Author Archives: Ian

Better Aussie Battlers

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In 1973 an average house in Adelaide would cost you $16,250 – and the average wage was $111.80 a week ($5800 a year) – average rents were $10 a week – a new Holden Kingswood was $2730.00.Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 4.15.20 PM

In 2014 the average house in Adelaide would cost about $450,000 – and the average wage was 1453.90 ($75,000 a year) per week – average rent are about $400.00 – a new
Holden Commodore was $35,000.

To put it simply, the price of houses have gone up 600%, rent about .25 % and cars about 40% in comparison to the money we were earning in 1973 and are now earning.

I have been thinking about this post for some time; not being an economist, accountant or financial advisor (as they are bullshit jobs!), I reckon, I’m pretty qualified to say, that something is really not quite right here.

Is it just that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer and most of us are all just sitting in the middle struggling…?

At this point, I should point out that all of this doesn’t matter.  I have lamented in other posts about the futility of chasing wealth and power as ultimately, we firstly all end up sitting in a chair, pissing our pants, watching days of our lives and waiting for our relatives to visit who never come….. and, then we die, and take nothing with us (remember, you never see a trailer on a hearse!).

In truth the rent, the house, the car are all useless articles that cost a lot, but perhaps have no real value in our lives.  It is no use knowing the price of everything, if you don’t know the value of anything.

And considering that in recent years more and more people are filling their time doing bullshit jobs (see earlier post this week – click here) I ask myself constantly “Self, – Is there such a thing as an Aussie Battler anymore?”

I think the world changed for the Aussie Battler after a couple of wars, a few where we called the returned soldiers Heroes, and then a few smaller wars, or where they Police Actions, where we called the returned soldiers baby killers! (bearing in mind we now all celebrate the ‘heroes’ in all our wars, and Police actions, yet fail to live the values we celebrate in them – I had a spit about this last ANZAC Day and put a video up on my YouTube channel if you’d like to have a look – click here).

Then we had a sexual revolution and a stock market boom (and multiple crashes), the housing boom, there was a baby boom in there somewhere (I think around the time of the sexual revolution or one of the wars – it doesn’t matter, I think the baby boomers are actually the cause of everything!), and now a technological revolution (still going on – is it a boom, or just a series of small startup booms, which become bust – unless you sell porn or are Facebook) and then a global financial crisis (which had a cool, catchy and overused acronym – GFC!) and then….

Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 4.17.41 PMWhat?  What are we now.  Are we Aussie Battlers, pulling ourselves up by our boot-straps, working hours in the hot sun, digging a hole somewhere, lifting some heavy stuff, to return home on dusk, having lamb and three veg for tea (not dinner) and watching the ABC News… do we see the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended…  I don’t think so!

Are we still the land of real opportunity, or are we a people governed by those who talk a Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 3.49.21 PMlot about jobs, struggling Aussie families, ‘moving forward’ (fuck, I hate that phrase, almost as much as the hypocrisy of the person who said it with the ultimate lie of never having a carbon tax in a government that I…. you know the rest of that bullshit – if not just switch on the News now and listen to any politician from any party in THIS election!) … are we now not governed by an elite group of people who themselves couldn’t even define (not that I can?) an Aussie Battler let alone find one.

What really is in the future for these entitled, self obsessed, iphone, ipad, internet, snapchat addicted no hopers, we call a variety of labeled generations, who still live in OUR houses (that we worked bloody hard for as real Aussie Battlers!) and expect everything to be given to them…..

This younger, ungrateful generation who live in a world…… yeah, in a world that……. yeah, in a world that… oh, yeah, in a world that WE created for them!  Oh fuck, I think it’s our fault.  I know the good old days are gone, but is today just their good old days yet to be realised – sometimes I think not.  there are just a few things I know, and we all know if we look, that are real different from then and now:

  • I know I got my free education (even Uni if you went – which wasn’t encouraged or expected) – and now to go to Uni means to have a HECS debt (the equivalent of my first house deposit) that may cripple you for a decade and beyond.
  • I know I could walk the streets pretty safe at night – and now we have more Police and more laws and now about 90% of parents drop their kids off and pick them up from school through fear.
  • I know it was a fair dream to own a home and a car and now the opening stats in this post say, perhaps this is not a dream, but a pipe dream.
  • I know that if I really wanted a job I just had to go out and look for it – there were enough to go around and now even with a degree, and a HECS debt crippling any wage I earn, I may not get a job, ever.
  • I knew if I had a career it would probably be for life and now a career is until the next Government reshuffle (or election where promises of jobs never materialise, but cut backs and redundancies do!), business insolvency or stock market crash. Bearing in mind always that the CEO get his payout and lives to start another company or better still get a Government advisory or consultancy role.
  • I know that if I put a little bit away in superannuation I would be set up pretty good when I retire and now (even today) the retirement age is increasing and I can’t put enough away, even if I have a job, didn’t have to pay my HECS debt and found a secure investment that didn’t go bust or involve massive corporate corruption – if all these things did or didn’t happen I will still struggle to secure any future in retirement.
  • I knew the local cop, the local bank manager, the local councillor, the local butcher the local milkman (he came to my house?) – and now I do my banking and shopping on line (if I do speak so someone it is in Mumbi!), the banks don’t want to know me except to take my money in fees and give me crippling credit debt – there is no local ‘friend’ or respected member of the community we all look up to and most of all trust.

