Clarity through questions

Lake Burbury, in the West Tasmania wilderness country (Jan 2020)

And here we are, already into the second month of the new decade. Where the hell did January even go?

The beginning of the new year has been a timely reminder to sit down and recalibrate - to differentiate between what is worth pursuing in the next 12 months and what is not.
Choosing what to avoid seems to be as important as choosing what to pursue.

And one of the questions that came up for me was: where does this blog sit in the bigger picture? Why have I not published anything since July 2019? Did life get busy or did I get lazy?
Why? Why? Why?

I will spare you the list of (fluffy and self affirming) excuses that my mind has already conjured up in the time it took me to write that last sentence, but the fact stands that the blog has not seen a new post in 6 months.

“Am I finally folding to that ever present, modern society pressure to publish and post something, anything, to keep the feed scrolling?”

It is not that I have been going through a falling out with the process of writing or anything like that. In fact, this blog just does not get to see 99% of what gets written down. I have been a big fan of the practice of daily journalling since I started back in January 2019.

You know something sticks when:
a) you enjoy the process enough to keep it around as a daily routine and
b) it has withstood the tests of time.

This is what the journal looks like.

My 2019 Hobonichi Techo

It is a Hobonichi Techo daily journal, something I heard about over the internet from Tim Ferriss. As you might be able to tell from the name itself, it is a Japanese notebook and to me it is special because:
a) it does not get in the way of the act of sitting down to write and
b) on the page of every second day of the whole year, there are these printed quotes at the very bottom of the page that never fail to entertain.

2 February 2019 - exactly a year ago

So with hindsight, it is clear to me now that the daily journal has been an effective way for me to feed my day-to-day need of expressing 'mundane' and 'ordinary' experiences, thoughts and ideas while the blog has been designed as a platform to articulate more about the highlights that occur as the year progressed. And if I look back on July 2019 and dig a little deeper as to what happened in the 6 months after, there was a lot that happened but perhaps not 'grand' or 'significant' enough for me to share more broadly.

In August, it was very much still winter here in Tasmania but I took advantage of good weather whenever I could to go out into the mountains with hiking boots on.

This was near the top of Mt Roland (elev. 1233m), about an hour away from home.

In September I got to recalibrate with a 'big city' (it is funny to observe how I speak as if I am a small country town boy who has never seen bright lights and skyscrapers before) by visiting Brisbane for a week, and towards the end of the month I was also able to get started on a personal project that has been long awaited for - parking up my 1994 Mitsubishi FTO and taking apart pieces of the engine and replacing very, very old gaskets and seals.

This particular project, surprise surprise, blew out completely in terms of the time and money that was originally allocated for it. The intention of spending just 1 month turned into something like 3 months and the money, well, maybe I'll talk about that in another time. So from October all the way up to mid December, most of the weekends I had were spent tinkering in the garage.

You might read this thinking that the whole time was a struggle fest, but actually a big chunk of it was spent in flow and I really enjoyed learning through using my hands and breaking down a complicated machine into simpler and more comprehensible pieces - and then the journey of putting everything back together and turning the key to start.

"Being one with nature" - the complexity of machines and the mountains

Mid November was also when some of my old friends from Perth came down to tour Tasmania over a long weekend and we had a blast hiking and exploring around the legendary Cradle Mountain when the weather was a little grey, unpredictable and with so much soft snow everywhere.

Well, what else do you do with snow anyways?

Not long after that, around the middle of December 2019, I left Tasmania for about a month to visit the family back in Perth and then travel onwards for some adventuring in Seoul, South Korea and all three hotspots in Japan - Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. There were many, many stories that came from these that I will be leaving for another time.

So yes, a lot has been going on, and perhaps not everything I previously brushed broadly over as 'mundane', 'ordinary' and 'not worth sharing' was justified. But this also makes me think and question about my personal intention behind sharing these stories in the first place. Am I finally folding to that ever present, modern society pressure to publish and post something, anything, to keep the feed scrolling? Or do I have something I would like to say?

I am not sure at this stage, and the answers are not clear. But what is clear to me is that the act of thinking, reflecting and articulating through sitting down to write continues to pay its dividends by revealing the hidden depth to these experiences that have already passed. And perhaps as you read through this whole process of me trying to figure out the Why to my story, that it sparks your own curiousity to understand more about your own journey and how you got here.

I personally believe that everyone has their own unique, one-of-one, precious story to tell but it becomes the responsibility of the individual to realise that there is much power in the story you tell yourself and others around you. It is within your control to choose whether your personal story becomes a well of strength to draw upon or something left neglected, undefined, hidden in the shadows and never reaching its full potential.

“No matter what he does, every person on Earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it. The boy smiled. He had never imagined that questions about life would be of such importance to a shepherd”
- Paulo Coelho