no free will, when in reality that's not what is being conveyed by this mentality. In my view what is being conveyed is that every experience you have in life can teach you something, no matter how mundane you may think it is, there is something to be learned from the experience. Does that mean that you have no free will? No, obviously not, all that it means is that you can learn something from everything you do, every choice you make has a motivation sometimes we understand it when we make it, sometimes we don't understand it until long after, and in some cases we never understand why we made those choices at all. Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you made a choice, even if you were forced into that choice, and you witness the consequence. Those two things can teach you a lot if you are willing to disarm yourself and look at those choices with a critical mindset and really begin to examine them.
Every job I ever had taught me something, either about myself, about the world, about the field of work that I was employed to do, or about people in general. I don't like to refer to these lessons as skills because the truth is most of the time they are not skills, they are simply the elevation of your awareness of a given truth that is self evident that is presented to you in that moment. Learning about how people interact with each other, the limits of their abilities, how they handle stress and pressure, the physical, mental, and emotional cost of any given task, these are all things you can learn but they aren't considered skills, nevertheless they are self evident if you are willing to open your eyes and observe.
I never pursued a career relating to the work I did for the sign-writing company, but much more than that, what I find interesting is that in my professional career as it stands, I've never really done the same job twice, apart from retail which I did a number of times always part time in addition to some other focus, usually studying. Once I learned all that I could from the experience I moved on to something else that would help me continue to grow as a person and gain a deeper understanding of the world. I realise for some that may sound trite or even contrived but the truth is, knowledge is what has driven me most in life, ever since I was a child I wanted to know everything about everything - of course I realised that was an impossible task so in the end I decided to learn as much as I could about everything I had an interest in and learn a bit about anything and everything else when I had the opportunity, my career path has been part of that mentality, throughout its entirety I have sought to learn what I could when I could from whoever I could.
I don't really have an ending to this post quite simply because it deals with a topic that I don't think has come to an end yet for me - my career. There will be more for me to do, and I don't really know what that will bring or where it will lead me, all that I do know is that I will continue to approach it with the same mentality as before, to soak up as much information as I can and learn everything that I can in the process.
I can't remember how old I was at the time but I was still in high school, nearing the end of my time there, as part of one of the core subjects we had to complete we needed to find work placements where we would spend time working full time rather than attending school. I was probably 15 at the time and the company I went to work for was a sign-writing company.
The first thing I learned how to do when I worked there was how to design, print, and apply a vinyl transfer; this involved using Computer Aided Design [CAD] software that would create a template for the sign by using colour layers to build the sign on screen. The template would then be cut by a cutting machine that would scour the coloured layers into coloured sheets of vinyl. Each vinyl sheet then had to be stripped of the waste which was done by hand using an etching knife to peel away the waste vinyl. You'd be left with a sheet of vinyl that only had the parts of the sign in that colour still on its surface. One by one you would align each sheet with the surface it was to be applied to, spray it with adhesive, smooth it out on the surface then peel the vinyl off again which if you did it right would leave the coloured vinyl on the sign.
I've always been interested in using computing in different ways, and seeing the combination of design and application fascinated me. This was really something that drove me towards software development as I wanted to create that kind of software. In the end I didn't pursue that career path but it was interesting to see.
During my time working at the sign-writers I also got to work with metalwork, designing and assembling the metal frames for 3D fabrications that would be the basis for more elaborate designs. I also got to work with engraving machines and gained a better understanding of how everything was done that I really had never actually though about up until that point. I've written before about the nature of design, and how everything in our lives has been created by design right down to the letter T you see on your screen right now, that font had to be designed and much more effort goes into it than you would think. This moment was rather analogous for me to the scene in Devil Wears Prada where Andy is shot down by Miranda for thinking she's exempt from the influence of the fashion industry when in reality everything she was wearing was the result of millions of dollars of industry. I gained an understanding from that young age that nothing you use that has been manufactured is exempt from the design process, someone somewhere had to think about it and design it before it could be made for you to use.
If you've ever endured the countless courses and training programmes designed to help you find a job, one of the things you probably hate hearing is the idea of transferable skills and non-transferable skills, mostly because it seems like a concept that is so obvious that you don't feel like you need to spend hours sitting in a classroom listening to someone explain its importance to you.
