DREWspective

So how was your 2011?

As well as being a chance to make big things happen, I knew it was going to be a scary year from the beginning. I knew that something very frightening was going to go down at some point, but I had no idea what. As it turned out, there were a few short but very painful difficult times – including the loss of a social circle, the near-loss of a £600 DSLR camera (just yesterday!), and who could forget the major screw-up (once again) by recruitment people over my pay, which they dared to call a “minor error”, that caused my financial crisis.

There were also some good times. For the first half of this year I made good on my message for 2011 (which unfortunately is no longer up) by taking action and invoking the “Yes Man” ideology. As a result: I’ve been part of setting a world record, have taken up street photography, visited the Dome for the first time, and certainly not least had exhibited at AFOLcon: my first ever public exhibit. There were plenty of other things that have gone well; I even got to see MF DOOM performing at the Roundhouse in Camden, thanks to a work colleague.

So I’ve written a post around this time for the last four years, that nobody ever reads on DREWspective, reflecting on the past year and expressing thoughts about the up and coming year. My thoughts are as follows…

As well as being scary at times, 2011 was probably more about self-reflection than any other year. Being the kind of person I am, I honestly never thought I’d live past 21 (because society has a habit of killing people who really want to make the world a better place). I still remember the hard times after university, when I was on the dole for seven months before landing a market research job, earning up to £120/week (which at the time felt like a fortune). Even further back: my 16th birthday got me no closer to losing my virginity, and my 18th was basically spent on Yahoo! Chat in an Internet café. While I still complain and rant sometimes, and admittedly my life is nowhere near how I’d like it to be, I’ve come a very long way.

I also feel like I’ve hurt a lot of people along the way, whether it’s by mistreating them, being an arsehole or not being there for people when they needed someone most. As hard as it might be to believe I’ve also broken people’s hearts and/or their trust, and I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of respect as a person along the way, and I feel badly about it.
But regardless of what anyone thinks, I hate suffering in any form – and I hate seeing people hurt and suffering. I can’t save the world or help everybody, but I don’t get off at all on anyone’s misery (and I despise anyone who does).

On the subject of suffering: my 2012 is going to be all about…

Living on your own terms

What I mean by living on one’s own terms is that our lives (and how they’re led) aren’t dictated by other people or their whims. Instead we make choices about how we want to live, and the kind of person we want to become – and of course taking responsibility for those choices, whether they go right or wrong.

Even though he’s a fictional character, I’m in awe of Howard Roark: the protagonist in the book and movie The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. He made a point, in his trade, of refusing to compromise with popular opinion, to the point where he rejected a crucial contract – which meant he’d be under the thumbs of the client – choosing to work in a quarry.
Watch the movie, then come back and tell me how many people you know – whether they go around spouting slogans like “I’m me” or “I can do whatever I like” or not – that could resist a fraction of the pressure Roark faced to conform. Unless they’re rich (which misses the point), I’d reckon hardly any of them would come close.

I guess the immediate difficulty with living on one’s own terms is the fact that most people, businesses and companies depend on other people fitting into some kind of mould, or conforming to some template. It’s a lot less effort to control, manipulate and sell to a group of people if they all think and act the same. It’s gotten to the point where people sound as if they’re reading from a script – and get thrown for a loop if you challenge them with a question. Living on one’s own terms isn’t easy – there are hordes of people who would rather “fit” people into a predefined slot.

By living on your own terms, I don’t mean with complete disregard for anyone else. For one, if your life or mood is dependent on someone else’s suffering, I would question your concept of “positivity”. As long as nobody else is being affected or disadvantaged, I say everybody has the right to live on their own terms – but we also know that not everybody wants those rights for other people.

“Confidence”, and other milestones

How many of you have heard someone talking about “confidence” being the solution to someone’s problem? Now keep your hand up if you’ve ever heard that same person explain – in no uncertain terms – what confidence is.

A big, big realisation I had this year was that, in order to reach a goal, you have to know what that goal is. Nowhere has it applied more in my experience than to this concept of “confidence”: I wrote a post a while ago about what I think confidence actually is, out of the realisation that I’d never heard anyone actually breaking it down.

Whether or not you agree with my definition of confidence, you can see how blindly chasing “confidence” has led most people to become arrogant, loud, conceited and/or stuck-up, sometimes leading to a “princess mentality”. There’s the flip side too: people who become withdrawn, reclusive and probably even mute (like me!) because they’ve given up trying to become “confident”.

It applies to many other things as well. You know, a lot of people want to be famous, and most of them go as far as whoring themselves (proverbially, I hope) on television in this so-called “reality programming” to get their fifteen minutes. But as I found out the hard way a while ago, real fame doesn’t happen overnight – and whatever you want to say about famous people today, it certainly isn’t easy. Akon (in a YouTube video) gives an insight into the kinds of sacrifices one has to make to have a lasting career, let alone remain in the spotlight.

Speaking of fame, there’s also the adage that one can never be happy reaching (or trying to reach) someone else’s goal. The fact that it’s someone else’s goal makes it that much harder to reach.
As a guy, let alone a black guy, I’ve felt a lot of pressure to develop a muscular body since high school. I remember wanting to join a gym, both to get fit and develop muscle, but never knowing where the gym was or how to join one. It took years to gain that information, and today I’ve got a pair of dumbbells at home, and I’ve been to a number of gyms over the years. I’ve even been on protein shakes and various supplements, both to lose body fat and gain muscle.
But then I realised why I wasn’t making much progress: it was the same reason I’d lost five stones on the LighterLife diet all those years ago, then put the weight back on in less than a year. I wasn’t doing it for myself; I was trying to impress other people.

