Daily Yamabushi

Why everyone needs to go to the mountains, or anywhere out in nature really. Mountains are particularly good not just because of the sights you see, but because they tire you.

Mountains you can climb at your own pace, which only you know is best for you. When you get to a certain stage of the climb, your focus changes to simply putting one foot in front of the other, and pushing forwards. This means your focus shifts from that of your everyday life, to that of your very existence.

It is in this stage of thinking of our existence, or not thinking of our everyday, that we gain insight into what life is really about for us. Do this on the regular, and you will never feel out of place.

There are a few rules for this of course. You have to keep quiet, you have to stop and show your appreciation to the sights around you for being the sights around you (Kami), and you have to give yourself enough time to do what you need to do.

Go to the mountains. You will not regret it.

Or it might be Taoism because of the connection to Ying and Yang, but without experiencing the bad, you cannot truly comprehend the good. What this means is, if you’re experiencing something ‘bad’ (which is also subjective) it just means that when the ‘good’ comes, you’ll better be able to understand and appreciate it.

Nothing is inherently good nor bad, it just is. But if something that happens is undesirable or makes you feel down, don’t despair. It might just be a lesson in disguise, or it could be a chance for you to truly appreciate something desirable when it comes.

Today I will be climbing Mt. Gassan, the second time in as many weeks. Last week I took a whole lot of footage that has since been rendered useless, so this is my chance to make up for it.

I did get to have a look at the footage, and I can already think of a number of improvements to make, so I’m going to do what my friend suggested and think of it as practice. Which in all honesty is basically what any creative endeavour is anyway.

He also pointed out something else that should make for better videos. I put a lot of pressure on myself to talk continuously on the camera like the professionals do, even though I’m not very good at doing it like that.

So, I have a list of points to cover, and I’m going to try covering them, but without too much pressure to get it right the first take. I give myself plenty of time for climbing, so I guess I should also give myself plenty of time for commentary. I think it’s in my nature to want to hurry to the destination, even though that’s not why you go to places, well not the entire reason.

Either way, this will be another chance at practicing my craft, and another chance to do one better. Let’s make it the best we can!

I just found that a lot of the footage of climbing Mt. Shogadake and all of the footage of climbing Mt. Gassan has been corrupted. I won’t have enough to make a video for Shogadake, and will have to climb it again. Thankfully it’s on the way up to another peak, Mt. Chokai, that I can tackle later on this year. Mt. Gassan I will also be climbing tomorrow, so I guess last week’s adventure would count as a warm-up. Obviously though, I’m pretty disappointed at losing all that data.

What happened was, and this is stupid on my behalf, about two weeks ago while I think I was transferring the video files to my external hard drives, my computer’s logic board gave out. I tried fixing it myself but was unable to, and the apple person also had a look and said that I had to get it sent in.

Then, this is the stupid part, when I got it back, I checked through to see that the files had transferred, which to be honest it says that had, and they are still there but unreadable, and I went ahead and erased the data off the SD cards. If I had checked them properly like I should have, I wouldn’t have had this problem.

What’s the lesson? Be thorough when dealing with data! I’ve had quite a bit of trouble dealing with these huge video files, 4K ain’t that easy to deal with. I guess I have to be extra vigilant from now on. Thankfully the mountains aren’t too hard to access for me, and I have already written the Shogadake article, and am about halfway through the Gassan one. So in the end it’s not too bad. I could have lost a whole hard drive, that would be insane to deal with.

On the right hand side if you’re reading this on desktop, or at the bottom on mobile, there is a link to subscribe to Mountains of Wisdom, my 100 Mountains of Yamagata Project. I just wrote a new article there, so if you want today’s article, sign up and I will send it to you personally 🙂

I’ve been looking back at the earlier stuff I made for my 100 mountains of Yamagata project, such as my first Mt. Kinbo article, and I’ve noticed a whole lot of areas that need improvement. In essence, they need to be more easily navigable.

Medium has taught me the importance of headlines. Walls of text can be off putting, but breaking it up with photos and headlines I feel is a good way to keep things interesting, and also give the reader what they want.

This is the nature of blogging and websites these days as honestly I don’t expect many people to read every word. Obviously I would be happy if they were to do so, but I don’t think it’s realistic, and nor do I think it should be. People want the necessary information first, not a huge narrative (recipe pages are a huge culprit of this).