What those concepts teach though is something that some of us embrace and some of us fight against, and that is the idea that everything in life happens for a reason. Some people feel comfortable with that idea but a lot of people don't because they feel that accepting it would imply they have no free will, when in reality that's not what is being conveyed by this mentality. In my view what is being conveyed is that every experience you have in life can teach you something, no matter how mundane you may think it is, there is something to be learned from the experience. Does that mean that you have no free will? No, obviously not, all that it means is that you can learn something from everything you do, every choice you make has a motivation sometimes we understand it when we make it, sometimes we don't understand it until long after, and in some cases we never understand why we made those choices at all. Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you made a choice, even if you were forced into that choice, and you witness the consequence. Those two things can teach you a lot if you are willing to disarm yourself and look at those choices with a critical mindset and really begin to examine them.
Every job I ever had taught me something, either about myself, about the world, about the field of work that I was employed to do, or about people in general. I don't like to refer to these lessons as skills because the truth is most of the time they are not skills, they are simply the elevation of your awareness of a given truth that is self evident that is presented to you in that moment. Learning about how people interact with each other, the limits of their abilities, how they handle stress and pressure, the physical, mental, and emotional cost of any given task, these are all things you can learn but they aren't considered skills, nevertheless they are self evident if you are willing to open your eyes and observe.
I never pursued a career relating to the work I did for the sign-writing company, but much more than that, what I find interesting is that in my professional career as it stands, I've never really done the same job twice, apart from retail which I did a number of times always part time in addition to some other focus, usually studying. Once I learned all that I could from the experience I moved on to something else that would help me continue to grow as a person and gain a deeper understanding of the world. I realise for some that may sound trite or even contrived but the truth is, knowledge is what has driven me most in life, ever since I was a child I wanted to know everything about everything - of course I realised that was an impossible task so in the end I decided to learn as much as I could about everything I had an interest in and learn a bit about anything and everything else when I had the opportunity, my career path has been part of that mentality, throughout its entirety I have sought to learn what I could when I could from whoever I could.
I don't really have an ending to this post quite simply because it deals with a topic that I don't think has come to an end yet for me - my career. There will be more for me to do, and I don't really know what that will bring or where it will lead me, all that I do know is that I will continue to approach it with the same mentality as before, to soak up as much information as I can and learn everything that I can in the process.
Love In Love
There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. The former is an affection and a feeling that can be held for anyone or anything. The latter is almost exclusively reserved for romantic love, that is to say someone who makes you feel those butterflies in your stomach, that heartbeat that misses a beat, that moment where time stops when your phone has a text and you see it's from them and you open it to read whatever they said next because it's from them and you can't wait to see what it is, even if it turns out to be nothing important, the fact they thought of you makes you feel a warmth and a rush that envelops your soul.
I truly believe that once you fall in love with someone, you will forever love them, no matter what happens. You can fall out of love with someone but you can't stop loving them if it was really love. There's a line to be drawn between like, love, and lust, something which you will only learn the difference between through experience and through your own realisation. Nobody can tell you what love is, what lust is, and what it means just to like someone. You come to realise it for yourself in time.
When you fall out of love, you find yourself looking at the person you were in love with in a new light. Sometimes it's considered to be a sobering experience, with the antecedent being a "love drunk" state of mind. If the feelings were real and the emotion was true then I believe you will forever love that person even when you are no longer in love with them.
There are guys who I fell in love with when I was younger. I still love every single one of them. I could never be with any of them now though, too much happened and too much emotion was attached. I still feel affection and warmth for each of them but that's all it is now. I know my feelings were real and I know my emotions were true because even when I see their faces now I still smile and I remember what I felt before. There is no longer that drive or that control over your mind that once existed however. No longer does your heart overwhelm your head and push you to do anything to have them. There is a recognition that is found where your heart remembers but in a way where it recognises time has passed.
When I first went to University, that was for me as a young gay man the first time I really got to be open about my sexuality and with that openness there was an honesty about what I wanted - a serious, committed, long term relationship. Trouble was I was old before my time, having skipped over my adolescence due to trauma I never experienced the years of recklessness that most people do in that time. Nobody my age wanted a relationship and in time I reluctantly accepted that if I chose to wait forever then I probably would wait forever. I gave in and I explored and sampled everything. I was late to the party by that point. As others were finding a new level below, I was rising higher. Everyone else wanted a relationship whenever I did not. That led to a lot of turmoil, broken hearts, and broken dreams, my own included.
When I look back on that time, I don't regret any of it. I've said before that in life you do what you think is right in the moment, and when you look back in hindsight you see things you never saw in that moment, it's unfair to judge your past self with the knowledge you now hold because they didn't know any of that back then and usually the fact they didn't is what led you to learn those things in the first place.
