A Writer’s Life

I’m starting to think I should buy a lottery ticket. I’ve never been a particularly lucky person; I tend to believe that things happen more when we work for them, or like karma. But lately I’ve felt like my fortunes have improved… and I’m wondering how far I should push it?

Last week was the Melbourne Cup. It’s Australia’s biggest horse race - and an excuse to party. They call it The Race That Stops A Nation because it’s watched by millions; work stops (or people call in sick), most schools pause, it’s a public holiday in Melbourne, and everybody at the track dresses up and drinks champagne. Most of the outfits are good; some are tragic. Of course they’re the memorable ones.

Usually I don’t bet, but I make an exception for the Cup. And this year I won! Efficient became the first horse since Phar Lap to win the Victoria Derby/Melbourne Cup double. Incredibly I got the quinella as well, which is a first for me. I’ve won the Cup six times now, though I know nothing about racing.

Winning was a nice surprise, and since then I’ve had small things go my way. Nothing major, but still the kind of things that don’t happen for me that often. I thought I was going to be late for a bus and it arrived just as I got there, which never happens; I heard from a few friends I hadn’t heard from in a while; there was an unadvertised sale at one of the music stores and I got 2 DVDs and a couple of CDs I hadn’t been able to find for years, and on sale. And just today a letter which I thought I’d lost or thrown away turned up when I decided I’d have one last look for it. I swear I’d looked through that drawer a hundred times, but today, there it was.

Of course all of these are probably just coincidences, but I can’t help feeling like I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment. And I think that’s the most likely reason. Winning put me in a good mood and I think if we feel happier, then often it has a roll-on effect; more good things seem to happen to us and we don’t notice the bad in the same way. We make our own luck.

The thing which worries me about that feeling is I can see how easily it can fuel addiction. I’m not a big gambler at all, but it’s a great rush when you win; it’s the thrill of beating the odds, of having luck with you, and you wonder if you can do it again. And again. Before you know it, suddenly you’re in debt, or worse you find you can’t stop. I imagine that’s how it feels for any addiction; gambling, alcohol, drugs. Perhaps that’s how addiction begins; a simple win betting $10 on a horse and something clicks in your mind, and from then on there’s something inside you that you can’t be rid of, hard as you try.

I don’t have an addictive personality, so I’m not worried about that myself; I only bet once or twice a year and I’m rarely tempted to gamble in other ways. But I do think it’s a problem for a country that one of its most celebrated days be dedicated to gambling. The week before the Cup, there’s so much coverage that you can’t escape it; for that week we glorify gambling and any ads or warnings are scarce. The Cup is part of our national heritage; we embrace it as part of our nature, but we don’t want to deal with the consequences of that - the ugly addictions beneath the surface. I’m not sure what that says about our culture.

But it is a great day, one of the few days that really does unite us as a nation, and for most people it’s just a chance to let their hair down and have some fun. That’s what it is for me. I’m still amazed I won, and that Lady Luck has been smiling on me since. So what do you think? OZ Lotto’s up to $8,000,000 this Tuesday. Should I buy a ticket?

I’m not sure why but I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. Maybe it’s that we’re getting closer to Christmas and my mind’s been turning back towards the past, or that we observed Remembrance Day on Sunday and it’s been lingering in my thoughts. It’s not unusual for me to think about death; I’ve always thought that death, though sad, is a natural part of life and there is beauty to it, if you know where to look. But for some reason it’s been different this time.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve felt depressed, but my thoughts have lingered more on the process of dying than they usually do. I’ve had people I’ve known and loved in my life pass away before their time and it was painful; they didn’t seem like the same person and it was very difficult seeing them like that. Peaceful certainly isn’t the right word for their passing, but it was almost a relief to see them go in the end, their agony relieved. We had a chance to say goodbye, something a lot of people don’t have; for many people death comes suddenly and everything that they wanted to say or do is suddenly out of reach. That’s the kind of death I think must be the most difficult to adjust to, for everything to be normal, and then suddenly so different.

My poem from a few days ago is about death. I tried to write it in such a way that the reader could take what they wanted from it, but my inspiration was death. I had been thinking about what it must be like to know you’re dying, to know this or tomorrow will be your last day. What must that be like? Can any of us really know until we’re facing it ourselves? I think if it were me I would be trying to remember the moments of my life, perhaps the regrets as much as the achievements, the friends I had and hopefully would still have around me, and taking the chance to say goodbye.