With that in mind, I’ve made a couple of changes to the layout of my articles, as is reflected in the recent Mt. Shogadake article. Now I purposely start out with the necessary stuff like a simple explanation of what makes the mountain worth visiting, and then an explanation of the trails, rather than a long story about my experience, that comes after.

I think these short introductions at the start are the most helpful way to go about it because people will be able to tell from the get go whether climbing the mountain is worth it or not for them. If it is, then they can continue on to the narrative I’ve written, where hopefully they will catch some hints on how they too can make a trip to the mountain worthwhile.

All this is to say, I’m going to be going back and fixing my earlier articles to reflect this change in thinking. Thankfully I’ve only climbed eight mountains so far, of which I’ve published 6 articles on. Best to get this out of the way as soon as possible.

I’m convinced the only way to get good at a second language is by making it a point of pride. Language acquisition takes years of self-motivated effort. You’re fooling yourself if you think you can learn it in class alone. That is putting the onus on the teacher. No, attaching the acquisition of language to your pride is the way forward. Only then can you be motivated enough to do what is necessary to acquire the language.

I think it’s fair to say this for language learning, now start making sure your other goals are a point of pride.

I turn 33 today. Same age Jesus was when he died (well, depending on whose information you believe). Here are five lessons, like the five stories of the pagoda on Haguro, for you I’ve learned over the years:

1. The world is unfair, *live* with it

Everyone has their struggles. Everyone, without doubt. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans (thanks John Lennon!). But I find we often forget that we have choices about how we react to life when it happens. We can wallow in the mire, or we can take action to get out of it.

This has been reiterated for me with Yamabushi training, and now when something bad happens, I think I am quicker able to accept it, and move on. I guess practice makes perfect.

This reminds me of one good lesson I got from Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. Dan Ariely suffered horrendous burns over much of his body. But he is a living example of the amount of damage us humans can take and still come to terms with (read the book for a better explanation).

Shit happens. Let it. But don’t let it get to you. You have to sort of ignore it, and move on to stuff you actually like doing. That’s what it means to ‘live’ with it.

2. Err on the side of action

For me, being alive is reason enough to live well. I get afraid of potential regret, and so I tend to err on the side of action. It’s better to regret something you did, than something you didn’t do (I think it’s Flea who sings this line, might be Dave Navarro on One Hot Minute).

We are faced with choices every minute. Some of them predictable, some of them not. In recent years I tend to go for the unpredictable for the sake of that unpredictability. I like to see where the rabbit hole takes me, and I like to test my limitations to see where they truly are. That’s what excites me, and I think it’s a honorable goal to have. I must say though this idea is not mine, this idea is articulated best by Gary Vaynerchuk.

Do shit. Just do it for the sake of it. That’s the only reason you need. Do it knowing that you need to take responsibility for it, for that’s the price of opportunity. But do it.

Almost all the time I procrastinate and avoid doing things I know I should because they look hard, I find out they aren’t actually that hard to do. Do it and find out how hard it is. It isn’t hard.

3. You have to make an effort to ward off the evil

The evil in this case being the struggle. If you’re proactive about it, making sure to get regular exercise, meditation in whatever form that is for you (taking walks quietly is all it takes), removing the oversocialization and overstimulation that comes with modern smartphones and devices by setting boundaries for yourself like my 6 to 6 rule, you can go some way towards controlling the damage. Or at least not exasperating it.

Then, you get to really enjoy the sunshine. You get to really enjoy the company of others. You get to really enjoy the simple things. And that for me is what it’s all about. The simple joy.

3.1 Smartphone overuse really is the worst

Since implementing my 6 to 6 rule, I’ve had a few insights I didn’t expect. I don’t like gaming because I feel it is a waste of time that could be better used reading or writing. In small doses it’s fine, but I just don’t like it that much.

For the 6 to 6 rule, I added an exception for weekends. But surprisingly I find that when I turn on the iPad at night like I used to, it feels like gaming feels to me. It get a niggling feeling that says I should be doing something else, like using the iPad at that time is unnatural.

This has also meant a reduction in the amount of time I spend watching Netflix and Amazon Prime and the like as well. So much so that I question their value. This has been a weird insight for me, but I think it’s a good one.

3.2 Mornings are the best

Does this need an explanation? Get up for the sunrise. It’s amazing. Even at 4am in the middle of summer. Especially at 4am in the middle of summer.