I learned a lot from every man I loved. Each love taught me something about myself and about other people. I am grateful for the experiences I had, and I hold a happiness and an affection in my heart for that time we had together, even those that didn't end well. I still love every one of them but I could never be with any of them now. I love them all but I am not in love with any of them. I don't think you can truly understand that distinction until you have been through the experience.
I truly believe that once you fall in love with someone, you will forever love them, no matter what happens. You can fall out of love with someone but you can't stop loving them if it was really love. There's a line to be drawn between like, love, and lust, something which you will only learn the difference between through experience and through your own realisation. Nobody can tell you what love is, what lust is, and what it means just to like someone. You come to realise it for yourself in time.
When you fall out of love, you find yourself looking at the person you were in love with in a new light. Sometimes it's considered to be a sobering experience, with the antecedent being a "love drunk" state of mind. If the feelings were real and the emotion was true then I believe you will forever love that person even when you are no longer in love with them.
There are guys who I fell in love with when I was younger. I still love every single one of them. I could never be with any of them now though, too much happened and too much emotion was attached. I still feel affection and warmth for each of them but that's all it is now. I know my feelings were real and I know my emotions were true because even when I see their faces now I still smile and I remember what I felt before. There is no longer that drive or that control over your mind that once existed however. No longer does your heart overwhelm your head and push you to do anything to have them. There is a recognition that is found where your heart remembers but in a way where it recognises time has passed.
When I first went to University, that was for me as a young gay man the first time I really got to be open about my sexuality and with that openness there was an honesty about what I wanted - a serious, committed, long term relationship. Trouble was I was old before my time, having skipped over my adolescence due to trauma I never experienced the years of recklessness that most people do in that time. Nobody my age wanted a relationship and in time I reluctantly accepted that if I chose to wait forever then I probably would wait forever. I gave in and I explored and sampled everything. I was late to the party by that point. As others were finding a new level below, I was rising higher. Everyone else wanted a relationship whenever I did not. That led to a lot of turmoil, broken hearts, and broken dreams, my own included.
When I look back on that time, I don't regret any of it. I've said before that in life you do what you think is right in the moment, and when you look back in hindsight you see things you never saw in that moment, it's unfair to judge your past self with the knowledge you now hold because they didn't know any of that back then and usually the fact they didn't is what led you to learn those things in the first place.
I learned a lot from every man I loved. Each love taught me something about myself and about other people. I am grateful for the experiences I had, and I hold a happiness and an affection in my heart for that time we had together, even those that didn't end well. I still love every one of them but I could never be with any of them now. I love them all but I am not in love with any of them. I don't think you can truly understand that distinction until you have been through the experience.
Staying Ahead
I've never been involved in the production of a TV series or a movie or any other type of content that won't be consumed until some time has passed after it was created. This blog however now has many scheduled posts that go quite far into the future. There is a perplexing mindset that is emerging for me as a result of this delay between writing and publishing and it's something I am not entirely sure how to address. The reason I write posts and schedule them for future release is because my creativity comes in bursts, I have written in the past about how I find it difficult to sustain creativity at an optimum level for a prolonged period of time. I write posts and schedule them creating a "buffer" of time where there will always be content being released on this blog even when I have not written anything in days or in some cases weeks. This makes it easier for me to achieve some level of consistency.
The desire to stay ahead of my schedule is what motivated me to write posts and schedule them but as I have done so, the time between writing and publishing has started to extend and increase. The buffer has become longer with time to the point where I can write a post and it can be several weeks before you actually get to read it. That's led me to contemplate the nature of delayed consumption. We live in a world of instant gratification and that mentality can push people like me to want to release the content sooner rather than waiting weeks to release it and see how people react. As I said, I have never been involved in the production of media with such a delay before and I don't know how to approach that mentality. I do wonder what actors and directors and everyone else involved in media productions think and feel about creating content that won't be released for months, and in some cases not for years.
There is no consequence for me to talk about posts I have written before they are published, if anything those conversations often add new ideas and new information that can lead me to take a post that was scheduled and extend it adding much more to it. There comes a point where I have to split posts into more than one part dealing with distinct issues that have emerged as talking points. I try not to let posts go beyond 1,000 words on here, a few have, but I don't like doing it. The purpose of these posts is to give you and me something to think about and when they are really long, some of the points raised are easily forgotten or buried in the text.
