Things Have A Funny Way Of Working Out For The Best

The wait will be worth it

This feels more like a hopeful wish than something I really believe at this moment in time. Today we found out that our supplier doesn’t stock what we desire from them; they’ll have to make it to order. That’s not so bad, it means less people are using what we’re using, we’ll be unique, just like we hoped.

“Supplier people, how long will it take for you to make it for us then?”

“Mid to late July.”

“Mid to late July? 4 months?!”

Four god-damn months. Four late Winter to Mid-Summer months. I shit on you Spring. The days warm up, the people get happy and look forward to their summer travels. The rabbits start humping. The world will be happy. All except this fucking conejo. Left in his burrow wanking, wishing and wasting the time away.

Everything else is set up to go. Id they only stocked the ones we wanted we’d be ready to go so soon and all this time spent dreaming and planning and hoping and wishing would finally be turned into something real. Real action. Finally building my future, my dreams, for real. Not just in my scarecrow haired noggin.

Maybe this is a good thing? The ideal release time for the product we’re making is September/ October and this does coincide perfectly with that. That’s it. It’s a sign from the universe. We were rushing ahead faster than we should have been and must slow down further, be even more considered. There are lessons to be learnt before then. Our will is being tested. It shouldn’t be so easy to achieve what we desire, we must first prove how much we really want it. The process must be long and drawn out. The tension must build. Our heads, hearts and souls must explode with desire, dirt and desperation. Is it a case of petulant impatience? Or thoughtful ambition? Do I sound spiritual? Or like a god-foresaken theist, desperate for answers where perhaps there are none? Either way, if it serves a purpose and doesn’t infringe upon others, I’ll take it. The idea of signs and a reason for everything is comforting and I am a Paulo Coelho Fan. I’ll take in as much of my surroundings as I can and continue to follow my gut, instinct, that feeling you can’t explain. It doesn’t always lead me where I hoped, but it’s always led me to something I needed to learn. And I’m happy where it’s taken me to now.

We could stick to our previous schedule, but we’d have to compromise on quality. It’d save us a few thousand pounds and a lot of headaches in doing so. But no, that’s not us. We know what we want to make and we won’t compromise on that. We’re doing it, and we’re going to do it to the best of our capabilities.

So what now? Well, we could still launch as before, build our email list and raise awareness for the main product launch with a range of fringe products we had planned anyway. That’s an option, one that might stave off insanity from my impatient-to-get-going skull floater.

Skull Floater

That would still leave me plenty enough time to write that screenplay I mean to write one day. I certainly can’t spend all my mental energy on the business for an extra 4 months with nothing productive to do about it. That would be mental suicide. We have a one year pay back holiday from the loan we’re taking to start the company. (Three times the loan we initially expected, ouch..no pressure). This leaves my own bank account in a somewhat healthier state for a while. Although with an extra 4 months to wait before any possible earnings, I may have to take a months summer work teaching English again. And maybe a cheap break away somewhere too, Madrid, or the beach. Or both if things were really cheap. I still need to replace my dog chewed passport that was chewed before I even had chance to pick the envelope off the door mat containing the passport that was replacing the the emergency passport I’d used previously to get back from Madrid that I needed to replace my stolen passport from a local feria in a small pueblo in Segovia. I am suffering from spending too much time indoors. I do need to get out and see things. Do things. I underestimate just how much I’m sacrificing in order to start a business, in the short term: Time & Money. My two favourite and most valuable commodities. I’m playing the long game.

What is for sure is that I’m going to have to find something to do for the next four months. Something productive, active. Movies, brains and my imagination are all great, but four (more) months of that doesn’t fit me too well. Something that doesn’t leave me in the red and, sometime after the four months are up, I hope to be able to connect the dots and see how things really did work out for the best, and be thankful for the time spent on the sidelines, watching others live their lives. I’ve always preferred playing football to watching it. I’m an awful spectator.

I’m doing what feels to me to be right. That, I really do believe, is the only way to be happy in the long term. It’s really true that nothing is ever completely straight forward. You don’t follow a perfectly linear path. Sometime you are forced to take steps backwards. Sometimes you go off track, you can’t avoid it but, with a centering vision of where you want to go and how you want your life to be, you can’t help but keep coming back to it and moving forward. And that’s worth everything, despite taking longer to get there than you had imagined.

Are you the luckiest or unluckiest person in the world?

