Action and Inaction

I begin this day as I do most days with eyelids fluttering open to receptors unkeen and reluctant to be drawn kicking and screaming into the dew day, like an infant being ejected from a mothers vagina. I handed the keys of the project I have worked on over the past five days to its owner last night. And she was one happy bee about it. Beginning something like that, of converting a car into a bedroom is one I had never really thought of before – but I have the skills and experience to be able to bring-forth the project into reality and work out the problems as they present themselves without having to resort to reading manuals or watching videos are asking the professional opinion of a dozen or so alleged 'experts'.

Looking at the van – an innocuous ford tourneo connect, it wasn't jumping out with options for what could be done. Not the most usual car for putting a bed and cabinet in, but I would make it work. The tricky details come down to attaching bits of wood to metal and plastic car. Anyway, I got a tape measure out, got some measurements, checked out some corners and scribbled down some drawings on some envelopes and put together a plan and design of the space. I was to give myself around 5 days for the job – 5 relatively intense days and so realised that working on it on the side of the road would not work out very well for all the practical issued which went along with it (power supplies, space, distraction, places to stay, material storage and cups of tea).

Where i'm at:

Sat now in a starbucks doing the cliché' of cliché' things – at a table, slurping hot caffeine and tippy tapping on my laptop. Got time to kill see. How often this happens to me. So what is it that i'm doing here really? This is a loaded question and I ask it as I ask a number of other things to get some kind of response from myself to validate this. We all like to be seen as useful and feel in control – there's nothing more obvious unto this as the endless phone chat and gap filling that we all find ourselves doing when in a position with a lull in action/stimulus. We can't be seen just standing and being present unless an action is being performed at the same time. We do this as we like to continuously be stimulated or entertained. Whether it comes from a handheld device or from the people and things we surround ourselves with makes no difference. We binge eat, watch, drink and prod our ways through the day assuming that when we fill our time with all sorts of stimuli we are achieving something as a result. Maybe it's a new fact, or a new sensation or just appeasing the need, we believe it contributes to our organism as a whole.

My case and point here is to say that the underlying things which make our personalities, our strengths and weaknesses are largely unchanged by this, but from excess 'filler's' we may find many of us retreat into these worlds as they present a safe place of so much more comfort than any real life situation can give us. The real world is messy, it is disorderly and it is not the fantastic space which constantly entrenches in on our mind in the imagination of screen writers, directors, editors and creators. We see the spectrum of strong colours in film, in books, in anything produced for consumption, and that's why this immersion can lead to a diluted impression of the real world. We cease to pay attention to other senses – smell, taste, the gut and instead get hooked on visuals and sounds. It's no wonder that many have become wonder-lost and shut off the difficulty situations in their lives with distractions and excuses.

Furthermore, there's a tendency to go along with things even when it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. We pay the bus driver and sit on the bus and close our eyes as the bus trundles down the road, not paying attention to what is happening out the window, but what is happening at our feet, or in the recesses of the back of eye eyelids.

How will we grow and develop into interesting beings if we can't see the interest in ourselves? We can become inspired by what we see and listen to, but there needs to be a distinction between holding the reigns and allowing these things to offer you new horizons and just being towed along for the ride with no will to determine the destination.

Actuating a path for ourselves is the only way we can become ourselves. Falling short of this is akin to being the observer in the crowd in the game of life – we must understand this in order to be able to move through from our reservations and our acknowledgements of our weaknesses and shortcomings to a point where we embrace it all and not shy away from that we dislike.