On trying, healing and going beyond avoidance

This post will answer the prompts 18 (Try), 19 (Healing) and 20 (Beyond Avoidance) of Reverb10. Join us and reflect on your year 2010…

Prompt 18: Try

What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did/didn’t go for it?

The following things came to my mind quickly when I thought about my answer to this prompt. Some of them are concrete, and others are abstract.

  • Running a location independent business: I’ve been learning about running a location independent business for a while. I haven’t quite made it though. It’s partly because I’ve been struggling to find what my strengths are, and it’s partly because I didn’t do as much as I could to get this location independent business project going. But next year, I will get something going. Yes.
  • Being a minimalist/maximalist: If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you’ve probably noticed that I mentioned about minimizing stuff and maximizing experience a few times. I will do these things next year. The idea of maximizing experience fits in with my mission of making the world more romantic, too. So, I will write more on minimizing stuff and maximizing experience on this blog. If you want to read more on minimizing stuff, Far Beyond The Stars by Everett Bogue is a good place to start.
  • Focusing on creating: Focusing on creating is one way of maximizing experience for me. This year, I reclaimed my creativity. I got it back. So, I want to show up in the world fully with my creativity next year. In order to focus on creating, I will need to minimize stuff as well as other unimportant things.
  • Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championship&World Domination Summit: In June, I will go to the USA for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Worldchampionship to compete and to attend World Domination Summit. Chris Guillebeau and his team of awesome people organize WDS, and I’m excited to meet Chris and other world changers in person.
  • Moving to Latin America: This is another way of maximizing experience. It occurred to me that living in Latin America would be fun and exciting a step to make. Given my interests in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Argentinean Tango, I believe it’s a natural move to make as well. After all, the average cost of living in Latin America is lower than that in Japan, too. So, let’s get this location independent thing going next year… in Latin America.

Now, things I wanted to try in 2010. I’m sure there were more, but three things came to my mind. The first one is Argentinean Tango. I happened to find great teachers and lessons were reasonable and affordable; I gave it a go and I liked it. The second one is being creative. To my surprise, I had written about my desire to be more creative in the beginning of 2009 and completely forgotten about it when I started working on the Artist’s Way in 2010. But I remembered this desire of mine and I was successful in regaining my creativity. The third one is running a location independent business. I mentioned it above, but I think I could do more effectively to get this thing going, but I didn’t. While I didn’t die from not trying hard enough, I surely didn’t make as much progress as I wanted to make. But next year, I will do my best.

Prompt 19: Healing

What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

I’m not sure if this is something we can categorize as “healing”, or if I really get what’s meant to be “healing” in this prompt, but I’d say working on regaining my creativity was a great healing practice. It was a gradual evolution, and I’m happy about it. Creativity has become a big theme in my life.

I now believe that we are all creative. Likewise, I believe that we are all attractive, and that we are all awesome. Seriously. Well, maybe not absolutely everyone of us, but I’m sure most of us can make choices about what we want to do and we are capable of learning and getting closer to who we want to be. I know you are. But, sadly, we are often led to believe that we are not creative, we are not attractive, and we are not awesome. When we are led to believe these things, we get wounds and perhaps “healing” is something to remove these wounds so we can believe in ourselves again.

I might have some wounds left unhealed in me, but I know I can stand up and fight this battle against mediocrity – mediocrity that keeps telling you that you aren’t worthy. I don’t know much about healing, and I’m not sure if I want to be healed or to heal others. But I think I am interested in empowering you, if that’s what you want. I’d be interested in teaching you how to do a triangle choke on mediocrity.

Prompt 20: Beyond Avoidance

What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

I will repeat myself a bit, because I’m going to mention a location independent business again here. But, perhaps, instead of running over the same thing again, let me say a thing or two about the concept of location indepent business, for those who have never come across this concept.

When you run a location independent business, you can work from anywhere, hence it’s a location independent business. Your product is either something digital like an e-book or a service that can be delivered via online like consulting.

