The Power of Positive Experiences Part 3 - positive experience in practice

Over the last two parts of this extended post, I sorted through why we need positive experiences and some of the qualities that make them what they are. I'm going to round out by suggesting a few activities that don't involve input from other people that one can do to gain the benefits that I've described in previous posts. I considered graphing up a bunch of stuff according to how they corresponded to the concepts that I've discussed in the last two posts - immediate versus delayed benefits, immediate versus sustained timeframes, and initially positive versus initially negative experiences. I decided against that though, because I realized everything is subjective and I'm not here to tell anyone how to live their lives - what I might look forward to might not be everyones' cup of tea. This post is meant more as a jumping off point for those at a bit of a loss with what to do with a spare afternoon, or it might help get you out of a rut if you've suddenly found yourself with a lot of free time.

One of the great things about being happy with your own company is that your free time really is freedom. You can:

Go for a long walk and really take the time to appreciate your surroundings. Take note of little things like street names and what sorts of plants and animals are around. If you live in a rural area, going for a walk and noting what sort of wildlife is around can be a really interesting experience.

In the same vein, going for a nice long drive can also be pretty therapeutic and give you time to think. Getting onto the highway and hitting the speed limit for an hour or two can help move things around in your mind without you giving them too much conscious thought. You can also plan to head to a new destination and see what's what when you get there.

It might be a bit 'people' oriented, but just heading out and seeing a band or people-watching without engaging anyone else is also something that can help the lonely feel a bit more connected without giving up that insulation that introverts cherish. It can also be stimulating for creative types (it is for me).

If you're strapped for cash, taking an afternoon to yourself around the house without doing any housework is usually quite affirming and has an immediate benefit. I usually start with a bit of light housework and then take a shower before getting into something just for me - reading a book or even a bit of writing.

In our era of modern technology, grabbing the right computer game can yield up hours of enjoyment without any strenuous physical activity. They're usually so immersive and huge in scope these days that it's not hard to make an extended project out of one. This could probably merit a post on its' own, but for the time being I'll stick to a couple of simple recommendations here -

•     In all honesty, getting a decent emulator of some kind and going retro offers the most bang for the buck in my opinion. It's cheap, very spec-light on computers these days, and you get a sense of the sort of story-telling that todays' light-and-sound fests are missing. Try loading up Genesis Plus and grabbing Shining Force 2 or Landstalker, for example You can thank me later.

•     Skyrim, of everything on offer recently, seems to be the go-to game for large-scale, non-MMORPG gaming these days. It's not easy on the wallet, but it does give a hell of a lot back for the outlay.

•     My final suggestion here is between totally retro and present-2013 cutting edge - give Baldurs Gate or one of the older computer-based RPGs a shot. They also do really well on any decent platform, and the story and characters are pretty entertaining. If you're the sort of person who enjoys gaming culture, you owe it to yourself to check these sorts of titles out (or revisit them, if you already have).

   
If you've got a really extended period of time off - like a week or more - taking a trip away can be one of the best things to do. Travelling alone is a strangely dense undertaking (it's something that I've got slated for a future post), but it is doable. Camping is one of the most excellent things that you can do to get away from the grind - it really reconnects you with nature and gives you time to think, to say nothing of the freedom you get with literally having no one within shouting distance of you. I will caution, however, that camping holds certain concerns for loners that you've got to think about. You don't want to end up on the missing persons roster because you went for a hike and fell off a cliff in the middle of nowhere. I'll cover this in more detail in another post as well.

When I was doing the graph that I mentioned and scrapped earlier, there was one big positive that started out as intially negative (something that you don't look forward to at the start), was a sustained action, and had a delayed benefit - in other words, something that seemed completely unpleasant that ended up having a good payoff at the end. That thing was quitting something. Cigarettes and alcohol came to mind, but other addictions or could also be lumped in here. From chewing ones' nails to procastinating and even excessive masturbation(SFW), there are a lot of things out there that seem like a total chore to get started in, but have huge payoffs if you stick with them. Again, the key for those 'going it alone' is knowing that it'll be a sustained action and it'll come with drawbacks at the start will go a long way to helping your resolve in the long run. Or at least, it helps me with my bad habits.

I could go on and on about things that introverts can do to introduce some indulgence and difference into their lives, but I'll finish off by suggesting that another perfectly legitimate way of having a positive experience can be found in 'slumming it' - sleeping, sitting around thinking, or just letting it all hang loose and doing nothing. It's a great way to recharge after periods of stress and forced extroversion, however as always you don't want this to become the primary mode of relaxation - it's all too easy to become a lazy cellar dweller that way. Save it for special occasions.

I hope that this post and the couple before it teased out an increased awareness of what positive experiences can do for you. Maybe this one got you thinking about what you can do to increase the incidence of this sort of thing in your life - it's certainly given me a few ideas for future posts. Thanks for reading!

The Power of Positive Experiences Part 2 - what makes a positive experience positive?

In my last post, I gave a bit of an overview of the benefits of having a positive experience. It was probably a bit of a no-brainer post, but it didn't really hurt to draw an explicit line from the experience to the benefits, especially in regards to the intended audience for this blog. This second part is going to answer the question of what a positive experience in terms of qualities that make something so.

So, what is a 'positive experience'? It's not really a hard one to answer, is it? There is a short and a long answer, though. The short one is:

'Anything that makes you feel good and provides you with a boost'.

The longer one takes into account a few other factors:

'Something either quick or sustained that those taking part in it take something that provides immediate or lasting benefit from, even if on the surface, the experience might seem negative'.

I'll unpack that a bit:

Positive experiences can either be something that happens quickly, or a sustained action that requires conscious effort to carry out. It might not even be sustained in the sense that it's one event that takes a while - it could be something small that is repeated at a regular interval that builds into a reward larger than the sum of its' parts.