There too has to be a limit to how much I will allow myself to write. I love to write and on some topics I could write a dissertation of 10,000 words or more on the subject and still not run out of points I want to include. There is a temptation at times to do this but I have to pull myself back and regain focus. Posts often end up having parts gutted out because they diverged too far from the original topic and they wouldn't serve well as a post of their own. This act of editing myself is something that I find interesting and challenging at the same time. I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on what is and is not relevant but as I have said in previous posts, we often don't see our own mistakes as we have become so used to seeing them we gloss over them.
With regards to the buffer there are a number of options that I could consider, but perhaps the most obvious would be to increase the frequency of publishing. Right now this blog is scheduled to post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday according to UK time. I could increase publishing from 3 posts a week to 4, or even 5 and still have a buffer of content. The trouble is this would require me to write more often to sustain that buffer and I'm not confident that I would be able to do that. Sure right now my creativity is going through a rare peak where there's a lot of content I am producing but I've had lows where I can't think of a thing to write for weeks. There is also the fact that this blog was originally 1 post a week and if you go back and look at the dates the posts were quite sporadic until I managed to get that content buffer in place. The number of posts per week stepped up to 2 and then 3. This is something I have already done and I don't think it will be a solution to the problem.
The problem in itself is essentially a content glut, and my own impatience. The latter I can address with some modicum of self discipline, and it is perhaps the most likely outcome that I will pursue. As for the former I don't think I would actually want to try and limit my creativity especially when it can so often be hard to come by. If you are a writer and you have ever wanted to create something with consistency, I would advise you start small and make small commitments and then gradually increase those commitments over time. I committed to 1 post a week and in time I exceeded that commitment and scheduled the rest until I reached a point where I was comfortable taking on a new commitment. I would give the same advice if you want to write a novel or some other kind of written work that is quite long. Start off by setting yourself a target as low as say 100 words per day, and start writing to meet that target. In time you'll surpass it and it will become easier to reach that target. Increase it when you feel confident enough to be able to meet the new target consistently. With any luck you'll end up with a production much longer than you ever thought it would be and your biggest problem will be editing it down as opposed to writing more - and in the process you might actually end up adding in more detail.
The desire to stay ahead of my schedule is what motivated me to write posts and schedule them but as I have done so, the time between writing and publishing has started to extend and increase. The buffer has become longer with time to the point where I can write a post and it can be several weeks before you actually get to read it. That's led me to contemplate the nature of delayed consumption. We live in a world of instant gratification and that mentality can push people like me to want to release the content sooner rather than waiting weeks to release it and see how people react. As I said, I have never been involved in the production of media with such a delay before and I don't know how to approach that mentality. I do wonder what actors and directors and everyone else involved in media productions think and feel about creating content that won't be released for months, and in some cases not for years.
There is no consequence for me to talk about posts I have written before they are published, if anything those conversations often add new ideas and new information that can lead me to take a post that was scheduled and extend it adding much more to it. There comes a point where I have to split posts into more than one part dealing with distinct issues that have emerged as talking points. I try not to let posts go beyond 1,000 words on here, a few have, but I don't like doing it. The purpose of these posts is to give you and me something to think about and when they are really long, some of the points raised are easily forgotten or buried in the text.
There too has to be a limit to how much I will allow myself to write. I love to write and on some topics I could write a dissertation of 10,000 words or more on the subject and still not run out of points I want to include. There is a temptation at times to do this but I have to pull myself back and regain focus. Posts often end up having parts gutted out because they diverged too far from the original topic and they wouldn't serve well as a post of their own. This act of editing myself is something that I find interesting and challenging at the same time. I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on what is and is not relevant but as I have said in previous posts, we often don't see our own mistakes as we have become so used to seeing them we gloss over them.
With regards to the buffer there are a number of options that I could consider, but perhaps the most obvious would be to increase the frequency of publishing. Right now this blog is scheduled to post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday according to UK time. I could increase publishing from 3 posts a week to 4, or even 5 and still have a buffer of content. The trouble is this would require me to write more often to sustain that buffer and I'm not confident that I would be able to do that. Sure right now my creativity is going through a rare peak where there's a lot of content I am producing but I've had lows where I can't think of a thing to write for weeks. There is also the fact that this blog was originally 1 post a week and if you go back and look at the dates the posts were quite sporadic until I managed to get that content buffer in place. The number of posts per week stepped up to 2 and then 3. This is something I have already done and I don't think it will be a solution to the problem.
