Pool/Snooker

Out of the three, however, this is probably the one that hits closer to home. It’s the one that connects me most with my wife.

We don’t have a lot of shared interests; or rather we do, but we have different tastes. We both read, but fairly different books at different speeds. We both love music, only hers makes me think of bratty teenagers on the bus, and mine makes her think of weirdos or headbangers.

But then along came snooker.

She’d been vaguely interested in it around about the time of the snooker World Championships, having friends at work who were really into it. Myself, I watched it a lot as a kid, but couldn’t really afford to get into playing it too much (especially as I wasn’t great at it), so when she suggested watching the finals I was only too happy to oblige.

And she was hooked, but actually playing it was intimidating to her. The size of the table, the precision needed to play red-colour-red, no handy referee to keep score, it all got a bit too much. Pool though? Much smaller table, still have to be precise but it’s by and large more forgiving, and much less to think about as a beginner.

It turned out the local pub did free pool on Tuesdays, so we started going on our lunch break, and once she started getting the hang of it we started going to our local pool hall. That was when I noticed the snooker tables tucked away upstairs in a more private room and started paying for that separately.

Neither of us are great, but it’s an activity we can add to the short list of Things We Enjoy Together. Plus, independently, playing snooker has become a bit of a sanctuary of its own for me. A place where I can chill for a few hours and focus on what’s in front of me, rather than everything else around me.

It would just be nice to be better at it; to not spend two or three hours inconsistently making good and terrible shots. We’re getting there, but inconsistently, and that’s why it takes up slot number 3.

We use ClassicFM to help calm the dog down if we need to leave him alone for a couple of hours. Works great, only now we have to reassure him that we’re definitely not going anywhere when we listen to it casually…

Reading

‘A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone, if it’s to keep its edge. That is why I read so much.’ - George R R Martin, Game of Thrones

Reading is one of the earliest hobbies I can remember. Our local library had a mobile van that would park at our local park every Thursday, and I would get through whatever I could.

I started with the usual kid’s books, following on to my early forays into comic books - Tintin, and Asterix and Obelix. At some point, the nice lady behind the desk suggested to my mum that I might want to give this new book series a go that had been getting quite popular, which is how I started reading Harry Potter.

I was hooked. Reading became a salvation, even back then when the most I had to worry about was school. Goosebumps, Animorphs, Darren Shan, wider and wider my net grew. It took a few years, though, before I found something else that captured my mind quite as much as Potter. That was at a random books fair at school when I was about 13 or 14, where I found The Fifth Elephant by Sir Terry Pratchett, opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

Nowadays, my tastes range from sci-fi to romance, hard non-fiction to high fantasy. My bookshelf hosts everything from Bill Bryson, Oliver Burkeman, Tolkien, and Stephen King, to John Green (both fiction and non-fiction), and Graham Norton. There’s also One Hundred Years of Solitude, but that has a rare spot on my Did Not Finish list.

But as my days grew harder and longer, it became far quicker to get sucked into Reddit than it did actual books or even blogs. Where once I was able to devour Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in three days after its release, now I’m lucky to manage 20 pages an hour, and even then that’s assuming I can read for an hour without interruption from work, sleep, or Priorities.

The way out? Read wider, read better, and sharpen that mind. Replace that instinct to fire up social media and pick up a book, find a new and engaging blog, read an essay in the Atlantic. Actually stretch my mind rather than let it rot. Go back to that salvation, and sharpen my sword.

Writing

On the list of things I both love and fear doing at the same time, writing easily sits above all others. Nothing could signify that more than this post.

I’m a guy with a dozen and one thoughts running through his head every waking minute, from dawn to dusk. I go to bed thinking, I wake up thinking, it simply doesn’t stop. Communicating them, however, often takes a huge amount of effort.

This stems from the fear of being Misunderstood, or to be more precise, the fear of Having To Try To Find The Right Words Over And Over Again. It’s why my therapy sessions often have five minute pauses whilst I search for the most efficient words, or why I’ll pause arguments because I know what I’m saying, but I’m clearly not getting my point across. I get flustered, frustrated, and soon enough give up.

But when I do find that near perfect combination of words? Pure, divine satisfaction. I’ve grinned ear to ear talking about some of my darkest moments for no other reason than finding the cleanest way to explain the exact situation and feelings it evokes. It’s an absolute joy when I’m able to clearly express myself, but that joy comes as a result of a journey that is often too daunting to take.

There’s also the familiar and oft repeated fear of sharing, the vulnerability that comes with expressing yourself to others. As with a lot of complicated feelings, it’s inconsistent; I’ve written and performed at several open mic poetry nights with no issue, for example, and published several blogs in the past, but have re-written this post five times over because I’m just not quite satisfied that it’s good enough for Others, despite the complete lack of consequence if that’s the case (especially compared to the risk of bombing on stage).

So then why persist? Because again, it brings me joy, and joy is often in short supply in life.

I also have an over abundance of ideas; brief bursts of poetry, stories half mapped out, blog post ideas, essay topics. Getting them out there seems the better path, rather than sitting under the weight of them.

And if nothing else, it’ll help lift the monotony in a far healthier way than endless YouTube shorts.

Actually Finishing

I have an all too familiar problem in this age: far too many things I want to do, but through a lack of effort and focus, doing none of them.

I’ve tried time tracking to try and encourage myself to really monitor time spent on what I’m doing, until that became too much mental effort. I’ve tried time blocking, but couldn’t then follow through on my commitments. Various productivity systems to try and handle and push through my actions in each direction, encouragement through friends, habit forming strategies (thank you, The Power of Habit), on and on the list goes.

Then something comes along, and I fall back on the less than healthy hyper focus on the critical areas in my life, overcompensating for my feeling a lack of agency by enforcing it through ‘productivity’ as opposed to the ‘unnecessary’ distractions of hobbies and interests.

It all came to a head recently where, through therapy, I’ve been reconsidering and analysing how and why I act, and questioned why I put myself through this process two or three times a year. What is it that pushes me to keep trying? Why do I think anything will change? Are these even things that are important to me any more? How important could they be if I don’t spend any time on them?

The importance question was the easiest to answer: they’re important to me because they bring me joy. The fact that I don’t participate in them consistently says more about my negative mental health habits than it does about the direction they take me.

As for why I keep trying, that became clearer after my last session. I have an abundance of ideas and a barely used canvas; I want to see how it’ll look when I start throwing some stuff on there, and learn what feels good in practice vs in theory.

So I try, try, try again. But what makes this time different? External accountability.

First off, I’ll be writing about how I’m doing and progressing each area here for all the world to see and comment on. I’m starting with my three key activities I want to build on:

  • Writing - not just blogging, but fiction and poetry too, to recapture that lost feeling of creating.
  • Reading - both fiction and non-fiction, in particular philosophy and long form articles; the antithesis of Reddit
  • Snooker/pool - to stretch my mind in another way whilst relaxing it in others, and also to build yet another new connection with my wife (more on that this week)

I’ll also be doing micro posts on the more core life areas - DIY, cooking, professional skills - as well as monthly progress and commitment checks.

Secondly, and the bit I’m most nervous about, is I’m going to be using Beeminder to put my money where my mouth is. Beeminder is a site where you set specific activities to achieve on a regular basis and for each time you fail to hit that goal, they charge you money. Plus the more you fail, the higher the charge goes (within limits - you can cap the maximum amount so it doesn’t go crazy). It gives you graphs that show which side of the pass/fail line you currently are and have been, which I’ll be posting here on a monthly basis, stacking external accountability.

The next few posts I’m going to go into each area in detail, then the hard part: getting started.

Let’s get moving.