The Dreamer’s Fears: Doing What I Want With My Life.

Good Life Project

“Don’t confuse genuine peace of mind with the passing lack of angst that follows the demise of a dream but precedes a mounting wave of regret.”

A job is so appealing because there is very little risk involved. You turn up, fulfil a simple set of predetermined criteria and you definitely have money in your account at the end of the month. No-one belittles you or tells you “you can’t get a job.” It’s also much harder to fail when there is a strict set of guidelines telling you what you can and can not do and a boss who takes responsibility anything outside your defined role and will tell you what to do when unsure.

You are told when to go to work, when to leave, what to do whilst you are there and how to do it. Everything is secure and defined and there is little room for judgement, failure or loss. If you play by the rules well, maybe you’ll be the lucky one and someone can tell you that you can now follow a new set of more esteemed criteria with more money and responsibility as a reward. This may or may not be fine for most people, I’m not going to discuss or judge people’s life choices, we are only responsible for our own and should be free to make them as we please, but the idea of being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it and having to wait for someone else to tell me when I can move a step up a ladder and can earn X amount of money doesn’t appeal to me. I’m in control of my life, the good and the bad and would not swap the freedom of choice in exchange for a steady, limited but reliable amount of money into my account each month. Life really is too short to give someone else control over 40 hours+ of your week in which you must do, in many cases, not all, work you don’t enjoy. Not to mention being told when and when you can or can not go on holiday, how to dress and how you must act. But this is the industrial way. It’s necessary to have a well oiled machine of compliant workers to maximise productivity and minimise costs. The problem for me is that it seems in an unfair exchange:

Humanity, Freedom and the Bulk of your Time for Compliance and steady pay.

Cog In The Machine

I understand the desire for security and to have money coming in now and to have the responsibility of finding what to do and how to do it taken off your shoulders. Someone else tells you what to do, easy.

It is becoming more and more evident that the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur is to develop your mindset. To see things clearly, the whole picture, to make a decision and run with it, not fearlessly, not in the absence of anxiety, instead learning to live with the fear and anxiety and understanding where it comes from and why. When you attempt anything great you will come up against resistance. Resistance from others, resistance from a lack of resources and resistance from people you need to help you create what you’re trying to create but the only fatal resistance, the only resistance that really ever stops you from doing what you want with your life? That’d be your mind and what you allow it to think.

I shouldn’t do this because I feel guilty that it might make my friends and family feel bad that I want to make different life choices than them, they may resent me for wanting to do something outside of the norm, for wanting more.

I shouldn’t do this because It’s selfish, who am I to want, hope and expect more from life?

I shouldn’t do this because I’m not good enough, I don’t know all the people I need to know, I’m too young.

If your family and friends want the best for you, they won’t stop you, if they don’t want the best for you, you shouldn’t waste your time caring for them.

It’s not selfish to want to live a good life. That’s a stick people use to beat you with to keep you in line. It’s not selfish nor greedy. It’s not ‘normal’ to get a job, it’s an industrialised idea that’s around 200 years old. In turbulence you always put on your air supply before you’re children’s. This way you both survive, you can’t help anyone else in your life if you can’t look after your own life properly.

Richard Branson didn’t know everything when he started and still doesn’t now. You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

These fears, this resistance I personally have seen and conquered. So what are my fears now?

• That our products don’t sell.
• That our story, our USP, doesn’t resonate.
• That we fear being ourselves and instead create something average, safer, that no-one will neither love nor hate.
• That Arya eats the cat shit from the cat litter tray and licks me on the mouth. Seriously, she does eat that nasty shit.

That’s it. No-one likes us so our (great) products don’t sell and I’ve lost all my money, I’m in debt and have to get a job to pay that back before I can ever dream of starting another business again. To be accountable to myself for wanting more and falling flat on my face.

I believe in today’s world, more and more people want to be human again. They want products they care about by companies with a message and story they can relate to. This is far less likely to lead to mass, industrialised, billion pound profits, but will connect with people, will be enjoyable to create and will still, with any luck, make me rich and allow me to live the life I choose, on my own terms.

My dream job isn’t a job at all. I want to create, connect, control and have the freedom to live as I please, enjoy what I do and make enough money to allow me to do that. I want a life of projects, many projects.

