1. I live now, not in the uninhabitable hell that was described in one of the climate scenarios I read about when doing my research this afternoon for the book.
2. My folks. Have I mentioned them yet? I spoke to them yesterday on Skype. I really like my parents. They get me (and vice versa) in a way that only people whose parts I’m made from could. I’m really looking forward to going to Barcelona with them.
3. I’m never bored. I went to a little local cafe this afternoon to do my reading. Eventually, I’ll be tapping out chapters in these sessions, and that’ll be fun. It’s also really encouraging to hear from friends who are reading or just finished one of my books, and have them curse me for keeping them up late or making them steal time to get back to the story. (My friend Kirsten’s doing that to me now with a young adult book she wrote about Easter Island.) No, the world isn’t asking for any of this output, but it feels great to be engaged with it, and to know I’ll never run out of things I want to do. When I’m bimbling through chatrooms online, I’m stunned by how many people declare to the room “I’m bored”. What a horrible approach to getting people to talk to you. And what a waste of potential.

Doodle:

<

p>

I was in the post office today, mailing off something I’d sold on eBay, and overheard the conversation between the clerk and the customer in front of me.

Customer: “I’d like to send this to Australia.”

Clerk: “What’s in the package?”

Customer: “A glass eye.”

Clerk: “Oh.”

I just wrote to a friend of mine, who’d e-mailed me this week, wondering aloud at why she was spending so much time on the couch, not working on her “stuff”. The previous blog post was my answer to her, but today while sitting on my bed doing my novel homework, something else came to mind. So I wrote her the following, though it’s really aimed at me.

======

A second thought occurred to me, about the question of “Why am I not doing my work?” It could be a matter of judgment.

I’m reading a book my editor recommended to me called Soul without Shame. It sounds very squooshy, but it makes some excellent points. This afternoon while reading this and some other material as background work for my book, I felt the overwhelming urge to have a nap. I just had to. So I gave myself twenty minutes to have a nap. Even on waking up, though, I was dogged by this sucking away of energy.

I’m scared to start a new book because part of me judges the whole effort and says “Why bother? None of your other books did much for you, and barely anyone noticed that you wrote them. Most editors didn’t like them, so maybe they’re just crap.” At a doctor’s office a few weeks ago, the attendant saw my occupation on the form and started asking me the usual questions — “Are you published? Would I have heard of you? Have you sold many copies?” etc, and it reawakened this sense of futility, and I’m still trying to shake it. (I hate that people like this with nothing to do with publishing ask these industry questions, which are roughly equivalent to my asking her what she makes in a year and whether she thought that was enough.)

I don’t actually feel that what these doubts say is true, or are the basis on which to judge the activity, but some part of myself worries that it’s true. Were in not for my own bloody-minded determination, this could scuttle the whole project. Or maybe it isn’t determination, but the fear of looking even worse to myself if I didn’t do what I said I could do.

I look at what you’ve done, and I can see how you might feel the same about your work: you’re not rich, you’re not famous, you still have to work hard to get any momentum or results. But to judge the worth or the meaning of your work by these standards would be to get it completely wrong. Your show was one of the best, most authentic and relevant pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen. When you sing with your group, the performance is powerful, good, and just plain fun. I know that what you do is developing your soul; I’ve witnessed that. You’re coming into your power more and more. You can’t stop. I can’t stop. We just can’t.

I’m not sure how to address the judgment or what to do about it. I’m looking forward getting ideas from this book. Also, my huge pile’o’books is dwindling, and soon it’ll be time for me to sit down and ask myself lots of questions. Many of them will be aimed at ironing out a story, but many will be for getting myself out of this pointless, undermining thinking that devalues the thing that’s most important to me in life, which is developing what I call a “culture of one“.

The antidote, I know from experience, is to reconnect with the work and what it’s like when it’s most fun, when you’re really in it. This other thing, thinking it should save you or justify you, just doesn’t have any joy in it. And people are moved by joy.

<

p>

It’s March, and it feels like it. Even though there are flowers bursting out of our front garden, it’s sunny, and the weather has been mild, it’s still winter.

I’m researching the book like mad, which is good, and I’ve done lots of difficult homework (reading about carbon sequestration, the troposphere, algae blooms, hydrogen storage, etc.). So far, I’ve read:

• Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert
• The Weather Makes, by Tim Flannery
• The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock
• Heat, by George Monbiot

They’ve all been excellent books — some more approachable than others. But the story idea remains just outside my grasp. I haven’t committed yet to moving forward with one specific plot.

Part of this is this apprehension is about whether I deserve to talk about any given topic. I’m not an activist, and I’m certainly no expert. My opinions are always borrowed, like a chameleon’s colours. So this period of “stocking the pond”, ingesting, digesting, is important to my process — soaking in a topic and getting comfortable with my own mind and figuring out what I have to say about a thing. And I don’t feel confident asserting that until I’ve done my homework.

But it’s so damned easy to just poke at the computer, watch movies, and eat instead.