4. Start something

I really don’t want to use this term because it’s the title of an album by a band I used to like until I heard the singer was an absolute arsehole. Haven’t listened to them since. But the message stays the same. You have to be creating something every single day. A blog is a good one, there’s no need to publish it, but it’s a good practice to have. Likewise, video or photos are really good too. If you have the ability to code, make a website or some animation or something. Whatever it is, work on it every day. This is something I wish to tell (force upon?) my younger self for sure.

5. Look after yourself

Sometimes we find meaning in helping others, well, most of the time. But helping yourself means you are better able to help others, so which is really helping them? As long as it’s not just one-way. Look after yourself.

The five lessons

There you have it. In any case, these are some of the lessons I have learned recently. You’ll be fine. Just ‘live’ with the struggle, err on the side of action, ward off the evil, stop using your phone too much (!), start something, and look after yourself!

Only time will tell, but I got a comment recently about the quality of my video footage on the Hidden Side of Mt. Haguro video. The viewer obviously picked up on the fact that I was using my Sony a6500 for a few of the shots, rather than the GoPro.

To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed with the GoPro. It was meant to be the be all and end all for my video production (well to a degree) as it was promised to be so, but what they don’t tell you is that the footage you see in their promo videos has got extremely good lighting. Filming in forests and other dark locations with the GoPro has been really hit and miss. I have to be extra careful not to bump anything as that can ruin a shot quite easily.

So yesterday on Mt. Gassan I decided to use my Sony more. And I did. I probably got a good hour or so of footage, and I’m hoping it’s good. Some of the locations were really amazing, cloud moving quickly over the mountain peak, river valley below kind of stuff, so we should be in for a treat.

The whole experience reminded me of the first time I got the camera way back in 2017. I felt extremely inspired at that time and was posting on my Instagram on the daily without fail. This was a similar feeling, trying to get the best shots that I could, this time on video though. If only I had done that four years ago…

My aim is simple. To portray the mountain in as attractive a way as possible. If that means using the Sony, so be it!

So I’m waiting to see how the video turns out, and I’m quietly hoping the footage is goof because this might be my modus operandi for the foreseeable future. Primarily using my Sony for visual shots and using the GoPro for talking. I think it worked quite well, but we’ll have to wait and see.

We climbed Mt. Gassan today. On the way up, it was beautiful, a bit overcast with light shining through and highlighting patches of green all around us. Really quite a view to behold. Then on the way back, it was foggy the whole time. It even rained on us for a few minutes there. On the way back, we could only see about 20 or so metres in any direction, the fog was that bad.

It got me thinking, the way up was better than the way down, at least in terms of filming interesting things, so much so that I sort of reminisced the way up when we were coming down. The good came before the bad, so to speak, and I was thinking that I should have appreciated the good more when I had it.

But had it been the opposite way around, had the visibility been poor on the way up, but great on the way down, you know I think I would have enjoyed it more than what actually did happen. I think I would have enjoyed the good more having already experienced the bad.

Of course this is just an isolated example, but this tells me that if you’ve gone through something bad, it gives you more power to enjoy something when it’s good.

To be clear, I try not to look at things as inherently good or bad, they just are. This is a teaching from Buddhism that I think is quite insightful. When you don’t place a meaning on something in this way, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to accept, and then learn from.

In the past I used to get flustered preparing for Yamabushi training, or simply climbing a mountain. This happened multiple times, even though I was preparing pretty much the same stuff each time. So, I decided to keep lists of stuff that I could update to make things easier.

I now have two lists for climbing mountains. One is for Shugyo training, making sure I have the right equipment and enough spares (like Fundoshi loincloths and Hakui jackets depending on the duration), and now a new one for just general mountain climbing.

Tomorrow I will be climbing Mt. Gassan led by a Yamabushi friend of mine, but it is not proper Shugyo. This list means I can get ready rather quickly, which saves me precious time. Mt. Gassan is as unpredictable a mountain as it gets, which means I will need extra time to prepare though.

When climbing, your bags can get quite heavy even if you’re trying to purposely carry as little as possible. It helps to think of this extra weight as extra resistance for training 🙂 extra water is also an incentive to drink more, which you will definitely need to do on a climb up Gassan!