The problem in itself is essentially a content glut, and my own impatience. The latter I can address with some modicum of self discipline, and it is perhaps the most likely outcome that I will pursue. As for the former I don't think I would actually want to try and limit my creativity especially when it can so often be hard to come by. If you are a writer and you have ever wanted to create something with consistency, I would advise you start small and make small commitments and then gradually increase those commitments over time. I committed to 1 post a week and in time I exceeded that commitment and scheduled the rest until I reached a point where I was comfortable taking on a new commitment. I would give the same advice if you want to write a novel or some other kind of written work that is quite long. Start off by setting yourself a target as low as say 100 words per day, and start writing to meet that target. In time you'll surpass it and it will become easier to reach that target. Increase it when you feel confident enough to be able to meet the new target consistently. With any luck you'll end up with a production much longer than you ever thought it would be and your biggest problem will be editing it down as opposed to writing more - and in the process you might actually end up adding in more detail.
Collective Friendships
Following on from one of my previous posts there is an issue I touched upon but never went into in much depth, that is the idea of shared friendship versus individual friendship. Whenever you have a lot of people sharing an experience, such as attending University together or another setting where there is something that binds everyone together in commonality, there is a tendency for friendships to develop that overlap. If you were to draw these friendships as a chart then you would have each person dotted around the outside as points on a circle, and lines through the middle showing the connections that exist between each person. The amount of overlap that happens, with lines crossing can become quite heavy. This can be considered to be a heavily integrated group of friends where almost everyone is friends with everyone else.
The problem with having this kind of density in relationships is that whenever conflict inevitably ensues and one person severs ties with another, there comes an expectation for everyone else who is connected to that person to also sever their ties. You can say this is childish and pugnacious, and you would be right. This is the idea that friendships in such densities are collective rather than individual and that you should determine the strength of your friendship based not only on your own experience but the experience of others too.
Whenever I wrote about the way we treat other people I said that the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. In these scenarios you have to be very careful about who you believe. There is a willingness to believe the one who cut off contact is the one who is right, that is not always the case, and even when consensus follows and people join in that effort and also cut off contact, that isn't an indication that they are right either. As we said above this is the notion of shared friendship as opposed to individual friendships, and this collective action can be explained as a herd mentality, it doesn't imply a deep level of thought has been devoted to the decision by each individual.
Going further than this, as I said above, the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. If someone severs ties with another person and then insists that everyone else follow suit, that is an indicator that they are a controlling person which can imply much deeper levels of manipulation. If they were virtuous and believed they were in the right without a doubt they would have the confidence to believe that others in time will see for themselves that truth. In other words if they think they are right they shouldn't have a problem with you continuing to be friends with the other person until you see for yourself what they already knew - there is of course the possibility that in time you will realise the problem was with them all along, not the person they tried to exclude.
I prefer to judge people for myself and see through their words and actions who they are. I don't like to rely on other people's perceptions in such scenarios because I know how easily people can jump to false conclusions. I know first hand how many people make false assertions and come to false conclusions about me personally. I gave up on the idea of correcting other people or trying to "win them over" long ago. What other people think of me is none of my business, I know who I am and I know what I am, no-one else gets to define that but me. They can think what they like, and if anything I find it highly amusing when I see people come to the wrong conclusion. I know in time they will see they were wrong, or if they never realise that then they will never know the real me, which is their loss, not mine.
I realise this sounds arrogant and rather condescending but it comes from a long battle with self confidence issues that stemmed primarily from other people's perceptions of me mainly due to the fact I was a shy person and it took time for me to open up to people. I know that I can come across as cold when you first meet me or uninterested, that's not usually the case, I'm just trying to determine whether or not you are someone I want to open up to. For a time I tried to change this behaviour and be more outgoing and be more outspoken and I never felt comfortable. That's not who I am and trying to be someone I am not, only caused more problems than it fixed. So a long time ago I accepted myself for who I was and with that accepted that the vast majority of people will never get to know the real me, and I'm okay with that. If you have a friendship with me, that friendship is between you and I and nobody else.
The problem with having this kind of density in relationships is that whenever conflict inevitably ensues and one person severs ties with another, there comes an expectation for everyone else who is connected to that person to also sever their ties. You can say this is childish and pugnacious, and you would be right. This is the idea that friendships in such densities are collective rather than individual and that you should determine the strength of your friendship based not only on your own experience but the experience of others too.
Whenever I wrote about the way we treat other people I said that the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. In these scenarios you have to be very careful about who you believe. There is a willingness to believe the one who cut off contact is the one who is right, that is not always the case, and even when consensus follows and people join in that effort and also cut off contact, that isn't an indication that they are right either. As we said above this is the notion of shared friendship as opposed to individual friendships, and this collective action can be explained as a herd mentality, it doesn't imply a deep level of thought has been devoted to the decision by each individual.
