Written during a visit from the happy one eyed street dog who randomly appears at my door seeking company and food
Cambodia and Thailand are fighting over a border dispute and although I’m 100km away from the bombs and the guns, the harsh realities of the situation are plain to see. Huge marquees appeared have been placed around the city stacked high with water, rice, and clothing to help aid the displaced people. In the building where I live a family of 8 have crammed themselves into a tiny studio apartment, and the local guy who lives downstairs drove off one morning dressed in military camouflage to join the Khmer forces at the border.
Despite all this, life just goes on. Locals continue to go about their daily lives and tourists continue to enjoy their holidays. If you didn’t read the news you might never tell what’s going on.
Speaking of news, there’s certainly a whole lot of disinformation going on right now which is to be expected during times of conflict. It’s alarming to see the ease at which people accept whichever side of the story favours the country in which they have chosen to live. I’d like to think that these days we’d be more savvy to the potential of fake news, but sadly not.
I’ve been taking a break from technology recently and trying my best not to feel guilty about doing so. My whole livelihood is based on writing code and building websites so taking a short break from it makes me feel like I’ve dropped the ball. It’s temporary though and I’ll be back at the keyboard soon.
Pretty sure that psychologists are correct when they say that social media and the abundance of entertainment is killing our ability to concentrate. Some of them say it’s killing our creativity too. This concerns me as practically all the worthwhile things I’ve done in my life have involved both concentration and creativity, so I want as much as possible of both these things.
In order to do this I’ve been actively inviting boredom into my life. I’ll go sit somewhere for a while with the intention of experiencing boredom. So far I’ve noticed one thing: when you stop trying to avoid boredom it doesn’t show up nearly as much.