Melder's musings: Finding the drive to blog when you don't have a specific thing to say

After a productive start of the year in my blog, I’ve kinda slowed down my writing output over the past few weeks.

A couple of reasons for this. The main one being life taking a busy turn; kids back at school, work projects ramping up etc. While I continue to journal, my brain just hasn’t had the space to think and write about a specific thing.

The other part is being indecisive on what to write about. I like tech and interntional living, but I don’t want this to end up as some amateur tech blog or end up just writing posts about intentional living that repeat themselves just to get more posts out.

So, I’ve decided to start a series called Melder’s Musings. Just a space for me to write about whatever I’m thinking or going through at the time; with no self pressure on the structure, length, or need to make a point or provide a key takeaway for whomever reads this.

Right now I’m in one of my happy places. It’s 7am and I’m at one of my favourite cafes near Roockingham Beach enjoying a coffee. I’m grateful I’m able to do this occasionally before I head to the office to start work.

After a series of stinking hot days here in Perth, Western Australia; I’m going to enjoy the hell out of the 27 degree celcius day, although it is still a bit too humid for my liking (we like a dry heat here in Perth).

I have recently purchased the Elite 10 ANC earbuds, which I might write some thoughts on at some stage. I did want some ANC earbuds for my train commute after giving my gen 1 AirPod Pros to my wife last year.

After damaging my hearing with music that was too loud when I was younger, I’m a bit more careful with my hearing these days (I’ll probably write something to expand on that too). As such, ANC earbuds are very useful for my commute to prevent me playing my music too loud on regular earbuds.

Must resist the urge to end a post with a nice little wrap up or sign off. That’s not the point of these ones Andrew :)

When a gratitude practice can become bittersweet

photo of someone walking along a beach with a clear blue sky - image by author

If you have pursued personal reflection activities or journaling, you may have come across some version of gratitude exercises. The idea being to focus and think of things to be grateful for in your life daily to help you appreciate what you have now. This can help in getting my mindset into a more positive space.

I’m prone to moving into a negative headspace really easily. Depression is something I have dealt with most of my adult life. Thankfully, I had access to counselling services very early on and started developing the tools to change my mindset and stop self sabotaging my own emotions with negative reinforcement.

One of those tools has been gratitude. Particularly in recent times, I’m always very conscious of how blessed I am in my life with a loving family, relative financial stability and minimal trauma in my life until now (I resisted even typing that last bit because I know it comes for all of us eventually).

But, I’ve noticed there are times when my gratitude mentality can also turn into a negative reinforcement.

If you are genuinely grateful yet still feeling down or even depressed; it’s very easy to get into a spiral of feeling down about feeling down. When you know your life is actually very blessed, so you should have no reason to feel down about any of it. When things in your life are beyond anything you could have imagined at your lowest point, so why do you now crave something beyond your happiness now?

For myself right now, it’s career. I’ve written about this previously if you are interested, but in short I find myself in a situation and career which is beyond what I ever imagined for myself and provides for my family and lifestyle; and yet I’m lacking any real fulfilment from it.

I read an article recently which referred to the “disease of more”. I won’t repeat some of the themes within it but encourage you to read it as well. In short, my takeaway was that our desire to achieve or seek fulfilment is a cycle that keeps us always wanting more instead of being truly happy with our scenarios now.

Or more more simply; how the act of seeking self improvement may actually make us feel worse.

It’s an interesting way to look at things. And while I’m not about to throw out looking at ways to make my work feel more valuable to me; I am going to add the lessons from the disease of more to my mental health toolbox.

To take some of the bitterness away from the gratitude.