I think under those circumstances death would be peaceful; perhaps still not something I would be ready for as I’m not sure I ever could be, but at least surrounded by family and friends I would hope it would be a time of remembrance rather than sorrow. Respectful. But to be honest I’m not sure if I believe that’s what would happen. I’m not sure what I believe any more.

I’m not afraid of death. If for some reason I learnt tomorrow that I only had a few days left to live, I wouldn’t fear it; I might be angry, or sad, or any of a thousand different emotions that I couldn’t possibly describe, but I wouldn’t be afraid. I consider myself a spiritual person rather than a religious one; I don’t know if there is something after death, but I would like to feel there is. But even if there isn’t that’s not something I would fear; death is natural and as long as we meant something to someone, that they held us dear in their hearts for a time, then I believe we live forever.

What I am afraid of is leaving people behind. Of leaving things unfinished… of starting down a path and finding I can only follow it a certain way. That to me is the scariest possibility of all. People say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I don’t believe that. Does anybody seriously believe that? It’s certainly better to have experienced than to have experienced nothing, but to have loved and lost is to have left someone behind… perhaps someone who depended on you, and needed you, and suddenly you aren’t there. Yes, if you’re the other person, you can love again and the pain will ease in time, but the relationship is different. Not better, not worse; just different. There’s something lost you can’t get back.

I suppose my one greatest fear in life is that I won’t measure up to my own standards. I look at myself and I’m relatively happy with who I am; I won’t lie and say that there aren’t things I wouldn’t change, moments I wouldn’t live again, or friends I wish I had stayed in touch with and miss dearly, but I take all that as a part of what makes me who I am. But no-one knows what their future will hold and I don’t know where I will be in twenty years. I hope I will be successful in the ways that matter; earning a respectable living, being a good person. I’d love to have a novel published, obviously, and to be secure in where I am. But I’m not sure I will be that. I feel like I’m at a stalemate right now that might last awhile. And if that’s true and I don’t achieve what I want, will it have been worth it?

I don’t know. That’s the one thing I can’t answer and that’s not me being negative, it’s simply that I do not know. How do you weigh what your mind says is possible against what your heart says it wants to achieve? By what measure do you weigh the soul of a man? By the life he has lived, the sights he has seen, the people he has loved? I would hope it is that, but is it really? I lost a friend when I was very young. It was a senseless death, just one of those things that happens for no real reason. I think she would have been a great person and I often wonder what she would be like today. We’ll never know, but I often think of her. And maybe I hold myself against that sometimes, even though I don’t mean to.

So I think that’s what I’m afraid of; not of death, but of what death represents, the measure of what you leave behind. Of course in the end there’s not much anyone can do except to live and value each moment, but I don’t think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people really are afraid of death, or if not death then of the unknown. They push it back as long as they can; they destroy their bodies in the pursuit of youth, they create conflict, they try to be remembered. We have an unhealthy relationship with death, particularly in Western culture; it’s a part of our lives but we try to ignore it or not think about it. And when we are touched by death, we grieve, which is natural - but we don’t always remember. We don’t see beauty, memory, life. And if we don’t do that, I’m not sure we really live.

My favourite poem is Kipling’s If. If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; if you can think-and not make thoughts your aim. I love those two lines in particular; I think they say so much about being creative, but also for how we should treat each other and value life. To dream, but not to dream so far that the dream becomes bitter when it doesn’t become true, in relationships, in life. I think that’s a good way to live and that’s what I try to do. I think most people probably would too, if they thought about it. It just saddens me when I turn on the news and all I see is… death isn’t the right word. Carnage. There’s nothing natural about what we’re seeing on our TV screens every night and that’s why I think it’s all the more important to hold onto some of the more peaceful aspects of death, if we can find them. That’s what I tried to represent in my poem.

Anyway, to anyone who’s got this far, sorry if this seems like a darker post… I’m just in a bit of a melancholy mood at the moment. I’ve said more here than I intended to, more about myself than I usually do… and that’s okay because increasingly this blog is becoming a window to my thoughts on life, and I can’t do that without investing some of myself into it as well. And it’s helping me sort through things more than I expected.