The actual point of this post comes from the past week or so of moving the product forward, meeting people in London. Older, experienced people who know a lot more than us and work with famous, huge, established brands. We’re just 2 young dreamers, but it didn’t feel like that at all. For the first time possibly ever, I felt that my actions were in accordance with my views and beliefs. It wasn’t an ecstatic, jumping for joy occasion, it just felt right, peaceful. I no longer internalised everything, I wasn’t inside my head. I was genuinely in a 5 day daze, just doing and being, taking everything in. It’s how I felt during my first trip to Madrid. I felt I was on my the way to becoming the man I wish to be and that felt peaceful, I felt fearless. I had a purpose, my purpose was truly in-line with who I am and what I believe, and it was no longer intimidating to meet experienced people nor did it concern me in the slightest what they thought of the 2 young upstarts. I was doing what I wanted with my life. And that is priceless.

P.S. The Living Creed at the top is from Jonathon Fields Good Life Project which has a lot of great, 45 minutes, deep, beyond the surface, living, learning, loving, fearing, video conversations with people doing great things with their lives. It’s really worth checking out. One can learn and relate a lot.

A Weekend In London: Business & Pleasure

London Shard Skyline at Twilight

Friday 1st of March 10:30am

We had a meeting arranged for 2pm with manufacturers to discuss the production of samples, numbers, what we needed to provide, what they could help us with, see the production line and get to know each other, so I boarded the train at Stowmarket for the 1 hour and 20 minute journey to London Liverpool Street, when my brother rang me to let me know he blew his uni interview at Leeds, his 1st choice uni. 6 years of army life and taking a non-conventional route to uni has knocked his confidence and he went in with a negative mind frame; that he wasn’t good enough for Leeds, which is ridiculous. He’s always been smart, he can write (wants to study literature) has more life experience and really, truly wants to enjoy uni life. It’s not just ‘the next logical step after school,’ it’s something he wants. He was feeling down and, against my advice of staying for the open day to see how wasn’t out of place there, he decided to come home early, possibly sulk, and probably drink.

Matt got on the train at Ipswich and we spent the next hour going through CAD designs and questions we needed answers to. We went directly to Maida Vale to drop off our bags at the flat we AirBnB‘d, ironed our shirts and headed straight out to the meeting. It could not have gone much better. We had a lot of questions answered, they can help us with a lot of the sourcing and we now have an entirely clear and focussed path and time scale from which to work towards. We looked around the production line and the future was laid out before us. We left feeling good.

We went directly to Old Street, to the google campus, for a TEDx talk which was a 90 minute video of the recent TED 2013 conference held last Wednesday. The talks were all interesting but Amanda Palmer’s really struck a chord with me. I’m not going to link it, so youtube it if you wish to see it, it’s worth 15 minutes of your time. At about 8pm we left the campus and headed, unknowingly, towards Liverpool Street (we were just following the gherkin). We had a mojito in a nice, classy 3 story club there and as we entered a girl fell down the stairs and dropped her drink. It was barely 8pm. After work Fridays in the city must be fun. So shocked, she got up before we had the balls to not feel her embarrassment and help her up. I still feel bad about that. One of the waitresses inside can only be described as every man’s dream. Every man’s, in her little black work outfit. Beautiful feminine face, olive skin, thick brunette hair and a great body. Proust said to leave pretty women for men with no imagination. He hadn’t seen this lady.

I’d been wearing a straw fedora type hat all afternoon and an attractive brunette walked over, again in a little black dress, and offered “I’ll let you be in a photo with me if you let me wear your hat in the photo.” It came across as arrogant and not charming. I didn’t like her accent either, but I obliged to the photo, she was attractive after all. Then came the killer blow “why are you wearing your hat inside?” I replied that it was easier to wear than to carry as I had a drink in one hand and my blazer in the other. I don’t know if she just didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t like how this girl spoke; both her words and way of speaking. We finished our drinks, took one more longing look at the pretty waitress and left for Leicester Square.  In leicester Square we had one drink, then another, then 4 more and headed to the penthouse which, as a bar, I love. Good drinks, great 180 degree views of the London skyline towards the city and parliament. As a club however, I do not like it. £20 entry well wasted. We bought a noodle stop, 2 toppings, and took a £20 taxi back to Maida Vale.

Saturday we slept in late and woke up to a good start-up scene conversation with Arun, our host and got to know all about his entrepreneurial background and current work as app developer and mentor for seeders and other groups and organisations. We went for a 4 o’clock breakfast of sushi and Moroccan mint green tea at Toast around Little Venice before tubing it over to Mayfair to check out some clothes around Jermyn Street and Saville Row: a man must aspire to something. Never have I seen so many Bentleys in one place.

