this simple life update

Well 20 days to go and we are nearly at the DOUBLE mark for the comic camapaign- £1941 pledged- which is great. Meanwhile I have been in the Lake District reseraching a new story for THIS SIMPLE LIFE provisionally entitled 'Rob and Mark's big rubber boat adventure.'! Or something.

please help fund my kickstarter campaign!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thissimplelife/this-simple-life-a-quarterly-comic-of-memoir-and-adventure?ref=user_menu

I wanted a comic that featured memoir and travel and adventure, I wanted it to be REAL, not another webcomic, and I wanted it delivered to my door. So that is what I came up with THIS SIMPLE LIFE is a memoir based true life comic. if you want to find out more go to the links...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thissimplelife/this-simple-life-a-quarterly-comic-of-memoir-and-adventure?ref=user_menu

opposites to consider

The bunker - world wide network of friends

Nuclear tourism - running a beautiful river

Trolling - practical and spirited encouragement

Envy of the wealthy - understanding the moment

Correcting others - getting benefit from a drone's eye view of human foibles

micro-capitalism

My use of this term means the human and small scale and fun side of trading, buying, making and selling without a bureaucratic superstructure designed to suck the life-force out of you.

Any company- which means ANY big company using subscriptions as a revenue generator- which makes it hard to change or leave is using bureaucracy as a weapon against the human race! Companies that create layers of complication to diddle us are immoral. So it is no surprise that once you've been duffed up by such a company you hate the whole thing. And because the word 'capitalism' is bandied about with about as much care as the word 'democracy' you end up wondering what label you want to take a breather under.

Reject bureaucratic capitalism- by which I mean cease working for such entities unless you have an escape plan- and embrace micro-capitalism. 

modern life is boring

Boredom is not a subject that has been studied very successfully. There are thousands of books on power and violence and sexual problems and depression and anxiety but hardly any on boredom. Philosophers have given it a cold shoulder. Foucoult never wrote Boredom and Civilisation, Heidegger didn’t pen Boredom and Time and Sartre may have written Nausea but he didn’t write ‘Bored shitless’. 

Yet as a dad you know one thing is going to come, sooner rather than later: “I’M BORED.” What is the thing you get to hear from teenagers during a TV voxpop on any town, city or village: “It’s fucking boring here.” As a child my sister had a French exchange and her new pal knew no English. But she had a dictionary. One of the first things she did was to rustle through it and point to a word: BORED. Which she pronounced Bore-red. After a few days she had learned to say “I am bor-red. I am the very bor-red.” 

Boredom is when the world lets you down. Depression is when you let the world down. Philip Larkin so truthfully wrote: first boredom, then fear. Many commentators, like former laureate Andrew Motion, misunderstand this notion of boredom- surely you’re frightened of life first and then it gets boring? But this is normal, regular, healthy boredom not the deep existential boredom that Larkin knows, that kids, whether in a delightful home counties village or an innercity housing estate know. Existential boredom is the great killer, the destroyer of decades of young life. It is the corrosive poison of our times and has nothing to do with being ‘a bit bored with that now’ as we speak of a lack of interest in Miles Davis or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Normal boredom happens when you are no longer challenged, the job is too easy. Existential boredom happens when the whole wold ceases to engage you. The cogs are slipping and quite obviously it is the prelude to depression- or anxiety- as Larkin wrote.

My sisters used to say towards the end of the summer holidays that they were bored and looking forwards to school. Being a contrarian I set myself against every commonly held view. I knew from encounters at school and through TV that kids were ‘supposed’ to find ordinary life boring so I was determined never to be bored. It was decision rather than anything based on observation or experience. And yet once I had made it (I also made a decision never to say ‘I’m tired’ even if I was) I found I never was bored- even at school, where watching the clock was the norm, I never associated this with boredom. I set my problem solving mind to solving the problem of what to do next and inadvertently created the space need for natural interest to take over.

You see we’ve got it all wrong. Life is fundamentally replete with things that are very very interesting. We don’t need to DO anything. Just make a big enough empty space to let those interests speak to us. But once we assume life is fundamentally boring then we never give ourselves that kind of space. We think as parents we have to do stuff, fill the screaming void of our children’s lives with activities and fun stuff and when that fails TV and video games because we pessimistically assume (in our actions if not our words) that life is intrinsically boring and must be jazzed up. One wealthy friend who had kids before I did, remarked wryly that his old sock and an empty cigarette pack were his son’s favourite toys- not the hundreds of pounds worth of plastic gimcrackery given by friends and family. The child knew.

When you covertly or overtly think life is basically boring and only by a constant effort at entertainment can you avoid being engulfed, your kids pick it up. But the killer thing is: they’re right.