I don’t think the Aussie Battler is a myth, but, I also don’t think it is our future.

The Merchants of Misery (the media) rule our lives, drive public opinion, topple governments (who needs the CIA when you have CNN), make us buy, buy, buy and most of all ensure that our lives never seem good enough and then provide us with a moral compass that worships possessions, destroys diversity through fear of … what is it now, political correctness gone mad, or racism, or sexism, or basically the fear of standing up like the real Aussie Battler to fight for values that nobody knows what they are…. we are a society of Aussie Battlers with nothing to battle for except our next outrage to Tweet about and our next must have possession (as directed by the Media).

I refuse.  I outright, and down right, fucking refuse to be a puppet, to be on mindless media autopilot!Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 3.57.29 PM

My Dad was a real Aussie Battler, and each day I wonder what he would think, what he would do? (bearing in mind at the end of each day he was to buggered to do more than eat his tea, watch the news and fall into bed to do it all again the next day – and he died at 64 on the dole as he wasn’t old enough for the pension!)

I haven’t mentioned this in the last couple of posts, even though it is the point of my blog and my YouTube channel, and that is being a better man.  Maybe it is because, sometimes, just sometimes, to be a better man, you have to understand that not all those around you have the same aspirations – they are still on autopilot, living a life dictated by the Media and the only way to wake them up is to give them a good hard slap (figuratively of course!)  Plus, there are those who will tear you down for even getting up any speaking what everyone else is thinking – even though when you speak up and say ‘fuck’ it becomes about saying fuck and not about the subject – always remembering, outrage is the modern equivalent of hard work.

I haven’t also mentioned, the being a better man words, because, well, I felt my blog, with an average of 60 reads per post and my YouTube Channel with a similar average, was just to small, I was too small, I just wasn’t important enough.

Then I thought, fuck it, that’s what everyone thinks – that’s what we are supposed to think, or go shopping to stop thinking at all!

So, standing up, speaking up, even if no-one is listening, is the point of being a better man.

As I have quoted before, as Gandhi said:

First they ignore you,

then they laugh at you,

then they fight you,

then you win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Better at Bullshit Jobs

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I didn’t go to work today; let’s face it I haven’t been to work for a while! –  and today – and all the other days I haven’t been, nobody noticed.  I was a hand in a bucket of water – pull it out and it doesn’t leave a hole.

I actually thought my job was important and I was the linch-pin to the whole show going on.

I had worked hard for years, put up with all the bullshit, all because I thought I was making a difference – and maybe I was.  But, now I am gone, I think the difference is still being made, just not by me. (Have a look at my post on the “Indispensable Man” if you think your indispensable – click here)

But, I think more importantly we are thinking things are important when in actual fact they are not really important at all.

Take printing a document.  It was supposed to be about now, in our futuristic world of technology, smart phones and the internet, that we were entering the time of the ‘paperless office’ yet there seems to be more actual paperwork, literally, (for everyone under 20 this is the correct use of the word ‘literally’) and it seems to just sit there in baskets on desks with more paperwork coming in constantly to put on top.Screen Shot 2016-06-19 at 11.08.23 AM

I heard recently that an office in the city set up all their printers so you had to actually go to the printer, where you swiped your personal identification card over the printer; only then would the printer print your job; you had to be standing next to the printer to collect it when it came out.  The little trick to this system was that every 24 hours all the ‘buffers’ in the printers in this 8 story building all ‘reset’ – wiping out all the documents that had been sent to the printers, that had not been printed and no one had come to collect.  There was no pile of paper (in the basket next to the printer for that express purpose?) of print jobs that had not been collected throughout the day, or week for that matter.  The little trick to this system, other than obvious confidentiality and security reasons, was that the company saved over $1,000,000 (yes, that is one million dollars) in paper and printing costs alone in one year!

Think of all the bullshit documents that never got printed and just disappeared into the electronic ether at midnight each day.

Also think about whether all that printing, all that word processing, and all that time sitting in front of a monitor was really even necessary?

Maybe you are sitting at your desk right now, working, reading this, and realised that your job is bullshit – it is made up, it is unnecessary, and in fact if you got up and walked out right now, no-one would probably notice for a couple of hours, if not days.

We are not talking about worthwhile work here, we are talking about bullshit jobs, mostly office jobs, administrative jobs, mostly in middle management business or just about everywhere in government and definitely any job involving HR (that’s Human Resources which used to be called Personnel which before that was called the boss who hired you…), regulatory law or the king of all bullshit jobs, local councils!

Worthwhile work and bullshit jobs – what is the difference (You may want to read something else I wrote about ‘worthwhile work’ – click here).

