Tag: giving up

Dull Drone – 25th November 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Imagination once so bright
Turned toys into tigers
Battered to death with culture
That no longer inspires us

Today I’m feeling:

Tired and needing that Saturday morning sleep-in catch-up. Still stuck with this dry cough. My weight this morning is down to 78.45kg because of not eating much yesterday and no doubt contributing to my tiredness.

Today I’m grateful for:

Noey at Utopia changing my water to be room temperature instead of with ice after she noticed I was coughing a lot.

The best thing about today was:

A little evening ride around to check out new advancements in our little municipality.

Lots of new things going on and we ended up checking out a shop that we have been past many times where there are just a bunch of bean bags on a lawn with no cover. It stands out a little because the shop will have to close whenever it rains.

They serve some really simple food and speciality sodas. It’s a nice environment to chill out and is pretty popular now that things are back to normal after Covid.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Much of the day felt out of my control today but none of it was in a way that bothered me. Some days are easy to accept.

Tomorrow though there are things I want to do and I will push the time in that direction.

Something I learned today?

Hayden’s girlfriend Vashti will move in with him soon. They will have separate rooms so that they can get away from each other somewhat if necessary, which I don’t think is a bad idea. 

I realise that it was at the age that he is at now when I moved to Australia.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

As usual I let Noey make my coffee at Utopia and despite it not being quite hot enough, it still tasted fine. I’m happy to let her improve her skills and be her taste tester.

After an afternoon snooze I was looking forward to going out to my room and playing guitar. Amy said ‘lets go for a ride’. Ok, I thought. It won’t be long before the sun goes down so there’s still plenty of time.

As we were riding around though Amy was looking for places to eat dinner. So even though it was now apparent that I wouldn’t be home soon, I happily rode us from here to there until finding a place to eat.

How do I practice patience and perseverance?

Well, as a quote-unquote ‘teacher’ this is an easy question to answer. I was fairly well practiced in patience before but even I have noticed that I have become far more patient these days.

As to perseverance I do remember as a child and teenager giving up way too easily whenever I found things too difficult. Somehow, possibly aligned with starting work, that changed. I started to enjoy working hard and to see a job completed, even if not always well done.

I believe I learned these traits from my mother who was always working and trying things. I’m grateful for that. Thanks mum.

I took this picture because this was the view from my beanbag at the restaurant this evening.

Have you ever realised you must love yourself, If you don’t then how can you love anybody else? – 12th April 2003

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Well, the last few months have been fine. Just recently though I have not felt so good but hope to start writing some more – will look back through some old notes – remind myself who I am – what I have become.

I don’t want to be lazy but I don’t know what real motivations I have at the moment. I started my Chinese studies at Uni in March and that has been going well though I sense I’m not ‘getting’ everything and really should study much harder.

God – I don’t want to give up on this – I’m sick of giving up – only being half good at anything – I want to be a genius at something! Haha!

5th Apr 2021 – In the early 2000s there was some way to do individual units of Uni courses for a very cheap rate, or at least affordable for me. Having become fascinated with China more and more since arriving in Australia and visiting in 2001, I thought I should give learning the language a go. Macquarie University was within walking distance from home and even though I didn’t understand how universities work I enjoyed walking around the campus and visiting the library when I was bored, especially I would now be able to check out books and videos, of which they had some classic fourth-generation director VHS tapes of movies that I hadn’t yet seen.

The class (Chinese Language 101) had about 20 students and I soon made friends with a young group of high school graduates, a couple of girls and a couple of guys. There was Lina, short, skinny and cute and Emma, plain but attractive and smart. There was Lina’s boyfriend, Paul, also plain and intellectual and then another handsome effeminate guy whose name I forget but was actually the most entertaining of the bunch. He reminded me of me when I was that age. Cocky and unsure with wild mood swings.

At one point during our classes, a pretty Chinese girl joined. Strange, as she could speak Chinese already. Some quirk of the system that allowed her to stay longer as a student and work illegally is my guess. I made friends with her immediately and pursued her as a girlfriend but the language and cultural barriers were too much and I wasn’t brave, smart or emotionally stable enough to figure it out. In short, I was an asshole. (Later in life I could identify this behaviour in some guys who would try and pursue Amy.)

I felt desperate and ended up chasing her away. I was really upset by it and felt worthless and hopeless for a time. Still constantly echoing in my head, TLJ’s words that I always needed to have a girlfriend and couldn’t be alone by myself, ie I didn’t love myself yet.

I always figured a twelve year age gap between male and female should reasonably align with maturity, as was the case with TLJ and me but actually she was still far more mature than me about the things that really mattered.

I can see from this writing I am able to express myself but still not able to find any solutions for myself. Right now, I think I’m blaming my alcohol consumption at the time as a default fallback self-medication.

