Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2019

What do you write about?

If you look at stories that have appeared in the last year, you see books on drugs and people hooking up, children who disappear and people hooking up, and small towns and people hooking up; you see stories about poverty, wealth, and the dreams of middle-class people. If you look at storylines from movies that have appeared over the past couple of years, you see superheroes, action heroes, fantasy worlds, dinosaurs, murderous machines, and people hiding in the woods. If you’re interested in non-fiction, themes covered in books that have appeared in the last year include politicians, politicians’ wives, world wars, other wars, religion, ways to improve yourself, ways to make money, and the things you learn when you travel the world. Same with material on the Internet. There are popular websites covering just about any fad, hobby, interest or obsession you can think of.

So what do you write about then?

You still write stories you want to tell, even though similar stories have already appeared. And if you don’t consider yourself much of a storyteller but you feel you have an opinion or two you want to share, you write about matters that are important to you, no matter how many books or articles on the topic have already appeared.

Why? Because your perspective is different from that of the next man or woman. And even if it’s similar, you’ll probably write about it differently, with other examples or case studies, or you’ll describe situations or state your views in other words.

Ultimately, you share yourself with people who share the planet with you, or who will inhabit the planet long after you’ve left Earth for a colony on Mars or a place in the Nothingness. You share with others what you believe, how you see things, how you experience things, what you think of what other people believe, even what you think of stories written by other people, or films made by other people, or political manifestos published by others.

You are not the next person, and your experience of the human condition on planet Earth is to a great extent unique. Write about it – for yourself, for your neighbours, your friends, your family, and for people you will never meet because they will discover your writing fifty years from now in a digital form that will only be developed ten years from now. And just maybe one person finds one thing you said, or the way you explained something, entertaining, or encouraging, or educational.

In short, keep writing.

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WEDNESDAY, 15 MAY 2019

The problem with earning your money with creative work is that you’re either very lucky that people continue to buy your creative work even if you do what you want and in the style you want, or you do end up looking at what’s in demand for the sake of your survival – types of products and styles, and then producing what the market wants to buy – which means you’re not doing free creative work anymore.

So, you’re either very lucky that people keep buying your free creative work, or you’re not so lucky and you end up doing what the market wants, and how they want it. And even if you fall in the lucky category, how long do you expect it to last?

TUESDAY, 28 MAY 2019

01:30

To make money, you only need to know a few important things. Problem is, you need to discover these few things in an ocean of information.

10:02

The problem is therefore not the amount of knowledge or information you need to discover and learn, but to discover a handful of specific snippets among dozens, even hundreds of snippets of information, and to choose between a variety of options, opportunities and possibilities.

THURSDAY, 6 JUNE 2019

A friend of mine who had already been in Taiwan since early 1998 offered to loan me money in October of that year for a plane ticket to Taiwan – in case I wanted to get out of my office job and return to English teaching. If he had offered me money for a plane ticket to any city in Northeast Asia … I might never have left Johannesburg. Fortunately for me the offer and therefore the choice was simple: Taiwan, Kaohsiung – take it or leave it. And just look at how well things worked out.

MONDAY 10 JUNE 2019

00:17

What does success look like? The process that leads to it is boring and monotonous, and you only see the result after months or years of hard, boring, monotonous work.

I always thought it could be seen in one brilliant flash, one day that stands out – and then you know.

I reckon there are many people who have stared success in a career or in an endeavour in the face more than once in their lives, but who have walked away time and again because they didn’t recognize it for what it was: the result of monotonous and boring, repetitive steps, five or six days a week, week in and week out, one year after another.

23:03

I’m reading the piece, “The correct answer, and what to do with my exercise bike”. Couldn’t help to highlight a piece of text: “The problem is that I started cultivating and living the lifestyle here [in Taiwan] that I said back in Korea I wanted to live in South Africa. In other words, I got the lifestyle right; it’s just the environment that is wrong.”

FRIDAY, 14 JUNE 2019

Quote from Onder-Kouga – Bakermat van Gerbers en Ferreiras [Lower Kouga – Cradle of the Gerbers and Ferreiras], by O.J.O Ferreira:

“The philosopher Marthinus Versfeld saw the function of a home like this: ‘Your home places you in the world. It gives you an address, somewhere where you can be addressed. Just as your soul needs your body to place it in the world and keep it warm, so a body requires a home to keep it warm. Therefore, your home is also a kind of flesh and blood from which you accept and build up the world. You go in to go out, and you go out to go in. Where your home stands determines your view, and how it looks inside determines how you will see the world beyond.’”