I am in Bali at the moment and there are so many people.  I quickly looked up the statistics and Australia has approximately 3 people per square kilometre and Bali has 690 – so, okay, yeah it is a bit crowded!  But, there are not too many people doing bullshit jobs.

Most of them are out in their fields growing rice so that their family can eat – certainly IMG_8780not bullshit and certainly necessary.  I sat on the balcony of our villa overlooking a field the other morning and watched a guy hand till a quarter acre block of land.   I only watched for a while in the morning as I had to have a swim, eat in a restaurant, buy some more shit I didn’t need and then drink beer…  But, later in the afternoon when I had filled my day with fuck all, I went back up on the balcony and saw that he was still working, finalising in the twilight the last few metres of tilling his field.  Worthwhile work?  Most of all I wondered what he was thinking…

Did he think he would be better off:

  • Being a telemarketer and asking people if they need funeral insurance
  • Being a public relations expert for a big company managing its image
  • Being a investment consultant

(Just on ‘investment consultants’ – what the fuck sort of job is that, surely if you knew everything about investing you would be rich and wouldn’t have to work?)

  • Being a mortgage broker

(Just on ‘mortgage brokers’ – do people think they do it for free!  So you go to a mortgage broker to get a loan from a bank, why not just go to the bank?)

  • Being someone who does administrative support, information technology solutions, security, sells them office furniture, stationary or caters to any of the above (and a 1000 other) bullshit jobs.

I am sure my Bali farmer tilling his field doesn’t give a rats fuck that there is a compulsory seminar on today for all employees at ‘Mortgage Broker Financial Services & Telemarketers Pty Ltd” on equity and diversity in the workplace!  (PS:  Another group of bullshit jobs in ‘corporate training’!!!)

Even the good jobs are now full of bullshit.  Just imagine our Bali farmer tilling his field – in 1 day!  Why, because all he did was till his field; he didn’t have to do a business plan and environmental scan, he didn’t have to hire a project manager, surveyor or tilling expert to make sure he was doing it right, he didn’t have to report (in triplicate on 5 different computer systems to 7 different supervisors and sub-managers and department heads), he didn’t have to have a OHS expert approve his hoe (read: “industry standard sharpened soil turning implement – un powered”) …. he just tilled his field!

So, bullshit jobs exist to support other bullshit jobs and although the work gets done, there was really no work in the first place – no fields got tilled, nothing grows in most of these bullshit jobs.  They are self creating and self perpetuating and if there isn’t enough bullshit work to fill a bullshit job we have corporate training, seminars and most of all the internet on every desk so if all else fails we can check our Facebook and watch porn!

I don’t know how you escape from a society that seems to thrive with bullshit jobs.  Has the industrial revolution and the technological revolution (which we haven’t seen anywhere near where we are going with that one) saved us time and effort – the answer is YES!

But, we have filled in the time that the ‘spinning jenni’ and the computer saved us with bullshit.

Are the poor starving less, is the world free of disease, have we cured cancer, is art more beautify, NO, because we have to get the correct coversheet on the memo to be hand delivered to the boss in the non existent paperless office.

I read in the Advertiser this morning that a survey of South Australia Police found that:

76 per cent felt workloads had either increased or largely increased in the past three years.

75 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed that management would listen to their concerns.

67 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed that management conducted adequate assessment before announcing the reforms.

66 per cent believed there were insufficient staff numbers.

64 per cent said service delivery will be worse to much worse under the reforms.

55 per cent felt positive or extremely motivated to go to work.

So, lets look at that at this survey using the ‘bullshit jobs’ methodology.

Firstly (and only really when you consider all the above results from the survey) one Screen Shot 2016-06-19 at 11.46.55 AMwould presume that most joined the Police to make a difference and serve society.  This is a good start to their employment – it is the thought they are going to be cops, doing cop stuff.  Then they find that they are required to spend the bulk of their time on tasks they don’t like and they are not particularly good at (and most certainly haven’t been trained for) which is administration, typing and continuous reporting to micromanagers.

So they find that they joined the Police to be cops and spend most of their time being clerks.   Most of these administrative jobs don’t actually need to be done, or a least could be done cheaper and more efficiently (e.g. your average cop types at about 25 word per minute and earns about $80,000 a year – your average typist types at 80+ words a minute and gets paid $35,000 a year – this is easy maths by the way!)

So, in the end everyone ends up doing more clerical work that cop stuff – it gets to the point where they all become obsessed with clerical work (doing the statistics, reporting to the boss, building a CV) that in the end they actually resent anyone doing cop stuff because they are not doing their share of clerical bullshit – in the end they are all competing to do more clerical bullshit than cop stuff.  As a matter of fact the entire organisation is now geared to bullshit clerical jobs instead of cops being cops.

By the way – reorganisation doesn’t fix this – organisational culture, which created it is the only way to fix it.

How can a cop be proud of being a cop, wanting to go to work being a cop, be proud of his/her work as a cop, when they spend all of their time being clerks doing bullshit jobs?

 

So where does that leave us.