Since I’m a freelance translator, I am, technically, running a location independent business to some extent, because I can work from anywhere. However, this freelance style of working still gives me some restrictions, because I’m dependent on orders from my clients instead of creating value that I want to share with people who believe in me and who I believe in. Also, my schedule depends on these orders as well. When there’s an urgent order, I need to adjust my schedule to it instead of focusing on creating what I want to create when I’m most productive.

So, I want to run a location independent business that sells digital products. This style requires less maintenance, compared to the freelance style location independent business.

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What’s your thoughts on these prompts? Tell me, because I’m curious. If you enjoyed reading this post, please share it with your friends by clicking the like button or the tweet button below. You can subscribe to this blog via RSS or e-mail, too. I’m looking forward to connecting with you!

Photo: pjan vandaele

The art of writing shitty first drafts

I don’t have a plot. I don’t know who my characters are. I don’t have anything ready. I’m worried that I’m behind if I compare myself with other participants. All I know is that I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo and that I’m going to spend the next 30 days writing… a lot.

NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month is a month-long writing marathon in which participants write a novel of 50,000 words. What’s important to note about NaNoWriMo is this: What you’re asked to produce is a shitty first draft rather than a well-polished masterpiece that’s ready to be published. Quality doesn’t matter. Quantity does. (You can read the details here. )

Last month, I realized that I want to focus on creating. So, the timing of NaNoWriMo was perfect for me except that I got reminded of it only few days before its first day. At the time of writing this post (5am in the morning on 1 Nov), I can safely say I’m not ready at all, if by ‘ready’ I mean ‘having story materials handy’. My inner critic loves to pick on this point and insist how unprepared I am.

Here’s what my inner critic’s voice sounds like.

“Dude, you don’t have any plot. That’s horrible. You aren’t going to write a great story without it. It’s very likely that you’ll waste your time. Don’t even start it. Whatever you’re going to write is bound to be crappy.”

My inner critic may sound right. But he’s wrong. Sure, I don’t have a plot. This plotless state of affairs is probably going to make it difficult for me to write a consistent, non-crappy story. I’m not going to worry too much about it, because he is trying to mislead me. My aim is to write 50,000 words of a crappy draft and not a best seller novel. It’s totally fine and even apt for me to produce bad, boring boo boos.

Having said that, it’s scary to accept and to embrace this plotless state of affairs. This is the first challenge I need to overcome in NaNoWriMo. Can I accept my current situation and simply start writing anyway? I say I can. The first sentence of my novel is most likely to be “I’m going to tell you a story, but I have no idea what the hell I’m going to tell you”, and that’s OK. This attitude, I believe, is what underlies the art of writing shitty drafts. If I don’t write anything in the first place, there’s no way I get to write something brilliant. Embrace imperfections and dive in.

By the way, since I don’t know what stories are buried inside the treasure box in my mind, I can’t judge whether they can be good or bad.

Either way, I believe in the power of writing them down.

If my stories stored in my treasure box are indeed rubbish, I want to take them out of the box by writing them down so I cam make some space for new stories, which might turn out to be better than the ones I have accumulated. There’s no reason why I should keep old ones when I’m aware that they are rubbish.

Of course, those stories might turn out to be great as well. If that’s the case, there’s no reason why I should keep them only to myself either; writing them down and sharing them with the world seem to be a better way of handling them.

Through out November, I will make sure to report my progress on this blog as well. I want to share some lessons I learn through participating in NaNoWriMo with you too. Stay tuned.

If you are reading this post on 1 or 2 Nov, it’s not too late. If you’re curious, why don’t you give it a try? Your inner critic might tell you all sorts of things, but remember, your inner critic is trying to mislead you and to scare you away. (This whole thing reminds me of my post, Cat vs. Curiosity. Check it out if you liked this post.)

My account name on NaNoWriMo is Masafumi. Feel free to add me as your writing buddy on the site. Happy writing!