I know it’s obvious, but I’m guilty of breaking this rule more often than I’d like to admit. Tonight we had a zoom chat for the first time in a long time, and I realized my rule of no phone from 6 to 6, made easier by charging it in a very inconvenient spot, has made me more attentive during zoom calls. Well, this zoom call to be precise, but I think there has been a shift already.

While normally I do get a bit sidetracked listening to other people, I think the 6 to 6 rule has made me want to pay attention more. Since I’m not distracted with my phone, I want or need even to become more engrossed in what it is I am doing.

Likewise, the one screen rule is a good one too, which I think is pretty similar. Both have the same purpose of allowing or forcing you to focus on one thing. TV is ok, but just not with your phone. Phone is ok, just not with TV. The same goes for zoom calls too. When you’re in a zoom session, all other distractions are turned off. When you’re in a zoom session, you’re in a zoom session.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have urges to reach for the phone and to succumb to other distractions, but with these rules, it gets easier to overcome them, and I truly am starting to feel the rewards.

So, my computer well and truly gave up the ghost. After consulting with a person from Apple, I have to get it sent away for repairs, which might just cost me a pretty penny. I tried everything I knew to do (I.e. ask Google sensei what you should do), and only then I talked to Apple when it was established that there was a major problem. My closest Apple-certified repair place was around 90km away in Yamagata City, so I’m going to do everything by post.

That’s one problem with living out here. I always say that we don’t need the convenience of living in a big city, and 99% of the time that’s true. I’ve probably only been to a convenience store here between the hours of 10pm and 6am maybe once or twice, at least in the past few years. If we really need to, we can get to Sendai in about 2 hours or so, but for something like this that requires emergency repairs, well, we lose out.

Although, the last time my computer had a problem and I sent it away (sticky keys on their ‘revolutionary’ keyboard), it was taken care of relatively quickly, it was less than 3 days. Also, my computer has been sitting unopened over weekends recently, largely because I’ve been outside in the mountains filming.

This means that I have a bit of a backlog of videos and articles to write up. The truth is, I wanted to get the 100 mountains of Yamagata up much quicker, but I’m slowly coming to terms with the limitations of Wix. One huge one for me being that I only have limited options for customizing the pages that blog posts appear on. If I want a full article like this or this, I have to use their blog feature, but then I can’t customize things like having a ‘in short’ section with basic info on the mountain. I could just write it in the blog post, but that sort of defeats the purpose of using wix (I can use Medium for that). On the other hand, if I use their dynamic pages, I can’t get photos or videos in the middle of the articles. So I’m kinda thinking I should just stick with WordPress.

You may have noticed I changed my site a few days ago (so far only the home page and the mountains pages), actually it was in the hours before my computer gave up, so I haven’t been able to fix some of the glaring problems (check out any of my mountains posts to see if you can spot them, one is extremely obvious at the top ;p). If I don’t get Wix up and running as I originally planned, at least it inspired the new design that I think is pretty cool.

Using Wix has been alright though. I get a fix out of seeing my designs up on the internet, and Wix makes it easy to put these up fast. Well, besides their system for organizing dynamic posts to display on a page, that could do with a lot of work. It’s a really unnecessarily convoluted system, the Brizy plugin I have been using has been 1000x better in that regard. Also, I’ve been able to replicate the Wix-inspired design relatively easily too.

Which is to say, there are a lot of things I want to try out, and I’m thinking I should just stick with WordPress for now, and think of Wix as more of an experiment. If you want to see what I’ve been building, you should be able to see it at travel.timbunting.com.

A couple of weeks back I was interpreting for an online session between the NZ Triathlon Team and a local elementary school. During the session, the elementary school students did their own rendition of the Haka. Every single time I watch the Haka, I get goosebumps, and this time was by no means different.

I’m not sure what it is about it. The Haka is indeed designed to scare, but these kids are like 3/4 my height and could hardly hurt a fly. Well, if you saw them on the street maybe. I’m really happy, it seems they really understood the meaning behind the Haka, and were able to put in a spine-tingling performance.

For kiwis, I can’t think of anything that shows more respect than the Haka. Some friends of mine even performed it at my wedding here in Japan. It was amazing. It’s also a very good motivator as well, and I believe it plays a similar role to the Torifune ritual we do before waterfall meditation to get ready for it. It’s amazing how these simple rituals can really inspire.

