Searching for meaning?

There is a really interesting long read in today’s Guardian. The article examines how we have weaponised our leisure time in a way that would have been unthinkable to our grandparents (and probably even our parents). Competition and the clamour for public approbation of our sporting, baking, reading, photographic or other (insert hobby here) activities is linked to a decline in the meaning that we find in our professional lives. The argument runs that if you are in a bullshit job (and – to a greater or lesser extent – most of us are), then one way to find meaning in your life is through the things that you do in your leisure time. The ability to share our achievements, exploits, creations, finish times on a whole range of social media platforms serves to both reinforce this sense of meaning, but also increases the pressure that we feel to be better/faster/more creative. Rather than leisure time being a time to rest and recover, we use our hobbies and other discretionary activity as a way to increase our sense of personal worth and value.

There’s a lot in the article that I can identify with. When I’m running (and I’ll be back soon – see blogs passim) I do user a tracker and upload my data to Strava. I like to monitor my progress, but not in comparison to others. I keep my stats to track my own progress – when I run at parkrun or any other run, I’m running with other people, not against them. My competition is the clock. To be honest, it’s the same with this blog. I do like to see whether people are reading, and it’s always interesting to compare which posts attract more or less reader attention. But – to take the daily blogpost through November as an example – what really matters to me is the discipline of completing the challenge. Completing it as a ‘public’ diary rather than simply jotting down some thoughts in an exercise book is part of the way that I hold myself to account.

There’s an interesting section in the Guardian piece about the ways that some people are using YouTube guides and audiobooks to fast-track their social time – listening to audio-books at 1.5x speed, or fast forwarding through on-line videos. This is presented as being something new. I’m less sure about that, though. I still vaguely remember the Readers Digest booklets that were a regular arrival at my grandparents’ house, containing abridged versions of various books. Perhaps in some respects, at least, whilst the technology has undoubtedly changed, the desire to squeeze the most benefit possible from our leisure time is not so different to that experienced by earlier generations.

blogging101 : Day 4

I read today’s task with a growing sense of trepidation : “We often create posts hoping that someone in particular will see and appreciate our work. Today, publish a post that you’d like that person to read – and stretch your blogging chops as you do”. The ‘stretching’ bit of the assignment is to incorporate a feature into the blog that hasn’t previously been included.

I decided to focus on the stretch element of the task first – largely because the question of who I write this blog for was too existential for me to even begin to get my head around. I’ve never embedded a tweet here previously, so I thought I’d give that a go. Amazingly, (and providing proof positive that the blogging gods are smiling down on my current efforts), about three entries in on my twitter homepage was this beauty :

Belfast police hunt for robber on the run in cow print onesie http://t.co/bXqhKJQDDx

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 6, 2015

And it was then that it hit me. I write this blog for anybody who – like me – is incapable of seeing a tweet like this and not immediately following the link to the news story to find out the details. (In summary, it involved the robbery of a man at 3am by a woman wearing a cowprint onesie, who then made off with two accomplices in a Volkswagen Golf car).

There are so many elements mixed up in the story – comedy, tragedy, drama, the absurd. There are so many questions – why was the woman driving around at 3am in a onesie in the first place? Why was the victim wondering around Belfast with a load of cash on him at that time? Was the victim known to the robbers? Was this the first such crime that they’ve committed or have there been udder ones? (Sorry – couldn’t resist!).

It seems to me that life is extraordinary – and that we all find extraordinariness in so many different ways and places. So I guess I write this stuff for you as a little glimpse into what has caught my attention and in the hope that what’s struck me as extraordinary might touch a nerve with you too.