Mikes Thoughts

I just write

I’ve read a few things on organizing all the things. I could create folders and a wonderful tag thing. Could link and correspond. Find the commonalities and second brain my way to nirvana. The truth is there is no organization. Only one folder I keep so-called web clips in. Minimal tags.

I have a Smart Folder in IA Writer that lets me see the latest writing. That’s handy. And I use it. A lot. So I was thinking when writing this morning about my journals. I write one a day now. I tried the OBTF and it’s not for me personally. I do have a simple automation in the Apple iOS shortcuts app that creates a new daily journal for me every morning at 530am. I enjoy writing morning things then. It sparks some thought about the day. Yesterday went to see my friend Sean for coffee. We go once a week. I came away from that happy to see him but tired of talking. Neither of us are social butterflies. I could never go at it like my wife does every day.

I also wanted to write a little about this person he told me about now living here. So a little segue on that I think. This person is retiring here but made some bad decisions around people that he came with. The biggest mistake to be made living here alone and not being used to life in Asia is living three miles out of town. Not knowing how to do basic things here. I will never feel adapted to many of the things here. Even with a Khmer wife. He is even a further step removed. I feel for him but decisions were left to his so-called friends that came with him. If there’s a recipe for personal disaster I believe it’s coming here not prepared. Not doing some diligence on where to live. Allowing someone else to set the tenor for life that has their agenda. Life is not some wonderful nirvana thing here. It has challenges. I like to call it The Edge because it is a life lived in a place so very different yet so many things seem similar. I wrote on this before so perhaps I’ll update that essay.

The writing ensues

Nothing is in a vacuum here. The things I hear stuck around for some words and walks. I write this blog to give me a place to ensure and endure. Both things meant to last me some words and a place to put them. The things become simple to me. Life is not meant to be complex or shunted together with goals and tasks. To me, the writing echoes the life and the life does the same with the writing. Creating complexity or order hardly seems necessary in a life here. So I don’t want to glue. To enable. To make things look cool with graphs and views and pictures. But all the pieces have lines drawn. And sometimes the lines stretch forward. And that’s ok.

So since things all do connect and from this person Paul to a weekly coffee time, feelings stretch out. I need a day after to process things. Alone and solitary. I cannot just do the Khmer way of forever social networks and talking. Instead it’s the writing that persists for me. It has to be simple though. I don’t need complexity in a life that’s not.

So I just write the daily life. The way it appears to me over coffee and walking. Like I wrote everything is walking. It all comes to me in the senseless joy of a step or two. The stop for coffee and perhaps later for a cut up mango from a street vendor.

I feel badly for Paul. There’s no expat education guide for Cambodia. No daily list. It would not work anyways. Each person must be enabled to find their own. But for the person that trusted another persons view, it becomes a hated thing.

So let me just write my way from this to that. From a social life here I am not enamored with to my wife that I love dearly. To people I get to meet and then cast words around days later.

I just write. What do you do?