I, and the other unbored contrarians, working hard to never be bored were wrong in the way that the alienated and disgruntled always are. In some senses the majority are always right- what I mean is- modern life isboring. But that does not mean every form of living is. The ‘normal person’ is both wedded to modern life but is fundamentally trapped by the idea that this life is the only way of life possible. Usually it is fear backed- they imagine that prehistoric man lived a life nasty brutish and short. (Which widespread research into hunter gatherer and pre-industrial tribes proves completely false.) But even so, just a look at other people around the globe who use some modern medicine and conveniences but don’t live as we do in the industrialised developed world. Using modern tools doesn’t preclude a different way of living, a different set of values to the forty hour week hump and die formula that the lousy modern world boils down to.

Modern life is boring. Face that one first.

be an average dad

Be perfect? Forget that. Be average. One of the most useful and also enjoyable things I’ve ever done is go on two theatrical improvisation courses taught by the genius Keith Johnston. Keith originated much of the impro games used in theatre around the world. He’s an innovator and an impro director who is the best teacher I have ever had the good fortune to study under. Sadly Keith is over eighty now and has stopped teaching but youtube and his two books offer some insight into his talents. Anyway, the first thing you learn with Keith when you go on stage is that ‘trying’ is a waste of time. You’ve been trying your hardest, doing your best all your life and where has that got you? Instead of wishing actors luck or suggesting they do their best Keith tells you, “Be Average.”  

I tried for years to be a perfect dad. Tried and failed and felt bad about it. Then one day I realised it was OK to be an average dad. Failing to be perfect did not make me a bad dad, just average, or, less than average. Because the very act of trying to be perfect and failing (which you always will) actually stimulates a worse performance then aiming to be average. The perfect dad mindset is the problem. It puts the child first, at the centre of the family. But no child wants that- whatever the squawking and squealing that suggests the contrary. All children want to be part of the ordered environment that is a happy family. Like the dog that wants to be master but is flummoxed and snappy when he is allowed to be, children may seek to be the centre of attention but they don’t know what to do when they are- except play up and annoy you.

The first and most revolutionary thing an average dad has done is realise that dadding is a skill, and not a very advanced one. But it has to be done right and in the lousy modern world there are all kinds of popular ideas that get in the way of this. But by calling oneself average you take the first step to leaving behind the vicious uselessness of a child centred world. You have moved towards a world where the child has to fit in with your life, not the other way round. Does that sound extreme? Good.

teaching your own kids

Teaching your child to become an adult seems like something you’d need qualifications for, and in truth, the happiest children in this troubled age (troubled with regard to parenting that is) that I have observed have been the children of teachers or people who work with children. These ‘professional parents’ aren’t operating on a long ago memory of what theirparents said and did. They don’t idolise childhood. It’s a job, they know how to get it done. Both my parents were teachers (before changing to other work) and they knew what to do.

Be consistent. Be a team. Show a united front. Decide on the kind of home you want to live in, and make it everyone’s responsibility to keep it that way. Set chores and police them. You can watch an episode or two of Supernanny and get the idea quite quickly. But sticking to it…

We hardly know what it is ‘to teach’. Does it mean telling someone off? Always correcting them? Setting a silent example (dedicated dad who drives you everywhere, doormat mum who clears up after everyone?) or does it mean letting them ‘find their own way’? We have such negative experiences of school we tend to lose sight of how we really learn. And even when we know we assume that others will just ‘pick it up’. Well some do, like those with a natural talent at sport, just watching it done is enough for them. One child I know learnt how to do perfect cartwheels and flips from simply watching an animated character in a video game. But others need remedial help, they need help in removing the blocks that are stopping them from seeing what is really going on. They need help in getting into ‘the learning zone’. 

The learning zone is when we are open and transparent and eager to absorb anything that looks like it might help, might get us closer to mastering something. It is the holy grail of all teachers to try and inspire this- but in an unruly class of thirty kids where being cool is a higher priority than anything else, the task is not easy. We encourage our kids in their sports and hobbies hoping they will pick up this crucial meta-skill, know how to learn, how to teach themselves something. And somehow, as an average dad this is one thing my children have managed to acquire. Genetic? Taught? All I can say is that I over encouraged the slightest interest they showed in anything I approved of to the point that they would give it up very quickly. It seemed I had failed again. But then, as they edged into being teens, they began to surprise me. And the places where they did show persistence and a desire to learn were all areas I didn’t really value. With Dill it was her endless and meticulous copying and drawing. With Al it was his obsession with street football tricks. It is almost despitemy efforts, or so it seems.

Over eager, over keen, wanting it NOW I had forgotten that beinginterestedis a normal part of being human. It doesn’t need encouragement or discouragement such much as time and space. And this is one thing the lousy modern world is very good at taking away. It is the era par excellence in which there is never enough of either. 

And don’t think sending your kids to an expensive school will solve all your problems. The pressure to fill every minute is perhaps even greater at a school with high ambitions and higher fees. Instead our children need long days of non-toxic time and acres of free space.