Seeing it that way makes it no wonder that I settled down in Taiwan. I was almost 28 when I arrived here. I was a soul desperate for a body; a body desperate for a home. My inner conflict stemmed from the desire to find this home in South Africa rather than in Taiwan, where it became more tangible by the day. The conflict was finally resolved when I accepted that I had already found, or created my home in Taiwan.

MONDAY, 17 JUNE 2019

The steps you finally take to receive money are, I believe, quite simple, and could surely even be described as easy. Eventually. But to discover, or to learn, or to work out, exactly what steps to take, when, and how – this I know, is not easy, and not simple.

WEDNESDAY, 19 JUNE 2019

I went to see a movie this afternoon at the Kaohsiung Film Archive. There were three movies to choose from. The showing just after lunch suited me better, so that was the one I chose. I was actually relieved that there weren’t more options. I enjoyed the movie – if you can describe a romantic drama about two sick young people as enjoyable. I was also aware that, had I had more options, I would not have chosen this movie.

* * *

Because it might be a lesson for someone else, three reasons why financial prosperity … let’s just say, has been a struggle for me to achieve:

1. I made assumptions too quickly.

2. I followed my own head too easily instead of following instructions.

3. Difficult to admit because choices are so important in one’s life, but … I had too many options. If someone had said, “We took the liberty to choose on your behalf: this one, or nothing; nothing or this one,” I would have said, “Well, then I choose this one.” Chances are it would have worked out well enough.

THURSDAY, 20 JUNE 2019

Sometimes it feels like every week is like the one that preceded it, as if days and weeks and months flow together as one.

Here’s an alternative wording for this situation: Stay strong and healthy.

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SATURDAY, 13 APRIL 2019

Any of a number of things – a resource, a book, a snippet of information – can bring to your attention on any given day something that will give you a huge boost on your path to success. I’m talking about the kind of thing you would point to in six months, or in two years, or in five years’ time, and say, “That thing – made the world’s difference.”

Of course, you won’t realise the real value when the resource, the tool, the book or the piece of information (“Did you know…”) comes your way. After all, it won’t arrive in an envelope marked “That Thing You Will Refer To Later”. But you will eventually know: It was one of the things that brought you where you are today.

Once you accept that these things are out there – floating around you as it were – it makes perfect sense to keep your mind open, and to anticipate a significant resource falling into your lap.

MONDAY, 15 APRIL 2019

11:01

Number two: Recognise the possibility that you are already doing something that will eventually make you financially independent, or that you’re already in the place where it is going to happen, or are already in the right industry, the right market or the right profession. You may be closer than you think.

11:54

Think of an unpleasant situation from your past (come on, it’s an experiment). Observe the feeling that arises. Decide on what you want to put more weight: “Recordings” from your subconscious that dictate how you should feel about it or conscious decision in the here and now.

Remember: these recordings are not your own thoughts; they’re just records of what other people have said over the years, or what you’ve read in books, or heard on TV or in a movie, and which were stored away in an effort to make it easier for you to make a decision in the future, or take a position that can make you better fit into your environment, and/or that may enable you to function better.

I understand why these so-called recordings are necessary, and why they can be valuable, so it is with respect to my subconscious that I say: The recordings in the particular case I think of are not valuable. I therefore decide, now and here, to label the unpleasant memory as Not As Important As I Used To Think It Was, and in the process I draw energy away from it. Next time the memory knocks on the inside of my skull, the sensation will necessarily matter less – like a fly that sits on your arm for a moment, and then flies away.

TUESDAY, 23 APRIL 2019

Was again reminded of Monday’s thought (15/04/19). Something happens. You either immediately feel something about it, or you wonder how you should feel about it. If you immediately feel something – where does it come from? Uncritical response from your subconscious; a previously programmed or recorded response that was waiting for an appropriate situation.

Is that how you want to feel about it?

If you ask yourself this question, where do you look for an answer? Earlier experiences that may be similar to the present one; things that other people have said about such situations, and which you thought at that time sounded correct and appropriate.

Again, ask yourself: How do you want to feel about it?

Chances are that the answer will be: “Nothing. I don’t want to feel anything about it. It’s not really important. I’d rather just move past it.”

