Much of the epiphany that will follow is kind of a weird one that has all coagulated after many late-night rants at/with my own personal live-in mutual therapist, Housemate Kermit Brown. It is also the result of a tremendous amount of reading I’ve done, and a recent move I’ve made towards examining what actually matters in life.
I mean, in general – what we should all be doing with ourselves and so on.
Oh goody, you intone with a somewhat dry, cynical air. Something we can actually engage with for a change, instead of just gaping at your rampant descent into self-indulgent stupidity and madness, shrugging and then walking away.
Okay um well … I’ll give it a shot?
So
Two days ago I read He Died With a Felafel in his Hand* in one sitting. As I was powering through the last 50 pages or so Queen Snow came out of nowhere and removed my eyebrows with a styling blade. She felt like it, I guess?
Me, wearing a Dinosaur Comics shirt, doing my best imitation of a Star Trek alien
Serves me right for promising to remove my eyebrows if we raised $2000 for the Leukaemia Foundation. Thus ends this whole epic Cavemen/Rat-Tail/Charity thing that I’ve been garbling about for a month or so now. Back to the modern era, where I suddenly remember: in addition to not having eyebrows or a rat-tail anymore, I also still don’t have a job, or any massive urges to go looking for one just yet.
Yesterday I spent the whole morning playing my flute, brainstorming short story ideas and writing silly lyrics, eventually moving on to abusing a perfectly good guitar (and the ears of anyone within range), belting out bastardised versions of the Whitlams, Ben Folds and the Cat Empire. This morning was lost to giving Queen Snow a pretty-solid-if-I-say-so-myself** talk about improving her English accent and so on … followed by an attempt to help her balance on her head which went … amusingly.
When I’m done writing all this I’m going for a run which will end with me climbing a tree I’m quite fond of in the nearby park. I’m considering staying the night in it for funsies.
MYKAL! you interject, all exasperated and stuff. This bears more resemblance to a 12 year-old girl’s secret DIARY than a blog with any purpose or relevance to well, anything! More so than USUAL! Are you even PRETENDING to have a point any more? You just haven’t done anything challenge-like since cutting your hair and now you’re looking for things to blog about! Go on, who do you have a crush on then? I’m sure it will be VERY INTERESTING AND WORTHY OF MY PRECIOUS TIME.
To which I say … mmm, fair call I guess? But as usual, I AM building to something here. TRUST ME? (I have a crush on YOU. YOU know who you are.)
So is the final day of construction on this thing you’re building to gonna be any time soon or what? Are you working with local union-affiliated tradies who get paid by the hour to build this “something”? Cos I’m thinking I might go make some tea and have a nap and read War and frikkin Peace and get into a debate about abortion or evolution or politics or something on the internet and go raise a family, live a full and rich life, grow old and grey with my beloved and if I remember later I MIGHT come back and see if you ever got to that point you were hinting at near the start.
YES ALRIGHT GEEZ OKAY WHY DO I EVEN KEEP LINKING TO THAT POST.
It’s just … why should we even care that you spent all morning playing the flute while we were studying or working or whatever? That’s not even impressive. It’s definitely not INTERESTING.
Well here’s a question – why don’t I just delete all this and start again?
I’m tipping you’re gonna spew some epic wall-of-text rhetoric wank that could just as easily (and far less painfully) be summed up as: “stylistic choice”
You might be onto something there. Let’s go with that.
*** *** ***
So why am I listing all the ways I’ve been chilling lately? Well, the challenge was “Be Kind to Myself”, after all. The truth is, a couple months ago it would have been a huge freaking deal that I’d done even just one of those things in a single week, and I’ve covered why that is at gratuitous length already. But in the last couple weeks of relaxing and doing exactly what I felt like, not stressing too hard about the long game, I have experienced a subtle but powerful shift in my mindset.
You know how, when you’re a kid, they always tell you things like, “just be yourself” and “nobody in the world is as good at being you, as you!” like this is actually meaningful or helpful advice? And then you become a teenager and especially once you hit uni you develop all these social skills that are basically all about hiding a good chunk of yourself from the world whilst also pretending to be a “professional”? Because in order to get by out there you really do have to be careful not to invoke the ill-judgement of certain small-minded but powerful people. Because you become increasingly aware that there is some pretty serious competition out there who at the very least look more “professional” than you feel inside.
The good news is, turns out at the end of this whole fiasco you do have the option of going full circle on all that shit. And that is how I’m “being kind to myself”.