I think of it this way…. if all the telemarketers, political secretaries, public relations officers, mortgage brokers, financial planners etc etc, just didn’t go to work for a week, would we notice, would we be worse off – or perhaps better off, but, if all the cops, doctors, school teachers etc etc didn’t go to work, what would happen?

The answer is simple.

The child of the bullshit jobs are bullshit jobs – all offspring are still born, to live a life as aimless zombies, eating our brains, stifling our curiosity, destroying our imagination, cramping invention and eventually, draining our actual spirit.

We must prevent their birth (abstinence worked once but birth control is more efficient) Screen Shot 2016-06-19 at 11.44.09 AMor if during a time of passion, of uncontrolled optimism in the boardroom or at a meeting where emotions run high and we decide to give birth to another bullshit job and it is conceived – have it aborted as soon as possible, you know it will grow up to be no good and just end up breeding with other bullshit jobs to create a ghetto of office cubicles and industry seminars.

 

Better at Walking Together

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Walking 10 IMG_8709 IMG_8712 IMG_8713 IMG_8719 IMG_8721 IMG_8710 IMG_8714 IMG_8729 IMG_8708 IMG_8711I was walking along the other day with my wife, holding hands, just walking. We were walking side by side and just out shopping – well, my wife was shopping, I was going along to be with her, because I wanted to.

Yes, we are holidaying in Bali at the moment, we love it, and we love walking around and looking at ‘stuff’. We also like doing it together.

This is when I noticed, we are somewhat in the minority…..

Most couples, even on holidays, seem to be on a quest.

The husbands (or is partner now the only acceptable term) are striving ahead, with the wife (partner!) dutifully following the mandatory 1 metre behind – OR, the wife is eagerly strutting towards the next shop and the husband is dragging his arse the mandatory 2 metres of shitted off, following you around, want a beer more than being here, look on his face and droop in his gait…

Okay, so why are you even out and about together. Just go separately, or is the habitual obligation of your marriage (or partnership) something you have to demonstrate publicly to make us all suffer along with you.

I understand sometimes ‘the man’ feels the obligation to walk in front with the ‘I’m not a tourist and have been here heaps of times before and know what I’m doing and where I’m going’ look on his face in a modern attempt at the cave man confidence which must always be displayed in foreign situations; but, does it really apply to doing something that is supposedly, something BOTH of you WANT to do TOGETHER.

My wife and I (reminds me as I type that the first time you say that at you wedding – “On behalf of my wife and I” – I’ve had a bit of practice at that!) go together because we want to be together, we want to walk side by side, we want to hold hands – it’s not always a journey, sometimes its just walking around. (Just as a note, we hold hands everywhere we go – life is too short not to hold hands!)

And… then there are times we don’t hold hands. That is when we are not together. Sometimes I go by myself and sometimes she does – because we want to and because the other one understands.

I know the moan of ‘having to go shopping with the wife’ situation. Surely, if it is your wife there is no HAVE to. Sometimes I do things that are not things I think are important, or I would like to do (like just about any form of shopping!) but I go because I want to be with my wife, and she may want me to come (the reasons behind this actually still remain a mystery to me – although the occurrence of this is pretty rare, my wife is smart!), so I am not actually doing it for me, there is nothing in it for me…. but, there is, it is making my wife happy.

This reminds me of something I heard/read/imagined about the father talking to his future son-in-law and telling him that ‘marriage wasn’t for him’. Of course the future son-in-law was worried that permission to marry the daughter was going to get knocked back – but, the father went on to say, it is not for you, it is for the other person; you change your life from doing things for yourself to doing things, everything, for another person because you now hold them more important than you. Of course this is a great theory, but, we as humans have a great trait of taking advantage of situations. That’s where the ultimate gift of marriage, or a relationship, or a lot of other things in life, comes down to one thing, TRUST. (I just remembered I wrote about this once before using the Indonesian interpretation and punctuation of the words Anda and saya. Click here to read it)

I put my wife first. Oh, I catch myself a thousand times a day NOT doing that, but, I actually do catch myself. My wife puts me first. We trust each other.

We walk along holding hands, we walk along together, because we want to be together. We remind each other of it each day, by holding hands, by walking side by side, neither following nor leading, both wanting to be there. And, when that is not working out, we catch ourselves, we wait for the other one to catch up, we walf faster to catch up, we walk back and get them, we walk back and get them and carry them if we have to. And, sometimes, walking together can actually be taking a different route so that we end up in the same destination, then we share our stories, tell of our trip, when we are back together.

I sometimes think that being a better man is understanding that some of the simplest things in life are the most important, like going for a walk and holding hands.

PS:  I went out to get some photographs in Ubud, Bali.  I sat in a little cafe (okay, it was a bar!) and had a coffee (okay, I drank 4 beers!) and took all these photographs in an hour – I did not see one (Yes, you read right – NOT ONE!) couple holding hands.  I am going to get a T-Shirt made which reads “At least while you are on holidays HOLD HANDS”.