But I’ll have something lighter for you tomorrow.

Don’t you think we all need some randomness in our lives? I know I feel like that sometimes. I don’t like letting everything become too similar and expected if I can help it; I like following my instincts, and if I do then usually anything that comes along feels natural.

So it was a nice surprise when sulz tagged me earlier. And this tag is fun because it’s 7 weird and random facts about me. sulz asked for my weirdest facts, so I’ll do my best! First, the rules…

• Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1) I got my first computer when I was 10. It was a Mac Performa 630 with a whopping 33 MHz processor and 250MB hard drive… brings back memories. Now everyone seems to have a laptop before they’re walking.

2) I’m obsessive about jigsaw puzzles. I have dozens and most of them are over 500 to 1000 pieces. When I start one, I have to finish it, and nothing will get in my way.

3) When I was younger I was in love with Martina Hingis. Now she’s broken my heart. Cocaine? Why, Martina, why?

4) When I was 3 years old my best friend was a drake named Quing Quang. He lived in the park near where we lived. Only problem was, he didn’t exist. I didn’t have an imaginary friend, I had an imaginary duck. Quack friggin quack.

5) I have more questions than I have answers. And when I do find an answer, it just creates more questions! I often wonder if I’ll ever have more answers - and if I’d want to?

6) When The Phantom Menace opened in ‘99, I went to one of the midnight openings for the merchandise (John Williams’ score). But I didn’t see the movie at a midnight screening; just on the first day. Even weirder - I don’t hate TPM the way a lot of people do. Just Jar Jar Binks.

7) I love SavageGarden, but for weeks when Truly Madly Deeply was out I was convinced that “I want to lay like this forever until the sky falls down on me” was really “I want to lay like this forever until this guy falls down on me”. I couldn’t understand what I was hearing wrong until someone printed out the lyrics. Major embarrassment.

I’m supposed to tag a few people here, but I’m going to bend the rules a little as most of the people I’d tag have already been tagged by sulz or Muse. So instead I’m going to open this up to anyone who wants to steal it (or has blogger’s block) - on one condition. Feel free to take it, but please include a link to FreeRice.Com on your blog, which is a great new site I found out about from ellaella and sulz. It’s a vocabulary quiz which is sponsored by some of the world’s biggest companies (Apple, American Express, Toshiba); for every question you get right, the companies provide funds to buy 10 grains of rice to feed the hungry. Definitely an initiative I can get behind; so far I’ve donated 2,000 grains of rice over the last two days. I’ve included a link to it in my sidebar and if you wanted to mention it in a post, or with the tag, that would be a wonderful way to show your support too.

And if you’re wondering how many of the words you’d know, it has 50 levels of difficulty; I’ve got up to about 48 so far. Brachypterous tripped me up today.

Image from Stock.Xchang

The smallest of truths
Hidden in a field of lies
Towers over all

Beauty without form
Colder than a frozen heart:
Only anger warms

A forbidden kiss
Reflected in candlelight:
My heart remembers

Memories of life
Strongest before the darkness
Fade away with dawn

A final goodbye:
A time for joy and sorrow
Time enough for love

Leaves falling to Earth
Branches reaching to Heaven:
Finally at peace

Licenced under a Creative Commons Licence

While I was putting together my list of 5 sayings that don’t make sense a few days ago, my mind kept coming back to “is the glass half empty or half full?”. Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because I just detest the expression with a passion. I think it was inflicted on me a few too many times as a child; I’ve never liked being psychoanalysed to begin with and now I just cringe whenever I hear it. Seriously, I don’t think there’s an expression I hate more; “because I said so” and “let’s face it” would come close, but even they don’t set my teeth on edge the same way.

A few years ago I used to hear it so often that I tried to make a game out of it; I thought if I could come up with a different answer every time, I might somehow preserve my sanity. I came up with some pretty good ones and sometimes I’d just change my answers to mess with people. It’s half full. It’s half empty. Well, it’s half empty, but really it’s full because the other half is full of air. Right now it’s half full, but there’s a crack in the glass so soon it’ll only be a third full. I decline to comment because it will reveal more about my psyche than the police are willing for me to reveal. And my personal favourite: There is no glass. You should have seen the way they’d stare at me, then turn to look at the glass when I said that! It was priceless.