Photo: Ernst Moeksis

Letting go of old belongings and creating room for new memories

Taro Okamoto, my favorite artist, believed that life is not about accumulating as many of us tend to think, but it’s about using up what we have. When first I read the very first paragraph of Okamoto’s book Jibun no Naka ni Doku o Mote or Have Poison Inside You in English, which expresses that belief of his, I was impressed and inspired. I think I was 16 year old or so, and I didn’t fully understand… or feel what he meant.

I wish I could say I learnt the idea of using up my life over the last 10 years, but I started getting it only recently. I came to understand this idea deeper and better by working on designing my life. What kind of person do I want to be? What do I want my life to look like? Answering these questions helped me clarify my vision and move towards it, because it tells me what I need to leave behind in order to get to where I want to go.

Some exercises in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way gave me some initial momentum. You get asked to get rid of your old clothes and what doesn’t belong to your vision. Once you get used to getting rid of some of your old belongings, you’ll get used to making more room for a new stream. At least that was the case for me.

Thankfully, I’m not an accumulative person in general. Even though I didn’t have many clothes, I still could manage to get rid of my old T-shirts that I didn’t wear anymore. I did have some attachments to them, though.

What makes it hard to let go of personal belongings is probably attachment we have for those items. It seems as though they store our memories and throwing them away is almost like erasing those memories. Of course that’s not really the case, although our belongings might function as triggers for our memories. And I can understand that sentiment about letting go of old memories by throwing away old belongings.

But, I decided that I need to make room for new memories anyway. If I end up forgetting those old memories by losing memory triggers, so be it. I trust my brain for keeping what matters to me. In any case, I’m determined to make new, even greater memories.

I’m aiming at becoming minimalistic about my possessions. By ‘minimalistic’, I mean as much as I could pack everything I have in a backpack and be ready to go. It will be really difficult to keep a hundred of books with me given this goal, but I’ll try as much as I can.

Getting rid of clothes was easy for me. I still have some that I could release from my hands, but I guess it’s OK for the time being.

I really don’t have much, apart from CDs and books. I did manage to get rid of most of my CDs – so, what’s left is a pile of books.

Although I cleared some of my books, there are a number of books making towers in my room still. Most of them are specialized books written in English (i.e. philosophy books) and I don’t really want to let them go. In fact, I could, but the problem is that I wouldn’t be able to access to those books at a library in Japan easily. I’ll do something about it though.

Instead of accumulating things in my life, I now want to give and share more. Not necessarily material things, but experiences, feelings and memories. To me, that’s what using up my life means in a nutshell.

On that note, I’ve decided to give away a copy of The Artist’s Way to one lucky person among not-so-many readers of this blog. It’s my copy. If you want to be considered for this give away, please write a comment on this post and tell me your story or tips about letting go of old belongings. I will pick the one lucky person at random on Monday and announce the winner in the next post. In the mean time, have fun letting go of your old belongings…

photo: Magda Sobkowiak

Nobody told you to do it: Climbing Mt. Fuji on a rainy day

I climbed Mt. Fuji on 14th of July. The weather condition was awful, although it wasn’t as bad as I expected, to be honest. How bad did I expect it to be? To the extent that it was impossible to climb Mt. Fuji. It was barely climbable. My friend Ashley, a Butoh dancer extraordinaire, climbed the mountain with me and she wrote about her experiences on her blog. Do read her post on Mt. Fuji as well.

We caught a bus from Kawaguchi-ko Station at 7.20 am. When we were at Kawaguchi-ko Station, the weather seemed fine and we thought we might be able to climb Mt. Fuji on a good weather condition. But it was soon proven to be mistaken. When we got to 5th Station of Mt. Fuji around 8.15 am, it was raining hard up in the middle of the mountain. We spent a little while to get used to the quick change of the altitude, and then took off around 8.40 am.

As we walked on, the weather got worse. The rain was hitting us hard. The wind was malicious. The fog was painting the scene completely white.