P.S. I disagree completely with hosting the Olympics during a pandemic, but it’s not up to me it seems.

Take a break! Give it some time! Don’t let the bad luck linger!

Last night was a crazy triple blow of bad luck. The outdoor pool had closed due to a thunderstorm warning meaning I couldn’t get my swim in, the All Blacks 7s lost (power to the Fijians! They played amazingly and fully deserved it!), and last but not least, my computer gave up the ghost!

Now, I wish I had taken my wife’s advice and just stopped there, but no I wanted to have a working computer the next day, so I tried to fix it, breaking my 6pm rule when all devices but the TV are switched off. That was another thing that did actually bother me it seems, and in that frustration, I may have accidentally deleted the content of a full 4TB hard drive… If I had just calmed down and tried in the morning, I may not have done that.

I’m going to be borrowing my wife’s computer until I can get mine back up and running, I guess it’s a good thing that I have that option, so I should be ok, but I’ve at least lost some work, and I’m going to have to start some things from scratch (including possibly climbing a mountain again), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is why you always back up! Or you could just save things on the cloud 🙂

The hard drive though, it might be a good thing to lose it. I have too many files that it was getting a bit out of hand. I counted and I have more than 15TB of capacity, and I believe a lot of it is being used. The problem is, a lot of it is stuff that might be usable. Might have to sort out another solution for storage, or might have to do a better job at getting quality stuff in the first place. An interesting conundrum to have.

Nice cool(ish) day today so I thought it would be a great time for a swim. Get to the pool to find out the outdoor pool is closed due to a thunderstorm warning. Nothing eventuating, so I hope they’d have it open some time soon. Have to swim inside for the meantime, but of course there’s only one lane available, and of course it’s full of old dudes and a small family doing one slow lap at a time. So, to give the family a good time, I decide to take my (at times rough) butterfly elsewhere. Win some, lose some, I guess. Sucks cos the pool is so far away too, maybe I should bike here so I can at least get that workout in too.

In the Triathlon, it’s said that you can’t win in the swim (the first part), but you can sure lose then. This statement is very true. If you don’t pace yourself, it can be very easy to burn out. This happened to me very recently when I got my rowing machine a few weeks back, I went way too hard at the start, and it completely ruined my workout.

So when you’re getting started doing something after an extensive break, it helps to have a way to ease back into the rhythm. One way I do this, in my case after an extensive break from the pool, instead of working on trying to hit times, I aim to hit percentages. For example, today I did a set of 4x100m with progressively increasing percentage of effort (70, 80, 90, 100). This way I can slowly build back my stamina, and also my muscle (my triceps are really feeling it). Once these are both back, I can do longer swims, or swims with more intensity, but until then, I have to pace myself.

It’s interesting how some things are expressed differently in different languages. Take for example in Japanese, when someone opens the door for you, you apologise to them for having inconvenienced them, whereas in English we’d usually thank them. In Japan, it’s all about humility. When you do something, anything, to inconvenience someone, you are sort of at their will. In English, apologising for this can make you seem weak or feeble, or ungrateful.

For the longest time, I’ve been making an effort to be positive in my remarks, for example instead of saying ‘sorry for the wait’, I try and say ‘thanks for your patience’. This is in an effort to keep things positive, to avoid putting a downer on things. In some cases though, this just isn’t possible in Japanese. I mean, it’s possible, but it’s completely unnatural.

A similar instance is that on the phone or at the door when we can’t see the other person talking, we say ‘It’s” and then our name, rather than just saying “I’m”. This sort of thing you don’t really notice until you have to teach it, and there are so many exceptions in English it can be hard to keep track.

Nothing like a good mountain to test your mettle. Today we climbed Mt. Atsumidake (I guess you could just say Mt. Atsumi) in the south of Tsuruoka. I had done a little bit of research in advance, but that research was all but pretty useless as it took way longer than expected to get to the top and back.

With Mt. Atsumi, you do a huge loop that takes you through extensive cedar forests, along a stream complete with awesome waterfalls, up a not so exciting service road, back into the forest and up to the top where a Kumano shrine and pretty spectacular views await. Then, the loop takes you back down through a combination of cedar and beech forests, where you eventually come to the remains of a praying spot for followers of nature worship, and we even saw an abandoned Shukubo, purpose-built lodging for pilgrims to the mountain. From there, it’s pretty close to the road that takes you back to the first entrance.