Turns out, nobody in the world is as good at being me as I am. I fucking kick ARSE at being me. And being myself involves associating with a bunch of talented nutjobs who support the silliest of ideas and just generally make the world that much more of an interesting and encouraging place to live in. In spite of the funny looks occasional tent-seekers throw my way I actually quite enjoy being me – I guess that’s why I keep doing it.
During the spit-balling brain-storming phases of the Caveman thing, Ek the Dreamer pointed out to me that if I wanted to go as far as plugging for corporate sponsorship for a charity stunt, I could do some sort of a showcase detailing all of the fun little things I’ve done in the past. That never came to pass for a number of reasons, but this remark really excited me. The idea of putting together some sort of CV that outlined all my favourite cool stuff I’ve been a part of was really exciting to me. I imagined a rough draft would look something like this.
Very rough, you understand. Obviously with editing that sloppy nobody’s hiring me!
But that’s the point.
What you made it to the point already? you say, with a smugness undeserving of someone who read this far just to mock me at some later point.
Yes, that is it. Right there. The point is that when I’m good to go, assuming I’ve got enough notice (probable) and enough of my wits about me (unlikely) to reflect on my life, I won’t be thinking about handing my “Professional Real-World Real-Job CV” in to help those I leave behind decide what to write on my obituary or whatever. I’ll be telling my grandkids about the crazy stuff that happened to me when I was in Japan, or when I rode my bike from one end of the country to the other just cos.
Even now, I don’t regret missing chances to enhance my career options nearly as much as I regret being too nervous to go try a new thing, or being too ill-prepared or “busy” to have a crazy adventure.
Wait. No. Just no. This is what you were building to this whole time? This battered old Disney-level cliché? “Carpe diem, be yourself and Be Not Afraid”?! THAT’S what you’ve had me invest all of my valuable internet-time on this time?!
You know what? Yes.
Because I don’t think this cliché’s really getting through to all of us who wanna roll our eyes and say it’s damned obvious or oversimplistic. I think in the name of “being realistic” many of us sacrifice our sanity and ambition. In deciding that some things are “sensible” and choosing to focus on being sensible, we have developed a new kind of madness which does not get diagnosed since we all happily participate. We think that life is divided into “things we have to do” and “things we want to do” – and of course if you are a meticulous pedantic digs-himself-deeper-by-going-around-in-circles (you know, like a drill) type like myself, you will blow well over half of your LIFE on the things you “have to do.”
This would be FINE if the things we “have” to do were as numerous as we can stress ourselves into believing.
But what do we need in order to be alive? Food, adequate shelter, access to medical facilities. Surely I’ve missed something. Please help me out.
So where the fuck do all these bills keep coming from? Most of my money doesn’t go towards these necessities, and I’d wager neither does yours.
I don’t have kids, I don’t have a serious physical illness. Therefore, I really have no excuse for thinking I don’t have enough money to get by. Most of that money would go into various luxury items/services and petrol which gets me to and from work on time. So obviously I want some money for that sort of thing – also “kids” and “serious physical illness” aren’t total future impossibilities, after all.
But I certainly don’t need all this … stuff. And my life should not revolve around the acquisition of funds and status. Both of those things should be utterly incidental background details.
We do have our own limits, but we are the only ones capable of truly knowing what those are. Now before you scoff at me again, do you think I’m being overly idealistic here?
Of course you are. I love writing, but I’m not good enough to get a publishing contract or whatever so why worry about being a writer?
Exactly. That right there is an example of letting somebody else decide your limits. Did you want to spend your life writing or did you want to earn the right to be called a professional writer by other people? If you just fricking write, who cares if you get called a writer.
I’ve got my Life CV. I’ve submitted it to myself, and hey, turns out I’m hired!
Slept your way in, no doubt.
Haha. Hey, shut up. My life as a Professional Mykal begins now!
So basically, being a “Professional Mykal” means just doing whatever the hell you feel like forever.
How fortunate for me that “whatever the hell I want” includes self-improvement, self-reliance, getting involved with helping people and staying in a position where I can look after those closest to me!
Yes, you may have said that a few times already. Can’t wait to read the post where you’ve run out of money. “Challenge #34: Swallow My Pride and Return to the Real World With My Tail Between My Legs.”
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
WE’LL see what Challenge #34 is!!!
Excuse me for now. I’m going to go for a run and then sleep in a tree.
How delightfully and desperately ‘quirky’ of you.
I'll look less like a serial killer pedo when my eyebrows grow back
*A 200-ish page long account of Australian sharehouse life delightfully told in the style of a well-structured drunken yarn with no pretence of anything resembling plotline. It is phenomenal
** “I majored in Linguistics my area of interest was language acquisition blah blah blah wank wank wank”
A Year of Monthly Challenges 