Will no response adversely affect your well-being and happiness in the future? If not, why should you care about who said what, or what happened? Why, if it’s not going to adversely affect your happiness and well-being in the future, should you care at all about something someone said?

And if you decide, or realise it doesn’t matter, let it go.

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SATURDAY, 20 APRIL 2019

South Africa is the country of my birth, my childhood, my youth, and my early adulthood. Asia, and more specifically Taiwan, is where I have spent the rest of my life so far.

South Africa has given me language and all the other building blocks of identity – culture; association with the history of a particular group of people; initial preferences in food and drink; ideas about who and what I am and/or who or what I was supposed to be, and an assumption of what I was going to do as an adult, or an idea of the options considered reasonable and acceptable for an adult to do with his or her life. Taiwan gave me the confidence to look at other options, including a language I could master for daily use that I never thought I would ever learn in the first two decades of my life; aspects of culture that I could observe and experience first-hand and could consider incorporating into my own life; other types of dishes and methods of food preparation to the ones with which I grew up, and more freedom to pursue ideas about who and what I am, and to consider a wider spectrum of options that are reasonable and acceptable for an adult to do with his or her life.

Am I getting alienated from the country of my birth?

I’ve been living in Taiwan for over 20 years, and in Asia more than 22 years. Will people look at me and think for a moment that I am Asian? Not likely. Not even if I live in Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia for another 20 years. I do nourish myself with Taiwanese food on a daily basis. I don’t even think twice about taking off my shoes before I enter someone’s residence. I don’t mind if people stand close to me in the queue at the supermarket, and I follow the same custom by standing closer to other people than what most Westerners regard as acceptable given Western ideas about personal space. I still don’t understand most of what TV news readers rattle off in Chinese, but I can read enough Chinese to understand the subtitles. And I can tell a Taiwanese police officer my version of an incident in Chinese to such an extent that he understands that I am not the one that has to be arrested.

Will I be able to return to South Africa right now and without missing a beat converse with other citizens about South African affairs of the day? No. The cultural shock to be back in the country of my birth, of my youth and my early adulthood will also likely be worse than the shock I experienced when I arrived in Asia 23 years ago. The sense of personal safety one has in Taiwan will leave me vulnerable and paranoid in South Africa. The gap between rich and poor in South Africa is also dramatically different from Taiwan. The rich variety of languages and cultural practices in South Africa is something else I am no longer accustomed to. What I as a white South African am allowed to say to whom, and how I am supposed to say it, is another area where I will initially commit some errors. (In Taiwan, I’m not seen as a member of a previously privileged group, so I don’t have to be careful about how I talk to people to avoid offending someone.) [In case you don’t follow the link, I am referring to some white people who think white South Africans should speak differently to black South Africans than how they would usually speak to people, to ensure they avoid offending black people.]

I also find nowadays that I enjoy movies that play off in Northeast Asia, about Taiwanese or Japanese or Korean or Chinese people, in a way that may only be possible if you have personal experience with Taiwanese people, or Japanese or Korean or Chinese people and with the dominant cultures of these countries. And I realised again recently, especially after we saw parts of Taiwan that we had never seen before, that I was comfortable with the idea of spending the rest of my life on this mountainous island.

I was born in South Africa, and it was there that I received the building blocks for the person I still am almost five decades later. My parents and my two sisters and their families still live there. I still have a strong interest in South African history. And although I have definitely developed a preference for especially Taiwanese vegetable dishes that are healthier than the vegetables with butter and sugar and cream prepared in South African kitchens, I still plan to enjoy a healthy portion of pudding and other desserts when I visit my family again in a few months.

I am still a South African born and raised, but there is no doubt that Taiwan is the place I want to go back to whenever I go away for more than a few days. And it’s not just because my wife and life partner also calls this place home, or because our two cats know no other home than the one we have provided to them.

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SATURDAY, 30 MARCH 2019

Thought about it again last night: the impression and accompanying programming I had received in my youth, and until recently never corrected, that making money should not just be a struggle but also that the result of my efforts would never actually be good enough. When I asked – who? my subconscious? – the hypothetical question of when I would reach a point where I’d consider that I had “made” it, the answer came promptly and clear as daylight: Never.

A terrifying insight, finally uncovered when I happened to think the right words in the right order.

Needless to mention by this time that this was all a misunderstanding. It doesn’t need to be a struggle to make money. You can, like any other person taking the right steps, get the appropriate results. After all, it works for me when I take the right steps with my health, and it worked for me when I took the right steps when I met someone I liked.