Better at “the dialectic”

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Well it has been some time since I have been mad here.Screen Shot 2016-04-25 at 11.30.59

And it escalates.  The YouTube channel is going well and I have decided that you can go against your nature.  I have spoken about this a fair bit in other posts; talking about the Scorpion and the Frog and generally trying to find a way to be a better man while all the time fighting against ‘my nature’.

I have decided it is fight I am going to lose!  I will lose, not because it is a battle that I cant win, not because using all my strategies is invalid, but because the one thing that continues to be my achilles heal will always trip me up, and that is  – I am me.

But, it not a fight I am prepared to give up on.
Here comes in “The Dialectic”.  Dialectic thinking is a pretty hard thing to explain – I tried once in a previous pScreen Shot 2015-05-09 at 11.05.19 amost and used my time in Bali as an example – bearing in mind philosophers have been arguing about it for years, sorry centuries!  They can’t come up with a definitive answer so how am I.  Well lets start off with a few of THEIR definitions and then I’ll get to how this is MY answer:

Dialectic thinking:

“a method of argument or exposition that systematically weighs contradiction, facts or ideas with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions”
(Fuck, that made my brain hurt!)

“The process of reconciliation of contradictions”
(That’s better – a bit like me.)

To me it is, allowing two contradictory ideas to exist at the same time.

Can I be the Scorpion and the Frog at the same time.  Can I still be shitted off by most things and wanting to tell most people I meet to get fucked AND be a better man.  Does one contradict the other so much that there can be no conciliation between the two.  The philosophers seem to think so – I do not!

I am me, sometimes it is not a pretty sight, but I am also resolved to be a better man – a man who lives his values, his beliefs and his convictions.  A man who is not wandering through life oblivious to my own existence.  A man who thinks a person is better, bigger and more important that the latest LCD Internet connects 100 inch TV.

To me dialectic thinking is about being those contradictions.

Not living those contradictions in conflict but just living them; as a better man.

As someone once said to me, how will you know when you are the ‘better man’ or is it a continuous process that never finishes.

I thought about it for a moment and said “Fuck if I know, but I refuse to continue living as a robot”.

I hope that my new series of videos “The Dialectic” goes a bit of the way to changing ‘Fucked if I know” to “Fuck me, I get it!”

 

 

 

Better Pen Pals

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I have been a ‘writer’ all my life.  Writing a diary, letters and now, I suppose, this blog.

I also like writing ‘interesting’ letters to people who annoy me, or provide products that have let me down and/or I just love writing to the ‘scammers’ – to see one of my favourites click here.

Anyway, not all my interactions are bad, some like the one below are just, I suppose nice, with a bit of funny (even from the recipients of one of my letters!)

A few months ago I wrote a letter of, not really complaint, but sort of, to Pilot pens.

I wrote it in long hand, on paper, with a pen – a Pilot pen actually.  Here is a picture of the letter but I have ‘transcribed’ it for those (like my kids) who are apparently incapable of reading cursive:

10th August 2015

 

Dear Mr Pilot,Screen Shot 2016-03-13 at 16.04.59Screen Shot 2016-03-13 at 16.04.26

 

I am writing to you, because, I love writing.

 

In our modern world the ‘art’ of penmanship is lost in SMS, jottings at a meeting and the occasional ‘gone to the shops’ note left on a ‘post-it’ note on the front door.

 

However, this art and skill is savoured by a few, like myself who love the innovation of modern writing instruments.

 

When I was 15 I saved my pocket money to buy a ‘Rotoring Micro Norm’ ink pen (I have written the name of that pen from memory) because I wanted the best pen on the market to practice my dreams as an architect. Unfortunately, life got in the way and I worked as a public servant most of my life.

The public service had its drawbacks but generation of paperwork was not one of them. I have gone from manual typewriters to ‘glass typewriters’ to the wonders of modern word processing.

 

But, always, the written word, on paper, in my own hand has been my favourite. As I sit here, at a real desk, not a work station, writing to you I feel all the joys that my grade 7 teacher Mr Kennedy instilled in me in forming of the perfect letter, sentence and paragraph. In addition I have been a diarist since I was 13 and have a handwritten chronology of my life!

 

All of this is in no small part thanks to the people who made the first pencil I wrote with to your pen I am writing with now.

 

So, I write to you today to say initially ‘thank you’ for continuing to improve the instruments through which I get so much joy and satisfaction; and; to enclose those that don’t work so well. The black one just never worked and the ‘multi-coloured’ one just ran out too quick (I am using it’s replacement to write this letter!)

 

I am disappointed in the performance of the pens (as you no doubt are in my spelling – but there is no auto correct with a pen – we just write as we are – who we are!) but not to the point that I have discontinued using them.

 

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I love the way the ink flows in the ‘FIXION’ range of pens, and the thin nib (I have started using the pens in preference to your ‘9-2 .38’ pen). In addition being able to erase my mistakes (other than spelling which I am oblivious to) is the ‘hard-copy’ version of the backspace key.

