Going all creative and embracing philosophy

As I hurtle toward my late forties I find myself at the prime age where one tends to re-evaluate life and find what is truly important. Or when you just decide to have a mid-life crisis. Both are kind of fun. I have been reading a lot of philosophy recently and find it absolutely fascinating. I regret not reading more on the subject earlier. I have found myself drawn to certain outlooks and in particular, like those of the Stoics. The most famous Stoics were Epictetus (a former slave), Marcus Aurelius (an emperor), and Seneca (a kind of Roman Lord Varys, if you watch Game of Thrones).

The idea is to be content as opposed to balls-out happy. If you want the latter go for the mid-life crisis – although note that the joy derived from driving a sports car and snorting cocaine off strippers is (apparently) not going to last forever.

The Stoics believed in logic and reason and not being too emotional which appeals to me. Think Vulcans but you can fun in moderation as well. Personality-wise, I am half the calm lover of reason and science and half a lover of wild times and excess, which is something I am trying to curb a little. Like a Vulcan-Klingon hybrid. The Stoics believed in enjoying what you have and that you can take control of your own story. Don’t blame or hope for external stuff to bring you happiness, make shit happen yourself. Often, what people think makes them happy is decided on comparison to others. Consider this cool thought experiment:

Aliens come and remove everyone from the planet, leaving just you. They keep everything working, however, so you can still have electricity and get petrol for your car and water to drink and so on. At first, you might be tempted to go nuts and wear the Hope diamond as you sit on your gold toilet before taking your Ferrari for a spin. But after a while, the diamond will probably feel a bit pointless, the gold toilet a bit chilly, the Ferrari a bit impractical for generally getting around. It is likely that after a while you would move out of your mansion and into a reasonably sized house, with a nice view, and maybe one of those cool Japanese toilets that heats the seat and can talk to you. Your clothes and car would be comfortable and reliable and probably not very trendy. And so on.

Obviously, you’d be lonely as fuck and probably look like a hobo but point is to find what would actually make you more content and that is not just money. Although that helps. It has been proven (Google it) that earning above a certain amount doesn’t make you happier. That amount was reported by numerous studies to be about $75,000 USD. Above that and you are no longer increase your happiness.

So, find out what makes you calm and zen and learn how to put up with shit when it inevitably happens. These ideas are elsewhere in philosophy as well, such as in Buddhism. Also, individuals like Nietzsche used to bang on about taking control and responsibility for what happens in your life and to generally get over it. There is a Zen proverb that says: “To be calm is the highest achievement of the self”. I could fill this post with quotes but it is teetering on sounding like a self-help book promo as it is. Essentially, bad things are going to happen but don’t let stuff get to you because, in the end, you’ll be dead. So try and achieve calm contentment and don’t be such a whiny little bitch and blame everything on others.

I have only just touched on the surface of philosophy as anyone with even a vague understanding will have noticed by the above. But I have been thinking recently on what I really enjoy apart from the obvious sex, drugs and rock and roll. And what I really enjoy is creating stuff. I became a journalist when I was 18 but started writing novels when I 10. They were mostly amazing adventure stories and the protagonist happened to have the same name as me, but they were fun to write and partly inspired my choice of work. I say partly because it is hard to write good fiction until you have lived a bit and it is even harder to get paid creating fiction at any stage of life. Relatively recently I wrote some science fiction short stories, a trio of travel stories and a long short story/ short novelette called Cooperworld. I recently found a function on my book sales page (that may always have been there) where you can see how many books you have sold since you first published and found they have actually sold pretty well, for what they are. Short stories aren’t massively popular.

I realised that I made more on these fairly short stories than I do when I sell an article – rarely get more than a hundred quid for a standard article and it is often tedious and dispiriting work that can take a whole day. These obviously took longer than a day and the income took months to build but they were an absolute joy to write. I have also rekindled my love of drawing and it is an immensely satisfying hobby. I used to like pencil and paper but the opportunities for experimentation with an iPad and pen are huge, great fun and something I am starting to explore. You can also design book covers on it.

I guess I have written this vague and rambling post because these are things that have been on my mind recently. It’s my birthday this month and while I am nearing the end of an epic fantasy novel, it is over 200,000 words long and is just a crude first draft. It needs an entire rewrite and that is going to take a while. But writing it has proved so enjoyable, I have decided to focus more time on writing just fiction. And maybe some more travel stories. And draw more. Essentially, I am going to spend more time purely creating what I want to create, and less time writing shallow clickbait bollocks for whoever is willing to pay me as a journalist. I am writing this because sharing ambitions with others has nearly always led to me doing it. I also hope that someone out there, even one person would be worthwhile, might read this and feel inspired to make a minor change in their lives to create something. The world is getting a bit illogical and shit and people who make things aid my new found love of contentment.

• Additional note – If you are interested in Stoics and related philosophy I highly recommend looking into it. I had read some philosophy already but what sparked my recent interest was, weirdly, Derren Brown’s book Happy. Another good primer and general introduction is 50 Philosophy Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon. After that, you are on your own.