Slight return

It took nearly seven months before I decided to publish on the Manifesto of Perfection again, the place I recorded my thoughts and opinions of all things self-improvement.

Last week I marked my return, where for the first time ever I featured work that wasn’t my own – a beautiful poem by Charles Bukowski ‘So you want to be a writer?’

I can’t promise it will change your life or anything, but it reminded me why I enjoy writing  – expressing oneself, relieving stress, someone appreciates your work, the natural inspiration process, artistic integrity.  I knew it was time to return.

Why the break?

I decided in July I wanted to take a break from blogging for various reasons.

The first was my dwindling passion for writing about self-improvement, reading a lot of books on the topic.  If you have read books on this subject you may understand the thrill from reading them, the feel-good glow when you finish, with great intentions of living a better life.

That feeling dies off, so you read another one, and another one and each time it produces a diminishing level of return on that euphoria it creates.

There are so many times you can read the same stuff again and again repackaged in a new format, quoting the same sound bites.

“Although we are born unequal, we are all equal in the time allocated each day”

Quote from hack self-help book #543729

This makes one cynical and as someone who blogs about the content, my greatest fear is becoming a part of the generic production line of cliché self-improvement content.

Secondly, the name of my site isn’t just ironic, I can be a bit of perfectionist.  Before taking my respite I wrote the post ‘Why bucket lists are bad and why you should shun them’. 

This sums up my dislike for wild fantasy lists that have no substance and do not actually motivate the individual to do anything unique or of substance.  Personally, I feel it is the best post I have ever written.

A sensible person would look at a great post positively and see how much they have come along… but not me.  It was my benchmark for good writing, but nothing met the standard.

All I thought was “That isn’t good enough for anyone to read”  and with it excuses not to write came.

Thirdly my life has changed forever, I am now a father to a beautiful daughter, so my world, along with my priorities has changed.

The challenge with writing is having that space for intense concentration and commitment, something hard to maintain when you have someone completely dependent on you.  I no longer can just do what I want, now that I have so much more.

As well as my daughter developing routines, I myself am learning new routines for writing as I enter this new world.  Part of my role to her is to be a role model and  I don’t want to use this life-changing experience as an excuse.

I want my daughter to see me as someone who doesn’t give up, always strives for more and does things that I love.  If she can learn by my example, then it’s a good start.

Why return?

There are other writing goals I have, but the motivation why I started the Manifesto always come back on a day-to-day basis.

On the morning commuter train, it was standing room only and jammed so tight I felt like we were shooting the new Human Centipede movie.  Room to breath was little and I felt like the conjoined twin of the woman in front; she had an arse like a bag of self-raising flour caught in the rain.  It hovered dangerously close to my crotch, where one sudden jerk of the train could lead to a rape acquisition claim.

This gave me a really good view of her Internet habits – gaming sites, unfunny memes and mindless social media browsing – the triad of time wasting shit.  I thought it was very sad she did not have anything better to occupy her mind, though you could easily argue I was sadder looking over the shoulder and judging someone else’s pointless habits.

I wrote this blog as my motivator away from dank submission hoping in an almost God-complex way that I would inspire others along the way.  Seeing someone with no purpose made me realise  I was needed more than ever, the war on mediocrity and taking life for granted continues.  Although merely a foot soldier, there is small hope I make at least one person’s life better.

Before I turn into another shouty ‘motivational’ YouTube personality screaming at the viewer to stop pissing their life away; all I wanted to say is – it’s all going to be okay – let’s do this.

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if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.

Charles Bukowski