Back at Maida Vale we stopped off at an off license to buy Coronas and Magners and I gave the homeless man outside a few pounds and wished him a goodnight and he was appreciative of it.

3 hours of music and beer/ cider later and we took the tube to Covent Garden where Matt’s escapades began. This is what I imagine must have been going through his head: “Is that a girl? Does she have a pulse?”

The first two were women in their early thirties. Not attractive and not particularly interesting to talk to. We ended up going to the a live band underground bar/club place called roadhouse. The boys behind us in the queue were kicked out – ‘mixed crowd entry only.’ Men were not allowed in without female company. We went inside after the girls, left them and headed to the bar and to Mexico; Tequila and Sol. Matt, who doesn’t like tequila, ordered 2 more shots another beer each before bouncing over to the other side where he introduced me to 2 Hungarian girls he had found in the 10 seconds it took him to cross the bar. They were both nice girls, good to talk to, quite interesting but not attractive even after the tequilas. Maybe that hadn’t kicked in yet. I motioned to leave and we moved along and met 3 attractive girls from Surrey: A pretty hat wearing blonde – who is the most similar girl to Jessa from Girls I will ever meet, just like her, only less Daddy issues I’m assuming – an upfront, confusing, but also pretty brunette and an equally pretty but too-tall-for-me brown girl. We paid for an expensive round of drinks but by this time I do not know what they were. 7 hours of beer and tequila shots later, along with shouting over the music for the last hour, or two, I’m really not sure started leaving me with a croaky voice which the brunette picked up on “haha you have a frog in your throat” and she happily pointed it out every time I croaked a little. The girls were nice, we were getting along well, I think. They asked us to dance but Matt declined. This is where his decisions in the night regarding the girls became questionable. I went to dance and the tall one took my hand and we span each other round a few times. I’m not sure how long we danced for but we went back to the bar for another round and my tequila had loosened my tongue. I told the brunette “I don’t know if I love you or hate you.” I imagine this was at the point she asked me if I like blondes. She cheered when I said not particularly, I prefer brunettes, before she then went on to jokingly ,I-tell-myself, insult me again. I could not read this girl. Matt and the hat-wearing-wearing blonde were getting on well by this point and the lights went on. I met a cute blonde at the bar on the way out, half-German half-English but raised in Germany and it turns out she was only 18 so I left that. The brunette asked if my ‘friend’ was coming with us.

We left Roadhouse and the girls wanted to go to a casino in Leicester Square so we all hopped in a taxi and went. It must have been easily 4am by this time.

We’d spent far too much the last 2 nights so I was not gambling. Matt wasn’t either, he stood by the TV watching UFC for some odd reason and I stayed speaking to the blonde and brunette as the tall one sat at a table speaking to some little asian guy. Tall girl turned and told me brunette girl had a Chinese boyfriend. Brunette said it was true, I’m not sure if they were joking or not. At 5am we left for noodles again but it was shut. We’d started to lose the girls by this point, they’d started walking ahead as we were looking for food. I was in no mood atto chase girls with an empty belly at 5am.

We went to the same taxi as the night before but this time they told Matt that they wanted £35 for the journey. I said no, you’ll take £20 or nothing. They took the £20.

We didn’t wake up until around 3pm on Sunday, but not too worse for wear. Matt was annoyed with how he left things, watching UFC and he tried searching for them in photos but neither of us could remember any of their names. You may have been wondering why I referred to them as ‘the blonde,’ ‘the brunette’ and ‘the tall one.’

We went back to Toast, this time for Camomile Citrus tea a sushi pack and Spanish toast with Serrano ham. Perfect, healthy day-after food. I’d love to set up a tea shop. Nice teas and seasonal, tasty food.

We then went to Camden to meet Simon, a video guy currently working on a Fox TV show called Man-Up and has previously worked for Ridley Scott’s production company. The quote for the video was more than we hoped but he knows his stuff and we could create something really amazing and that excites me. Will have to re-jig the finances a little maybe. Camden is a fun place. The first pub was playing metal music so we left and settled in one playing Michael Jackson song and they played 7 or 8 of his songs in a row and that makes me happy.

Sunday transport services out of London to the east are appalling. A long underground journey to Newbury Park followed by a bus to Ingatestone followed by finally an hour long train Journey and I was back. The train journey flew by as I’d paid for the ‘free for a small fee’ Greater Anglian Wifi offered on the train. Free, for a small fee, is not free at all.