A positive experience provides a benefit of some kind - it gratifies you with a reward of some sort, either immediately or over time. It might even be something that has no immediate payoff but you know will in the future. Have you ever laid out the next days' outfit before you went to bed that night, and congratulated yourself when it resulted in an extra couple of minutes sleep in the next morning? That's the sort of thing I mean there.

Finally, a positive experience might not always seem entirely positive at the time - this is a crucial thing to keep in mind for the introvert, owing to the self-powered nature we have. Sometimes, things can seem pretty bad. In my university work, I often run up against concepts and workloads that seem far too much to deal with, especially given that I'm without gainful employ at the moment. What usually gets me through is the idea that it's all building up to something good - something that will be a huge boon to me in the future. It makes the things I have to deal with now - the stress, the tenuous financial situation, the exhaustion - worth it in the long run. It also expands the concept of a positive experience to mean a lot more things than those that just seem good - almost anything can be a positive if you look for the good things that you can take away from it.

These things all combine in different ways when we do things and get into certain situations - from what I've said here, you can see how a lot of different things can be construed as positive. I guess in a way I'm just breaking things down so it's easier to see exactly what makes something a good experience, so maximum benefit can be gained from having them.

We've covered benefits and the qualities of what makes something a good experience now. I think the third and final post will provide some helpful ideas for those of us who don't feel they need to attend a party full of people they don't know to get a buzz. Thanks for reading.

The Power of Positive Experiences Part 1 - effects and importance

In the realm of the self-dependent loner, a couple of strange things happen that aren't in the normal purview of those with a large amount of connection to the outer world. I've touched on these things, particularly in regards to my post on Hypervigilance, where you exercise a high degree of vigilance to threat with a view to avoiding anything that might come up before it does.

The main problem there is that once something does go wrong, it can land you in some really hard territory to get out of. It's hard to haul yourself to the doctor and then back home when you've got no one to take you, for example. Letting the house degenerate into squalor just means a whole lot of work for you, because there's no one but yourself to a)blame for letting it get that bad, and b)clean it up for you.

These sorts of things are part of why positive experiences - especially for introverts - are such powerful tools. Here are some of the ways they can help:

They provide relief from the particular grind that loners deal with day to day. They give you an opportunity to drop your baggage and concerns and just enjoy the ride for a while. Sure, this goes for everyone else too, but when you're running the whole show by yourself, that can be an especially huge boon.

They help reinforce the idea that you are playing the game right and not doing something that is too hard/wrong for your lifestyle. Personally this is something I've noticed after having a good time - I've often wondered if I should give up seeking my own rich inner life and thrusting myself 'out there'. After enjoying something good, I often reflect that I don't have to change anything about my life, because good things do come along.

They help reinvigorate you for getting back into what I've broadly termed 'the grind' (though that's probably a bit of an unhealthy term for it). They help break plateaus and motivate you to change things that have been hanging around for a while. Again, this is a fairly common effect of affirmative experiences for everyone, but it's especially poignant for those who manage their entire lives themselves.

Those are the three main positives that I get when I experience something good in my life and situation. I'm sure there are a lot more, but this isn't meant to be exhaustive - just provide a bit of an idea about what the benefits can be, and to act as a statement for why you should get out there and make an effort to have good things happen to you.

In my next post on Positive Experiences, I'm going to figure out what makes a positive experience in a fairly granulated, concept-y sort of way. I'll round out with a third post about suggestions for what can make a positive experience when you don't want to involve other people and just enjoy yourself.

The Middling Way

'Everything in moderation - including moderation' - Oscar Wilde

I am going to address another broad concept that I have found useful in my day to day life. The above quote sums it up pretty nicely, and it had helped keep me in two ways, which I'll detail below. As with most of the things that I discuss here, I haven't always lived this way - it's been something that I've had to become conscious of as I've gotten older. I think it's worth writing about because it seems to be one of those 'Life 101' things that is so basic that it often gets forgotten about.

The concept itself is basically that of not taking too much of a slant on any one issue in your life - but at the same time, not living in a way that is completely devoid of strong opinions or actions. I strive to be neither too frugal with my money, nor spend it too quickly. When I undertake activities to improve my fitness, I make sure that I am not overworking myself too hard, but I also make sure to do them as often as I can so as not to let my fitness suffer. I don't have too many strong opinions on things that don't concern me - in my own personal life, this comes down to politics and a lot of other things with a heavily technical base. In my work life as well, I also strive to be useful and productive, but overworking is a big concern for me as it's caused me big problems in the past.

Sustainability is the name of the game with this concept, which I've come to call 'The Middling Way' (I can't say that I discuss or even consciously think about it by name, however). This is the first of the two ways in which it's benefitted me overall - in moving the sustainability of a lot of things that I do to the fore, it's allowed me to get maximum benefit from them and helped give me a good, solid structure around which to build a comfortable and satisfying life. There's more of a sense of balance around all of my actions since I came by this concept, and that's what's needed when your support network is small. It's made all the difference to slow down and have periods where nothing is done to excess and moderation rules. It gives one perspective on what unbalance looks like, and probably most importantly, has a way of creating a knock-on effect where areas of imbalance become easier to identify and work on. This echoes what I said in an earlier post about holistic thinking.

The second main benefit that I've noticed is in the changes in the way I approach something that requires I do in fact throw caution to the wind and do something to excess. In this regard, I'm mainly talking about the increased ability that I get when doing something in this fashion, and also the increased satisfaction that I get from it as well.

