Feeling Down (in the dumps)

I remembered something the other day that I had long forgotten, something I used to do to make me feel better whenever I felt down in the dumps, out-of-sorts, a bit fed up. 

You know those days when you get up and spend an hour thinking you should do something, but everything you think of isn’t what you want to do?  You open a book, and put it down again.  You pick up your journal, but the pen hovers above the page and no inspiration comes.  You switch on the TV and flick through a hundred channels – each one as unsatisfying as the last.

Those days you just can’t seem to buck up.

I remembered that on days like those, I’d clean and re-arrange my bedroom.

I would move anything small enough to move out of the room, and I would shift the rest into one side of the room while I cleaned, dusted and vacuumed the other.  Then I would move everything over and do the other half.  Then when the room was clean, I’d move my bed so it was facing a different way, in a different place.  The other furniture would be shifted to somewhere new, or differently aligned, and eventually, the room would be finished and my mood would be elevated.

The new alignment of the room always made me feel better when I went to sleep – excited, in a way – because it was new.  Sometimes I would imagine I was now on a strange ship, sailing into the unknown, or like Robinson Crusoe, in my desert island cave.  And when I woke in the morning I would feel fresher than the day before, more energised. Re-motivated.

Proponents of Feng Shui would say I’d stirred up the energy flow in the room, and I think they’re right.  The stagnation I felt before is gone.  The room feels different, and so do I. Invigorated. New.
My energy seems to flow differently too.

I extended the practice to other rooms in the house – mostly the living room – changing the position of the sofa, the TV, the book cases and so on, and it would work there too. 

So, when I woke the other day feeling listless and unmotivated, I found myself (without even knowing why) cleaning the kitchen sink and draining board.  This progressed to the work surfaces and the oven door.  I emptied the bin, which took me to the garage, where I saw much that could be tidied and rearranged.  And so passed two hours.  I returned to the house feeling much happier, with more energy and a brighter outlook on life.  I think we become so in-tune with our surroundings that we can stagnate in the sameness of an unchanged room, so my advice would be – when you feel listless, stagnant, down-in-the-dumps, discombobulated and out-of-sorts, change something!

Rearrange a room, sort out a closet or wardrobe, clean the bathroom from top to bottom, declutter the garage or shed.  Get the energy flowing again!  

Making a cheese sandwich.

I handed my daughter a cheese sandwich the other day, and as I did so, I wondered about how it was made.  I took two slices of bread, spread butter on one side of each, sliced some cheese and put it on one of the buttered sides, and placed the other piece of bread butter side down on top.

 Job done.

But that was just my part of creating that cheese sandwich.  I still had three unanswered questions. 
Where did the bread come from?  Where did the butter come from? And where did the cheese come from?  The bread came from the supermarket, but how did it get there? By lorry, driven by Arthur, taken off the lorry by Bert and stacked on the shelf by Carl.  

But who loaded it onto the lorry?  Where was it stored before then? How did it get there?  So, we have a logistics aspect to the bread – how it moves from A to B.

Where was the bread made?  What recipe was used?  Who supplied the yeast? The salt? The water?  So we also have a multitude of other ingredients to consider, as well as their various logistics.

But ignoring all those for now, let’s concentrate on the flour that was used – where was it milled? Who milled it?  Who made the packet it’s stored in?  Who grew the grain?  

So now we have two more fundamental occupations to consider. The miller and the farmer.  Both of these people play an essential role in our bread production.  

Focussing on the farmer – did he plow his field?  With a tractor?  Who made the tractor?  Who sold it to him?  Who maintains it?  So that gives us equipment.  

Who made the lorries, the fork-lift trucks, the components of each, the tyres, engine oil, glass. Who refined the fuel?  Who drilled for the oil and where?  Who built the oven?  Who supplied the gas and electricity?  How was the electricity produced?  

The incredibly complex structure of each piece of machinery is mind-boggling, without even considering how the individual components of each machine are also produced, supplied, shipped and so on, down to where the iron ore is mined for the steel, how is it smelted and so on.

Ignoring all that, let’s go back to the farmer.  Where did he buy the grain?  Who grew it? So now you are approaching the origin of the bread – but in actual fact, you’re just entering a loop.  Where did the grain come from that grew the wheat that made the grain?  It wouldn’t be an infinite regression, but it would look at first glance like one.

How many people, then, have been involved in making our two humble slices of bread?  How many machines have been involved?  How much fuel has been consumed in its production? How many miles between growing the wheat and the bread in the supermarket?

Two slices of bread!

Now, the butter…

My daughter took the sandwich, took a big bite and with mouth full of food, mumbled “thanks Dad!” before walking off to her room to watch TV, while I stood in the kitchen, my head spinning from the hundreds, thousands of interactions and associations that occurred before those two little words.

The Damp Squib

A few months ago I decided to venture into a massive online presence, the purpose of which was to build a greater awareness for this blog.  Why?  Because (like millions of other people out there) I thought I had something worth listening to, something worth reading.

Was I jealous of teenage girl blogs that seem to have 10,000 followers?  Maybe.  Unlikely though.

I asked myself the other day - who am I writing for?  And the answer is - anyone willing to read it.  I'd love to be able to influence the world - change opinions, make it a better place by writing about the destructive nature of bullying, how we should all recycle, and how my one wish would be for an end to hatred and intolerance.

I decided then that pouring time and effort and money into promoting my words is a waste of time.
Why?  Well, my website (designed specifically to draw people into and around my social sites) has had 8 visitors in total.  Eight!  So links added to blog posts asking for visitors have achieved nothing.

My subscription to Blogarama promoted the site well, and my posts went from 10 or 12 views, to thousands - but despite getting almost 3,000 views, my last post got one +1 and no comments.
To me, it's never been about getting views or building a following - it has always been about interaction - building relationships, commenting on something, feeding back to someone, touching another life somewhere on the planet.

My expanded online presence has not worked.
Oh well, back to the drawing board!