Christmas Presence

Why 'Turning Towards' is the New Goal Setting

Heads Up

Here’s a head’s up about my writing; it’s wandering and overlapping, sometimes confusing.

• It’s not in line with current trends or fashions.

• I’m not keen on adding my two pennies to the latest twitter-frenzy or political horror show.

• It might be low-brow and possibly even mundane (if that’s even allowed on the internet).

• There are lots to take in - plenty of rabbit hole links to go down, all at your own pace. Even my photo captions aren’t usually some throw-a-way line but relax, they are here to work for you, not the other way around.

There’s nothing to cash in at the end of the post, but we’ve spent some quality time together, gently musing, and I hope that’s OK.

Here’s a heads up about your ego, and mine too; the ego is always looking for the payoff. What’s in it for me (the old WII-FM)?

The ego gets out of the gate far quicker than we ever can so if we don’t consciously check it it is reading for what it can gain or exploit.

The ego is a survival mechanism - don’t be too hard on it but remind it to take some time off, won’t you?

The good news is that when you understand this, you can relax and just kick back and let the words wash over you. There’s no winning and losing. There’s no secret sauce that you’re going to miss if you’re not paying attention.

You’re OK and I’m OK even when we’re really not OK…and that’s OK.

That dead week between Christmas and New Year

The drizzle brought my son and me in from outside.

I wrestled out of my new Christmas Carhart dungarees…the ones that make me feel like a real man…until I get the clasp stuck and have to ask my wife for help or run the risk of weeing myself.

Meanwhile, Leander, self-prompted no less, washes the dirt off his remote-control monster truck tyres. A Christmas present from his Gran.

We were out in the rain because the previous evening my Nintendo-Switch-parental-controls app informed me that I was failing as a parent. Twenty-seven hours of screen time in three days…Yikes!

The day after the day after, Boxing day, my son, AKA ‘Square-eyed Billy’, clearly needed some fresh air.

I silently wondered why I relied on an app to tell me this, but half of me also wondered whether there was some way to add my children to the app on my phone that stops me from overwatering the houseplants.

This photographer clearly gets plenty of fresh air waiting around to capture perfect moments like this one

Calling a Spade a Spade - Why can’t I escape technology?

I don’t know if you can relate to this but I occupy a space somewhere between being a Luddite and a technophile. Or maybe I don’t hold the space, but rather bounce violently between the two extremes. One part of me hates technology with a passion whilst the other half of me checks in with it constantly throughout the day.

John Moriarty would say, a spade, having two parts (a shank and a blade) was technology enough, and my heart sings in agreement.

Technology enough <3

And yet in reality, and in practice, I’m an early adopter of most technologies.

As an example, I used to track my HRV as early as 2009 and still even to this day it’s a relatively underutilised technology for tracking the autonomic nervous system - which is basically a measure of how much adaptability/resilience you have to take on challenges… aka life.

Sunshine and Health Challenges

My current favourite app is Circadian which lets me know when the sun’s up and when I should be eating and winding down artificial lighting for sleep. Sleep is one of the few things (the only thing??) all health and fitness experts agree on. Not that I position myself as a fitness expert…heaven’s forbid.

Winter sun might not meet our Vit D requirements but we’re way more sophisticated than just sunshine equals Vit D!

One key reason I need to manage my daily rhythms better in 2023 is my recent 2yr health struggle since getting an early bout of covid and being breathless ever since (not to mention heart palps and all the rest of it).

I suspect at the heart of my health problems is a compromised gut - which is the frontline to our immune response.

By some accounts, the gut lining is restored around every 5 days or at least it should do if it gets the right circadian signals to regenerate. Basically, you want early morning sunlight and no late evening blue light or snacking).

There’s a whole heap I could write about why I have a compromised gut and the emotional components of my sickness. And maybe I’ll write about the Spiritual container for my chronic sickness at some point too.

Let’s just leave it with the confusing message that apps are great for health but also maybe the gaps are now too big for technology to fill. The gap of losing the pulse of daily life, the pulse of relationships and relating to one another…the gap of losing your connection to your own body. The gaps between us and our neighbour.

What’s My New Year Message?

You know I didn’t sit down to write a health post. Maybe the invisible corporate pull of New Year, New You has sucked me in! I apologise if it has you spinning your ‘I’m not good enough’ or aspirational wheels.

You are good enough. In this year and the next. Dare to believe that you’re even loved. Loved by some unseen force that has little regard for our worldly ideas of time running in straight lines. A love patiently waiting for us.

Meanwhile Out in the Rain

Let’s get back to my son tenderly washing the dirt off his new Christmas toy. An old-school remote-controlled car.

