Day Five :: Don’t Look Back

Today I did a lot of reading and a lot of listening. A lot, you might say, of learning. All of which has made me realise how much more I have to learn.

Amongst the new skills I need to learn is touch-typing. After 20 years of typing vast numbers of words, I really do need to learn how to do it to the best of my ability. So I’ve set aside some time this weekend to get started. Because it’s never too late.

Today also came with moments of aggravated peevishness. As part of the lesson I worked through, I found myself looking at the websites of people who are doing what I want to do – writing for a living – and doing it much more successfully. As well as distracting me rather more than it should have, this also frustrated me and made me feel like a bit of a jerk. It made me remember the wasted years. They weren’t even wild years, the ones I’m thinking of. They were just wasted, as was I, and that’s such a sin.

But of course, it’s not massively healthy to dwell on the fact that it took me so long to get going. Much better instead to concentrate on all of the experience I gained whilst pissing around wasting my life and squandering my talents.

Hmm.

I admit I’ve still not quite mastered this positive thinking lark. It’s probably best not to consider the past at all. But if I insist on comparing myself to other people, I have to remember that as well as the ones blessed enough to know where they were going from the get-go, a great many people never manage to figure it out at all. At least I know what I want.

Well done me.

More generally, five days and around 30 hours into this course, I have to say I’m enjoying the forward thrust. The sequencing. It’s very well devised. Lessons lead naturally from one to the next and I’ll often find something on which I have begun to dwell addressed soon after I have begun to dwell on it. This is something I noticed with the Vipassana course too. It’s always gratifying to feel that the person to whom you have turned for help has a good idea of what you’re going through.

Now I really feel like getting away from this bastard computer. But I can’t. Feedback Friday awaits.

Onwards!

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Oasis, Tom Waits