The trick, I think, is to get that there are seasons, and to have compassion for myself as being part of that cycle. It’s appropriate and good to lie fallow sometimes, to be dormant. Much potential energy is created when things decompose in the ground.

Our work is inside us already. Sure, there are actions we have to take for it to manifest externally, but being a slave driver with a whip at our own backs never gets out the really good, deep stuff.

In addition to the climate-related books I’ve been reading, I’m also working through a number of different books about personal work, worldviews, etc.: Find Your Power, Soul Without Shame, The Enchantment of Modern Life, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. I’m still waiting on Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy, which sounds promising. Further down the queue, but I still want to get to, are Writing Open the Mind (which was one of those books you tack onto an Amazon order so you get free shipping) and Self-Promotion for the Creative Person. (That last one’s the scariest of all, and will possibly be the most useful.)

A theme that’s emerging out of this work is: “What are you afraid you’ll become if you don’t drive yourself with all this discipline?” If my work is something that I love — and I know in my heart it is — it will happen regardless. But it will happen in time, and maybe not a time-frame that satisfies my impatience or worry.

There are some other projects I’d like to get to, too, craftsy things like pop-ups and books. If only I could be productive 24 hours a day. In practice, I’ve got about five or six good hours of work, both for the Coach and my other projects, and then I need hanging out time. That’s just how it works.

<

p>

I signed up for Facebook at the suggestion of The Strategic Coach’s web programmer, who wanted me to check it out for a project we’re doing. It’s a “social networking” website — basically people chatting to groups of friends, based on a shared background. I’ve found ones for Dalhousie University’s theatre department, Charlottetown Rural High School, and even Forest Glade, my public school, which is still running and has a horrible circa-1997 website. Forest Glade, the subdivision (I really did grow up in “The Wonder Years”), also has a group of its own.

<

p>

Facebook started off as a college project, so the members tend to be young; I’ve not found anyone from Dal, the Rural, or Forest Glade of my generation yet. But in the subdivision’s group, someone posted pictures of the urban ruins of the old Easttown Plaza. This was where my family went grocery shopping at the N&D. The poster also included a picture of the abandoned Woolco.

<

p>

<

p>

I remember going to that Woolco, and Mom buying me a treat one day because I’d been a good boy while we were shopping. It was a pivotal moment, actually, which several friends will recognise, because this has become a story in my life called “The Puppy Puzzle”. It goes like this:

<

p>

When I was about four, Mom (“Mommy” in those days) and I went out shopping. We were out for a long time, but I was quiet and well-behaved. So as we passed a display piled high with boxes of puzzles, Mom stopped and told me I could have any puzzle I wanted. Wow!

<

p>

I agonised over the decision — which one? I finally narrowed it down to two: One box featured a oil-painting illustration of a cartoon puppy, grey, with huge loving eyes (very Seventies, likely also the era of the “crying clown” paintings). The other box, though, had three puzzles in it. They were solid colours — red, yellow, blue — making up a sailboat, a drum, and a soldier. I decided that it made more sense to get the one with more puzzles in it.

<

p>

When we got home, I ran with my box of puzzles down to the “crawlspace” in our basement (a weird storage area that grown-ups would bump their heads in, but made for a great play-area for my brother and I, and was a frighteningly dark place for sleepovers). I sat on the old green patterned rug that was laid over the bumpy concrete, and I took out my puzzles. I opened the box, looked inside, and I cried: I wanted the puppy puzzle.

<

p>

This stuck with me, and I trust you to infer the lesson I took from it. I’m pretty convinced this experience has informed a lot of my subsequent decisions in life.

I went to a music cabaret tonight which was supposed to start at 7, and no one was there. I sat in the pub, read my book — the first few chapters of George Monbiot’s Heat, which states that our carbon emissions actually need to be reduced by 90% for us to avert the catastrophe caused by the “positive feedback” loop that a rise of just two degrees will likely trigger.

I had a pint.

After a while, the bartender turned the volume up on the football, making reading impossible, so I necked the pint, packed up, and went downstairs, where a few people were straggling in, but nothing was really set up.

I went back home.

I wasn’t going to sit with three or four people I didn’t know trying to ingratiate myself while they assembled their instruments, or sit in a corner trying not to look like a killer.

This afternoon I had a test-call with the assistant of someone I’m going to interview for a Strategic Coach article. I used SkypeOut to call her and it was utter rubbish. Normal Skype is about 85% successful when I talk to my mum or my editor, but this was just awful. As I wrote to Skype’s support desk, “I felt like Alexander Graham Bell calling to Mr Watson, except Watson was being filtered through ‘The Matrix’.” It was embarrassing.

These two experiences underscored something odd about me: I’m comfortable standing up in front of a large audience and presenting to them, but I get shy about making phone calls or showing up alone at other people’s events (which I normally do because my friends here generally aren’t into the stuff I am).

