Day 572 – Odd climate

Welcome to today’s update, have a quick watch of the video version and meet me below for the rest of the write up:

I was too preoccupied with writing every day, that I completely forgot to stop and appreciate the achievement so far. Yes, I tried to mark certain milestones before, but it was miserable at best, and it seems like I have a hard time celebrating anything in life. For those of you that are new to this blog, “Day 572” might feel like just the beginning of a post title without certain meaning. Maybe you think that this is some random day that happens to be the 572nd total in writing, but there’s caveat – this is 572nd consecutive day, of everyday blogging and podcasting, without single day off.

Yes, I write every day, regardless how dull the day was, how low I felt, how bad I was, how difficult and challenging it was to find time and place to do it. I prevailed. On Sunday it will be 82 full weeks of writing. On Monday 115 working weeks (5-day weeks). Next Friday will mark exactly 19 calendar months which surprisingly aligns with the date I started: 19th of September 2022. It is so distant, when I look from this perspective, but also doesn’t feel so far, as the daily writing became routine. A habit that I was so much fighting for to establish and maintain, because I was crap in establishing any worthy habits in my life. Yet here we are – 572 days later, a personal best, that significantly beats my previous best of about 60 days in a row, of any reasonable routine that I remember.

What did I get from it? My wife constantly asks me WHY I keep doing it. Whenever I don’t feel like writing about anything, especially days where there’s really nothing to write about. I always answer: “Because I like it. Because it pushes me to think, be sort of creative in making a write up out of a dullness of daily life. Because it’s a journal for f’cks sake. And it’s a daily journal, so I committed to write daily.”

“Will you stop it ever? Are you going to write it forever?” – she asks. There’s only one truthful answer I can honestly give her: “I don’t know.”

“What do you have from it? You just sacrifice your time for nothing.” – sometimes she says frustrated. I respond: “Not really. It gives me a platform to spill into. I train writing, and I think I got a little bit better in it over time. Even if it’s placebo, I certainly feel more confident in writing. The same goes for podcasting and recording. I might be cringe still, but no longer shy of camera, and improving on avoiding “fillers” or diverging from topics – so I get better in that too. And very important thing is – I have readers! Subscribers!”

“Who wants to read such boring stuff?” – sometimes she asks. “People. People like you and me. People who have something special in them that they decide to consciously click, then read the blog post. Some of them even like it!”

So here we are. Reminiscing on how it started and how it goes. What was in the past, and what is now, but really not sure what the future holds.

Speaking of Elizabeth and going back to the topic of “Odd climate” – today we managed to do our daily walk at Murvagh. The wind was quite strong and despite decent temperature of 14.5 degrees Celsius, the felt temperature was definitely closer to 10.

We went along the beach up North, leveraging tailwind, then crossed the dunes beside golf club and followed the road across Murvagh Forest, which gave us shelter from the wind for most of the stroll. Last kilometre was opens space so we got a bit of breeze, but overall it was nice 5.2 kilometres.

Odd climate is in reference to what is going on around, and how bad and wet the weather is, despite temperatures spiking. Somewhere in Ireland there is even big mass organised in one of the churches, where farmers will be praying for better weather (like it helps, but hey, I don’t make the rules).

There’s one more odd thing with the climate that brought much warmer year than couple of decades back – the mushrooms. Not only spring mushrooms shown up, but way too early we start seeing summer species already in Poland and Ireland as well as in other countries where members of our mycology groups are located. It’s fascinating.

Regardless of which side you’re on, supporting climate change agenda or not, or somewhere in the middle, there is some change happening. Whether natural or slightly influenced by us, it does not matter that much. It is impossible to believe with current science that we humans could be influencing global weather change – we have some ego to think that we can. Regionally maybe, in highly polluted areas and isolated spots that have their own tendency to microclimate, but on a global scale it just doesn’t fit the claim. Yes we definitely have some minute impact in specific areas, but we forget that the masses of ocean waters and air around us are enormous in scale and what we affect is a small fraction that immediately gets balanced by enormous power of Earth’s ecosystems.

One thing is true though – the climate is changing. Nature has tendency of rotating between many different warming and cooling periods and we definitely have records of that in human history. So this is a fact for sure, climate is shifting. What I do not agree with, is the fact that it will go to a “terrible” spot and all those apocalyptic events that scare mongering promotes. No. Earth is able to regulate itself through nature, regardless how much damage we mere humans do. It might take longer, and it might take even to sacrifice certain species (including us if necessary), but this cycle is bigger than us, much bigger.

Those who are with me for a while, you know that I am a nature man, and citizen of the world. More than that, I really do protect as much as I can, raise my child to know the beauty and importance of protecting the planet, and I am on the verge of disconnecting from the grid – but I also know when we lose our plot, when we start believing agendas that were not vetted properly, or skewed to bring some people gains. Middle ground is the most difficult one. It’s not sexy, but I like it. This is where facts are and likely the truth might be found. It’s easier to think white and black, and claim to be on the extremes, or on the poles of for/against human-made climate shift, but it is making ourselves singular, close minded and very biased. Nothing in life is really this or that, there are always angles, contexts and facts that might show one thing but actually prove the opposite opinion, that we being cognitively biased, not only don’t accept, but worse, use to strengthen our rusty views that led us to be conservative in specific topic in the first place.

I think we lack balance. Not only in obvious things like production, waste, emotional responses etc., but in simple thinking and opening our minds to possibilities that we aren’t always right. That there might be facts that show we’re wrong, and we will have to face it. What we do with these facts is another thing. Will we change our view and prove those prefrontal lobes make sense as our advance in evolution? Or will we use these facts to strengthen paradoxically our “wrong” belief, and fall into cognitive bias trap, avoiding change in us, and letting pride of not changing ourselves stand on our way?

That’s it, stay tuned and see you tomorrow!