I had expected the climb to be a 2.5 hour loop, but it seems I got the calculation completely wrong, with the mountain taking us about 5 hours all up. These things happen though, when you have to live with the consequences of a mistake, and you have to push yourself further than you originally expected.

For us, we had the advantage of the YAMAP app that let us know where we were and at what elevation, so we knew how much longer we had, which didn’t exactly make it easier, but meant we had an idea what was in store.

That’s also one good lesson I think from Yamabushi training in that you have no idea when the training is going to end, if it’s a new mountain, you have no way of knowing how much further you have to go, you just have to take it as it comes.

Life is like that sometimes. Sometimes you don’t know how much longer you have to push yourself, but like the mouse that churns the cream into butter and climbs out of the pot, your effort might lead to results literally just around the corner.

I have also heard that people who have no experience controlling their breathing when in cold water don’t do so well, whereas people who can control their breathing can survive in cold water for much longer. This is all just in your head it would seem. This kind of self-belief I think is a sort of power that can help you go that much further.

Go as slow as you need to to keep going, but never stop. This is simple advice I have for people with a set goal in mind. Always be moving forward, take it one step at a time, but never stop until you at least reach one milestone. If you’re unsure whether you can reach a goal or not, this is one surefire way to ensure you do. It may not be easy, but it is possible. Go as slow as you need to, but never stop.

In the past three years I have been to three friends’ funerals. All three were tragically young, each time it broke my heart, and I really do not want to make a habit of it. I’ve said this before in regards to my own dad’s death, but even though it is something extremely unfortunate, death is a normal part of life, and for me it is a stark reminder to do the things you always said you would.

At my dad’s funeral, it was a colourful affair. The only people wearing black were me and my wife as we were led to believe this is normal from watching TV and movies. Everyone else was wearing extravagant clothing to celebrate life rather than commiserate over death, which is something I can get behind. Japan is still very much traditional, and black is still very much the only acceptable colour (besides white). All three times I had to borrow a black tie from my brother-in-law. You’d really think I’d learn my lesson and go buy one, but I really don’t want to.

There are some other interesting points about funerals in Japan, one of which is that you don’t take the route you took to the funeral home on the way back to try and make any spirits that stick to you lose their way. You’ll also be given a small sachet of salt to throw over your shoulders as a purification for before you go back inside your house. On special occasions in Japan such as weddings, it is custom to give money in an envelope in the form of pristine notes that haven’t been folded. This is the opposite for funerals, money given should have been used somewhat.

I hope you learned something about funerals in Japan, but I really hope you don’t have to go to one anytime soon.

The advice I probably most agree with in life came from what could probably be the most unlikeliest of sources. When I was working as an Assistant Language Teacher just south of here, I made a pretty good friend in the junior high school’s 60-something chain-smoking farmer groundskeeper Mr. Otaki.

On sultry summer days, I would be sitting at my (air-conditioned) desk, and Mr. Otaki, with his deep smokers’ voice and carefree gait, would slowly walk up to me and whisper for me to follow him.

When I got to his office, a small 6-mat tatami room, the reason he wanted me to come was pretty obvious. Sitting there on the middle of the table was one massive watermelon. He just wanted me to have some of the watermelon he had grown, out of sight of the other teachers and the students of course. We sat there like innocent schoolgirls gobbling up what at the time felt like contraband, but was actually pretty innocent.

I’m pretty sure from the one bus tour in Osaka in the 80s Mr. Otaki proudly showed me a photo album of that he had never been overseas. He had spent his 60-odd years almost exclusively in and around the Shonai region of Yamagata, besides annual trips to Tokyo for the Sumo of course.

This man who ironically had hardly any experience outside this small area of Japan told me, ‘nandemo keiken’, ‘it’s the experience that counts’. These two words have stuck with me ever since, and I think it’s because they are quite powerful indeed.

Yamabushi training is all about the experience. The reason why (I think at least) we describe the Dewa Sanzan as a journey for rebirth is because that’s the closest proximation to actually having done the training. It’s the experience that counts.

Just thinking about doing something but not actually doing anything about it, that won’t get you very far. Until you’ve actually taken that first step, put in the hard yards, and experienced something for what it is, you truly don’t know much at all. That a secret-watermelon-loving retiree said that to me only made it that much more powerful as well, and I wish to share it with you too.