Think about an Olympic runner - they don't put in an Olympic level performance every time they train. But the training they do allows them to build a stronger foundation for the time when they do need to pull out all of the stops - the actual event they compete in at the Olympics. It conditions them to handle conditions of relatively extreme stress, and allows them to push themselves harder than they otherwise would be able to. It's the same with the concept I'm exploring here - moderation allows you to condition yourself to a greater degree for situations you might find yourself in where you'll need better abilities than what you've already got. It could be said that this is the 'including moderation' part of the quote at the beginning of this entry. This idea goes for more than just the physical too - you can apply this to your temper, mental capacity, or even financial situations.

I have tried to say a lot in this entry about a pretty huge concept. I hope the main point has come across. I will be wrapping up with dealing with these more nebulous concepts before too long, and continuing with some more practical advice for a self-supporting individual. I hope you keep reading.

Peace.

Myers-Briggs Testing; some thoughts

A little while ago, I underwent testing to determine my personality type according to the Myers-Briggs protocol. I did it as part of a university-based activity using a basic online tool, and then afterwards was interested enough to request a more in depth test which not only gave me my type, but where the various aspects of my personality sat on their respective continuua. I'd only ever undergone the test once before this, and I can't remember the result that test produced. These later tests designated me as an ISTJ, or Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging type. This blog will concern a bit of analysis and some thoughts concerning this result.

As far as my career goes, the little bit of reading that I've done on the subject points towards the fact that this particular personality type is what more 'traditional' librarians were, back in the day before the internet exploded and they became a much more diverse group. Nowadays, extroverted librarians do not seem to be uncommon, and every other aspect of our personalities is mutable in regards to the profession as well. This was interesting to me - not only did it show me that I wasn't too wide of the mark where my chosen career was concerned, but that I was also correct in predicting that the information sector had undergone a lot of changes in the last couple of decades.

Having said this, however, I keep coming back to the idea that the personality type test isn't meant to be some iron-clad set of rules for how someone behaves, nor is it a restriction to who can work as what. I'm sure that even in the period where my personality type was apparently the dominant one in the librarian profession, there would still have been a wide variety of personality types present there as well. Likewise, just because I'm an introvert doesn't mean that I can't function in group settings or even get into a bit of public speaking. I can even be the life of the party when I have to be (and sometimes, I've had to be).

It occurs to me that this personality type testing is only meant to give you a fairly basic idea of what your preferences are in relation to others. Introverts are capable of extroversion, and vice-versa - but for the purposes of what they actually like to do, I get the feeling that the test has helped me gain a better understanding of that. I have eschewed the test until now because I was under the impression it was an exercise in pigeon-holing, and this didn't sit well with me.

Even though I think that taking this test has been a net win for me in terms of a bit of self-discovery, I'm also conscious of its shortcomings. A cursory glance around the internet will reveal that the test itself is decidedly unscientific - I even got the feeling it was considering that most of the questions one answers to prompt a result are based purely on personal perceptions. Though based heavily on the work of Carl Jung, the test doesn't appear to be particularly provable as fact. I also wonder how many people are influenced by the test to act a certain way once they find out their type. Though it's a useful piece of information to know about oneself, it seems care needs to be exercised when figuring out exactly how useful it is.

For me, I am taking my result at face value, calling it my preference, and moving forward as I would have before I found it out anyway. Has anyone else got a take on this sort of test?

The Paperboy

The boy was small and very cold, and he shivered as he moved down the little garden path towards us. My father stood underneath a gutter that glittered with frost near the top of the little stairway, waiting for our daily delivery to come as it always did - by way of the boy. As always his huge back was straight as a plumb line and the heavy black coat he wore had snow on the shoulders. He’d already been out today. Nearby, my sisters sat, taking morning tea and waiting for the scrawny young man to drop off his payload. He was a small, callow darker shape in the murk of the morning.
“Good morning, sir.”
“And to you. Here is your money.”
My father rumbled. For some reason, he reminded me of the stern old crows that lined our way to school each day. The boy would have been tiny against him even on the same footing. On the stair, as he was, he almost seemed out of sight. As he extended his arm, the paper in it, the air was suddenly full of a thunder that took me a second to realize was a huge truck, hammering down the ice slick street. At this the boy turned suddenly, arm still out, and uttered a groan at odds with his tiny frame. I was surprised by its’ depth.
“What is the matter, boy?” asked my father. He could have been irritated, but it was hard to tell. We were still too interested in the truck, by now at the end of the road. The boy turned back suddenly.
“Sorry, sir. That truck is bringing my new neighbors into town. I’ve heard some strange stories and stranger things coming from their house in the day.” As he spoke, he put the paper in my fathers’ hand and took the money.
“What things?” the question came from Sadie, my elder sister. She regarded him intently, almost in a predatory manner. For his part, he almost jumped. She’d never addressed him before, though she’d been present for many of his visits.
“They… they sing strange songs, milady. And I’ve heard that their children have as much influence in their family as the parents do.”
“That is interesting, paper boy. I’d like to hear those songs.” The girl replied, leaning forward and smiling. My father moved aside to give them clear view of each other. Though he seemed stern, he was kind. The paper boy licked his lips and looked up at him for a moment, only speaking after the nod was given. His voice betrayed his nerves.
“I… If you’d like, milady, you would be welcome to come to my house to hear them. You all would be.” He looked at the three of the children in turn, and I noticed his eyes were pale blue. I’d never seen that color before.
“We would love to!” cooed Sadie. “Where shall we come, then?” her excitement was evident.
“Down to Abaddon and Crine. My house is the one with the big garden.” He said, then looked up to my father again and inclined his head.
“Thank you sir. I must be going now.” He said, and backed down the stairs. My father nodded wordlessly again, smiling. I knew he prized manners. Sadie got up and walked to the balcony, leaning out.
“Wait, paperboy! You cannot expect us to come to your house without a name, or a time?”
He told us his name then, and the time he’d expect us. It was after school, which was agreeable. He turned and walked back down the path, still shivering in the cold. Sadie turned to the pair of us and grinned widely.
“This should be fun!” She beamed.

