Dec. 2021; naked in front of the mirror

So 2021 is finally over. Good riddance to bad rubbish. What a thoroughly shit year that was. Now ‘tis the time to look forward to the horizon, tell ourselves all the “new year new start” crap we somehow make ourselves believe for a few weeks. If you read last weeks thing then you’ll know it’s almost impossible for 2022 to be any worse than last year for me (But then never say never.) But on the flip side, 2021 has taught me some very valuable lessons, and I’d like to share a few of those with you today. Some are from my own behavior, and some are the ones I’ve been on the receiving end of. All have given me a little shake, a wake up call, shall we say. And all are in some way represented in my list of new years resolutions, along with some other far more boring stuff. So, what has last year taught me?

One of the hardest things a person can do, is to look at themselves naked in the mirror. Now, by naked, I mean this both literally, and figuratively. When was the last time you stood, butt naked, and looked yourself up and down in a full length mirror? Weeks? Months? Maybe years? Like what you saw? I bet things have changed since the last time. Some things grown. Some things shrunk. Some things gone saggy. Some things altogether disappeared. Aah, the sweet pain of growing older. Now, here’s the 6-million dollar question; When was the last time you looked at yourself, truthfully. I mean 100%. Not the soft, fleshy bits on the outside we stuff in wonderbras and hide in tight trousers, oh nope. The inside stuff. The stuff that makes us liked or despised. The stuff that tells us it’s ok to ignore that beggar, or pretend we’re asleep on the metro instead of giving up our seat to an old person. Yeah, that stuff. Your morals. Ethics. Lust and jealousy and pride and prejudice. All the stuff floating around inside your coconut that makes you and I the people we are, for right or wrong. As we are literally just 2 days in to the new year, this weeks Sunday Scribble is all about taking a brief stroll around the echoes of (y)our mind. And just like the dentist says, this may feel somewhat uncomfortable…

1. Choose your friends wisely. With all the crap I had to deal with last year, I feel extremely fortunate that I had some amazing, selfless, giving and caring friends to support me, help me along and pick up the pieces with me. Pick me up, even. Their kindness will stay with me forever, and I vow to pass it along to others in their own particular time of need. But this isn’t the main gist I’m getting at. It’s this; beware of users. Keep your eyes open for those “friends” who only choose to be around you when it benefits them somehow. Now I don’t mean people who want to learn from you in some way, they’re the good guys. I mean the people who want to earn from you. The people who pick and choose their acquaintances by what they can get from them. They say some people are givers, and some are takers. It’s fine to be a bit of both, but some just sit purely on one side of that particular fence.

I used to have an acquaintance several years ago. Let’s call her Catherine (because that was her name.) We were never friends as such, not real friends. Real friends call each other for no reason, they have coffee or lunch just to chat. They spend time together when there’s nothing in it for either of them. That’s friends. No, we were never friends, but we shared mutual friends. Anyway, she was one of those people who you would never hear from unless she wanted something. There would be no contact for 6 months, and then all of a sudden I’d get a “Hi Jay, I hope you’re well” text. After several times being caught out by this, slowly my immediate answer would just be “ok, what exactly do you want?” These people have no interest or concern for you. As soon as someone more “profitable” for them comes along, you’ll be yesterdays news. They only care about what they can take or get from you. Stay clear of them. We only have so much time on this planet, don’t waste it on people who don’t give a crap about you. Let them go find someone else to use, and you spend time with real people, real friends. They’ll be grateful of your time.

And, if by any small chance, you have the deep insight to realize that you are in fact one of those people who uses others for personal gain, then please, change. You probably have the ability to get what you want without screwing people over to obtain it. Try to be a real friend. Give to people and expect nothing in return. Either that, or just do the world a favour and go jump in the river, and be washed away with the rest of the turds. Karma is a bitch, and eventually, you’ll get what you deserve. One way, or the other…

2. Keep your prejudices in check. I’ve mentioned several times how this awful time of the pandemic has really shown peoples true colours, and it has. This year alone I’d struggle to count the amount of times I’ve been on the shitty-end of prejudice. People have read “Imported cases” on some idiotic wechat article, but what they actually hear is “foreigner imported cases.” Even to this day, half the time people won’t sit next to me on the metro. I’ve had people walk out of the elevator when they’ve seen me, a foreigner, get in. I’ve been checked and double checked on health codes and virus tests, signing forms with passport numbers, temperature and all that, while others are allowed to walk in freely. And I’ve heard the sentiments echoed all too many times from other foreign friends here. It ain’t cool. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of prejudice. Which leads me to the absolutely inexcusable video clip that’s pretty much gone viral around China recently;