As I left the train to walk home, 11pm at night, a cat came from the bushes and I was scared. But it was a nice cat. Cat didn’t attack me, cat wanted affection and I obliged and cat jumped on his hinds legs to get to my hand quicker each time and clawed at my leg to rub cat’s head on my briefcase. 2 minutes of stroking and I left, daydreaming of wanting to set up an animal shelter where all the animals we can fit in live happily, in open spaces and it’s self sustaining, no donations needed and the idea spreads and there is one of these in every county in every country.

I got home and saw Jordan, my brother. He’d had friends round the night before. The kitchen was a mess and beer bottles were left laying around. I was too tired to clear up.

I woke up this morning and my body was tired from the rest after all the walking and dancing done over the previous 3 days.

Today we spoke to our business mentor and have arranged a sit down, spoke to the start-up loans company and the loan will take 3 weeks after final application to have the money in our business account. We spoke to a supplier who is coming down to see us from Yorkshire on Monday and tomorrow we are going back to Mayfair to meet an agent of our principal supplier. Shit’s getting real and that’s exciting. DO-NOT-ASK-YOURSELF-WHAT-IF-THIS-DOESN’T-WORK-BECAUSE-IT-WILL-ONLY-DRIVE-YOU-INSANE-AND-LET-FEAR-RUIN-YOU. That’s a note to self. Sorry for shouting.

This is a marathon post after a week without writing. A splurge. Thank you if you managed to read it all.

P.s – Nathaniel received an offer for Leeds this morning. He didn’t fuck up the interview after all. What a dramatic tosser.

 

 

Wasting time: How are you spending your time?

Yes? YES?! Yes!…? I can’t say yes without it making it sound like a question. This is how Australians must feel every time they open their mouths and their speech inflects upwards at the end of the sentence.

“My name’s Bruce?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

“YIS? I just told you that my name’s Bruce?”

“Are you telling me or asking me?”

“I’M BLOODY TELLING YA?”

“Are you fucking with me or is this just how you talk? Where are you from?”

“I’m from Bondi?”

“Oh fuck off.”

I didn’t write yesterday, I was tired from an icy-cold game of football, which we lost 2-1, so I watched Argo and fell straight to sleep. I must have been tired because it was a deep sleep and I had vivid, unpleasant dreams which rarely or never happens to me and I was sure that one of them had happened as I was woken up by Poppy sitting by the door, meowing to be let out.

I get up to let her out and return to my warm, thick duvet and remain there until around  midday at which point I open my mac and perform my morning ritual of checking Facebook, email, BBC football, the blog and finally searching for any new episodes of TV shows I like to watch that air during the night in the states. There were none. In my post-heavy-sleep weariness I remain sitting on my bed, online, opening new tab, closing new tab, opening new tab, closing new tab, in the hope that something non-taxing to do online would hit me in the face. It categorically did not. That’s when I came across this posted on Facebook.

This made me re-evaluate my time spent sitting on my bed wasting time online. What the hell was I doing? I know this shit, I’ve done it so much and never does much good come from idle surfing. So I immediately proceed to get up, shower, get dressed and go downstairs where I remembered there was football on TV so I sat down and watched the first half. Shit. Even after consciously being reminded not to waste time, I waste time watching a game of two teams I don’t like in the slightest. So I head back upstairs and follow the game online. The balance of my time account going down and with nothing to show for it.

I youtube a music playlist of songs I listened to in my gap year 7 years ago and begin to reminisce and before long I start to fantasise and visualise dream scenarios sometime in the not-so-distant future. Not entirely productive but not time to regret either I feel.

Enjoying the Spanish language music, I open my book. I hadn’t read a page yesterday so today I’ll read a lot more. I’m one and a half chapters into my reading, that’s around 15 pages, when I’m called to dinner. I read to the end of the paragraph, where Robert Jordan had just made love in the afternoon to Maria in the heather and their earth metaphorically moves and he assures her she’s the only girl to have made him feel that way. They literally rocked each other’s worlds. Is it less cheesy because Hemingway wrote it? I go for food. The food was nice.

I return to my reading place and immediately begin from where I’d left off. Two pages later, the sky outside is dimming and I fall asleep. Dinner made me tired. It’s 3 hours before I wake up again. I really must have been tired this weekend for some unbeknown reason.

I’m not sure you can regret sleeping when you’re very tired. Naps/ siestas are nice. Sleeping a lot however probably does mean a lack a purpose. This is how I feel recently. There’s little for it. My mind is on the business but we can’t move forward until Friday. That doesn’t mean however that I should waste my time between now and then. The habits we form are based upon how we spend each moment, each day and our habits become us, or we become them.