We arrived that afternoon at our new friends’ house, knocking on the dour wooden door three times. It was not hard to find. The garden was immense, but the house seemed as dwarfed by it as the boy had been by my father. It was an ugly little place, all brick, but it seemed cozy inside. As he admitted us, I shook his hand and the girls curtsied as father had taught us, and then we met his mother – a jolly looking, friendly older woman who walked with a cane and seemed pleased to receive visitors. I was to find out later that his father had never been a part of his life, though I never found out why. We spent the afternoon at play and conversation, waiting for the nighttime, when his neighbors would begin their nightly choir. I came to think highly of our paperboy that afternoon. I was glad Sadie had spoken.

That night, the snow fell lightly as we made our way out the back of the ugly little house and down into the back yard. The glow from the houselights caught the little flakes as they fell onto us, and lit our way down to his little nest he’d made in the hedge towards the fence. There was only enough room for two of us to fit in at a time. He turned when he got there, and said, “Ladies first. Sit in and listen to them and what they sing.” Sadies’ eyes were bright in the muted light, and as she and my younger bent to get into the nest, we caught a note or two from the other side of it, drifting through like the snow. The girls giggled and slid in, and when he let the branches swing back, they were safely enveloped inside. No more singing came to us. As we stood and waited, he shivered mutely and rubbed his hands together.
“Why do you not have a warmer jacket?” I asked. He turned and looked at me, a rictus grin on his face in the cold.
“I can’t afford one.” He said simply, still rubbing. Snow slid down and off his hair.
“But your paper route…” I began, at least glad I had something to talk about.
“It doesn’t pay much, and everything goes to my mother to help us live.” He said, without any distain. I nodded, understanding. His mother was a cripple. They needed all the help they could get.
“I’ve got one you can have tomorrow if you want.” I said after a little while of watching the snow drift down.
“Really? I’d love to be warmer.” He murmured. I suspect he was taken aback. His grin was white in the half-light. The hedge giggled.
“Ok, we’ve heard. Your turn now,” came Sadies’ voice, high with mirth. The hedge parted and they came out, grinning and tittering.
“That good?” I asked, eyebrow raised. They both turned to me and burst into laughter.
“Really, that good!” Sadie gasped, and the paperboy allowed himself a chuckle. I dove into the thicket, eager to be in on the joke. The paperboy followed, and we wriggled through to the cavity. We could hear clearly from there, and we sat and listened intently. Their music was beautiful.

We went to different schools, but we often walked home together because they were near each other and we enjoyed speaking to our new friend. One day, a few months later, he came to us in the afternoon with a broken face. He’d been hit pretty hard, and the damage was considerable. He couldn’t talk properly. One of his eyes was swollen shut.
“What the hell happened to you?” Sadie practically screamed at him, horrified that someone could be hurt so. I’d noticed she’d grown awfully fond of our paper boy. He flinched as she touched him.
“Just boys’ stuff” he said, voice tight with pain. I considered taking his schoolbag away so he could walk unburdened but decided against it. If he needed help, he’d ask. Sadie obviously didn’t think so.
“That’s horrible!” she cried, and turned to me. “Surely we can-“
“Just leave it.” He said. I’d never heard his voice sound so flat before or since. He pushed away from us and stormed off down the street. Sadie watched him go, at a loss for what to do. I shrugged at her pleading eyes, and began to follow him home through the chill afternoon light, the girls drifting along with me. We kept our distance. There were blood spots on the pavement, but nothing else to mark his passing. We didn’t see him for a little while after that.

Summer slipped into Autumn, then deepened into Winter again. The snow began to fall heavily, and one day on the way to school Sadie told me she had a secret.
“Guess.” She said, when I asked what it was. I was familiar with the game, but didn’t enjoy it. I could never guess, but she always told me anyway. It was a vestige of childhood she clung to for no reason than –I suspect – she knew it annoyed me.
“Your watch stopped”
“No.”
“You’re really adopted”
“Hey! – No.”
“I’m really adopted”
“I wish.”
“Then what?”
She pursed her lips, gauging me and appearing to consider not telling me. I kept walking, waiting. She took my arm gently and walked beside me, then smiled.
“I think I’m in love.” Her voice was deep with meaning. She was serious.
“Who with?” I asked. She’d never sounded like this about a boy before.
“Someone you know.” She said, suddenly playful again.
“Ah. Well I wish you luck.” I said, as we moved on in the cold air.

I called on the paperboy after we missed him for our daily walk home one day in early spring. His mother, when she answered the door, was dead in the eyes.
“Where is he?” I asked, suddenly worried. She turned away and shambled into the house.
“He was hit by a car this morning on his way to school. He was reading a letter from a girl who had fallen in love with him.” She replied. “He’s dead.”
Suddenly I felt like blaming my sister for something. Everything.

The snow was falling lightly again when I took to the road that year. The run that I was on needed a predawn start, and I often wondered if my friend took as much quiet joy in the slowly blooming days as I was. I was not cold, for I had my own jacket, and I made sure that I was as courteous as he’d always been to us, and that the runs were done properly. I upheld the memory of our paperboy by doing his job, and it made me happy to remember him like that.

Hypervigilance and its role for the Loner.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't been paid to flog Mark Sissons' work or anything. I just happen to think it's a good framework for healthful living. I'll probably touch on the Primal Blueprint in later posts, once I'm able to start eating how I want to.

The concept of hypervigilance is one I first heard about when I conducted research into fitness and diet in an effort to curb a habit of eating terribly that I had developed. I was put onto the wonderful Primal Blueprint by a friend who knew that I loved food so wouldn't stick with anything that restricted my choices. The Primal Blueprint goes further than a way of eating though - a lot of it has wider applications.