 

So, in closing I say ‘thank you’ for creating the ‘FIXION’ range of pens, just keep working on their longevity and quality control. I am sure your aim is to have us all continue the joy of handwriting with wonderful writing instruments.

 

Finally, I share with you a little sad, but fulfilling story about the joys of writing.

 

My Mother passed away recently; in going through her things in deciding what to keep, and what to donate, what to sell and what to fight over, I came across a box of letters I had written to Mum over the years. They started back in 1978 when I moved from our country home to the city to study; we had no phone; so I would write to my Mum and Dad on a weekly basis – and they would reply; the years passed and our correspondence was spasmodic, often through necessity only, or the obliged post card from holiday locations my parents only visited through those glossy cards of a few words; my Father passed, the phone became my connection to my Mum; the letters stopped. Mum eventually moved into a nursing home about 12 years ago and visits became obligations and phone calls the contact of the drifting connection. Then, about 5 years ago I wrote my Mum a letter. On the following weekend that I visited her, she spoke about nothing other than the joy of receiving that letter. So each week, I sat down on Tuesday and wrote my Mum a letter; each weekend I would visit. There was not very much time between letters and visits to ‘report’ on , but, there was a lifetime to write about. My obligation became our connection; my letter our world; the past, the present and future. Mum passed; I now have those letters, those moments in time; the paper she touched and the words we wrote and read. Those letters are who we were, who we hoped to be. They are us, and always will be.

 

Thanks for the pens to make this possible.

 

Very kind regards,

 

Ian Schlein

Anyway, after a few months of not hearing anything I wrote them another letter that I thought they may understand (and I thought was funny!):

Screen Shot 2016-03-13 at 16.05.27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway a few weeks later I got a reply with a few pens enclosed (which I was grateful for):

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 20.07.14
Finally, I thought I would write just one more reply – this time it was unaddressed and unsigned, but, I reckon Hayley will know it’s from me:2016-03-14 - To Pilot Pens Hayley CardThe joy of a card, a pen, a piece of paper, can never be underestimated.

Better at Swimming in Shit

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I try very hard not to swear in my posts – but, those of you who know me will realise that swearing, to me is a way of punctuation that only swearing will fulfil (my wife says I use ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ as filler sounds like other people l use ‘um’ and ‘ah’).

But, today my post has to be titled ‘swimming in shit’ because that is what I have noticed I am doing – shit is shit and that’s all there is to it – calling it ‘poo’ or ‘excrement’ is just not the same.

It is a bit of a shock to when you go down to the same old water hole for a quick dip, then after a few minutes of paddling around you see, a few syringes, a used condom, a pile of beer cans on the bank, the water is dirty and actually smells like shit; that you suddenly realise you are swimming in shit.

This has been my observation of my life over the last couple of weeks while I have been on ‘blog sabbatical’.  If you read my post “Better Knowledge” you will get a bit of an idea that I have not been posting as I have been out and about and ‘looking at the world’; I have also been sucked into Youtube where I think I am a movie star – and people are actually listening!

Let me tell you I have been looking at it positively.  If I come across angry people, I think “they may be angry for a good reason” so let it go: if I come across selfish people, I say “they must need this more than me”; if I get cut off driving, beeped at, given the bird or tailgated, I say ‘they must be in a hurry to something important’.  I have been employing all the strategies in my post “Better dealing with Dickheads” and have had no conflict with dickheads or in fact everyone I meet or come across in my daily life (even the dickheads).

I am a fucking saint and love the fucking world and realise all this time I am swimming in shit – I just haven’t seen the turds floating about.

I do realise of course that most of the ‘turds’ don’t actually know they are ‘turds’ – read my post “Better Oblivious” or “Better off Oblivious” for why this is so.  Perhaps I am the turd and don’t know it.

I am going about my life, dealing with dickheads and getting along.  I am not oblivious; I am noticing the connections, noticing the people, noticing my great life, being happy…..  and all the time I am swimming in shit!

What is this shit that I am swimming in.  It is the stuff in our lives that we notice, but just get used too.  It is the stuff we accept that is okay, it is the turds that we brush aside and say, “Oh, it’s just a little turd, not a problem.”  But, get enough turds and you are swimming is shit.

What are these turds?

I am sorry but I just can’t get away from the biggest excrement creator in our society – the arse that sprays shit and turns all streams into torrents of turds – THE MEDIA – the ‘Merchants of Misery.’ They don’t just tell us about the turds they make them, they hand them out and ask us to polish them – they fill our daily lives with a deluge of dung and continuous diarrhea of brown smelling discontent.

These ‘merchants’ for they are merchants because all they do is sell; they have no conscience.  They are the ‘Wolves of Wall Street’ in our lounge rooms, on the radio, filling the internet, plastered over every building, in our letter box (we call it junk mail for fuck sake!) and most of all polluting the minds of our children.  They tell you that your are unhappy unless you buy, buy, buy;  and, when you do buy, they tell you what you have bought is not good as you have to buy again to have the new stuff.  If this is not bad enough they also tell you what to think!