It’s such a simple, well-known concept: Don’t waste time. No fucking shit Sherlock. Yet we all do it so often. Sometimes we need to consciously remind ourselves of the obvious, the clichés, the every day things we assume we know. That’s why I have Memento Mori tattooed on my forearm. Yet here I am, wasting time. This is one habit I must endeavour to break. I am waiting on business meetings before being able to move forward, but there are other things I could be doing. Patience can be a virtue, but it’s no excuse for lost time.

Things that are sometimes considered wasted time but in fact are not:

• Movies & Tv shows you genuinely enjoy
• Sitting, lying and simply being with someone you truly care about
• Helping a friend or stranger without thought nor hope of reward
• Taking a walk
• Visiting a new a place, any new place with no specific reason for going
• Getting lost
• Brewing tea with tea leaves, not bags, and waiting the required brew time
• Playing the game for the joy of the game itself
• Meditation
• Learning a second, third or fourth language even though wherever you go, you can find people who speak English.
• Failing at something you truly wanted to try. It’s not failure, it’s a lesson you needed to learn.
• Loving & losing; Love: requited or otherwise.
• Being kind to those who don’t deserve it.
• Gap years, career breaks or any long term travel project.
• Doing anything with an uncertain outcome.
• Making lists of things to remind yourself of what is and what isn’t wasted time.
• Reminding yourself of the obvious.
• Curiosity.

It’s never wasted time if it’s something that we feel we want, that makes us feel happy, or just feel full-stop, or moves us forward and teaches us something new. Even if the project, adventure of act doesn’t turn out how we imagine, it’s never a waste of time. The alternative to this is apathy. Otherwise known as ‘long, slow, delayed, boring, life-hating, death limbo.’

Things that are a waste of time but we do too much of:

• Caring what other people think.
• Explaining or justifying your actions to people whose sole goal isn’t to understand & learn, but to judge. It’s perfectly sane to do things that others disagree with. Listen more to yourself and less to others.
• Facebook chat.
• Conformity for conformity’s sake. Be yourself. If that’s different, then embrace it.
• Spending so long in the shower that it makes your skin dry. Find a new place think, fuckwit.

I spent the last 20 minutes of Saturday’s time balance on writing this the first 25 minutes of today’s. The cover photo will be my new desktop picture. Time well spent if it teaches me to be more careful with my time.

Marion Cotillard Naked

Man is..

Yes. The title was just a dirty trick to test traffic. Did it work?

*If feline friendliness doesn’t appeal to you, and I understand that it shan’t, skip half way down*

Another cat inspired post? I spend far too much time inside these 4 walls, I have little less for thought. Poppy, the mother cat, the oldest of them all is still alive and going strong. Her son and muscat would bully her to keep her away from the bedrooms and she’d spend most of her time at night under my bed. After graduating nearly 3 years ago I was home for 4 months in-between the July and August I spent in Spain and the move to Madrid in January ’11 to teach English. During this time Poppy became very fond of sleeping on or between my legs, meaning that in my subconscious sleep I’d wake up in the exact same position in the morning as I had left myself at night, albeit slightly stiff. This is something Poppy, or pops as I affectionately call her, hasn’t forgotten. I’m her bedtime bed and pillow. She doesn’t like to go outside much and the combination of freedom from the male felines and my constant indoor presence means she tends to follow me wherever I go. This is nothing new, for at least 6 years now she has followed the dogs on their daily walk, only to stop as we reach the busy road, only to wait for our return. Besides the cat fur on my bed and floor, the only problem is the constant meowing. I show affection and as soon as i withdraw my hand form her head she meows. I walk from my bedroom to the bathroom, back to my magic-whiteboard-lined bedroom, to the kitchen downstairs to the lounge, back upstairs and she is never far from my heels, meowing each time I stop for a second. With each stroke in hope of quieting her, all I succeed in doing is encouraging her to meow more in hope of more affection.

I end up annoyed and begin to raise my voice, “shut the fuck up cat, how many times? are you fucking kidding me?”

