Day Eight :: A Little Bit Wild

So this morning I finished work on the first incarnation of my Upwork profile. Have a gander if you’ve a mind to. Thoughts and thinly-veiled condemnation welcome as always. The title needs work. And you can hire me if you like. I also do haiku.

And I spent an hour this morning applying for a job. But it was a total pleasure. It was one of those off-piste moments that could go either way. You feel me? It was a concept proposal. It was the Sergeant Pepper of job proposals, the kind of thing that could make or break a man. We’ll see. It came very naturally, and it’s always best to go with your gut, I guess. Within reason.

I wanted to say, about this course. It’s reminding me of other periods of my life when I’ve submitted to a regime of sorts, such as Vipassana (which was obviously much more extreme than a measly five hours’ work before noon) and when I practised Nichiren Buddhism for a while. With the Buddhism particularly, as well as the ritual of the chanting, which I did get into for a while, there was the reading and the learning and the being excited by that new knowledge, as well as the feeling that you kind of always knew anyway, deep down inside yourself.

I also keep thinking of the most important thing I’ve learned from twenty years of teaching English, which is that teachers are not teachers at all, but facilitators of learning. It’s particularly true I think when you’re teaching adults. If they’re not genuinely keen to learn, no amount of teaching will have any effect at all. But if they’re passionate to learn, the teacher’s role is primarily to feed them, and to guide them and to give them order. And I feel well fed with those things.

That’s what I have always lacked. Order. Discipline. Doing this course and sticking to the timetable I’ve imposed upon myself, I can feel myself responding to it. To ordered learning. And the course is very well ordered, which is to say, sequenced. That’s another thing I’ve always lacked. Sequence. Thus far then, I am pleased to report, the course is providing the precise guidance I need to be able to give my best to all the stuff that I’ve always previously recoiled from.

So, a part of the upside of all this, the response to the order and the efforts I’m making, is that you just start to feel more alive. You have lots of ideas. My mind becomes alive to new possibilities and you have to force yourself to try and focus. Make a note and focus. And because you’re doing more and opening more doors and practising certain techniques that facilitate a more positive outlook generally, you start to get a bit manic. Coincidences fizz into life! Serendipity abounds! It’s like being stoned, but without the cotton-mouth!

Or maybe I’m just a bit manic.

Either way, it feels good.

As does the shirt I put on for the profile pic photo. I have grown attached to it. It’s my work shirt. I may even buy a second. The whole idea of making a proper job of it. It’s coming together in my head. My horror of business and finance and personal responsibility is, I feel, on the wane. You can be serious, it seems, and still a little bit wild.

Now I must go to Canary Wharf and facilitate some learning.

Anon! 

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Buddhism, discipline, routine, Vipassana