Western guy, standing there, shouting and swearing and saying the most horrid crap he can, to health care workers who spend their long days trying to keep people safe. What a complete embarrassment of a human being. As I’ve said before, when you are in a foreign country, you are a representative of your own nation. But in China, quite often it doesn’t sink-in as far as that. If I’m in London and I hear some French guy being rude to someone, I may think “That French guy is being a dick.” But here, most people don’t understand, or even care, where a foreigner is from, they just see a foreigner. They don’t think “That German is being rude,” they think “that foreigner is being rude.” Yep, we all get lumped in the same box. If you are a guest in this country then please, go ahead and think whatever you like, but keep your bloody mouth shut. The reason people often have a less than favourable view of foreigners here, is because of people who leave these negative, lasting impressions. This pandemic, and all the ramifications and side effects it’s had on us, is making tensions worse and people’s patience wear thin. Bite your tongue, think whatever you like, but remember; if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. One of my new years resolutions is to keep this in mind, for I can be as guilty as any when it comes to losing my rag. As my grandad advised me about life when I was young, “keep your eyes and your ears open, and your mouth shut.” Stupidity is loud. Intelligence and confidence is quiet.

3. Set some goals, and kick yourself hard up the arse to stick to them. Now my excuse is, last year was very difficult, the worst year ever, emotional and upsetting and blah blah blah, but that’s it; It’s an excuse. It’s not a reason. The real reason I haven’t achieved a quarter of what I’d set out to do last year, is this; I quit too easily, I’m lazy, and I make excuses. Cards on the table, truth be told, that’s it. I procrastinate, I overthink, I bury my head in a book instead of moving my unwilling carcass and doing something. This year, I’m determined to push myself, harder than I’ve done for many, many years. I’m sick of myself being consistently average.

I had a conversation recently, and it made me think. It was with a fellow musician, and we were discussing why, after many years of our chosen interest, we don’t improve much, if at all. It’s like we “peak,” and that’s it. Now one thing I’ve had an interest in learning over the last couple of years, is basic human psychology. Nothing deep, just a little to know what makes (most of) us tick. When it comes to expanding or minds, increasing talents and skills and the such, it seems like most of us stop improving because of one simple thing; we stop trying. That’s it. We just stop trying like we used to. Now I think back to when I was first learning bass guitar. I was 16, young and stupid and full of rock n’ roll rebellion, and damn I would play that thing 6, 8, 12 hours a day sometimes. I would play in pitch black, thinking that on a dark stage I can’t rely on my eyes looking to see where the notes were. At one point I had a bass guitar in every room of my house, including the toilet (some of my best riffs came from a lengthy sit on the throne.) And then as years went by, my rehearsing slowed down. I got pretty good. Then I got really quite good. Then I started to listening to all the compliments. And then I stopped improving.

After a while of doing something, you naturally get better at it. And my problem was, by the time I got good (and I mean like, 6 out of 10 good, in hindsight honesty) I got a little bit big headed, and a big bit complacent. I got comfy. In my mind I was “good enough.” And then, to me, “good enough” was good enough. I was making money, I was showered in nice words, and the good times were rolling. And I stopped getting better at the thing I claimed to adore, music. This has now been in my head for the last few days, that I can’t let that happen with other things in my life I adore. Photography. Writing. I’m pretty mediocre at both, but I want to get better. I want to grow and improve and see a noticeable difference in a few years time. And the only way to do this, is to keep doing them, but better. Harder. Faster. Set goals and get rid of the excuses. An excuse is not a reason. No more excuses.

If you have a thing in your life, a hobby or passion or interest or whatever, and you think you’ll be doing this for the rest of your days, then do yourself a favour, and make some goals. Set some targets. It doesn’t truly matter if you achieve them or not, just do your absolute best to. Give it all you can. Procrastination is the enemy. Take your shoe off and give yourself a damn good kick up the butt. You’ll thank yourself one day.

