ConsultantLife

Ok, this is the first entry in my blog, my embracing of the digital revolution. I always wanted to set up a blog as a platform to publish my consciousness to the world, mostly because I want to use it as the vehicle to improve my writing, develop my style, etc (have just made several spelling mistakes in this sentence and probably over ran on the length – good start). Which makes me think; other than hoping for an improvement in my writing, if I look back at this say a year from now, possibly I could recapture the moment I was writing about – almost relive it. We have photos to capture pictures, videos to capture episodes but my blog could help capture my conscious moment, my thoughts at that particular time.

Ok, subscribing back to the blog format, I should probably detail the event or activity that will form the subject of this particular blog entry, summarising with a profound conclusion clearly demonstrating my evolved cogitating process (note to myself am hoping to reread this at some point in the future so ignore the run-on sentences and promiscuous use of brackets).

Well am on a plane going to Houston to visit a loved one, well I mention loved one loosely, since the actual semantics of the relationship is that we currently less than romantically involved. We have moved on from the initial stages of any relationship: ‘Oh you’re just like me’ (commonality) to ‘Oh that’s so cute’ (endearment) to now ‘that bugs the hell out of me’ (differences). Am interested to see what new turn this romantic chapter (hence the 10 hour plane journey, alleviated by the fact that I was able to use my airmiles to get a free business class ticket) in this episode of my life, will take.

Kübler-Ross described a model for dealing with grief and tragedy when dealing with terminal illness. Since, relationships involve extreme emotions; happiness, joy and grief, I thought this may have some real application here, slightly adapted of course – relationships are rarely terminal. People deal with tragedy by going through a number of successive stages shock at the news of the initial trauma, denial to be able to remotely function normally to contend with the greater awareness, anger to partake in the blame game that gives some self re-assurance that an event, person or even chance will responsible for actions that were uninfluenceable even in periphery; acceptance a realisation that denial or anger does not change the predicament faced and finally hope the optimism that a future event will bring (the are actually Five Stages of Grief. These are: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance – I have customised it slightly to help explain the ending of a relationship). Next time I’ll use the 4 stages of happiness (anticipate, savour, express and reflect) to describe another event in a future blog.

Anyway on a more positive note, I never believe you can regret doing something unless it is unholy unreligious, unethical or illegal. I always regret things I never did, so reaching a decision no matter how unwanted is always good thing. It helps me drive solace in that I have made the decision and not dwell on uncertainties. Ultimately intuition is nearly always correct.

Just finished reading Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and left me with a kind of confused impression, like a short circuit in my brain causing a constant feedback of the books main point. You see these last few years I have made it a constant obsession of mine to eschew personal contact, with the exception of loving girlfriends, or just the singular girlfriend in my case. I much rather prefer the voyeuristic approach using my own perceptions to compensate for the social remoteness. I find it far more interesting when you can just label people and predict how they will behave.

Conversely, Keith much rather prefers to go out creating social bonds with anything that has a pulse with a view to give as well as receive. A kind of human energising battery seeking out new relationships. The basic premise of the book that no individual can survive alone, we belong to a complicated interconnected matrix of relationship, which ultimately goes to define who we are. By understanding this social network one can place themselves at the centre of it use it to channel success, growth and happiness.

Although I don’t completely drink the cool aid on this idea, he does seem to have a point, our creation is a consequence of the action of others, our dependence up to a point is reliant on others and ultimately a survival is contingent on the relationships we form with others. By developing the relationships one could possibly enhance their survival. The only problem is I generally enjoy shunning people, alienating whatever friends I have and in a coveted way I think they have become use to it, that so do they, like the suburban sado-maschist secretly enjoying the wifes weekend shoping excursions so he can catch up on some much needed digital R’and’R.

So why the fuss to write this post? Well it bothers me because Keith my well have shattered my miserable happiness, you see I thought I was free from the burdens having to develop and maintain meaningful relationships (outside the girlfriend one and that in any case hardly counts, it is much more than just a relationship). So until I get this clear in my own mind, I am planning to retreat to remote exclusion somewhere in the corner of my room and not return until I have been enlightened or something to that extent.

