Greetings you gorgeous boys and girls.
Been a while since I’ve done this blog. I am currently emotionally invested in another part of my life which takes a whole lot away from my ability to be creative. I’m not saying that I have got my mojo back, I just have a little bit more time at the moment and I’m trying to force myself to get back into it.
I have a book deal that requires me to finish what I have submitted so far; however, finding creative flow during these difficult times has been a legitimate challenge.
My plan is to merge these two very opposite positions and hopefully each one will pull the positives from the other.
So here is my attempt at getting back into creative work.
Where were you when Auckland had its wettest hour in recorded history?
I’ll tell you where I was when this foreboding thunderstorm was wreaking havoc on everyone’s morning.
I was on the roof of my house, in boxers, topless, helmet on, in toe-shoes, wielding a giant metal pole.
The morning started off like many a morning before it. Me pretending to sleep, while my beautiful wife tries to wake up my youngest for school. I don’t get that many days off from my secret job, so when I can have a lovely lie in, I do it.
All of a sudden I hear a massive “OMG” and I’m up. I am reactive like that, something I inherited from my Dad. Along with anxiety and overthinking.
Water was seeping from the wall of my daughter’s bedroom wall.
This wasn’t a leak, I know this kind of behavior from liquid. It was my old nemesis from years of riding motorcycles, capillary action. Capillary action is the behavior of liquid when it comes in contact with other materials. The way it defies all science like gravity and Newton’s First Law.
I have been on rides in a full one piece $800 rainsuit and still end up with wet underpants. No material on this earth is able to withstand long periods of saturation, I’d imagine building material will be particularly shit.
The girls left for school and work with my assurance that I will sort it.
Our neighbor has this absolute cunt of a tree in their backyard. I’m not well versed in dendrology, so I don’t know what it is called, but it’s massive and has these long strips with tiny spiky leaves on them. Not like pine leaves, more like that thyme herb stuff.
That tree sheds its shitty leaves so much that I have to clear my section of them every week. Averaging two industrial sacks each time. It’s an absolute nightmare, but I don’t have the balls to complain about them to her just yet.
That being said, I hadn’t seen the roof of my house yet until this morning, but I assumed that the leaves had blocked the complex guttering system of my house.
So this was what I did.
I had a smoke and a glass of Coke Zero. Usually I have a smoke and a coffee which is followed by a shit and a scroll. But this was no time for chronographic pedantry, I needed to take action immediately.
I kept my boxers on as I was already wearing them and they were spent anyway, so getting them wet holds no consequence. Finding a shirt was an issue as I only had nice ones in the drawer. My family has been using my old ones as sleepwear as of late.
Health and safety was definitely a concern as the roof is 4 meters at its peak and falling down will definitely be dangerous, especially evident in the wet conditions and that tree spewing its juice everywhere. So I got out my helmet. I turned on the headset and Bluetoothed it to my phone just in case I fell and was still alive and conscious. I could use voice activation to call 111.
My point of exit was my daughter’s bedroom window onto the garage roof. A direct approach. The first step was already dodgy, an instant slip. I think feet lose their grippiness as you get older. I couldn’t wear normal sneakers as I needed to feel the galvanized screws that hold the roof sheeting down. I got out my Vibram Five Fingers shoes that I used to wear years ago.
This was way better. I fair dodged my way across the front of the house. Parallel to the wall, towards the gutters on the right hand side. Using my big toe like cat whiskers as I touch and place on the screws.
From behind the visor I see my suspicions are confirmed. Big balls of leafy heads collected all the way down the gutter, water spilling out from behind them. A big pool of rain water formed on the roof, covering 20% of the surface area. I can grab the first one. I pull it out and water gushes down into the secondary path of the labyrinth of piping.
I can’t reach the second one, and climbing up will take me to the climactic 4 meter mark. I decide to put a leg up, but a thunderous clap stops me. The storm has upped the ante and for the first time, I realize that this was a really bad idea. There and then I decided not to take my body any higher. I reach over and start pulling away at the second ball, to no avail.
I need something longer to pick at it.
Next to the drain is a long copper pipe. It must’ve been left there from when the house was constructed. It had that blue tinge that copper gets when it is not being useful. I dubbed it the copper pipe of Low Self-Esteem.
I pushed at the leaves, still nothing. Then I placed the pipe under the lot and pulled down creating a fulcrum. The leaves dislodged immediately. Fucking FULCRUM lads. I didn’t get an “A” in Physics for nothing.