4. Don’t be jealous of anything, or anybody, ever. Oooh, the green eyed monster can be hard to tame, but believe me on this, it’s possible. Over my life there’s been scores of times I hear myself thinking “it’s not fair” when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to. Someone else gets what I wanted, what I needed, what I thought I deserved. But it’s poisonous. All you do is infuriate yourself, make yourself look petty and insecure, and alienate others. Stop it. Jealousy is born from a masochistic form of admiration. You want to be that person, you want what they have or what they can do. And it can eat you up. But stop it. Oh, you like that person but they don’t like you, they like your friend instead? Then screw them, they’re clearly an idiot. Look at you, you’re awesome. They must be mentally handicapped and they clearly don’t deserve you. Oh you want that job/promotion but they gave it to someone else? Screw them. Bust your ass at improving what you can do, better your skill set, and wait for them to ask themselves why they didn’t give it to you.

Remind yourself that hey, life isn’t fair, and nobody ever said it was. Work harder. Try to achieve more. Get other’s life completely out of your head, and focus more on your own. The only competition you have in life is with yourself. Stay in your own lane, and run your own race, at your own speed. Stop glancing over at others progress. Just put your head down, and run like your arse is on fire.

5. Listen. But listen carefully. All day every day, our eyes and ears are bombarded with information. Videos, news reports, TV, Douyin, weixin, a never ending stream of diarrhoea that flows into our eyeballs and ear sockets. And as the saying goes, you are what you eat. This works for what we ingest, too. The books you read, the movies you watch, all that diarr-info we snort up makes us what we are. It shapes our opinions, our wants and dreams, our biases and prejudices, our lusts and desires, our judgements and our minds sentencing. But, please keep this in mind; Most of what we see from social media, the news and internet, is crap. Lies and crap. One sided, moronic, sycophantic horseshit. You’d think that with the entire worlds knowledge at our fingertips that we’d be more acute to this, but sadly, we are not. We believe what we want to believe, and rarely let the facts get in our way. We pass on our half-chewed opinions and lopsided judgements to others, with only 2 possible outcomes; They believe you, and you’ve created another idiot. Or they don’t believe you, and just think you’re the idiot.

I’ve said many, many times of the power of reading. The amazing spiritual and imaginative journeys we can take by just feasting our eyes on a few well chosen pieces of literature. But this goes the other way too. I think of it like a comparison to Instagram and photography. Now, 20 years ago, people who spent large amounts of time and money on photography were real photographers, who made real pieces of work. Then cell phone cameras and Instagram comes along, and now we have a billion more photos every single day, for the whole world to see. But does that mean photography, overall, has improved? Or has it just been watered down, and now there’s just more shit to see? Same with media and the news. 20 years ago, people had to either buy a newspaper, and then take the time to read it, or sit down and watch the news on telly. Many people chose to completely ignore the news, and live in ignorant bliss. And good for them. But now, we simply cannot get away from the news and the media. It’s everywhere. It’s impossible to not hear it. So listen. But listen carefully. Listen to opinions, then feel free to duly forget them. Hear people out, and then feel sorry for their backwards way of thinking. Weed out the nonsense. It only clouds your judgement and fills your head with diarrhoea.

6. Give. And be kind. I’m one of those stupid people who gives away money to charities, beggars and such, when I actually have very little of it myself. But, it makes me feel good. We can’t help everyone. We can’t save all the abandoned pets, and we can’t feed all the hungry babies. But by not helping at all, even a tiny little bit, we are as bad as those hurting and hindering the ones less fortunate than ourselves. Give. Instead of your 35rmb Starbucks in the morning, go get a 7-11 coffee for a third of the price and send the rest to a charity. You’ve still spent the same money, but you’re paying into the karma bank. And bank really has the most interest for you. Helping feels good. And you have no idea just how much one small gesture can indeed, help.

There’s many more things I could go on about, but this weeks Sunday Scribble has already gone on for quite a bit. I’m going off to write up my new years resolutions, which I’ll probably mostly-stick to. The new year is upon us, and it’s about the best time to look forward to a (hopefully) better future. Who knows, maybe this year the pandemic will finally be under control. Maybe we’ll be able to travel again. Maybe we’ll stop blaming the rest of the world for all our own problems. Wishful thinking. But for now, at least, things go on much the same. I still see people not wearing face masks in crowded places, or even more idiotically, wearing them pulled down so their nose is uncovered. Wearing a face mask only over your mouth in a time like this, is like having sex with a prostitute and putting the condom on your balls. And in contrast, I still see people wearing face masks whilst driving in cars, alone. And as the old saying goes, “man who wears face mask alone in car, also wears condom alone in bed.” Anyway, enough condom talk, and I’ll wrap this up. Have a lovely week everyone, and once more I’ll wish you a very happy, healthy, prosperous and loving new year. Happy 2022. Now, go be kind. Karma is watching.