You’re at the bank, queuing up to pay in some cash when two men walk in but you can only see their mouths and eyes; they’re wearing balaclavas. They run up to the cash register and ask the cashier to fill their bags with cash. The cashier obliges and they leave running with a sack full of cash each. As they are leaving, one turns and without looking fires a shot. Of everyone in the room the bullet hits you. It hurts, but it’s not fatal. It has hit you in the arm.

At that moment in time, are you the luckiest, or unluckiest person in the world?

Apparently, how you answer this question is hugely important in determining your mind set in life and hugely affects your happiness and levels of success. The answers tend to be split 50:50. Which one are you?

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.

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.

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.

The Worst Case Scenario

Oh to be him.

Human evolution endowed us with a tool. A very useful tool to protect us from mistakes, mistakes with consequences. A mistake that 1000s of years ago could leave you outside the tribe, vulnerable to a fatal sabre-tooth to the testicles. This tool is the Worst Case Scenario Generator. “If I do this, this awful thing might happen..So I probably shouldn’t do it.”

I probably shouldn’t write this because some of my Facebook friends might read it, think Im a stuck-up, arrogant, know-it-all prick and delete me and that cute girl I like might see that I have less FB friends than some other guys and will sleep with them instead of me. I’ll become jealous and depressed, drink myself into stupor and wake up 3 days later in bed with a heroin junkie heffalump and die years later, addicted, bitter and alone. Then I’ll never get to be with Marion Cotillard. (In the immortal words of LFO: “I think I fell for the girl on TV.”) Girl On TV

These scenarios never happen.*

So the problem is that this isn’t very useful to us anymore. Survival is no longer a problem, not for those of us fortunate to be born in the developed world. If we are poor and hungry and have nowhere to live, the state helps. In fact, I’d even bet the opposite. That more retirees die of boredom than people who die from relatively minor risk taking. Thos who take risks, who live a life of their choosing and learn along the way have more to live for and as a result live not only a much fuller life, but also a longer one. If we fall out with friends & family or colleagues, our modern day tribes, we are no longer left alone in a forest at the mercy of predators. If we dare to try something new, something untested, something that we don’t already know all the answers to, what are we really risking? Humiliation, failure & not having as much money as we’d like. So we make excuses for not doing the things we want. For not standing up and saying I’d love this, I’m going to try for it. “I’m too young, I’m not born talented, I’m unlucky, I don’t know all the answers, I’m not intelligent enough, no-one believes in me, no-one is telling me I can do it, I’m not good-looking enough, I don’t know if this is worth it.” etc.

All this stems from the Worst Case Scenario Generator; asking yourself “What if this bad thing happens?”

One of the great things about the Spanish language and something that helps me to better frame age and fear is that in Spanish, you are not an age. You are not fear. In English we say “I am X years old” and “I am afraid.” In Spanish you have an age, you have fear, but that’s not who you are. You can fail, but that doesn’t make you a failure. Failure is something that happens, not something you are.

It’s important to know that the people you admire, the successful people who have what you want, do what you  want, live how you want to live aren’t fearless, they learned to live with the fear and act anyway. They aren’t born with it, they practiced even when they were shit until they got better. They aren’t perfect, they make mistakes and learn from them and don’t dwell on them. And most importantly, they are probably aware of the worst case scenarios but choose instead to focus instead on “What if I do this and it turns out to be great, everything I ever hoped for.”

The risks we face today are far lesser than those we have ever faced at any other period in time whilst the rewards are greater than ever and open to anyone, including me, and including you. It’s a case of choosing yourself, being vulnerable to humiliation and failure and owning it. You own the good and the bad. The risk and the reward. The blame and the credit.

In todays world we get to play poker with a greater chance of success, higher rewards, and a cheaper buy in. But few people still dare to play. They’ll watch it from the outside wishing they could play but making excuses as to why they’re not.

What’s your alternative? Stay in your comfort zone where you never do anything wrong. Where you can never be criticised for wanting more or creating something that anybody can have an opinion about. The downside is that the safety zone is no longer inline with your comfort zone. Staying in line, conforming, not having ideas, not taking ownership of your life or your work no longer has the guarantee of a steady job and steady pay check anymore. There’s little living to be done in conformity. We think we’re safe and smart by standing in line and waiting to be picked and in doing so we blow our chance to matter, to make a difference and live life on our own terms.

We spend so much time consuming, and so little time creating. But it’s the creators who are truly alive. The opportunity is that everyone, anyone can create. It may start off awful, it may fail. But you persist, it gets better, and it creates connections. You feel better for it.

And that worst case scenario you dreamed up? It won’t happen. Even if it did? So what? It’s a risk worth taking. You don’t try once and give up. You create, persist, get better and enjoy the creation for it’s own sake and possibility of the life you dream of coming with it. We just have to accept that the fear of shame and failure are part of it and they aren’t going anywhere. Learn to live with it.