I don’t feel a sense of guilt. I spend a lot of time with the animals my mother has deemed worthy of filling our home with for the past 25 years. It does however take a lot of work to look after them all. It’s not so much the feeding and cleaning that bothers me, although restrictive, you can plan for that and form a routine. What bothers me, as it does in most matters of life, is affection. Having a lot of pets requires a lot of attention and care. I firmly believe it is cruel to have for one’s own purposes only to leave them alone for 8-9 hours a day. I love animals, truly. But to be pursued 24 hours a day gets a bit much. Poppy follows me and sleeps on me. Arya moans if she’s left shut inside her warm dog room with her warm dog beds and free roam of ample garden. She’s not a labrador at all. They lied to us. She’s a wolf. She loves to pull; she’d rather die of asphyxiation than stop pulling her way to the lake. She doesn’t care for food in the slightest, unlikes every other lab in the world. She’s fussy, she eats only what she likes. All she longs for is human affection. She jumps up, both paws on my shoulders (she stays there, hugging, until she falls backwards) and tries to lick my face which I half refuse, half accept. She’ll follow me upstairs, sit on my bed and, like poppy, follow me wherever I go.

I love the animals but when I’m trying to read or researching or doing something for the business, it annoying to have to worry about the animals. It’s a big responsibility to look after animals. What would mum do if I wasn’t an ambitious, live-life-on-my-own-terms, kinda guy who dreams of more rather than accept the norm?

I thought this’d be a short post but as often always happens, I’m still incapable of the masculine, mysterious, 1930’s leading man style, brief-worded approach of living and being.

I will one day myself have animals but, like baby arse wiping, not until I’m in a position to spend time with them and have them well looked after without imposing on others.

A constantly hairy house with a food-laden dining room from Ziggy, the messy African grey parrot, is not a reason to reject the idea of pets, but it is when the owner of the house and pets comes home moaning and upset of having to clean so much.

“But Matt, you spend so much time at home, why don’t you do all the cleaning?”

Fair question, keen observer.

Back to my reasoning for this post (I thought to say inspiration but, how clichéd?) Poppy, after all my annoyance of her today, came this evening, as I was skyping my friend and business partner, to place her front paws on my right thigh and rest her head on me, silently, to sleep. Now, she is curled in a tight ball on my unfolded bed covers which means that unless she moves, tonight, only me legs will be warm.

Business. Today we decided to build our own wordpress website against hiring a contractor. It’s a skill worth learning, saves money, still looks quality, and with more and more of the worlds biggest companies joining wordpress, the quality and standard will only increase. What’s more is that this way we can control the whole project and add to it when we desire with no lost time nor extra cost.

I love my new Ashwood leather wallet. It wasn’t even of the those particularly expensive wallets available, but it’s the softest leather I’ve ever felt.

For Whom The Bell Tolls is becoming one of personally favourite novels I have ever read. I’m not sure of which great man said it, but someone did, that every book is a reflection of ourselves. It’s perfectly true. Anna Karenina despite it’s length was my favourite novel. It taught me things that at the time I needed to learn about love and astounded me every single page with it’s observation of people and the human condition. I love Spain and have a fascination with the Franco era although I have little knowledge of it. This book, For Whom The Bell Tolls lays out many of the harsh truths, in fictional terms, which leave me wanting more of the truth. I cried last night reading it in one particular chapter whereby the heroes of the book commit violently unnecessary acts only for the protagonist to reflect upon them unfavourably upon hearing the story first hand. I’m certain that before the end of the novel I will have learnt a lot more of the Spanish civil war, let alone a political education of communism, fascism and otherwise.

Reading the book, I am reminded of Cuéntame Cómo Pasó. It’s a good show highlighting the daily life of the post Franco-era in Spain when la gente madrileña for the first time  were able to go to the beach, with freedom. It would be crazy for the modern day tourist in Spain to think that only 40-50 years ago even the Spanish themselves couldn’t enjoy their coastline unless they lived there.

I worry little of writing style and don’t check over myself, barring typos, but the more I begin to write the more I believe it true Hemingway’s admission that one must learn to write, one is not born with it. It has been a great revelation and relief in my life this is true. We talk of a person’s talents and gifts but personally, such talk deprives others from the belief and opportunity of fulfilling their dreams and doing something they truly care about. We live in the connection age. It’s time this changed. Although now unsuccessful and with no experience to reinforce my beliefs, I will always be honest about how it came to be that I will be a successful man and I will share what I believe with others. That is a key driving force behind my life. I do believe we must care for our own oxygen masks before those of our children, and many forget or ignore this, but I firmly believe my current beliefs will lead me to the life I wish to lead and from there, I will be in a far greater position to help those both near and far to live the life of their choosing also.