Gestalt theory first arose in 1890 as a reaction to the prevalent psychological theory of the time - atomism. Atomism examined parts of things with the idea that these parts could then be put back together to make wholes. Atomists believed the nature of things to be absolute and not dependent on context. Gestalt theorists, on the other hand, were intrigued by the way our mind perceives wholes out of incomplete elements. Where am I on this bipolar scale, well easily Gestalt. However I was thinking by being one of over the other could influence how you mind perceived it. If you were Gestalt, and thus making wholes out of incomplete elements would you be subject to say, negative influence? Or would you by being prone to atomism, would you see things as they are?

I have been thinking about the duality of negative and positive mindsets a great deal. Mainly in attempt to condition myself to develop a positive attitude. Now this is more difficult than I had imagined. Not that I am naturally a pessimistic person but I have to contend with a number of thing outside my influence to make the experience more positive. For example, work colleagues, public transport, rude people and so on. However, am decided I am going to persist to it since, although I don’t expect my life to radically changes, I do expect my perception of it to be significantly improved (no positive pun intended).

The hardest thing about being positive is arbitrating the constant conflict that goes on inside of me. Externally, I have found it easy not to complain or refrain from negative comments but internally I find an inner turmoil. I constantly have to listen to my inner self evaluate a situation and come up with a negative aspect of it. I find my inner self thinking something negative internally and then I try to find a positive spin. Despite this I have noticed I have been fairly more relaxed at work – maybe there is a silver lining to this positive cloud.

On the red-eye back to London. Unasked questions answered. I guess found the closure I was looking for. Did I go through the five stages, I think so not sequentially and not on this visit, more hovered between denial, anger and acceptance. I think that’s were a relationship differs from a tragedy ultimately there is hope that can often blur, delay or sometimes extend a painfully correct decision with usually disastrous consequences.

Ironically since I am flying back on New Years Day, I have some optimism for the coming future, metaphorically like the valiant boxer, coming to the end of the twelve round bout and realising no more energises can be spent on an outcome that by in large could not be altered. Anyway the New Year, people tend to reflect on the past, what they enjoyed, hated, changed. Well not me, I will use these next few days to reflect on the future, past reflection should be a chore of the daily introspection every individual should perform at the end of a tiring evening (tiring to ensure introspection does not cause insomnia). My current endeavour is to reflect the past daily minutely, live in the present constantly and watch the future often.

Whoever, invented New Year’s Resolutions was onto something. I like to adapt it slightly, set myself a number of objectives, which I can track over the year. A mix of things quite achievable (read more) to the more difficult (learn a foreign language). I then set out how best these can be achieved, remember reading a book on foreign language learning, that often people chose one or few routes to practise a foreign language, say home study supplemented with audio CDs. However, I prefer to use something different, my more difficult objectives I declare battle on them. So say I was learning a foreign language, I would try to do the following simultaneously to incorporate a number of different mechanism (and take advantage of synergies), e.g. reading foreign children books, watching foreign TV; playing video games in a foreign language, going to a foreign course, listening to foreign CDs; listening to foreign music, etc. Then wait for that magic threshold where the effort required to learn new or existing information becomes almost seamless.

The human race. Are we not disgusting, mindless, narcissistic little creatures. I met up with a friend (well slight exaggeration) this weekend, he happened to be ‘in the area’ (euphemism for I self-consummate intolerably and I want to exert my aggrandizing personality on you with a total disregard for anything not related to myself).

He wanted to catch up, which course was completely on his terms. As I tended to ignore this sleight, I caught up with him and his wife to be (let’s call them Poshter and Becky to protect their identities) outside one of the vainglorious avenues of London, full of pretentious, vacuous, mindless imbeciles – Bond Street. Well, as he got out of his rather expensive sports car, he just grunted a few words about his day, which clearly was important information required for my continual existence; and drove off rather fashionably.

The whole incident left me rather bemused, this was a friend I had know from my days as a student, where we would sleep on the floors of our prey’s college dormitory after a cheap night at one of the mainstream London venues. His new insidious found snobbery left me utterly perplexed. Who says jealousy is dead?