If you don’t have a dream. If you’re not learning anything new. If you’re not open to the risks that take you to where you want to go in life, are you really alive?

Things to be open to:

• Mistakes
• Failure
• Criticism
• Humiliation
• Risk
• Connection
• Success
• Reward
• Appreciation

Those in life that I admire and want to spend my time with are those who try and they learn. The might be afraid. They might be vulnerable. But they try. Sometimes it’s nice to sit in the back seat and be driven. But sometimes it’s nice to drive.

*They sometimes might happen.

Next post: Taking Things Personally.

Why Do You Do What You Do? Learning From Ferrán Adriá.

Ferrán Adriá’s Wired Cover

What do you want to be when you grow up? You spend so much time teaching children to ask themselves this question, asking it to yourself. Is there one right path? What are you passionate about? What is your talent? How do you find out? What were you born to do? What can you do that will change the world and make it a better place?

I think we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question. How are you supposed to find an answer without ever having been pushed into a certain field, whilst young, that you become passionate about?

Instead, we should be asking ourselves ‘what do I want the outcome of my work to be?’

This is what I aim to get out of my work; I aspire to:

• Be creative
• Be in control of own work and life (be my own boss) and have the freedom and responsibility that comes with that.
• To produce work that connects with others, produces emotions and adds value.
• Be economically comfortable
• To enjoy my work
• To be able to morally justify my work, and its consequences on the world, to myself.

We are not born for any one purpose. I just think it may feel that way once you are on a path that feels right, that you enjoy, that fulfils you. So where does this leave me?

With many options. What will I do? That will be revealed in the coming months.

It’s so easy to find reasons not to do something:

Clothing: fashion is superficial and what matters is inside us.

Writing: too much time observing, not enough time enjoying the moment from inside the bubble and over-analysing things until you become an alcoholic, depressive who shoots themselves in the head with a shotgun.

Movies: encourage needless escapism when people could be using their time more productively.

This is the problem with asking yourself what you want to do as as opposed to why you want to do it. When you know what you want the results of your work to be (this becomes the why you do it) the negative reasons not to do something soon disappear as you know and understand your reasons. It’s much easier to be a critic looking in from the outside than a creator working on the inside, but which would you rather be?

These negative ideas aren’t my views. But they are thoughts I have had. Thoughts that have paralysed me through over-analysis whenever I’ve been close to choosing what I want to do, leaving me feeling like Sylvia Plath before her fig tree.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

We are all, every single one of us, so very capable of any number of things. We just have to commit. Commitment to hard work and getting good at your craft or proffession. And commitment becomes so much easier when you understand why you’re doing it.

This leads me to the inspiration for this post…

Having spent this past weekend in London with the purpose of mixing business & pleasure (heavily skewed 90%-10% in favour of pleasure) I was introduced by a certain Lithuanian/American lady friend of mine to a famous American, travel-writer-chef-tv guy: Mr Anthony Bourdain.

Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain & another lover of all things Spanish: Mario Batali

Despite his digs at Jamie Oliver, I like this Bourdain character; a laid back, opinionated man who enjoys a drink; unashamed of his vices and laissez-faire lifestyle with his gonzo-esque, expletive laden views.  He says & does what he wants and seems happy for it, as he travels the world eating great food, drinking a lot and probably getting paid well for the privilege. I admire that. Flicking through the 8 seasons of his TV show ‘No Reservations‘ watching the episodes of the places closest to my heart, notably France & Spain, I came across an episode of the infamous, now-defunct, El Bulli restauraunt in Cala Montjoi, Catalunya, (and at the risk of wrath) Spain, run by Ferrán Adriá.

El Bulli, Cala Montjoi

As an avid reader of Wired magazine (he was front page of the UK edition this autumn), watcher of various Food programmes in Spain and general lover of Spanish gastronomy, I was well aware of Ferrán Adriá, molecular gastronomy, El Bulli and his new project. But in this episode of  No Reservations, set in the last days of El Bulli’s existence, we’re privy not only to the superficial outer-observations of what the man does and how he does it but, more importantly and certainly more interestingly to me, why he does what he does.