Tomorrow we have a football match against the top of the league. We are third but lost the last game and drew the 2 before. Since Christmas we haven’t played well. I myself egoistically combine the drop in form of 3 draws and 1 loss with my play in midfield and the 2 wins prior in which I scored 5 goals in 2 games in my only 2 games in attack. Asking me to play midfield and defensive allows the team to attack us. Playing me up front allows our whole team to attack. Promotion was in our hands 2 weeks ago until the team in second scored a +3 minutes of extra time equaliser. Now it’s unlikely. Barring a miracle win tomorrow against the new team in the league that has won approx. 13 of their first 15 games, we’ll remain in this league. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Day 4 – wastefulness

Day 4 in the trenches. Yesterday we lost our feline comrade, today no casualties. Today I learnt, as with anything, that you only consider the main objects and disregard the smaller things as relatively non-significant but they soon add up.

I’m referring to product supply and manufacturing and the cost of the little things. We’re more or less around budget so it’s still ok, and I’m excited. We’re arranging a meeting in London to next week to meet to discuss sampling and manufacturing and we hope to coincide the trip with a meeting with the agent for the main material too and then spend the weekend celebrating in advance in leicester square at the penthouse bar.

We also learnt that we can mix and match colours and quantities at any quantity which is perfect as we can create any range we want now and try and test what works and what doesn’t. This supplier really is a dream come true, so far.

I wasted a lot of time today. Unproductive days, in which I’m too lazy, for me, lead to far too much introspection and the combination of the two never is never favourable in terms of self estimation. Too little effort leads to too much time spent inside ones head and that’s an illness that strikes even the greatest of men.

I dislike business for business sake but we need a purpose each and every day. It’s that which makes life enjoyable, worth living. There can be many a purpose for each person, but purpose there must be.

Milan beat Barcelona, makes for an interesting second leg. If Utd can knock out Madrid and Barcelona falter, barring surprises, Utd and Bayern will be head to head for the Champions League. I like that.

Tomorrow I’ll search for AirBnB places to spend next weekend In London and arrange the business meetings. That’s all for today.

Day 3 of Writing Before Bed: Bye Bye Muscat

The fruits de mer went down the toilet. The Mother was busy spending hours filling in forms so instead we went for fish & chips by the frozen lake with the dogs. Ducks, and seagulls standing on the ice, swans in the broken ice with geese pestering the kids on half-term for bread. A 2 hour walk later around the rivers leading into the lake and the ice was melted. It was a nice day. Warm sunshine, no wind.

I came home to find Muscat, our old, skinny, fur-matted, cat-with-a-mane on my bed. The lion cat. He used to be such a good looking, soft furred cat, rescued 14 years ago. He was extremely friendly today, purring and rubbing his head on my hands wanting to be stroked. I obliged, sliding my hand across his thin, spiny back bone before going back to work researching and emailing manufacturers and suppliers when the aforementioned Mother asked if I’d like to go with her to the vets. I knew why she was going. I didn’t need her to explain. Muscat was old and senile. Made an incessant meow like nothing I’ve ever heard from any other cat before a few times daily as he was searching for a new clean area to shit in. He’d grown tired of going outside or using the cat litter tray. Cat shit stinks. It’s the worst. It’s up there with fox shit. The smell of fox shit is harder to get rid of though when a dog rolls around in it. Shit is my least favourite thing. That and baked beans.

How Muscat Will Be Remembered.

So work stopped and I spent the next 10 minutes continuing to stroke his fragile frame as he lay there, revealing his matted belly fur. He really was a furry cat and where his body had withered away, the fur had begun to mat. Oscar was sent to the vets a few months ago in a similar state, except slightly worse. We said we wouldn’t wait so long next time. And so Muscat’s time had come. 14 years after we rescued him. We know he was at least 16, could have been older.

It was so easy to get annoyed with him when he’d meow non-stop, leave smelly shits on the floor, rub his wet nose on your hands when you were busy typing and leave a trail of fur on your bed but that goes out of your mind when you send an animal to death row.

Why is it OK to euthanise animals when they are old and sick, but not humans?

We were recommended some supplier by the manufacturers Matt spoke to. One of them is perfect. Exactly what we were looking for. I love it and it makes me excited and gives me that itch to really get things moving forward. Sans consultant, so we’re doing it ourselves. Had it not been so, we would never have come across this perfect situation. Things really do have a funny way of working out when you go for things; when you take action on life rather than let life take action on you.