Hypervigilance is one of the Primal Blueprints' central lifestyle laws, and though I haven't been able to apply too many of the other laws for one reason or another, this one really stuck with me and eventually led me to the Holistic Thinking mentioned in my last post.

So what is it? As I read it initially, hypervigilance is the state of being aware of the environment to a high degree in case threats present and cause trouble. Here, 'environment' means a few things - the Primal Blueprint takes a focused physical approach, but I tend to apply it to social and even financial situations as well. It's constant scanning and evaluation of a circumstance and being aware of a 'worst possible scenario' so that it can be avoided without too much effort. It's keeping your eyes peeled, your head in the game, and your heartrate down. That last part is very significant, but I'll discuss that in a moment.

For a loner, being aware of a concept like hypervigilance is a massive boon - it helps you anticipate things before they happen, but mostly it keeps you out of trouble before you get into it. If you're going it alone, oftentimes there won't be anyone there to help you get back on your feet, so avoiding situations that could be dangerous to you and help you stay safe so you can enjoy new experiences and places with some sort of security becomes principle. Once you've got to go into damage control, things can get messy when you haven't got a support network or readily available help. A strongly independent person equipped with well tuned avoidance mechanisms will sustain themselves and grow healthier and longer than someone who can't get themselves out of a jam until they're damaged. At the core of it, this brand of hypervigilance is about cutting the crap out of your life and keeping it out, using nothing more than your own judgement and intelligence.

I realize that I'm probably using a couple of pretty problematic terms here - a basic googling of hypervigilance will bring up a lot about how it's a form of psychological injury, one step down from full blown paranoia, and something that needs to be treated so 'sufferers' can enjoy life. I don't disagree with these suggestions if someone is suffering from a full time hypervigilant state. What I'm suggesting in this post is that the state is a useful tool to minimize involvement in any stupid situations. It's a conscious state to bring oneself to in situations that might provide that 'slippery slope' of a damaging situation - and the main thrust of it is to remain mindful of these threats so you can get along with enjoying life at some point. I absolutely don't recommend fostering a state of hypervigilance on a permanent basis - that's unhealthy and missing the point of what the state is meant to achieve. Like a couple of beers can help you unwind after a stressful day but a whole case will destroy you for the next two days, so a bit of conscious hypervigilance can help you avoid a lot of detrimental situations, whereas a permanent state of it will be just as unhealthy as the aforementioned situations. Everything in moderation.

As always, I hope this has been useful to someone and that the concept gains adoption in the wider community. It's certainly been useful for me and has probably been the main reason I have gained not only independence, but happiness too. Feel free to comment with any questions, or even your own experiences.

Holistic Thinking - a base mindset idea.

We all have a guiding way of thinking that dictates how we handle different situations. I've given a fair bit of thought to how to say this lately - it's hard. It's different from a world view or an attitude in that this guide isn't caught up in how one feels about something. It's more like a tool box of things that you use to deal with a given set of parameters to produce an outcome you want. Your attitude might dictate the outcome you want, or how you approach the situation, but that's not what causes the change itself. The toolbox of your awareness and your different skills does that.

The purpose of this post is to describe the toolbox of what I call 'holistic thinking'. Until very recently I thought of it as 'design thinking' but realized that this concept is far more nuanced than what I apply in my life. Eventually I'd like to have enough of a working knowledge of design thinking to call that my approach in life, but this is going to take a lot more research and application of knowledge. For now it's holistic thinking, and I feel that this is a useful way for those lacking a broad support network and easy points of reference to think. As an attitude, I feel that the phrase that best sums up my current one is 'everything in moderation - even moderation'.

The main idea with holistic thinking is that it keeps the mind open to all aspects and factors in a given situation, and is centred around what you need and want. It is also very much about being mindful of what a situation and the variables within that situation are not - this not only keeps unneeded concerns out of the picture, but it keeps one aware of things that could 'come into play'. This concept of being mindful of the entire field of possibilities and using only those which will benefit the situation was born from the concept of minimalism, which is also close to my heart. Keeping this awareness is especially useful for the aforementioned sort of person, who may find themselves dealing with a lot of different situations due to their independent nature. I've heard this sort of thing referred to as 'wearing lots of different hats'. This is just one aspect of the loners' life that can be improved by keeping a holistic mindset.

There are a few ways that this mindset helps the person who has it, particularly if this person is the sort of person I hope ends up reading this blog regularly. I've listed the advantages below. I tried writing them all out but this post was (is?) turning into a novel.

• Good for avoiding stagnation and ignorance in a situation - good for preparation
• Helps avoid stress, the 'root of all evil' in a loners' life
• Helps evaluate what's really important and makes other things secondary - here's that minimalism again
• Helpful in establishing routine, a set of behaviors that can again reduce stress and prepare for almost anything.
• Good for establishing points of reference about what's acceptable behavior and things like that - no 'crazy hobo syndrome'.
• Nurtures active reactivity - a state of readiness but not anxiety about what's going to happen in the future. You can deal with almost anything because you're aware of what may or may not happen. Helps avoid stress no matter what's going to happen.
• Nurtures hypervigilance - a high degree of awareness of all factors in play, especially environmentally.
• Keeps you interested, gets you off your arse and out the door - there's always things to find out and creche into your knowledge base.

Of course, this holistic mindset isn't perfect - there can be some downsides to it. It can be mentally exhausting, for starters. It's also never bulletproof. No matter how much thought you give to something, you're never completely prepared for anything that might happen - all you can really do is try to mitigate stress when something unexpected crops up. The last thing I've found is that in a new situation, it can be easy to misread a situation and gain a lot of misinformation from personal bias and things like that. This ends up in a lot of effort being expended learning about something that can be completely wrong. For this reason, leaning on other people to give you other perspectives or practical reasoning as to why something is so can be crucial.