Here is a man at the top, the pinnacle of his field, admired globally for his forward thinking approach to food and dining experiences, sharing his own creations with a TV host and writer on the last day of his 27 year El Bulli project, before moving onto even bigger, better things and he is as giddy as a child. He enjoys eating his own food, but more than that, key to everything he had built: he loved watching Mr Bourdain enjoy the food. He truly loved it. He went on to say during this meal, that he doesn’t hope people leave and remember the order of the courses or even exactly what they ate; he only hopes that they take with them forever the memory of the emotions and feeling of happiness the experience gave them. This was his why. Everything else was secondary to him. The food, the years of experiments and trial and error all boiled down to this most important of motives: Human connection. Creating happiness in the act of connecting with another human being.

Ferrán and his brother, Albert, grew up in a poor town called Hospitalitet just outside Barcelona. His father a painter and plasterer. He didn’t hail from a line of famous chefs, nor did he have the money to travel and train under the best chefs in the world and to set up his own restaurant. He went to work in a modest German owned restaurant in Catalunya and from there learnt to cook, and then began to travel over the border to France to learn new techniques, all the while implementing his techniques to a small number of local residents in a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. He did things his own way. It is that exact same restaurant, in the exact same place, far from any major tourist attraction or large town of note, that decades later became the most popular, renowned restaurant in the world, being named the best restaurant in the world 5 times in 10 years before closing it’s doors in 2011.

Watching the man in action and others enthuse about the effect he has had on their lives (one great chef cried as he recalled how Ferrán had been so generous in sharing so much with aspiring chefs and had given him a soul, a purpose) led me to wonder, enviously, where such passion, dedication, drive, enthusiasm and joy for what one does comes from.

Ferrán Adriá was not born to cook. He loves what he does because he’s become good at it, and is able to express himself and, in doing so, connect and share happiness with others. Being a chef is just his modus operandi. He could have done done it in any number of ways, as we all can.

He succeeds where other forward thinkers have failed not because they lacked, skill or technique, but because they tried to move food forward in order to show how clever they were. Ferrán has always had a much deeper purpose. He moves things forward to find new ways to connect, to surprise and astonish and as a result, he’s happy to share everything he knows, because there is always more for him to learn too. He doesn’t guard his secrets through insecurity and fear of losing the magic. He generously shares and that makes him all the more magical.

As long as you know why  you do what you do, and that purpose makes you happy, everything else is secondary, whether you do it for an audience of ten, ten thousand, or ten million.

In successfully doing this, you’ll find joy in your work and you’ll have your reason for being. A reason that will stave off the negative aspects of life.  In successfully doing this, you provide a service to others and are content in yourself. And that’s enough. This is what we should aspire to. In doing our work in this way, we will touch and inspire others who come into our lives and will leave a positive impact on those around us which will in turn teach them to do the same. There are 7 billion people on earth. There aren’t 7 billion cures for cancer. To make others happy, even for a moment and to enjoy the work you do, is enough. Inspiring others to do the same will make the world a better place. Whether your audience is 10 people, 10,000 people or 10,000,000 people.

The Consequences of Industrialist Propaganda & The Creative Revolution

For clear and coherent writing, scroll to the green picture where you can read a little excerpt from Seth Godin’s new book.

This giant black & white industrial picture is bloody depressing. This needs some colour.

An irrelevantly nice photo. That’s better. Now I’m thirsty. Which is silly because it’s sea water. I read earlier that cat’s are so efficient, at salt removal I guess. that they can actually drink sea water. No idea if that’s true.

This is a post about something I’ve long known and felt, but hadn’t ever put it into words. I’d go as far to say that this topic has been the most important topic in my life in recent years and dominates what I tend to think about, my hopes, dreams and ambitions and the decisions I have made.

We are living in the beginnings of a post-industrial world where the first few people, the leaders and early adopters, the creatives, the artists and the dreamers are forging a new culture that is no longer based on the Industrialist principles we’ve been taught to believe in at a detrimental cost to our lives, careers and ultimately happiness. The internet is changing that. The flow of ideas and communication and lower barriers to entry are changing the landscape of how we earn a living and ushering in a new, more personal, individual, post-industrial age where mass produced crap is replaced by nice products by people who care, for people who care. It may not be Victorian Britain anymore with workhouses and starving, raggedy little Oliver Twists fondling our pockets for change but we are still indoctrinated by industrialists, for now. A knee jerk response to anti-industrial thinkers is often to label them socialists or ‘damn commy bastards’ in an American accent from the ’70s. You can be a capitalist without being an industrialist.

