Human Writes

For many years my paid work involved editing and writing. I am now retired and writing is my main hobby and source of joy. “I live alone and work from home” is a present mantra.

My daily pattern of activity has changed over the years. At present it involves being at the computer first thing after getting up. I check the email, Facebook and Twitter for personal and ‘real’ messages and then scan the Guardian online to see what is being touted by the media. I used to scan the Google news as well but I gave that up because it was a media overdose.

After the review of online stuff I open a daily diary page. Its filename is the date (eg 130719.doc) and the first entry is the time. [alt]+i, t, page-end, up one space, [ok]. I then sit for a few minutes waiting to see if attention will be captured by a writing topic.

If attention is not captured by a particular topic then I watch passing thoughts until I am moved to act on a non-writing distraction. I leave the computer switched on with the diary page showing so it is easy to edit as the day progresses. The diary pages are not intended as works of art!

NOTE: over the years I have had an on and off relationship with ‘Brande Flows’. These are ‘stream of consciousness’ exercises where I type nonstop for 20 minutes recording whatever happens to come to mind - if only to say that there  is nothing coming to mind. The original idea came from the classic by Dorothea Brande (1934) “Becoming a Writer”. Every now and then I have a go at a flow. Amazing stuff turns up. Where does it come from?

Sometimes, as for example at this present moment, attention is captured by a topic. In this case it is “Human Writes”. The phrase arrived after reading an article about journaling by the Guardian blogger Oliver Burkeman.) A few minutes ago I made a brief list of short items that might be included. Once an item has become part of the story I delete it from the list.

There was, and still is, an almost unconscious awareness of the direction this short story (a one-pager) might take. I am in flow. The muse is speaking through me. The conscious ‘I’ is not in control of what is going on. There is the temptation to use the passive voice and thus to avoid using the dis-easing words ‘I, me and mine’.

I produced my first one-pagers while working on a proposal for a science education project in Oman. There were some technical terms that could not be avoided but I did not want to spoil the flow of the main text by including long explanations. I therefore generated an appendix of one-pagers to which readers could refer if need be.

The work-related one-pagers were mainly summaries of the thoughts of experts. In Lesotho I produced more than 600 of them dealing with leadership, management and administration in education. In Tanzania I produced a large number of one-pagers related to civil society activities linked to poverty reduction and social development.

However, while in Lesotho, and independent of the official work, I began writing one-pagers dealing with eastern religions in general and meditation in particular. Eighteen of these were prepared for a local newspaper and ended on a web site.

I continued with this topic in my early freelance days where sixty six were published to a web site and of these seventeen were ‘home grown’. The home-grown stories indicate a shift away from herding other men’s cows towards dealing with my own. Rather than regurgitating what others have said, I moved to writing one-pagers about what was subjectively true to my problematic and illusory ‘self’. And I shared most of these by blogging them.

NOTE: The blog “Existential Soft Rock - mental re-construction through just sitting - be still and know” began in Nov 2002 and is now an archive. It contains 506 posts and has had 29,298 visits.
The blog “Changing Minds” began in Jan 2013 and is ongoing. It contains 126 posts and has had 2455 visits

This is a good point to introduce the idea of “no self, no problem”. The writing is an end in itself. It is an effortless action. Stuff happens. Time passes, work gets done, and there is product. The mind has a mind of its own. And the reward, when self-consciousness returns, is to have had time out of self-ish mind; to have experienced the unspeakable peace that passes understanding.

The self-less process of writing is its own reward. The extra job of blogging the one-pagers is easily done and gives an air of finality to an article. And then they are in the public domain where other people may or may not find them interesting. But that is an added extra.

My subjective feelings about journaling and blogging are positive; they facilitate being in the timeless flow of no-self. But my instincts and training steer me towards hard-nosed objectivity and the passive voice. The two ways of thinking can, however, support each other.

The big picture is one of communication. First there was speaking and listening for all and then there was reading and writing for an elite. But it got democratized such that today almost anybody can make their voice known through being a source of human writes.

I live alone and work from home
and channel human writes.
Cool.