Yesterday I read something insightful that I hadn’t thought about in regards to writing daily. Basically, most good ideas start out in written form; books, films, stories, music even, starts out in written form, and from there they can be developed. Then, having your ideas out in written form means you can more easily work with and on them.

If you’re in the practice of writing daily, sure you’re going to have a hell of a lot of perhaps useless stuff, but if you have volume, mixed in there would be a hell of a lot of great stuff that you can work with. Either way, it starts by having these ideas in written form (depending on the media there may be exceptions), and it’s a great practice to have, especially daily, to clear your mind, and maybe discover something special.

Am I moving forward? Or are we moving forward? It’s such a simple thing, but the use of pronouns makes a huge difference in communication. Whenever we’re in a group situation, it’s important to think as a group, to take initiative as a group, and to take responsibility as a group. One of the best ways to show solidarity for the group is through cognisant use of pronouns. When giving advice as well, you can really make someone feel like you are on their team by using a collective pronoun; you and I versus we and us.

Next time you’re in a team meeting or similar, take note of the pronouns used, and if you’re part of a team, really think about whose team you’re really on.

Way back when I was working at a swimming pool, we had a team meeting because the team wasn’t as cooperative as it should have been, and I learned what I think is a very good lesson from this team meeting.

Those who have worked at pools would know that every 15 minutes or so you rotate the lifeguards to help keep them awake. We were trying an experiment to see whether the newer lifeguards would take the initiative to rotate or not. Basically we wanted to judge how awake they were.

They didn’t rotate, so our experiment was good in that we had found out that they still had more to learn, but that we did this experiment in the first place was rather foolish.

You shouldn’t expect people to know to do things like this. You have to take the initiative yourself, especially if you’re in a position where you have the knowledge and the ability to do so. Sometimes, there are things that people just don’t get round to doing, even though they know they should do it. Sometimes you have to take the initiative to make sure these things get done.

If we had told the newer lifeguards they were expected to rotate at a certain time, I’m pretty sure they would have. Instead we played a stupid game on them that in the end just made us look foolish, and uncooperative. This was but one lesson, but it did help us to build a better team later on.

Some situations in life truly are sad. Unfortunately, even when you try hard not to play the victim, the situation makes it sound like you are the victim, so there’s no way around it. This in turn makes you look like you are ungrateful and a complainer, which people can easily get tired of hearing.

You could argue that those people are just insensitive, sometimes they truly are, but I think we need to try and give them a reason not to be. When I explain something sad, I always try to finish with a positive, either some sort of life lesson or advice garnered from the experience, or some way I’m trying to move forward positively.

This way, the person gets the information you want them to hear, and they aren’t burdened with having to console you. I think this also goes some way in healing as well, to show that you are at least thinking in a positive manner, no matter how trying the situation is.

We all know the phrase time heals all wounds. Honestly, I have found that to be the case for a lot of things. While time may not heal all wounds completely, it does go some way towards giving perspective on what can in the moment be an extremely harrowing experience.

Working back from that logic, if you’re in a harrowing situation, even one as severe as the current pandemic, you should take solace in that it won’t last forever. And even things that do last forever, we have the uncanny ability to come to terms with them more than what might seem possible in the moment.

Which is to say, sometimes it pays to take a long-term perspective on things. When viewed over the long term, even big things today can seem insignificant, and you feel like a fool for paying them so much attention. Just let time take its course, and get on with it.

When you start new projects, you never know what type of skills they will require, and what type of skills you will learn. It’s really quite surprising. For the Mountains of Wisdom project, I wanted to get a website up quickly, and I had the idea of using a database and dynamic pages, which I hadn’t thought of previously. This has since necessitated a bit of ingenuity (for me at least) in the excel department.

I’ve taught myself excel and website creation before, only the basics, but now I feel pretty confident in being able to get a website up using a spreadsheet in a relatively short amount of time. Just yesterday I learned how to make sentences using data from other cells, which is probably a pretty basic thing but I just never had the reason to do it before. Once you know how to do these things, you realise how simple they are, and want to do them again and again.

I’m convinced projects are where it’s at. There’s so much to gain from wanting to solve interesting problems. Not only is the problem interesting, the solving of it is also interesting. So in the end, I guess it becomes a matter of finding interesting problems to solve that also create value; a collection of which gives you quite an experience.