But of course the reason the expression exists and has become so popular is because it asks such a simple question, but has no simple answer. We’re fascinated by the way optimistic and pessimistic influences appear in our lives; that’s why there are so many psychology books, so many self-help books - our thinking determines how we act in our day to day lives, and it’s daunting to think out mindset might have a negative outlook.

Why should it worry us, though? What’s so bad about seeing the glass as half-empty? I’ve never quite understood why. Most of us know it’s not good to be pessimistic; being in a negative state of mind makes it more difficult to function and brings you and everyone around you down, as well as having an impact on depression and other illnesses. But I don’t buy into this idea that just because I look at an equation one way, that means I’m more likely to subscribe to a certain kind of mindset. It’s just too simple; too black and white. I know it’s not that simple because whenever I try to answer the question seriously, my answer varies, and not for the reasons people think.

Does anyone else find that as well? Maybe not, but my first reaction when someone asks me “if the glass is half empty or half full?” is that it depends on whether the person is pouring or drinking. Does that make me pessimistic? I think it makes me realistic; I can’t answer the question without knowing. If you are drinking from the glass, it’s half empty; if you’re pouring water, it’s half full. Prove me wrong! But if I put that aside, I’ll often answer based on how I’m feeling that day; if I’ve had a good day, I’m more likely to say half full; a bad day, half empty. For me it’s about mood and not mindset; because my mood changes every day, how can one answer be an accurate reflection of my thinking overall?

It can’t. And that’s why I hate the expression, because people swear by it as fact; I’ve had many arguments with people who just don’t seem to accept that my answers are outside their definitions. Well, maybe they’re right from a certain point of view, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my opinion.

My definition of pessimism (or optimism) isn’t based on a thought but on a lifestyle; it’s not how you answer a question, but how you live every day. I’m more in the camp of Arthur Schopenhauer’s definition of pessimism than this current idea of negative thinking. To me pessimism is the belief (constant belief) that the world around us is the worst possible; that things will only become worse; that evil will triumph over good. Optimism is the belief that we exist for betterment and goodness; that we have value and people and events are intrinsically good; that the world has a positive influence. For me the only way to judge either is through someone’s feelings and personality rather than their mindset.

Personality is an interesting thing, isn’t it? I posted a quiz called What Kind of Soul Are You? the other day and thanks to everybody who took the time to take it , you can see some quite distinct differences. It was just a fun quiz but it was surprisingly accurate with my results; I’m fairly trusting and impulsive, and I like to think I’m creative and nonconformist. What really interested me was the way different types of people were more compatible than others; that’s true in real life. How often does someone rub you the wrong way, or you’re unable to form a connection for no reason? And yet with others, you’re on the same wavelength right away.

I think it’s because we recognise similar traits in each other; we all have our likes and dislikes, and over time that becomes part of our psyche and difficult (though not impossible!) to look past. So it’s not so strange to think that we’d form connections with people who best complement us. Often more positive people will be drawn together, and likewise negative people. Someone who thinks on a more intellectual level will crave that in return, while a docile personality might gravitate toward the opposite, to someone with strength to dominate the relationship. Our personality is unique to us, a reflection of our humour and everything that makes us an individual; whereas our thoughts can change day to day, our personality is much harder to change. It reveals much more than we vocalise; our intensity, our hopes. That’s why it’s a better judge of what kind of person we are.

So what kind of person do I think I am? The truth is, I don’t think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist. I don’t like categorising myself as anything because then I’m putting myself in a box, and once I’m in there it’s hard to get back out. Deep down I’m a positive person; I don’t chastise myself often and usually my thoughts and dreams are hopeful. But I don’t like closing myself off to my negative thoughts either because I learn more from them than from my positive ones. If I can ask myself, “why am I thinking that?”, then I can actually turn it around to my advantage; I’m not afraid to face my insecurities, and that’s why I have few fears.

If I had to say something, I guess I’d call myself a realist. Maybe that’s a cop out, but that’s just me being honest. I wonder how you see the glass? Or maybe there isn’t any glass at all?