I’m not saying I’m happy with my body shape or weight, or that I have no interest in developing my figure. But as I’ve said before: losing weight, or changing anything about yourself in the long run, has to be for yourself above anything else, otherwise it won’t last. As it turned out, I began losing weight gradually since July, just by watching what I ate and very occasionally exercising – I was no longer trying too hard, especially mentally.

To live on your own terms, f*** what everybody else thinks you should be, do, have, believe or want – this isn’t about other people. In fact, other people are usually the problem.

Women

In my own life – and I kid you not – women have been the source of almost all my major problems. Dad was working his butt off, and I didn’t have a male teacher until halfway through high school, so I was almost exclusively raised and taught by women. What followed was years of indoctrination (being told and convinced, directly or indirectly, that I was wrong, offensive, mentally ill or insane, just because I was me), at the same time being led to cater for women’s ever-changing whims.

I was lucky enough to discover the Men’s Rights movement a few months ago, which made me realise that a lot of the things I’d gone through and suspected were happening while I was growing up were real. University – and perhaps college – really was a hotbed of feminism (where a white girl is often sided with over a black guy, no matter how flimsy the issue), and whether on TV or in real life, men in general were gradually being made to fit specific images (i.e. European-looking, “alpha male”, stupid) to even be considered for reproduction. Conversely, any old woman can slap on a low-cut top and heels, and call themselves “sexy”.

Keeping on the subject of living on your own terms, with regards to women, consider the term “real man“: a phrase most women throw around in order to control men’s behaviour. Yes, it’s control, because the concept of a “real man” is so ambiguous that hardly anyone knows what one is.
The widespread use of this phrase was the first nail in the proverbial coffin. Call me whatever you want, but just as I would refuse advice on how to attract women from a woman, I’ve always seen something inherently wrong with the idea of a woman telling a man how to be a “real man”.
(For our slow, CSI-watching friends here and across the pond: I’d rather ask A MAN!)

My gradual development into living on my own terms began with how I see women in general. Thankfully, having had so many template rejections in the past, as well as listening to horror stories from other men and on the Tom Leykis show, I can honestly say that I’m no longer nearly as obsessed with women as I used to be – therefore I’m no longer as much under their control. I see and hear most women in public these days, and given how they talk, what they sound like, how many accessories they’ve tacked onto themselves and how they treat other people, I now wonder why the hell I’d even pursue them, let alone fight with other guys or lose sleep over them. Whereas I was intimidated by long-term and married couples in the past, I no longer envy guys who’ve been chained to a potential nagging wife.

As a guy, the moment you realise that women aren’t worth sacrificing anything for is the first step toward any kind of freedom. Of course, if you actually find or have a good woman, that’s great for you – but we only have to look at the hordes of “white knights”, “manginas” and “pussy beggars” (and even “nice guys”) to see that living one’s life trying to please women is a losing, and possibly fatal strategy.

I want to make it clear that I don’t hate women, and I don’t subscribe to misogyny – it’s the female bull**** I absolutely hate. As with the handful of decent recruitment people that exist, I really don’t like talking badly about women in general – because I know a couple of decent ones – but the vast majority of them have set a very bad example.

Manipulation

Finally, I would suggest that we become aware of how other people try to manipulate us to cater for their whims.

There’s a lot of manipulation going around, and I’ve talked about a couple of examples on DREWspective: things such as suggesting you’re “happy”, or fake urgency by overuse of the word “need”.
Increasingly common are “d’ya wanna” commands, mostly used in the workplace:

D’ya wanna have a look at this

which actually translates to

you want to have a look at this

In the past I’ve been accused of being overly sensitive to words, and I suppose from the outside looking in it looks like I am. Personally, I just like to know what I’m supposedly agreeing to, so I’m very careful about giving automatic, knee-jerk responses to these statements.

Let’s be very clear about something: if someone wasn’t trying to manipulate you into doing something, they would be far more direct instead of being weaselly. You’ve probably heard of “weasel words“; these are “weasel techniques”. (Having looked at that Wikipedia article, I’m guilty as charged.) I believe in the adage of “ask, don’t tell”, but also “tell, don’t ask” – and when someone’s telling but pretending to ask, or asking but pretending to tell, not only is it weaselly but I consider it to be dishonest.

In my own effort to combat manipulation against myself, I’ve decided on four basic policies with dealing with people:

• I refuse to help dishonest people;
• I refuse to help jerks/assholes;
• I refuse to help liars;
• I refuse to help bullies.

None of these kinds of people serve any purpose other than to cause suffering, so there’s no way in hell I should feel compelled to help them as I’d help someone else. As Gordon Ramsay once put it,

You don’t f*** me, and I won’t f*** you.

(I think that’s what he said, anyway.)

~

That concludes my long-ass New Year Message for 2011. I will probably be back before the year is out with my last thoughts, but in the meantime I hope I’ve said at least one thing that’s helped or made sense.

Have a good one.