works of wanderlust

Category: deeper thoughts

  • leaning positive

    Angry sells.

    Have you noticed? You probably have. I mean, isn’t that why we are living in these unprecidented times? Angry people, rage, fails, and violence all seem to generate more clicks, more views, voter turnout?

    I wrote a couple weeks ago about the weird fluctuations in my traffic. Some days I get a lot of clicks and some days almost nothing. I tossed some advertising modules up on the site because, hell, if I’m going to start needing to deal with increased traffic I may as well turn that into bucks to pay my hosting fees.

    But, truth be told, I’m probably not angry enough. Not even close.

    Look. It’s simple.

    I’m not picking fights with other bloggers or accusing people of hate crimes or committing hate crimes (I hope) or tearing apart the creative works of others for my own self-agrandizement. (Although this is sort of a critique of the social zeitgeist, so there is an argument that I am being negative about negativity to promote positivity, blah, blah, whatever.) I’m doing none of that. I could. I mean it’s so easy to be mad and pissy and negative. And I’d get a helluva lot more traffic.

    It’s an angry world and anger sells.

    The roaring twenties are roaring cuz everyone is pissed off all the time and roaring negative about damn near everything. It is almost performative. Like, people are hating on others for the lolz and the clicks. Literally.

    I do catch myself playing that game, too. Creeping into being mad.

    And I mean, look, honestly, you can be part of that obtusely unaware crowd of people who think rage and anger and being an asshole are somehow flags of independent thought rather that what they really are—the soup of the day—but I see through a lot of it, personally. That’s such an easy clear path to follow. It’s like lazy af and lit by a neon casino glow. It’s fake and wonderful and terrible and always so fucking lazy. But then what do I know. Maybe that’s just age writing. Hell, I’m creeping up on fifty. How did that happen? Yeah, maybe I am just naive. Maybe I just don’t want to lean into the clicks, huh?

    My truth is just that, as I wrote above, angry sells. And I’m not even close to angry enough to bank on this blog…

    …which was never the point when I started writing it. Still isn’t.

    If you have stumbled upon this site, congrats. The Algorithm doesn’t want you here. You have entered a place where there is nothing to be sold, nothing to be bought, nothing about which to tear off your shirt in a spitting rage. I have been trying—not always succeeding, but trying—to lean positive.

    That is not performative. That is just me. I’m not inclined to rage on differences, or tear down effort in any form or demand a level of quality that I could not first deliver myself (which is virtually never.) I am most just here to point and say huh, isn’t that thing that happened a thing that happened and wasn’t it mildly interesting?

    That doesn’t sell.

    But you are here reading it, so maybe there is hope for the world not being completely sold out to hate and anger, right?

  • Just A Re-introduction

    The Cast Iron Guy was my pandemic project.

    I needed an optimistic moment in every day, something thru with to look out onto a crazy world and find something solid and reliable.

    If you’ve come here looking for in depth cast iron cooking advice, or one of those guys who uses electrolysis to do amazing things restoring cast iron pans, or somebody who builds a raging bonfire in his backyard and slays a piece of meat to perfection… well, you might be a bit disappointed.

    If you’ve come here looking for a guy who is a little disillusioned by technology and writes about some of the simpler things in life like exploring the outdoors, finding spaces in local nature, cooking real food, and trying to be a good citizen of planet Earth… well, you might be closer to the right place.

    At the time I started this I was incredibly cautious about using my real name because of my job and my role supervising people and the fact that I’d been burned in the past by people twisting the things that I’d written against me, words that were genuinely innocent and largely apolitical, but honest and real and left me a bit exposed to people who use those things to their every advantage. I’ve kept my real name off this site for that reason and I write under the moniker of Bardo. The name has a couple meanings and you can look up the eastern spiritual meaning yourself, but it was also the name of a character in a book I read decades ago that stuck with me for his personal philosophy and the struggles he had abiding it. It worked for me then, and it still does now.

    I haven’t written here in a while because life has been full of chaos and change.

    Most notably, I burnt out my professional soul to a deep fried crisp and voluntarily left the job that had done the burning out. As I write these words I’ve been on a “career break” for almost exactly four months, in which time I’ve been on three international trips, trained for and run a marathon, started a personal journey of pursing the creative life I abandoned when I was young for more practical and “paying” jobs, and generally tried to heal that aforementioned burnt out soul.

    I logged into this site again this morning and noted that while I’ve been off exploring the woods, travelling the world, and making art, people have been reading what I wrote here during those pandemic-writing years. Some of the posts, I kid you not, have over a hundred thousand clicks, and if I had comments turned on I’m sure would be filled with neglected interactions.

    So, what’s a cast iron guy to do with a mature blog in which he’s not sure what to write anymore? I suppose, this reintroduction is a start, but maybe a promise that I’ll try to come back here, while not daily, routinely to post more stuff. I still cook. I still explore. I still take excellent care of a respectable cast iron collection.

    If that’s worth anything, stay tuned.

    -Bardo

  • three-sixty-five.

    I don’t want to say I’ve been saving up for this post, but after two years and two months of keeping a so-called “daily” blog, this — what you’re reading right now — is post three-sixty-five. One post per day for one full year. This should have been the post I wrote on December 31, 2021, but instead I’m writing it at the end of February 2023. A little more than a year late, and not exactly a great score for a “daily” writing plan.

    Obviously I missed a few.

    Yet, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of daily practice in the last couple months.

    For example:

    In February I’ve been trying to write every day. I’ve started a more succinct and back-to-the-daily-spirit and original intention of this site called “daily bardo” where I focus less on long-winded articles looking to have complexity and draw, and instead just write something every day. But I’ve also been writing a bit of fiction every day (not here) and flexing my creative writing muscles this month.