This has become a bit of a monster post, so I'm going to leave off here. Next post I think I'll talk about the role of hypervigilance in an independent persons' life. I hope this is useful to someone – it’s certainly helped me. Please let me know if you enjoy these posts, and what you'd like more on. I probably have some more stories I'll post up before long too - I handwrite all of them and then have to transcribe them, which can be a pain.

Peace.

Scene is set; now for introductions.

Okay, so now I've set the scene a little bit, I think I'll just go into what I want this blog to be, and a little bit about my experiences with the subject matter from there. I'll preface all of this by saying that I'm going to do my damndest to make the scope of this blog bigger than just me and my experience. I want to try to impart some of the advice I find helpful, and I'll certainly be present in some of these posts, but I also want to engage with the subject matter and other people. Hopefully this isn't going to end up just being all about me. With that in mind:

The blog: I've given this blog the tagline 'a community for loners' and for the moment, that's sort of what I'd like to become here. I'm not expecting anyone to change who they are or anything, but I would like to build up a bit of a hub for people who are feeling like they don't fit in and are perhaps a bit lonely to come and get constructive advice and support. I know that through my own journey I could have used some - more on that in a moment.

Primarily, I am going to be using this blog as a bit of a creative space and a place to stash useful advice from others, as well as a log of my experiences pertaining to isolation, introversion, solitude, self sufficiency, and other situations of that ilk. I'll say for the record that I'm NOT going to be wasting time miserating on the condition of being alone - though depression has been a feature of my journey (which is going to be touched on), I'm satisfied with where I am at the moment.

By it's nature though, solitude can be a hard situation to navigate, so hopefully there's something here to offer to those who need it. I'm hoping that's painted a clear enough picture of what I want to attempt here. It's a bit of a hard ask, but it's something I've been doing a lot of thinking on, so hopefully it comes off. If not, at least I'll be sorting myself out.

Me: My bio in the sidebar of this page should tell you enough to get a pretty good picture of who I am, but in relation to my experience with isolation, I've had a pretty long run at it. I have lived independently of my parents since I was 15, and have only had relatively intermittent contact with them and the other two members of my family since then. I lived in rural and minor metropolitan settings and recently relocated to the capital city of the state to pursue study. I now find that though people are in close proximity, personality and monetary restrictions mean I limit much of my contact with other people (let's not oversell it; I still have a few friends).

Since leaving school I have had a couple of relationships that ended due to various reasons, my capacity for internalizing problems and emotions being one of those. My longest stretch being single lasted for just over 5 years. The rural setting, lack of social support, and a couple of bad relationships have culminated in my looking at this particular period of my life as a healing experience; this is part of why I decided to start this blog. At the moment I live with one other person, next doors' cat is my main company, and I'm sitting on a verandah in the middle of the night with no lights on, writing this.

I'll try to update this as often as I can write something worthy of being read. At this point, I'll say that's going to be weekly.

The Beach

The sun beat down upon the broad stretch of sand as we pulled up to the park behind it that morning. The sun was only just over the rim of the world, but it still lashed the sand with heat that rippled off it. She looked over at me and grinned. She was a surfer, and the white tipped waves were in full swing out on the water. I smiled back, looking forward to seeing what she could do with the board. Covertly I was also looking forward to seeing some spectacular wipeouts as well. She hadn’t been into the water for a while. She had broken her leg once a few years ago and had almost rebroken it once or twice when she’d gotten back into a car. She forgot things.

‘Let’s see how I go…’

I took a moment to look out over the breakers before I replied.

‘Should be fun.’ Ten seconds later, we were both out of the clapped out old station wagon and she was tearing at the straps holding her board to the roof rack whilst I opened the boot and fumbled for some sunblock and towels. I freed a pair of faded ones from the sea of clothes and crap that we’d been living out of for the last however long, then began to paw through, looking for the bottle. It was a mark on how messy the back of the car was when she managed to get the board off before I found what I was after. I heard her footsteps beating the carparks’ dirt, and looked around the boot. She was already halfway across the park, huge yellow board ready.

‘Aren’t you gonna help me?’

‘See you down there, honey,’ the words floated back to me in the mid morning stillness. I shook my head and went back to my task.

I was left alone at the back of the car, hunting the sunscreen through a total mess of life. Eventually I found it, then straightened and moved towards the beach. I was struck, just then, by how empty the scene was and how we seemed to be the only things consciously alive for the moment. I stopped at the edge of the carpark and turned slowly, looking through the whole panorama of where I was. Night still faded towards the West, over the land. I could faintly see a star still shining there. The shore breeze swept in and shook the eucalypts and pandanus that clustered in around the clearing for the cars, seeming to move as one entity all around me. Sunlight shone in, and I noted that the sky was still pink with morning. I was totally alone, and as I turned, a horrible anxiety hit me. It is hard to describe even now, but for some reason I turned back to where I was meaning to go, and leapt onto the grass of the park. The sheer scale of the world around me crashed in at that moment, and I wanted to be gone from the place. Behind me, the star faded.

The edge of the beach was distorted with heat when I came to it, and the breeze that rippled it blew over me and cooled me as I took in the vista. The sky was immense above us, and the few clouds that were there moved in on the breeze. I savored the color changes the sun wrought on them for a moment, that odd fear subsiding and already half forgotten. The sea stretched away before me, out into eternity it seemed just then, and to either side of me were the rocky walls of the bay we’d decided to come to. Even these seemed huge and beautiful in the morning light, and I took in first one, then the other, and wondered in a vague way how long they’d stood here and seen this spectacle of morning. Beyond the dark line of the tide, the girl that I’d come with seemed a tiny speck against the volume of nature that we were presented with here. I was pleased to see her, and the last part of my fear dissolved as I saw her paddling out, oblivious to me. Her yellow board was like a beacon in amongst the shifting mass of water, and after a minute of taking in the scene, I jogged across the burning sand to the cooler stuff the tide had wet down, and sat for a while to keep watching.