Our pace was quite fast. We did have some rest, but never a substantial break. It was so cold that stopping to have a rest meant cooling down your body under that circumstance. So, the best way to keep us warm and sane was to keep marching on. I think it took us only 5 hours to get to the top of Mt. Fuji, while it is estimated to take more than 6 hours to get there.

The whole experience reminded me of what I have been learning and getting more aware of this year.

Since I expected the weather to be bad, my intention was simply to keep going as far as possible. All I cared was to take one step further and I didn’t really worry about getting to the top of the mountain. What’s great is that these small steps did get me to the top and back to 5th Station. What can I do to make my life more creative, romantic, and awesome? Know where I’m heading and take small steps towards it every day. It’s just like climbing Mt. Fuji.

By the way, the real top – the highest point of Mt. Fuji wasn’t reachable due to the bad weather. The view from the top was completely white and otherworldly. There was nothing magnificent of the kind you see in photos of Mt. Fuji. But that freaky view was made beautiful thanks to all the steps I took and the experiences of getting soaked and frozen as if my body was washed and left on a snowy field before leaving this world.

Nobody told us to do it. We chose to climb Mt. Fuji on that day, and the weather happened to be terrible. You can’t control the weather, unfortunately. But you can make a choice. My choice was to take small steps. This whole process was so moving that I almost cried for joy at some points. I made a promise to Ashley that I would keep smiling for the whole way, and apart from those moments, I did keep that promise.

We got out of the top of Mt. Fuji as soon as we got there. For descending, it took us less than 3 hours, I believe. We managed to catch the 4.55 pm bus from 5th Station to Kawaguchi-ko Station.

Would I do it again? Perhaps not any soon, but yes, I would. On a sunny day.

Anecdote:
I brought my iPhone with me, intending to tweet about this climb. However, since I didn’t stop much and couldn’t be bothered tweeting, I put it in my backpack, covering it in a plastic bag. But it escaped from the bag. It was stuck somewhere in the backpack, with nothing to protect it from water. So, naturally, it got all wet. When I noticed that after coming back to 5th Station, it was too late and my iPhone didn’t work at all. I tried this method to resurrect my iPhone and it worked! Make sure you protect your iPhone from water and if it gets soaked, try the rice method. I can’t guarantee that it will work for you, but it did work for me. It’s worth a try.

A short question with open possibilities (Day 13)

What was your childhood dream? Or did you have more than one dreams?

There are a few things I wanted to be: Pegasus, a cartoonist and a game designer. If you are thinking “What? Pegasus?”, I’ll tell you about it soon.

When I asked that question to my grandmother, she gave me an answer quickly and told me that she wanted to be a singer. That’s surprising and not surprising at the same time, because I know she likes singing and she does have a good voice.

What was your childhood dream? Are you pursuing it? Or have you changed your goals? I’m curious about your stories. Don’t tell me your story is boring, because it is more interesting than you think. Always.

30 Day Blogging Challenge

Starting from 14 June 2010, I will update this blog every day for 30 days. I have no idea what I’m onto, but I know what I want. I want to give some love to my blog. Or to put it in a conventional way, I want to form a habit of updating my blog regularly. I might not update it everyday after this challenge, and I might rather update it 3 times a week. But if I can update my blog everyday, then I’ll know for sure that updating it 3 times a week is doable.

I’ll go for quantity rather than quality. The 30 posts I will write for this challenge might turn out to be totally unreadable and, quite frankly, rubbish, but that’s totally fine with me. These posts will serve as stepping stones for greater posts in the future.

Do you have a blog that needs some love? If you do and are interested in taking up this challenge, do join me. The more, the merrier. Or did you always want to start blogging, but didn’t know where to start? Come join us now, and get your blogging habit going with this challenge. I know it’s a very short notice, but when there’s no need for you to wait to take action, there’s no short notice either. What you have is a choice you can make. There will be no fancy prize apart from the experiences you will take away from this challenge; in fact, that’s a great prize and I want it.

If you want to take up the challenge, please leave a comment below with your blog’s url so I can link to it later. Also, if you know someone who might enjoy this challenge, invite that person as well!