I didn’t read much today. I’ll read 10 pages or so before bed and find out how Robert is getting on with blowing the bridge and how Maria’s hair is growing. I’m sure he’ll take her with him once his assignment is done.

Back to Guadarrama, in the Sierra outside Madrid, I go. Hasta mañana.

R.I.P Muscat.

Fruits De Mer

I decided recently to try writing something everyday. Even if I don’t really have anything in particular I wish to talk about. You rarely get stuck for things to say, so why are people so often stuck for things to write?

This is somewhat of a journal entry I guess. I’ve never kept a personal journal. I call it journal because it’s much more masculine than keeping a diary. Maybe log-book would be even more manly. Men keeping journals makes me think of the two world wars. What is it about the threat of death that makes man live how they wish but never did prior? We shouldn’t need the excuse of imminent death to get off our arses and do these things. I’ve never been one for writing feelings and thoughts down for my eyes only. I rarely do so. I like to share these things, even with those who on the receiving end aren’t so chuffed to have to listen to it. Writing here allows me to make my thoughts public without writing to anyone in particular. It’s just out there. That idea frightened me at first. Not so much now. Fear lets you know you’re doing something worthwhile. Unless your fear is of wiping babies bottoms. That’s a rational fear and an arse wiping maid should always be hired.

Writing down your thoughts and feelings used to seem such a teenage girl thing to do, to me. It helps you collect your thoughts and release your mind from them. Written down you can see them for what they are, from an external perspective which allows you to see how trivial they are and let go of them, or see how real they are and do something about them. It’s cathartic.

Casa de Campo, Madrid, Spain. Lake and view. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first time I ever wrote something I felt down was 3 and a half years ago on a bench in Madrid. On the way back to Madrid from Pozuelo I decided to get off the metro at Casa De Campo in the early evening. I’d never been there before, I had no reason to get off and I don’t know why I did. But I walked outside into the evening sun, onto the dusty path leading into the giant park, sat on the first bench I came across and I happened to have a notepad and pen in my bag. I can’t for the life of me think when I started carrying a notepad and pen with me, but I still do, wherever I go. I almost never use them. I sat and spontaneously poured what was in my head onto the page. Incoherent possibly to anyone but myself. I can’t even remember where I was staying, where I was going or what it was that was in my head. Who? yes. What? no.

Few people know what my friend and I are doing. They know we have a project. They just don’t know what it is. I’ll keep it that way for now. We had arranged weeks earlier to meet a consultant who would help us source suppliers and make our samples but he let us down at the last minute and offered to phone us today to reschedule. He never phoned; very unprofessional and a waste of 2 weeks of our time waiting for him. So now we’ll look to go direct to manufacturers to aid with sourcing and sampling, beginning tomorrow.

I feel that each day like this is almost a day lost. A day longer to wait to be doing with the my life the things I wish to be doing. Another day longer until I can enjoy building a company. Another day in the wait to move to London, to go back to Madrid, to walk along the left bank of the Seine.

Until we have the samples done, there is little productive work for me to do, and so I remain, tilting at windmills.

It does give me chance to read though, when I’m not being attacked by Arya, jumping on me as I sit on my bed, leaving dark dog hair on my covers.

I started For Whom The Bell Tolls today. I like a book that gets straight into it. I like novels of male heroes at war, on adventurous missions, meeting beautiful women on the way. A beautiful spanish woman in this case: Maria. The book is also serving as a history lesson on the Spanish civil war.

Roberts thoughts of Maria did make me wonder on the existence of coincidence. When Robert meets Maria, he sees she has a beautiful face, but wishes he could have seen her before her hair was cut so short.

It’s funny of all the books I could have bought, of all the books I have here waiting to be read that I should choose to read this one. And that I should choose to read it now. This seems to happen from time to time. The timing of things seems just too perfect to be chance. As a rational person with little belief in the supernatural, the question of coincidences stays with me. I’m conflicted.

Robert Jordan, the young fair haired protagonist, also finds his voice changing when he speaks to Maria. I realised a few years ago that I do that too. When I feel uncomfortable or I feel the need to be particularly non-threatening and appear too nice my voice would become higher. I still do it from time to time but I catch myself doing it now. I really don’t like it. That’s the sacrifice you make as a life-long Michael Jackson fan.

Tomorrow, mother and I will take the dogs to Walberswick for a walk along the beach. Stop off at an Inn there that allows dogs for lunch and buy some freshly caught seafood from the fisherman’s huts to take home. Yum fucking yum.