    In March, I’ve decided I’m going to try and do something call #mARTch wherein I’m hoping to draw and paint and sketch and do art every day of the month. Daily art. Most readers who pass through here probably don’t know but I’ve got a couple blogs that I write on, and one of those I started mid-last year and is very much an art and creative digital studio site where I post much more about that personal journey.

    In April, with my knee almost fully (seemingly) healed, I’m hoping that a few things come together with respect to my fitness and state-of-injury and the weather and I can work towards a daily run. Running every day seems obvious and a lot of people ask me if I already do that. “Do you run every day?” No. Of course, not. There are people who do, who have, run daily for years. But I can usually keep it up for twenty or thirty days before the body just goes “ugh” — tho, ultimately the payoff is worth it with the increase in fitness at the end. I’m going to try to do a daily run streak in April, all factors cooperating.

    I haven’t given much thought to the rest of the months of the year, but I’m sure something will occur to me to take on as a daily challenge for May… June… maybe even July and beyond.

    Daily practice isn’t about volume, nor output, nor streaks, and neither is it about simply filling a calendar.

    Daily practice is about doing something on repeat, routinely, no matter the mood or state of mind you happen to be in or the place you are at physically, mentally, emotionally, or whatever.

    Daily practice is about building a creative muscle that performs whenever you need it, not just when you feel like it. It’s about controlling the creative process, the writing mind, and the physical being — and being able to call upon it at leisure, and not merely building a skill that requires an external factor to be present and available and in control of you.

    Also, I like the idea of daily because you can go to bed each night fulfilled in accomplishing at least one thing. And tomorrow is always just one sunrise away.

    I originally set out to write the Cast Iron Guy daily. I started this blog in January 2021, in the middle of the pandemic and in search of something normal, simple, fixing me towards sanity, something to write about, think about, every day grounding me here. Ultimately, it took me over two years to write a year’s-worth of daily blogs, and I’m fine with that. It’s not a failure. It is 365 posts after all. It is 281,000 words and over 28,500 visitors. It’s something rather than nothing. So? Here’s to the next three hundred and sixty-five.

  • long ago, and far from now

    December 27 of 31 December-ish posts

    What do you want the world to look like in the future?

    The past is behind us. The present is fleeting. The future is what you make it.

    What do you think the world will be like 25 years in the future?

    Every day I get up and think about my day.

    No, really…

    I’ve been journaling in the mornings.

    I keep what most would call a bullet journal, which by any standard is just point form writing and notetaking that is mostly about making lists that are about three things: the past, the present and the future.

    I make point form notes about things that already happened, blurbs about how much I slept, exercised, or stressed about things. I write about what I read with brevity. I comment on the movies we watched last night or the food we ate yesterday.

    I build lists of stuff I’m thinking about right now. I note how I’m feeling in the present and comment with a few quick words on my place in the flow of the moment. I put myself into the now and capture the instant with an insight or two to remind myself that it happened at all.

    I plan ahead for tomorrow, next week and next year. I plot out projects and jot down to do lists of how I want to accomplish things in the future.

    I do all these things to ground myself in the universe.

    All that said, I haven’t written about anything so far in the future as twenty five years away.

    What do you want the world to look like in 25 years?

    Do you even think about it. Do you plan for tomorrow? Next week? Or maybe next year?

    Have you thought about what the world will be like a quarter of a century from now?

    I do, sometimes. Maybe I should start a bullet list for that.

  • Excuses Me

    December 26 of 31 December-ish posts

    We were driving home from the last of multiple family christmas gatherings today and, as we sped north down the highway, we passed the giant outlet mall on the outskirts of the city. Then we passed about five hundred cars driving slowly bumper to bumper in the southbound direction and queuing for the mall where the possibility of countless sales, deals, bargains, and boxing day shopping bonanzas waited therein.

    We kept driving.

    What did you want this year
    … but not get?

    As a guy who has a small category on his blog about “gear” I use and like it would be too easy to write about a “thing” that I was coveting and didn’t happen to find a way of adding to my collection this year.

    On the other hand, my Christmas gifts included all manner of delicious coffee bean blends, running kit, microbrew beers, and spice mixes so I can’t really complain about my lack of holiday haul.

    It has occured to me, particularly as I look at blank notebooks, missing blog posts, and a stack of unread novels on my bedside table, that I didn’t find myself with a lot of productive time this year.

    I’ve been busy.

    What a terrible excuse, huh?

    When I did find a bit of time here or there I managed to paint many awesome sketches, upload a hearty collection of writing, and even crank out a healthy smattering of code. Not as much as I would have liked, but still… quite a bit.

    But, all that said, work was consuming this year, consuming in the way that it followed me home and drained my evenings, and sapped me of motivation. I’ve been work busy. I’ve been dad busy. I’ve been family busy. I’ve been health busy. I’ve been paying the bills busy.

    Also, put that all with the fact that I haven’t been for a decent run in over six months thanks to my knee injury, and the free time I did have was usually spent doing physiotherapy exercises and trying to get something resembling recovery going on down there. Not running and instead doing physiotherapy at the gym is far less exciting than running through the trails with my friends.

    What I’m trying to say is that productive time was not my companion this past year.

    I hope to change that up in 2023.

    I hope.

    Thing is, I can’t buy more time from the outlet mall, and no matter how long I queue on the highway I don’t think motivation will be waiting at the other end.

    But I have started thinking about my 2023 projects: drawing comics, making videos, writing more frequently here (though still unlikely back to daily right away) and generally easing my foot off the metaphorical gas of my career in favour of some creative pursuits to balance out my life.

    I didn’t get much of that in 2022, but maybe my personal boxing day deal will be to give myself this big ol’plan to put some productive time at the top my my 2023 priority list. Thanks, bud.