They tell you what ‘news’ is; they tell you in a way that is not fact, it is not impartial, it has one goal, and that is to keep you watching so that you buy, buy, buy.  All incidents are horrific, at catastrophe, a tragedy and then we get to here my favourite question after a death of a son, child, mother, father…… “Are you upset, how is the family coping?” – Are you fucking kidding me – no you are not, because we then answer as opposed to saying something like “Are you seriously asking me that question after my son, child, mother father was killed, maimed, injured, I lost their house, car etc etc etc….”  We all play the game, we all want that (useless) 15 minutes of fame.

I read a survey the other day (can’t remember where, can’t find it on the internet – I’ll just pretend I’m a journalist and say from a ‘reliable source’) that said the percentage of people who would help someone else in trouble, had dropped, yet the percentage of people who would help someone else in trouble if they were being filmed had quadrupled.  Everybody wants to be a fucking celebrity.  (I am about to conduct a brief survey especially for this post – “One moment please”)

I typed into the Youtube search box “funny cats” and got 6,600,000 hits.
I typed in “PTSD” and got 333,000 hits – I gave it another go, this can’t be right….
I typed in “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” and got 115,000 hits…..
I typed in “Police Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” ……. and got, 7,500 hits….
(PS: “Police Brutality” got 490,000 hits)

We are all fucked – we are all swimming in shit!

 

Death in the Line of Duty

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http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/10/02/police-suicide-second-class-death

I read the above article and it made me wonder what recognition is right for all Police and the duties they undertake….

Everyone gets a Medal for coming to work, yet how we die, or are injured in ‘the line of duty’ provides no guarantee of medals or recognition.

All Police are brave: why?

Because they go to work each day not to face the dangers, but knowing they may be there, and going anyway.

Sometimes those dangers, those horrors and the sadness they encounter hurts them: it breaks their bones, makes them bleed and often breaks their spirit:

Some get better, some struggle on, some die.

It matters not in the end the medals they receive, it only matters that we know, even if that knowing is by a few, in times of silence, and remembrance, that in the line of duty they served others; and the injuries and the pain and the anguish, they took was always for those they served:

and they did it willingly, often eagerly, but always in service, and always in the line of duty.

History will show, often slowly, that medals will be given, and monuments erected, and heroes mourned, only when we understand that the greatest sacrifices were made, without thought of those medals and monuments, but for our fellow man, in the line of duty: no matter how much at the time they hated us, or refused to recognise us, or forgot us, or didn’t live the pain that we felt, or how, what we did, for them, willingly, caused us to lose ourselves.

I want no medals, no monuments:
I want no accolades, or cheers, or parades, or commendations:

I want it to stop:

when the horrors are too much,
the pain to great,
when the sadness wont leave,
the images just wont go away,

when the greatest fear is, being alone.

I want my brother, my sister, my boss, to reach down and extend their hand, to help me up, when I stumble, and if I fall.

Better Video Blog?

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Well after (again) a bit of an absence from writing I have decided to return with a ‘vengeance’ and start posting again and recording a ‘video blog’ on YouTube.

Why?

Well, my opening video explains most of it, in that the world has got ‘fast’.

I decided I needed to speed up with it or get left behind.  Bearing in mind being left behind may not be such a bad thing!  I hope you enjoy my video blogs – some of them will go over the other posts I have made here, and hopefully make more sense!

Enjoy.

Click on the link here: https://youtu.be/5VuS5xyVwA8

Better at Saying Hello

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I haven’t written for a while as I have been working on a few posts all at once – all in which I hate the world!

I try to live my ‘mantras’ everyday; you know the ones, peace, mindfulness etc etc, but life, people, problems and more people, get in the way (one of the posts I was working on was called “Swimming in Shit” – so you get the gist of where my head has been!)Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 23.19.57

Then things changed and I realised, in a moment, the power of “HELLO”.

I met a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while and they were just glad to see me.  They said HELLO – with their EYES, their SMILE and their HEART.  It was a Hello that made me happy straight away.  I think it also set the scene for the brief conversation we had – it was positive, it was upbeat, we laughed and we talked about ‘good stuff’.

The goodbye came and it was a good goodbye – if wasn’t a “let’s do lunch” goodbye, it wasn’t ‘I’ll call you goodbye’, it wasn’t a ‘we should do this more often’ goodbye – it was a goodbye, that said it was good to be with you, for that moment.

So often I am ‘swimming in shit’ and I have no doubt that sneaks through in every one of my Hellos.  I have to get better at saying ‘hello’.

I (we) are coming to a time of the year where it can be stressful, happy, and sad at the same time.  It can be wonderful with kids and family and friends, when at the same time we are thinking of those that are not with us anymore.

It is also a time of the year when we see lots of people.

It is a time of the year for lots of “Hellos”.

I am going to be better at saying “Hello”.

Hello will be with my heart
Hello will be with my eyes (I’m looking at you)
Hello with be with my smile (Greeting people you know is great!)
Hello because I’m glad to see you (because I or you, may not be here tomorrow)
Hello is for now, this moment

Hello, Hello, Hello – glad to see you, tell me about the good things in your life and I’ll tell you about mine.