Regarding health and relationships I received reasonably good programming and exposure as a young person, and little resistance if I had wanted to go in another direction – my older sister, for example, decided for some time shortly after high school that she was a vegetarian, and I observed that there wasn’t much resistance from my parents. My programming regarding personal finances and making money was, however, a textbook fuck-up.

Okay, very little of this hasn’t been spelled out yet, so let me get to the real point: Take the right steps and get the appropriate result. Take more of the right steps and move even further in the direction you want to go. More right steps, more right actions, more appropriate results … until you reach a point that can only be described as you having broken through to the other side. As you stand on what would clearly be the opposite bank, you might still wonder when exactly “all of this” happened. But there would be no doubt: You will have made it.

And this does not only apply to making money, but also to relationships, and to health.

THURSDAY, 4 APRIL 2019

I smoked for fourteen years. Since I worked in a tobacco shop in my early twenties where I was surrounded by fragrant tobacco every day, I started with pipe smoking. Later I worked my way through a series of cigarette brands I believed would enhance my personal identity. First there was Camel Lights, then Gauloises Blondes, then Marlboro Lights and finally Craven “A”. Then, after trying hard for a few weeks in 2002 to quit, I puffed on with a better class of cigarette called Nat Sherman.

Like most habitual smokers, I knew I eventually had to overcome the habit. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I really liked smoking. There was something about craving a cigarette, and then after a while getting an opportunity to break away … taking out a cigarette, tapping it on the packet, lighting the tobacco, and taking that first drag of smoke into your lungs. Salvation! I was also conceited enough to imagine myself a more discriminating smoker than people who smoked ordinary convenience store cigarettes – I even rolled my own smokes.

I was one hundred percent smoker; there was no doubt about that.

And then, the day after Christmas 2008, I – once again – started taking steps to shake the habit. First I threw my remaining cigarettes into an old book bag, together with all my lighters, ashtrays, tobacco, roller, rolling papers, filters, and pipes, and took it to my (then) fiancé’s apartment. After a week, as I had negotiated with myself, I smoked two cigarettes. Then two weeks nothing, then another cigarette (maybe two). I might have smoked a cigarette again at the end of January, and then six months passed before I bought another pack to enjoy some cigarettes with friends on a night out. I was, however, strict about one rule: I wouldn’t smoke any cigarettes at home. The packet would go into the fridge until another social event. So it went on – two or three cigarettes when we went out with friends every few weeks, but nothing on my own at home.

By 2013, a few months had gone by that I didn’t smoke any cigarettes. When we went out again one night, I realised I had no desire to stand outside with the smokers and suck on a tube of tobacco. The idea of the smell on my fingers, the taste in my mouth, the possible sudden rise in blood pressure, the light feeling in my head – were simply not worth the experience I had previously enjoyed so much.

It was clear that I had reached the other side. I was no longer a smoker. The other side had become my new reality. I could have wondered if I wanted to: When did this happen? Had I asked, I would have answered: Do you remember all the steps you have taken since Christmas 2008?

* * *

One more example: For many years in my twenties and early thirties I was on my own – alone, stuck with only my own company even at times when I really would have enjoyed some female companionship. It felt like it was my fate in life. I got so used to it that I couldn’t imagine myself having a female presence in my life ever again – with all the wonderful benefits that come with it. I started accepting that I was on one side of the chasm, and people who had found happiness with another person were on the other.

Then I met a woman – also from South Africa, a few months after she had arrived in Taiwan. From that very first day I knew I liked her. But I was sure she would never see me as anything more than a friend.

Over the next few months, however, I got to know her better, and to my deepest surprise, I received some signals that she might just be interested in more than just friendship.

So I started taking steps to turn the connection between us into something more. As anyone who has ever gone from “nothing” to “definitely something” with another person knows, there was a series of “negotiations”. I followed the steps and undertook the negotiations to the best of my ability.

And then, one day, there was no doubt that I was on the other side of that chasm. No doubt. Once again, I could have looked myself in the eyes in the bathroom mirror and asked: When did this happen? When did this become my new reality? Once again, I could have answered: Do you remember seeing her again after a few weeks, and afterwards giving her a call and suggesting that you meet for coffee the next day – a Sunday it was? Do you remember other appointments and dates over the next few weeks and months? Do you remember taking a series of actions with a dash of positive expectation?

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