The Frome community networking event I attended Wednesday caused me to focus on many topics, the fruits of which will appear in the coming days.
For more than ten years I have kept a daily diary, now running to something like two million words. What began as a simple record of events slowly became something else: a mirror. Over time, patterns began to reveal themselves — not only in the world around me, but in the way I respond to it.
One pattern appears with persistent regularity.
I’m writing this because at a meeting of volunteer workers in Frome I noticed that someone’s website, although technically competent, lacked the warmth and welcome that first-timers to the scheme might appreciate. I had a strong urge to share my feelings with them, but so often my views are construed as interference, and I do not mean it to be.
Here is my confession:
I notice things.
A website that hides its purpose behind vague language.
A community notice that fails to make its call to action clear.
An organisation that seems unaware of how it presents itself to the outside world.
The thought arises almost before I can stop it: this could be improved.
It is not a hostile thought. It is not competitive. It feels, at least to me, constructive. If I can see a clearer way of arranging something, why would I withhold it? Surely pointing out a small adjustment that might bring more clients, more clarity, more success is a kindness.
And yet the response is often the same: a tightening, a defensiveness, an energy shift in the conversation. The temperature changes.
For a long time I interpreted this as resistance to improvement. Later I realised something subtler was taking place. I was not commenting on a technical detail. I was brushing against ownership.
Ownership is rarely logical. A website is not just a functional tool. It is an expression of effort, competence, aspiration, and sometimes even pride. When I suggest refinement, however gently, I am unintentionally implying that something is incomplete. Even if I want nothing in return — no payment, no acknowledgement — the suggestion carries weight.
The diary helped me see something uncomfortable: my frustration afterwards was not entirely about them. It was about me.
It was about unused energy.
My mind is wired to detect patterns, inefficiencies, and misalignments. That capacity is one of the engines of my writing. When it is channelled into essays, reflections, and books, it feels purposeful. When it is not, it begins scanning the immediate environment for something to refine.
In other words, if I am not shaping my own work, I start reshaping other people’s.
That realisation was liberating.
Observation does not create obligation.
Seeing that something could be improved does not make me responsible for improving it. The world is full of things that could be better arranged. If I assumed responsibility for all of them, I would have no time left to build anything of my own.
There is a distinction between being perceptive and being appointed.
I was perceptive. I was not appointed.
Gradually, I have begun to experiment with restraint. When I feel the familiar impulse — the quick internal redesign — I pause. Instead of speaking, I write. A flawed website becomes a meditation on self-presentation. A defensive reply becomes a reflection on identity and ownership. A missed opportunity becomes an essay about the comfort of “good enough”.
The energy is not suppressed; it is redirected.
And something else happens in that redirection. The irritation softens. The need to be useful shifts from immediate correction to longer observation. What once felt like a small battle in conversation becomes material for understanding human behaviour more broadly.
The diary has taught me that my role is not to fix every structure I encounter. It is to notice, to interpret, to describe.
I do not need to take responsibility for the world’s presentation.
I can take responsibility for my attention.
That, for now, is sufficient.
Perhaps this is why I am drawn to aphorisms. An aphorism does not intervene; it observes. It does not correct; it reframes. It offers a lens and leaves the world to decide whether to look through it. In learning to write more and advise less, I am not abandoning improvement — I am refining its form. Instead of repairing every loose hinge I encounter, I am sketching the architecture of the house. That feels quieter, and, in its own way, more enduring.