I sat down on the beach, and watched her for a while.

She surfed without any pattern or need for one, and I clapped when she rode well and laughed when she fell off. Behind her, the great ball of the sun rose slowly and steadily, and gradually the crisp feeling of the new day fell away and the heat increased. I sat and considered how simple our enjoyment was here, and was thankful that we’d come down at the time we had. This thought led me to fulfill my own desire for enjoyment, and I got up and began to walk down the beach alone. The sun and sea were on my right, the dark rustling green of the park and open forest beyond to my left. Noise moved through the air from both sides, and before me stretched the dark yellow of the wet sand. Immediately I saw a darker patch in the shadowy headland that lay at that end of the bay, and I decided that it would be my destination. I strode for a while, curving down to the waterline to wet my feet in the cold brine, and left a single set of prints behind me in the sand. All the time, the noise filled the air and the behemoth of rock before me loomed larger in my vision. I never looked back, secure in the idea that she’d be amused for a while longer, and fell to listening, smelling and feeling my surroundings as I moved, soaking up everything. The sun was warm, the water and breeze were cold. The waves crashed near the shore, but always there was the more terrestrial rustle of the forest, huge in the air. I smelled the salt, felt the sand grind underfoot, and soaked it all in consciously, willing it to be remembered. After what seemed like not long enough, I stood at the edge of the shadow, and the hole in the rock was a deeper pool of darkness therein.

The climb up to the cave was short but hard, and I was sweating by the time I hauled myself over its’ sharp lip. I was high above the beach, and though I was panting and warm, I still shivered. There, in the shade and away from the sun, the rock seemed to suck the heat away from me and down into itself, to what purpose I couldn’t know. I took a moment there and cast my eye out over the beach, and was pleased with what I saw. The beach, the forest, and the headland at the other end of the bay all lay before me, and along with the clouds everything moved with the invisible breeze. In the midst of it all, the yellow slash of her board swung and slashed through waves. I turned away after that, and made my way carefully into the mouth of the cave I’d found. I wondered what I would find there. I had only made it a little way in, perhaps ten paces, when the keening of the wind over the lip I’d hauled myself over began to wail at my back, and the odd fear that I’d felt so recently began to return. I did not turn, nor did I move at all. Before me lay shadowclad rock, and I suddenly got the feeling that I was heading far away from all that was alive, and gravitating towards something that was at best dead and at worst something between the two. My mind went into freefall. The sound of the wind welled up in that space, and suddenly I shivered more. The rock was cold beneath my sandy feet, and I could see something the color of bone lying deeper inside the dark confines of the place I’d come to, on the ground. My mind began to spin, frightened. Even now I cannot explain the exact trigger or even parameters of the feeling. I felt very alone, very cold, and very, very far from anything meaningful. Anxiety held me to the spot for a few moments more, and I thought I saw movement there in that dark place. At that I turned and fled out of the cave, away down the rocks, and ran for a small while back up the beach, in the sun. I still cannot say what gripped me in that cave that morning, but I hope that whatever it was leaves me to my little life, and doesn’t pay me any more mind.

I sat on the beach for two hours, lathered in sunscreen and under the towels I’d bought down, and watched her. I laughed when she fell off and clapped when she rode well, and enjoyed the simplicity of the moment. She paddled into the shore eventually, and ran up to me with the board under one arm, smiling broadly.

‘Havin’ fun, honey?’

‘Lovin’ it, mate,’ I replied, smiling back.

The sun sparkled off the sea, her hair, and still beat down upon us.

The Fable of the Spurned Herd

Long ago, there existed a little village at the edge of a forest. There was an inn, and a church, and all around the village there were farmers, who grew crops and raised animals. These, the villagers would eat, and some of the animals would make things like milk and eggs for the villagers. It was a good village, at least for a time. One day, without warning, the villages’ animals began to give birth to sickly, twisted young – it began in the sheep first, and the wise men and women of the village were called out into the fields to sort out what to do about the problem of the twisted young. It was decided after much discussion that the townspeople couldn’t in good conscience kill the young, as this would bring more bad omens to the village – for that is what they decided the twisted births were. It was decided that the children would lead the twisted young animals away from the village at feeding time, and then slip away, and nature could take its’ course. This would remove the ill omen from the village, but not make them guilty of the deaths of the young animals, who were foul and abnormal in their eyes. And so, the next night, when it came time to feed all of the animals, the children were given instructions to lead the twisted sheep down the road that led into the forest, and feed them once they were deep in the woods. This the children did, and they left the poor animals there without regret, because they were children acting on their elders’ orders and didn’t know any better. This left the little animals alone, with no one to care for them, in a very dark wood. Now, it just so happened that in that wood, there lived a troll, who was out fossiking for food that night. He found the little group of animals huddling fearfully in the clearing the children had bought them to, and he waked out into it. He bent his trollish body down, and asked one of the lambs, ‘Why are you out here in the wood, little one?’, and the lamb understood him, because trolls had learned to speak the languages of the animals.

‘We were bought here to eat dinner, but we were left here because we are ugly,’ replied the lamb, ‘and now we fear we are to become dinner ourselves’.

To which the troll laughed, and replied,

‘No little one. That’s not the way things happen in my wood. Nor are you ugly, any of you here. You are all exactly as you were intended to be’. And with that, the troll stood up, and he bade the little herd of animals follow him, and then he struck a magic match that burned all night, so he could lead the animals back to his house.