I watched as the pool on my roof decreased as the water spilled violently into the gutter. Washing out the last bits of leaves with it down into the pipes.
Well happy with myself holding that copper pipe towards the thunder.
I heard that less than 1% of people will be struck by lightning in their lives. I wasn’t worried at all. I have never been in a low percentile for anything. I may not be good at Math, but I do play percentages and averages. I was gonna be fine.
As my adrenaline and stress disappears down the drain, I look across the sky. Summer is gone. That beautiful morning sun has been replaced by that peachy sideways glimmer. With lanky shadows off poles and trees. This has been happening for about two weeks now. Winter is expected, but the Filipino lady watching me in horror was not.
She was watching me this whole time from her bedroom window. How lucky am I that she knows me, I used to be her manager at a previous place of employment. She knows I do dumb shit.
For my own mental health I decide to look at the positives from this experience. Firstly, it set up my day. Fixing that issue gave me a very early sense of purpose. I feel pretty useless when I’m not at service to anyone or anything.
Secondly, I had a strong urge to take a shit and I didn’t even have a cup of coffee. The morning adrenaline imbued me with enough excitement that I did not need caffeine.
I sat down on the toilet and started to Google.
I found out that Coke Zero does actually have caffeine in it. I had been involuntarily ingesting caffeine forced upon me by the Coca Cola Corporation.
This is why I hate big corporations.
Shit News
So after all of that rant about my morning, I want to talk about the News for a bit.
Not necessarily about what is happening in the news, more about how to deal with our current news cycle for our own mental health.
Most mornings I wake up to news that is somewhat distressing. Like this morning.
When the news cycle is distressing, we experience it as distress. Well I do anyway.
At the risk of sounding self-centered, I’m not treating any of the bad news as an inconvenience or as a negative influence on my mental health. I’m just pointing out how I deal with the anxiety of world events to protect myself.
A few days ago, I planned on taking the old Kawasaki on a ride through the Waitakeres. I look forward to these kinds of days and I made sure I planned everything. I got the bike sorted, I packed some snacks, I made sure that I finished all the obligations I had at home. Nothing beats guilt free riding.
The morning of the ride, I checked the weather on my phone. However, I was inundated with the news of Russia attacking Ukraine. I saw pictures of people bleeding and crying and fighting. I immediately jumped on Facebook to look at what people were saying. This made things about a thousand times worse.
I still took my ride, and although it looked like it was supposed to look, it didn’t feel like it was supposed to feel. At every instance I was checking Facebook, the comments on the thread I was following was getting longer and longer. This was no longer about the facts, it was now how people reacted to the facts. Now I was feeling frightened, helpless and sad.
I kept going, feeling guilty about trying to enjoy myself while people in other places like Ukraine, Yemen and Palestine are suffering their own humanitarian crises.
I have experienced this kind of thing before, back in 2014 when Israel and ISIS were running amuck in the Middle East, and based on that experience, I now have the tools to handle this one.
There are basically two ways to handle this. The first way is to acknowledge the bad things that are happening and deal with your own mental health as a result. Or we could just pretend that nothing is happening performatively, go about our day and don’t acknowledge our emotional reality.
I want to remain informed, I feel an obligation to feel informed about human suffering. So when I’m sat at home in my living room having a panic attack about something out of control, it serves no purpose whatsoever. Me jumping online and rage typing on a 300 comment thread is helping nobody. It won’t alleviate anyones suffering and it won’t make the Russians turn around.
This was when I made the decision.
I will check the news twice a day from a reliable source and block all comments and stories on social media regarding Ukraine.
I can tell you this for sure. If I didn’t create boundaries for myself there and then, I know that I would’ve experienced a huge amount of purposeless distress. The keyword here is purposeless. Distress that has no purpose. I know that this would affect my ability to think critically and function as positively as I could.
Not jumping on threads and shitting on Russians does not make me any less empathic, instead it has the opposite effect. Me posting “World War 3, we are all fucked” is just going to cause more distress.
So I won’t be sucked into the online stuff like I did in the past, even though I have been told I am “sticking my head in the sand”.
Quick note on that. Sticking your head in the sand was coined by a fella called Pliny the Elder in 24AD. He was a naturalist who falsely accused ostriches of sticking their heads in the sand when they felt fear. A combination of fear of idiocy. We now know that ostriches do this to protect their eggs.
Pliny also came up with the quote “Fortune favors the brave” minutes before he ran into the erupting Mount Vesuvius. He was a dumb cunt.
Ok that is all from me this week, I’ll try to keep this up.
You can keep your money this time.
Dog Bless