Going further than this, as I said above, the way someone treats others is the way they end up treating you. If someone severs ties with another person and then insists that everyone else follow suit, that is an indicator that they are a controlling person which can imply much deeper levels of manipulation. If they were virtuous and believed they were in the right without a doubt they would have the confidence to believe that others in time will see for themselves that truth. In other words if they think they are right they shouldn't have a problem with you continuing to be friends with the other person until you see for yourself what they already knew - there is of course the possibility that in time you will realise the problem was with them all along, not the person they tried to exclude.
I prefer to judge people for myself and see through their words and actions who they are. I don't like to rely on other people's perceptions in such scenarios because I know how easily people can jump to false conclusions. I know first hand how many people make false assertions and come to false conclusions about me personally. I gave up on the idea of correcting other people or trying to "win them over" long ago. What other people think of me is none of my business, I know who I am and I know what I am, no-one else gets to define that but me. They can think what they like, and if anything I find it highly amusing when I see people come to the wrong conclusion. I know in time they will see they were wrong, or if they never realise that then they will never know the real me, which is their loss, not mine.
I realise this sounds arrogant and rather condescending but it comes from a long battle with self confidence issues that stemmed primarily from other people's perceptions of me mainly due to the fact I was a shy person and it took time for me to open up to people. I know that I can come across as cold when you first meet me or uninterested, that's not usually the case, I'm just trying to determine whether or not you are someone I want to open up to. For a time I tried to change this behaviour and be more outgoing and be more outspoken and I never felt comfortable. That's not who I am and trying to be someone I am not, only caused more problems than it fixed. So a long time ago I accepted myself for who I was and with that accepted that the vast majority of people will never get to know the real me, and I'm okay with that. If you have a friendship with me, that friendship is between you and I and nobody else.
The Placebo Effect
For a while in my life I had to take a lot of prescription drugs, right now I am not taking anything thankfully, but as an example, during the height of my Sarcoidosis journey I had to take 18 tablets every day, sometimes 19. When you take so many tablets there is a thought that dwells on your mind and that thought is what are they actually doing to you? The clinical explanation is quite simple, each tablet is prescribed to treat a given symptom or condition and they have their stated purpose. The question of what they actually do however goes a little deeper. Not all medications are created equal, and whilst many are effective, no drug is ever 100% reliable, there will always be cases where it works better than expected, and cases where it works worse than expected, part of the reason for that is that our physiology although similar does deviate from person to person. Tolerance in medical terms is defined as the level of a drug your body can withstand before it has an effect and that can vary quite a bit.
Beyond the clinical explanation however, or to be more precise the pharmaceutical explanation, there are other factors at play that determine what a drug actually does when you take it. One factor I find fascinating is the influence of Psychology on the effectiveness of treatment. Most people will be aware of the placebo affect and have a basic understanding of what it is, namely that a drug only works for a patient because they think it will or because they expect it to, not because of the chemical composition of the pill - in fact some medications are nicknamed 'sugar pills' for the fact they contain nothing of any real substance - no pun intended.
Whenever you get a cold, the first place most people turn to are the various remedies that people believe provide a cure. In some cases they even turn to medical professionals seeking out medication to treat their cold - if a doctor is worth their weight in this situation they would be direct with the patient and advise them to simply get some rest, stay hydrated, and try and maintain a healthy diet, all of which are things we're supposed to do anyway. A bad doctor in this situation will prescribe the patient a drug they fully know and understand will do nothing whatsoever to treat that cold, for the simple reason that the cold and the flu - related, although different - are both caused by viruses. In the UK we have legal restrictions on certain drugs to prevent you from buying them over the counter or from a pharmacist without a prescription, one class of drugs that are controlled by these restrictions are antibiotics. There is still a perception held by the general public that these can be used to treat the these conditions - they cannot. Antibiotics will not treat viral infections. In years gone by, it was common for doctors to prescribe antibiotics to the patient, knowing they wouldn't actually work, but also knowing that a typical cold or flu lasts no more than a few days, or a week at most, so giving a patient a 2 week course of antibiotics would "buy" the doctor enough time for the patient to naturally recover.