The years began to roll by in the forest, and the little herd of animals lived with the troll in his house, which was really a big cave, deep in the darker part of the woods. They had meadows to eat in, and cold, clean water to drink. The troll looked after the herd that the villagers had spurned, because he had been alone for a very long time, and he enjoyed the company. He led them about, and made sure they were safe. At night, he always made sure there was a fire so the herd wouldn’t get scared, and he warded off the wolves that sometimes came down from the mountains. When one of the animals got sick, he tended it, and he told them all about how things in the forest worked, because he’d had a lot of time to work those things out. Eventually the little herd grew into adulthood, and though they still looked different physically, they were strong and healthy, and happy. Every now and again, the troll would find new animals in the woods, because the people from the village were still finding them amongst their own herds. They didn’t realize that the different-looking animals that were being born were just a natural part of life, and not something to be shunned and spurned. The herd grew, and eventually, one day, a little girl led the animals too far away from the village, and she got lost in the woods at night. The troll went to her and said, ‘Don’t be frightened, I have taken your animals, and looked after them. Come stay the night with me, and I will take you to the forests’ edge in the morning. You will be safer there than if I led you there when we can’t see’, and he was right, because he’d run out of magic matches. At first the little girl was scared, but then she listened to him, and grew curious, so she agreed to go to his cave. Inside, she did indeed find all of the animals that the villagers had taken into the woods. They didn’t know what to make of her until the troll told them who she was, and then they crowded around to smell and make their noises at her, because she reminded them of their first home. As they got close, the little girl reached out and touched one of the elder animals, and she found that it’s coat was as smooth and thick and shiny as the very best of the animals in the village, because they had grown up free and with the very best grass to crop on. For their part, the animals did not bear any ill will towards the little girl, because they knew that the people in the village were only doing what they thought to be right, and the children weren’t to blame. In any case, they had been given good lives with the troll in the forest, so they really couldn’t complain. The little girl walked amongst the spurned herd and touched each of them in turn, and was amazed by how soft and strong, but gentle each of the animals were. Now that they’d grown up, their unique bodies, which had seemed so sickly and bad in infancy, had now become a way to tell each one apart, so their personality could be identified easily. This was very different to how things were in the village, where the animals all looked and acted the same. Once the little girl had walked through the herd, and each animal had been touched and gotten a smell in turn the troll set up a bed for her very near the fire, so she could keep warm. The troll gave her milk from the herd, and some berries he knew people could eat. The milk, too, was the most delicious the little girl had ever had, and it helped her get to sleep and dream good dreams. The troll sat at the mouth of the cave, as he often did, and waited for the dawn. In the morning, the little girl woke up, and the animals bore her home on their backs, which were strong and comfortable. At the edge of the forest, she climbed down to the ground, and asked the troll, ‘What will I tell my village when they ask where I’ve been?’ and the troll replied,

‘Tell them that their animals are all here, and that they miss their fields and family’. And the little girl nodded, then thanked the troll and the spurned herd for having her, and ran back to the village. No one had gone looking for the little girl because she had no mother or father, and no one was willing to risk themselves looking for a girl no one was connected with. Nevertheless, when she scampered up to the gates, a great commotion was had, and all of the elders in the village wanted to know where she’d been, and why she wasn’t crying or sad.

‘Because,’ she said, in the way children address adults who don’t know any better, ‘I was with the herd of animals that we put in the forest for the troll to look after’. This caused more commotion in the village, for the elders had never thought that the animals they had the children take there would survive for very long, never mind thrive and take care of little girls who got lost in the woods. Nor did they ever conceive that a troll should take care of either animals or little girls.

‘You must take us to the forest and show us this troll and his herd,’ said the elders, and the little girl did, because she had little choice.

Once the villagers all got to the edge of the forest, the troll walked from the trees to stand before them, because he’d known they’d want to see with their own eyes the little girls’ troll, and he’d waited for them. Such a brazen revealing made the townsfolk all draw the weapons that they’d bought with them, for they feared the monster, but the little girl stepped forward and said,

‘This noble troll kept me safe last night, and I had no weapons or anything to give him. Please don’t fear him.’ This stopped the townsfolk from attacking straight away, but they kept their swords out, because they had always been told that trolls were dangerous beasts. The elders stepped forward and asked the troll,

‘Why did you look after this girl? And where are the animals you keep?’ to which the troll replied,

‘Because she needed the help, and she hadn’t done anything to me. And I keep no animals,’ he said. ‘They keep me. They keep me happy and fed, and they give me company in the woods. They are my friends, and though you put them there because you thought there was something wrong with them, there wasn’t. They’re just different.’ And with this, the animals began to walk out of the trees and let the townsfolk look upon them. They all moved exactly how they were meant to, and though they were animals, the people could see that they were very different from the uniform beasts of burden that they kept back home. The animals walked towards the villagers, and the villagers reached out and touched the animals. They saw that they were strong, and their coats were beautiful, and they were gentle. They hadn’t really needed to be shunned, they just needed to be taken care of in a different way, which the troll had done.

‘What do the animals want now?’ asked the elders of the troll, whilst the people made friends with the animals for the first time.

‘They want to be free to go home to their families. Their families did not exclude them from your herds – you did. And they miss them.’ Said the troll. The elders could not fault that, so they decreed,

‘From this day forth, all of the animals in the spurned herd shall be allowed onto our villages’ fields, so they can keep their families close, and the troll of the forest will ever after be a friend of the village, for showing us that things that are different are not always bad.’ And from then on, all of the animals of the village and forest were able to travel between the two, and know their families, and keep the troll who had shown them such kindness company. The bloodlines of the herd were made stronger by those who had been spurned, and through acceptance, that village became more peaceful and prosperous than it ever had or could have been.