As quick as a dad can shout, “Where’s that bloody tiny screwdriver…It needs double AA’s!” we were back outside with his car and getting the full UK winter dreichness in our gills.

This is the only photo that pops up if you search the word ‘Dreich’ in Substack’s photo gallery but it doesn’t say dreich to me - it actually looks like quite an inviting day!

*Dreich - meaning dreary or bleak - was once voted Scotland’s favourite word.

However, after just a few moments of being back outside, with me trying to find logs and old slate tiles to make ramps, he wanted to be back inside. When I asked what for, he told me he needed a figure to sit in the driver’s seat.

“A figure?!?!” I shot back but he’d already disappeared into the house.

He came back with a small action figure which I think was Catwoman or possibly Batgirl. Her black outfit rendered her somewhat invisible against the all-black car so I was troubled by the aesthetic but had to give credit for the perfect scale as she fit snugly into the car seat.

As he sent Batgirl whizzing past our neighbour’s drives it dawned on me that this was more than just a preference for play. It was in some way the essence of who he was.

Dance for Your Daddy My Little Laddie

Obviously, I’m not basing this off a single observation but rather repeated patterns of behaviour. Even when we play football together Leander is mostly engaged with the theatrics of “he shoots, he scores, and the imaginary crowd goes wild!”

What we see is grace. power and straight lines. What the ballerina feels is cramped feet tight calves and pressure to perform.

I’m on unfamiliar terrain so I need to pay more attention. I lean into my son. I get curious, because, for me, football was all about physicality. The throwing yourself into tackles… the constant being down and getting up off the floor. Pressing your open palms into wet grass and mud to stand up. Pausing to wipe the sweat out of your eyes with the synthetic polyester sleeve of your replica sports shirt. I still remember getting ‘man of the match’ for being the hardest-working footballer on the pitch. The thumping of my heart and the burning lactic acid in my little legs, to me, was football.

Maybe it’s not so different as I imagine. We’re both chasing a euphoria - me directly in my body and Leander arguably a purer form of heightened emotion through active imagination.

And maybe this is key, neither of us is performing for an observer outside of ourselves.

I think of dance and how that can be one or the other and rarely both. Dance can be a scripted performance for an audience to enjoy or it can be expressive of what a dancer is feeling. Often it can be very cathartic for the dancer but difficult to watch.

How do you live your life…

• - for an unseen audience?

• -for yourself regardless of how it looks on the outside?

Soldier and Sailor too

When I sit here now, at 46yrs old, and I track the arc of my own life I recall that the only thing I ever wanted to be was a stuntman.

Gateshead wasn’t awash with stuntmen in the 1990s but poor working-class towns were, and are, key recruitment areas for the military. I can’t help but think that in joining the Royal Marines I was somehow playing out that stuntman life - albeit very naively thinking a soldier’s life was a wholesome adventure.

A beautiful nomad with his temporary home in the background letting me ride his camel and offering me a delicacy (looked like a chocolate truffle but tasted like a piece of blue cheese!) - Did my psyche create a real-life movie set for myself?

If only someone had seen me as a kid and said “That kid likes to use his body. We’d better have some good ideas for when he becomes an adult. That skillset could really enhance the tribe”.

It just might have saved me some PTSD.

Today my job as a parent, now that I have an app that takes care of his screen time, is to take care of my son’s essence.

That thing that’ll stay with him into his adulthood.

So when society (schools, career advisors, friends, social media) tells him “You know what you should be…”

I can say…

“Son. You can do anything you want but I can tell you what you loved to do as a kid. I can tell you what you moved towards and what you recoiled from. I can tell you the stories you’d tell me before the full weight of society leaned in on you”

2023 The Year of…

Love isn’t it?

It’s always love.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My Substacks take a long-ass time to write. My life has unfolded in many difficult, and often contradictory ways, and to distil it into anything that remotely resembles useful advice takes a lot of time and even more care.

I think my voice is important. Not more important than anyone else’s but I’m saying the most important things I personally can say.

In a time where compassion is regarded as weak - especially by men and young men have zero role models in this area - I’m committed to not putting a paywall between those young men or anyone who might find some succour in my writing.

So I ask those who can pay for a subscription to support the work that I do here. And by paying you’re paying not just for yourself but for those who aren’t in a financial situation to pay just now.

And if you can’t pay for a subscription, don’t worry about it, enjoy the writing knowing that someone out there has been gracious and heartfelt enough to pay for a complete stranger’s space at the table.

Isn’t that a lovely thing for us all!