This happened much more so in the past, today of course this practice is discouraged, partly because antibiotic resistance is a growing problem caused by their overuse, but also in part because of austerity. There is a cost associated with these medications and preventing doctors from prescribing them lowers that cost. The fact that these drugs didn't actually treat the condition they were prescribed for, seems not to have played a factor at all in the decision to stop prescribing them - which leads you to question how many other drugs are prescribed knowing they won't actually treat the conditions they are prescribed to treat; more than this, it makes you question how many treatments actually rely on the patient perceiving an effective treatment being administered for them to recover - in other words, how common is it to be prescribed what is essentially a placebo even if the pill you are given is pharmaceutically active?
You can also flip this question on its head and ask how many conditions do people develop in the first place because they expect to develop them - something referred to a psychosomatic condition, or to define it more explicitly, a physical condition that develops as a result of a mental condition like stress, anxiety, or depression. If a placebo is a drug that doesn't treat a condition but makes it disappear because you believe it will, then psychosomatic conditions can be seen as the antithesis, as conditions that develop in the first place because you believe they will. It's important to note here that not all placebos actually work, and that not all psychosomatic conditions develop out of expectation, there are exceptions as there always will be and as with many things, there can often end up being more exceptions than the rule to begin with.
Still of all, the question remains, how much of our physical health is determined by what we think and feel, in whichever direction it heads, either in recovery or in malignancy. There are times whenever the desire to overcome something without any treatment at all would be an incredibly bad idea, particularly those conditions which can be fatal, but for conditions that we can recover from without treatment, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
You might find yourself asking why I would contemplate this question, as I am not a medical professional, but the answer to that is rather simple. I have seen through my own experience and through that of others both in my immediate and extended family, as well as the experience of friends, and the experience of people through social media who I do not know personally, a correlation, where time and again they have been advised by doctors to focus on condition management rather than pharmaceutical treatments. In the past 10 years the UK has experienced one of its strictest periods of austerity in a generation, some would argue in several generations. One area that has been a particular focus of that austerity is Healthcare, despite the best efforts of successive governments to purvey propaganda to the contrary, with headlines claiming billions extra in funding is being spent, the trouble is most of that increase doesn't even bring you anywhere near reversing the cuts that were made in the first place. More than this, there have been many cuts that have been delivered in ways which are obfuscated, they do not grab headlines, nor do they garner much attention from the general public because they are done in ways that are not immediately perceived as being what is defined as a "cut" - for example freezing recruitment for several years caused the number of people employed by the health service to fall, and fail to keep up with population growth, the end result is a cut that is made against the projection rather than the headline figures.
Healthcare is not the only area of the UK economy where this has been the case, these hidden cuts have been employed in many different areas and are not limited to the UK either, several other nations employ the same tactics, the USA for example has succeeded in hiking taxes on its citizens aggressively whilst making them believe their taxes have been cut. This was achieved through the use of tariffs, additional costs on goods and services that are paid for by the consumer in the price they pay for those goods and services or by the company that produces them - these tariffs in reality are hikes to VAT and Corporation Tax respectively they just aren't referred to as such, and the guise of international trade disputes are used as justification, just as the guise of austerity is used as justification to cut public services in the UK in a way that isn't directly viewn as a cut.
The emphasis on using condition management, relying on pain management techniques and visualisation instead of prescribing painkillers, I believe is motivated by cost and austerity, not by any clinical justification, moreover, if this approach actually works then it would raise serious questions as to why those drugs were prescribed in the first place if they never actually worked or if they were relying entirely on perception to be effective. If however, this approach was to ultimately fail, then in the coming years there will be a health crisis that will develop as a result when a nation of sick people have gone untreated for years allowing their conditions to progress, in many cases to points where effective medication may no longer work at all. Which brings us back to the question we asked before, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
Beyond the clinical explanation however, or to be more precise the pharmaceutical explanation, there are other factors at play that determine what a drug actually does when you take it. One factor I find fascinating is the influence of Psychology on the effectiveness of treatment. Most people will be aware of the placebo affect and have a basic understanding of what it is, namely that a drug only works for a patient because they think it will or because they expect it to, not because of the chemical composition of the pill - in fact some medications are nicknamed 'sugar pills' for the fact they contain nothing of any real substance - no pun intended.