~

Today I ordered a new OS for my [#$%ing] computer as well as office software. I now own a legal copy of almost everything I use. This has been important to me for a while, and I’m almost there.

I don’t normally do the meta-filter, hyperlink thing, but this is a scathing, wonderful article that rips the duodenum out of the tech industry.

It resonates with me, because I use a lot of tech in my daily life, and I follow what’s happening, particularly in mobile computing. I’m thrilled because a year later I don’t want to replace my Pocket PC. But a year is pathetic. The next OS is already out, and I know darn well there will be no upgrade path. I don’t care: this thing appeals to me more than the new models, which all have phones integrated into them, so they have teeny-tiny screens, because everyone’s thinking “phone-toy” rather than “computer you can do work on.”

Still, I was up late last night fixing the notification queue in the registry on my device because alarms weren’t going off. That’s pathetic in a machine whose first purpose is being an organiser.

I feel bad even criticising this thing, first because it’s generally so useful (I’m able to write this blog entry in bed), but also because I’ve been duped into this stupid machismo about having the best system, where any flaw in our gear is parlayed out into a failing of our identity, and conversations about the machines we own become indecipherable from ad hominem attacks.

I find myself drifting back to pen and paper lately, like the book I made for planning the novel. But sometimes the gadgets are indispensible tools, like when I woke up just now with four Very Big Ideas about the book, and could just record them into this in the darkm or last night, when I was able to produce a copy of my novel at home in my bedroom. I’ll also be listening to music on this later while I do my morning focusing (’cause the Shuffle is full of random loud “walkin’ choons”, so I keep my trippy pre-sleep/morning music on a separate device).

I’m going to go finish reading that article now. The writer’s tone strikes me as a bit ungratefully vicious, but I get that he feels burned by how much of his time and attention these things have consumed. And there’s something refreshing about someone telling his truth, consequences be damned.

So I’ve been bingeing on Internet TV in my spare time. The latest indulgence has been Heroes, a superheroey drama-thing.

I’m mostly really enjoying it. One thing that’s starting to get under my skin with television shows with an objective — you know, not the “genie back in the bottle” sitcom plots, but the programs with a long story arc — is the sheer amount of stalling. It’s like there’s a two-hour movie in there that’s been cereal-fillered out to a full season. (I’ve never even tried Lost because I’ve heard too much about the creators making it up as they go along, which requires constantly redefining things and playing tricks on what’s been established.)

I guess that’s why I’m drawn to writing novels — single, stand-alone novels — and not television writing. God forbid I should ever write something then have to bring the characters back onstage for an encore. I’m laughing as I write this, sitting on my bed, thinking about bringing back Fix and Julie, Hugh and Simon, or Stefan. I’d love to see them again, I really would. But it wouldn’t be right.

I just bought carbon credits to offset the trip my folks and I are taking to Barcelona in April. Now, I know that doesn’t actually undo the air travel, but I felt compelled to do something. Just saying “Ah, f**ckit” isn’t sufficient anymore.

Yesterday, I finished The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery. That was a chewy read — the most chemistry and biology I’ve encountered since high school. And even though most of it washed over me, I do find that I’m better able to understand the issues in each day’s news items about climate change.

This is the trick: how does one get active without getting all activist? In a world geared to the cult of individual freedom, where the word “enough” is anathema, almost unpatriotic, what do I do with this compulsion to do right? I feel it driving me, like it’s ingrained. My parents must have hammered this message in from an early age, about being good and thinking of others, ’cause it just doesn’t switch off. I can’t just do what I want if I know it’ll have an impact on other people — and these days it’s impossible not to be aware of the effects of every little action.

Guilt is a crappy motivator. It may work for short spells, but people will inevitably react against such heaviness, because we just want to live, not be forever negotiating our every move. And it’s not like this change has to be difficult; what I read yesterday convinced me that it can be painless and ultimately profitable, but there’s just so much inertia and vested interest at the personal, corporate, and political levels making it difficult. Whatever entrepreneuring person gets in there and makes this cool, fun, and compelling has a big future ahead of him or her — like my friend Fidel, who has been negotiating with the organisers of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, showing them how smart buildings made with environmentally-sound materials can be safer for the construction workers, less expensive to build and maintain, and be the paragon of aesthetic appeal — in other words, no compromises, so no excuses other than habit for avoiding the opportunity.

And hopefully “cool” will be why we change these things, not because shorelines and countries get washed away or completely dessicated as we move into a state of emergency.

I really, really don’t want my book to be annoying. Where is the funny in this?

Since when was “dude” an appropriate honourific to use in business communication? Okay, the “business communication” I’m referring to here is spam, so perhaps I’m being too picky. But before someone insults my genitals, offers me a mortgage in the U.S., or tells me how I can get rich by having a university degree*, I want him to call me “Sir”.

*But I have a university degree. Why am I not rich? The last time I got one of those “a degree will get you $30-40,000 extra a year” messages, I forwarded it to Magda in payroll. She laughed.