Capitalists often seem to be labelled with the same brush as those corporation-tax-dodging, government-official-bribing arseholes planning how to keep the general proletariat in line. For anyone unsure of the difference between capitalism and industrialism: google it you lazy bastard. Industrialism is the hyper state of capitalism. The extreme end where human’s are kept in line , made to comply, with the dangling carrot and the extra special carrot that will make their numb existence of a boring job they hate, always seeming just around the corner. Where the childish enthusiasm, curiosity  and creativity are stripped from you so you can sacrifice your life and consider yourself so very wise for never taking a risk in your life. Where the risk takers are ridiculed for their failures and those who do break through the glass ceiling and see how the world works are seen as magicians who must have been born with something special. “Their daddy must have been rich.” “Everything was handed to them on a plate.” “They’re lucky.” “They’re ruthless.” Or simply..”they’re an artist, that’s why they’re crazy.” The problem with this is, we teach our kids to act the same and live the same unfulfilling existence full of excuses and rationalisations over experiences and adventures. And the kids grow up to feel guilty for wanting something else, something more. Who are they to say their parent’s lives aren’t good enough for them?

This is why the rich get richer.. whilst the poor and middle classes always struggle. They leverage people and money. They use those who wait in line, are told what to do and how to do it in exchange for a pay check and with the illusion of security and a safe life. Until enough people realise that this life isn’t the only option, that it’s ok to dare for me, will this ever change. And it is changing. As job security goes down, debt goes up, pensions are less secure, people are being forced into new ways of thinking about how they earn their living. What kept people in line before was the lack of other options, the job security and a decent wage with a solid pension at the end of it, is now diminishing. The dangling carrot is a lot further off and much smaller. It’s rotten. Donkey no likey the rotten carrot. The only thing stopping people in this age of connection and information is fear. This fear is the hangover from the industrial age.

In the context of education, the (negative) effect of industrial thinking is brilliantly explained in Ken Robinson‘s engaging, insightful, truthful TED talk, Do schools kill creativity? Which you can watch by clicking the link on Ken’s name. It’s really worth taking the time to watch it if you have any interest in the area or have kids of education age yourself.

This is a passage from Seth Godin’s great new book ‘The Icarus Deception.’ He can explain it more coherently than I can and if any of this lights a spark in you, buy the book.

“Capitalism was refined and condensed and iterated until it became a monster. The industrialist not only wants to make ever more productive trades, driving quality up and costs down, but insists on changing two things that have never been changed at a mammoth, world wide scale before.

Change the Culture. The industrialist is big enough and powerful enough and profitable enough that he can act like royalty. He doesn’t issue decrees by royal fiat; he does it with advertising and lobbying and by offering a huge carrot to anyone who complies.

Thanks to industrialists and the bountiful profits, our definition of success was changed. The very way we spent our time and resources was transformed by mass advertising, mass schooling and mass production.

The industrialist lobbied to build his plant on the river and then filled it with effluent. He opened doors to repetitive jobs and the numbing hierarchy of middle management. He demanded a seat at every table –a voice in how we ran our government, our schools, our science, and our spiritual organisations. But it was all okay, because the productivity he created made us relatively wealthy, fed our children, and delivered medical care as well. Industrialism brought hospitals and CD players and the Egg mcMuffin. What could be bad about that?

The change in culture  went further than most expected. Another change followed…

Change our dreams. The overwhelming impact of more than a century of cultural indoctrination can’t be overstated. We have embraced industrial propaganda with such enthusiasm that we have changed the very nature of our dreams.

Being a human today means more wealth, better health, and the leverage to influence others. But it is also a fundamentally different existence from the one we had for millennia before this.

The industrialist needs you to dream about security and the benefits of compliance. The industrialist works to sell you on a cycle of consumption (which requires more compliance). And the industrialist benefits from our dream of moving ip the corporate ladder, his ladder.

Capitalism is driven by failure, the failure of new ideas to catch on or the failure of the organisation that fails when it is beaten by new competition. Industrialisation is about eliminating the risk of failure, about maintaining the status quo and about cementing power. “too big to fail” is the goal of every industrialist, but “too big to fail” means that the capitalism is no longer functioning.”

We’re not here to live life apathetically. no-one wants that. Where everything and everyone and every thought is standardised. Break the cycle and dare to take control, and personal responsibility for your dreams. Dare to fail, to look a fool. It’s what the best people do; those who are really alive, with a glint in their eyes and a rocket up their arse. Be creative. Don’t overcomplicate it, and don’t make excuses. Dylan got it right:

“A man can consider himself a success when he wakes up in the morning, goes to bed at night and in between did exactly what he wanted.”

It’s as simple as that. As always, the doing is the hard part, but that’s where the adventure lies.

Feel free to leave a comment if you were able to suffer through the whole post. Agree, disagree. Love, hate.