Whenever you get a cold, the first place most people turn to are the various remedies that people believe provide a cure. In some cases they even turn to medical professionals seeking out medication to treat their cold - if a doctor is worth their weight in this situation they would be direct with the patient and advise them to simply get some rest, stay hydrated, and try and maintain a healthy diet, all of which are things we're supposed to do anyway. A bad doctor in this situation will prescribe the patient a drug they fully know and understand will do nothing whatsoever to treat that cold, for the simple reason that the cold and the flu - related, although different - are both caused by viruses. In the UK we have legal restrictions on certain drugs to prevent you from buying them over the counter or from a pharmacist without a prescription, one class of drugs that are controlled by these restrictions are antibiotics. There is still a perception held by the general public that these can be used to treat the these conditions - they cannot. Antibiotics will not treat viral infections. In years gone by, it was common for doctors to prescribe antibiotics to the patient, knowing they wouldn't actually work, but also knowing that a typical cold or flu lasts no more than a few days, or a week at most, so giving a patient a 2 week course of antibiotics would "buy" the doctor enough time for the patient to naturally recover.
This happened much more so in the past, today of course this practice is discouraged, partly because antibiotic resistance is a growing problem caused by their overuse, but also in part because of austerity. There is a cost associated with these medications and preventing doctors from prescribing them lowers that cost. The fact that these drugs didn't actually treat the condition they were prescribed for, seems not to have played a factor at all in the decision to stop prescribing them - which leads you to question how many other drugs are prescribed knowing they won't actually treat the conditions they are prescribed to treat; more than this, it makes you question how many treatments actually rely on the patient perceiving an effective treatment being administered for them to recover - in other words, how common is it to be prescribed what is essentially a placebo even if the pill you are given is pharmaceutically active?
You can also flip this question on its head and ask how many conditions do people develop in the first place because they expect to develop them - something referred to a psychosomatic condition, or to define it more explicitly, a physical condition that develops as a result of a mental condition like stress, anxiety, or depression. If a placebo is a drug that doesn't treat a condition but makes it disappear because you believe it will, then psychosomatic conditions can be seen as the antithesis, as conditions that develop in the first place because you believe they will. It's important to note here that not all placebos actually work, and that not all psychosomatic conditions develop out of expectation, there are exceptions as there always will be and as with many things, there can often end up being more exceptions than the rule to begin with.
Still of all, the question remains, how much of our physical health is determined by what we think and feel, in whichever direction it heads, either in recovery or in malignancy. There are times whenever the desire to overcome something without any treatment at all would be an incredibly bad idea, particularly those conditions which can be fatal, but for conditions that we can recover from without treatment, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
You might find yourself asking why I would contemplate this question, as I am not a medical professional, but the answer to that is rather simple. I have seen through my own experience and through that of others both in my immediate and extended family, as well as the experience of friends, and the experience of people through social media who I do not know personally, a correlation, where time and again they have been advised by doctors to focus on condition management rather than pharmaceutical treatments. In the past 10 years the UK has experienced one of its strictest periods of austerity in a generation, some would argue in several generations. One area that has been a particular focus of that austerity is Healthcare, despite the best efforts of successive governments to purvey propaganda to the contrary, with headlines claiming billions extra in funding is being spent, the trouble is most of that increase doesn't even bring you anywhere near reversing the cuts that were made in the first place. More than this, there have been many cuts that have been delivered in ways which are obfuscated, they do not grab headlines, nor do they garner much attention from the general public because they are done in ways that are not immediately perceived as being what is defined as a "cut" - for example freezing recruitment for several years caused the number of people employed by the health service to fall, and fail to keep up with population growth, the end result is a cut that is made against the projection rather than the headline figures.
Healthcare is not the only area of the UK economy where this has been the case, these hidden cuts have been employed in many different areas and are not limited to the UK either, several other nations employ the same tactics, the USA for example has succeeded in hiking taxes on its citizens aggressively whilst making them believe their taxes have been cut. This was achieved through the use of tariffs, additional costs on goods and services that are paid for by the consumer in the price they pay for those goods and services or by the company that produces them - these tariffs in reality are hikes to VAT and Corporation Tax respectively they just aren't referred to as such, and the guise of international trade disputes are used as justification, just as the guise of austerity is used as justification to cut public services in the UK in a way that isn't directly viewn as a cut.
The emphasis on using condition management, relying on pain management techniques and visualisation instead of prescribing painkillers, I believe is motivated by cost and austerity, not by any clinical justification, moreover, if this approach actually works then it would raise serious questions as to why those drugs were prescribed in the first place if they never actually worked or if they were relying entirely on perception to be effective. If however, this approach was to ultimately fail, then in the coming years there will be a health crisis that will develop as a result when a nation of sick people have gone untreated for years allowing their conditions to progress, in many cases to points where effective medication may no longer work at all. Which brings us back to the question we asked before, how effective is it to rely on psychological based treatments as opposed to pharmaceutical based treatments?
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