Hello, Goodbye – it was great to see you!

Better Knowledge

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I haven’t written a post for awhile as I have been reading and …… well, thinking.

I realised that although I think I know a lot of stuff there was a lot of stuff I didn’t know about.  I have been increasingly curious about ‘why I am here and what is the point’.Screen Shot 2015-11-06 at 5.22.09 pm

Yes, I know that we are all plagued with the age old question “what is the meaning of life” – but, in actual fact I don’t think we are….  I think the majority of the time we are just going about living, oblivious to our inevitable deaths which so often appear to be a surprise and a period of intense grief to those remaining…. and, then of course we go on with our lives again.

I am sure that prior to that moment there must be something more important than the latest episode of The Bachelorette, the price of the new iPhone (Do I really, really, need my phone upgraded – Why?) and indulging in the latest ‘pleasure’ because the Merchants of Misery (The Media) tell me that it IS the latest pleasure.

So, where have I been for the last month – I have been thinking and reading and then thinking about what I had read – and then researching and thinking and writing down what I had researched, thought about and read.

I was helped along when the 24 year old son of a friend was chatting to me; he was studying music and said that throughout history the particular period in time was reflected in the music – he gave examples of during the 60’s it was all very ‘free’, it go angry in the 70’s because of war and injustice and then down right radical in the 80’s with punk rock and anarchy being the musical cry…. he then said, he was looking at music over the last 10 or 15 years and it was just a mess – there was no theme and there was no meaning – it was noise for noise sake and for sales profits… he said he was disillusioned as it reflected the world.  This philosophical observation by a 24 year old, was further emphasised by the other philosophical blurbs of my children, my favourite which is there explanation and my  inability to understand that 40 text messages back a forward was a better method to organise getting together, than a 30 second phone call.

I take my children’s observations of the world with the same grains of salt that no doubt my parents took with my observations of the world.  However….. the real moment came when I was driving in the car and heard a song come on the radio (my wife told me this morning that it had hit number 1 on iTines!) that described a guy going into buy a moped – are you fucking kidding me!

I agreed instantly with my 24 year old philosopher – todays music is lost – there is no generational theme, no undercurrent of meaning, no soul – it is a reflection of the world created by the  Merchants of Misery (The Media) selling us more crap so that we buy more crap – all to seek pleasure in the way they tell us to – ultimately, so we will buy more crap.

Pleasure is no happiness; pleasure is not meaning; and telling me about buying a moped is no fucking music!!!

Where has all the knowledge gone about what is important and what has meaning.

Maybe, I have answered my own question – the meaning has gone in the music because we have lost the meaning to our lives.  We have lost some ‘depth’ to our existence.

In my reading and my thinking and my writing, my writing mainly consisting of mad notes scribbled on random piece of paper, I decided that society has lost some valuable knowledge about living that has been replaced with bad music, instant gratification, new stuff every week and striving for things that don’t only not matter but we can’t actually identify what they are.

My example of this is asking people this very simple question:

If you could be anything you want, where money was not really a consideration; where you would be doing something that was your passion: where you know doing it everyday would make you happy.  What would you be?”

I often clarify this by saying, “Well I always wanted to fly jets, and be an astronaut” but know that is not very likely and as it turns out it was not really my passion – just a fantasy.  So “What would you be” – “What would you do”.

Strangely enough, the majority of people I ask say “I don’t know?” – now I ask this to people of all ages and the answer in about 90% of cases is “I don’t know” – well, I have one think to say to that, how fucking sad.  It would be fair enough that you never attain your dreams – but, it is a tragedy to never have any!

Of course there are the ‘trap’ answers that actually mean nothing:
“I want to be happy”
“I want to be rich”

I reply – define happy – define rich and if you were rich what would you do? Would you be happy?

We are all so confused or worse – not thinking about our lives.   Why?

Because, nobody taught us how to think about our lives.  Yeah, we all went to school and learned stuff that we thought was shit at the time and turned out to be shit – but most of that ‘learning’ was really ‘educating’ as it was designed to teach us a few fundamentals to get us through (how to read, basic maths, the times table) but, actually the rest was teaching us how to think – I don’t think our current teachers even understand this concept.

So, we leave school being able to read and write and have a good basis for surviving in the world…… really?  Where is the REAL KNOWLEGE about living IN the world.  The REAL knowledge is actually about other people and us; how to get along.  Where were all the lessons on picking a partner, picking friends, getting on with people, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with loss and heart ache, how to be happy is a world that may be unfair and tragic through no fault of your own.Screen Shot 2015-11-06 at 5.25.52 pm

Life may actually be able to teach you about life – and, experience is the best teacher, BUT, why do we not a least try to teach our kids, and each other (it is never too late) that the real meaning of life and the real lessons in life are not about Nikes, and iPhones, and stuff, and the noise of the Merchants of Misery, but, how I get along with society, my neighbour, my family, my partner and most of all myself.