The Week That Was – 25th February 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

23rd Nov 2021 – Trevor Brooking – I hated Trevor Brooking!

Record of the Week: Just a Gigolo – The Village People
Highest Entry: Gary’s Gang – Keep On Dancin’ – 23

23rd Nov 2021 – The Village People! I had not converted completely to punk rock just yet. Perhaps my attraction to them was the happy, fuck-you attitude they projected. Well, their upbeat gay anthems were (and still are) part of the western zeitgeist.

Tracy Pew R.I.P. – Haha

25th February 1979
The other lot came round today. All four of them.
Blurp!

23rd Nov 2021 – Hmm, so now I’m confused about the ‘first lot’ I mentioned and ‘this lot’, ‘the other lot’! If there were four of them…..perhaps my Aunt Shirley, Uncle John, my cousin Sharon and her husband Ken. It’s possible though I think my Uncle John may have already passed away by this time and maybe Sharon and Ken’s first son, Mungo, was already born. My uncle John was a competent carpenter, or at least that is in my memory bank somehow. Perhaps just some weird association with fresh-cut wood? I know I liked him.

I was ambivalent to my Aunt Shirley as she always seemed so strict but I really came to dislike her over the next few years as she would often tell my mum that she was doing a bad job at raising me. I tried to avoid her as much as possible, which wasn’t that difficult really.

I wasn’t very family-oriented really, possibly due to the fact that I never had a father around as he had passed when I was too small to even have any memory of him, and even though we were living with my grandparents I think I resented that in some ways, as other families of friends were just the more traditional family unit of parents and one, two or three children living together. There were times when I wished for my mum to remarry. I was always hopeful whenever some man or other came into our lives but I appreciate that my mum was happily self-sufficient.

By calling my extended relations, that lot and the other lot I’d already made my mind up about certain things.

26th February 1979
Didn’t see the eclipse today
Da! Da!
Ipswich 6-1 Bristol Rovers

23rd Nov 2021 – February in England. Well, it’s no real surprise that I didn’t see any eclipse.

27th February 1979
Had five pancakes
Did games today!
Even though my foot hurt

23rd Nov 2021 – My foot is hurting right now. I can still poke into the arch of my left foot and feel something isn’t quite right. But it’s mainly the joint of my big toe that is painful now. I’m considering going to get it checked out. I’m not sure what to expect from the Thai medical system here in Chiang Rai. It feels like we are a long way from where folks with real expertise might be. I’m sure whoever I see will give it their best shot though. At least I could get an x-ray done that might give a better idea of managing it.

By fuck, did I love my mum’s pancakes, covered in sugar and lemon juice. What a treat. I could never replicate them though.

28th February 1979
Went to orchestra at school

23rd Nov 2021 – I guess I was playing the clarinet. Mr Broadway was my science teacher and music teacher. He had curly brown hair and was quite fun to be around. But I gave up the clarinet when it started to get more tricky. This was quite a common behaviour through my teenage years. Too hard? Give up. Sometimes I still do this. And I see Hayden do this too. What is it that makes us give up so easily when things become more difficult? When I get stuck learning to play the guitar now, I just keep trying until I finally get it. I don’t put the kind of pressure on myself that I used to.

1st March 1979
1. Bee Gees – Tragedy (2)(1)
2. Blondie – Heart of Glass (1)(3)
3. Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army (5)(2)
4. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive (7) (-)
5. Abba – Chiquitita (3) (4)

24th Nov 2021 – Oliver’s Army was great as were some other early Elvis Costello tunes but I stopped listening after listening to the “Carry On Sex Pistols” album where Steve Jones continually shits on him, so I thought I should too. I’ve more recently bought his first two or three albums as they are often revered in certain circles but I haven’t given them a listen yet. It’s only been about 5 years….one day, one day.

Writing this post is making me want to go home and listen to this and the Birthday Party (Mr. Clarinet). Not the Village People though.

2nd March 1979
Get REV homework
Soap was on at 11:40
Only my second whole week at school

3rd March 1979
Do bricks 2p
Didn’t do them?
X – Ipswich 1-1 Forest

24th Nov 2021 – Outside our back door was a small bricked patio area that needed to be cleaned every week or two as it would get a little mouldy and slippery. I hated cleaning them, although I can imagine the first time I did it I was really trying to do my best but after a while, I just resented the time I had to spend doing it and I would attempt to do it as quickly as possible and sometimes I would be made to do it again because I had been too careless, which of course meant losing more precious time.

I’m curious about the X, and various other codes that appear more often throughout the year. I’m thinking that this was some secret indication of my masturbatory habits as it would have been around this time I discovered the pleasures of touching my dick. More on that later.