Month: August 2026

I’ve started meditating again. Been doing it for about a week and I’m already feeling the benefits. I will admit there’s some muscle-memory involved as I have done quite a bit historically.

The main point is it sets me up for the day. It’s a moment for me – a period to breathe and sit and let everything wash over me.

I do it to a ten minute music clip (with a kind of house beat). I like the melody and the imagery is of a car journey through a gorgeous snow-clad landscape (going backwards!). The lyrics too are pertinent as the song is called “I Remember”, with my favourite words “you don’t have to give up to let go.”

We know what’s good for us. We don’t need a study or a recommendation, you’re able to feel it for yourself. Funnily enough, having done it for ages, the reason I stopped is because I actually thought it was doing me harm – I started developing a strange tingling sensation in my legs that unnerved me but I now realise this was my near-total inability to, well, fucking relax!

I wouldn’t allow myself to relax.

I wouldn’t give myself a break.

I wanted to hold on to the drama!!! (hence why the favourite lyric has seriously struck me)…

Letting go is not failure, it’s allowing yourself to be free.

Free from trying to change what you can’t.

Free from trying to convince others.

Free to get on with what is intrinsic and joyful to you. What matters.

In big and small ways (mostly small to be honest), I’m getting things done. 

Freeing myself (yes, slowly) from perfectionism.

Understanding taking steady steps is far better than wanting to get everything done all at once.

Accepting that I can’t change most stuff.

These are the things we need to remember.

Have you already made up your mind before you know what you’re capable of?

Do you believe there’s only one way things can turn out?

Is anything worth it to you?

We get to a point where we have to ask these questions. The alternative is autopilot, drifting, sleepwalking through life.

Maybe I’m lucky to have parents who are ageing well. I don’t know but I certainly observe that people the same age and younger are A LOT older than them.

Being fat, being unhealthy, being tired. These are not inevitabilities. They’re not.

There’s the adage, the harder I work, the luckier I get but you can be strategic as well.

I’ve recently shifted my diet to basically an 80/20 split of carnivore and carbs when I need ‘em. It’s working rather well, not zealous, not faddish, just pragmatic. It allows me to just listen to what I need and doing it without drama.

I believe that most end up where they are because of stressing about all these things – job, food, relationships – so desperately, to get things right! 

We’re all making it up as we go along, I am honestly using that as an excuse to enjoy as much of life as I can. We don’t know what’s ahead, start to pay attention to what YOU want and need – I’m doing it and it’s working rather well!

We expect.

We desire.

We’re desperate for the attention.

We want the validation.

And the truth is, we want someone else to make the decisions for us. We want a plan, a spreadsheet, the perfect route to where we’re going.

But there’s something missing, isn’t there! What is it?

Certainty?

Confidence?

No, it’s not those is it?

Adventure.

But you might look stupid.

You might not get it ‘right’! Agggggh!

But observe people peopling all over the place. They do stuff (and almost certainly they are worrying too).

We leave ‘em to it and so can you.

Do it for yourself – be proactive, have a jolly old time! It’s all an experiment and everyone is making it up as they go along. It’s how it works.

I was just slicing cheese on my wooden chopping board. I found myself wanting to stab the knife in it so it stood on its own – so I did and it inspired this post (I even photographed it for you).

Even something we think of as solid, wood cut from a tree, is not totally solid otherwise the knife would have fallen over.

We want clearly defined boundaries.

We want other people to understand and observe them.

We want to make our lives as simple as humanly possible.

The latter is something I strive for but I cannot ignore the evidence of my eyes, ears, nose, my body. Things are not neat! I always chuckled growing up when I heard in Poirot episodes,

“Do you like the country, Monsieur Poirot?”
“It is very pleasant, apart from the untidy habit of the trees shedding their leaves.”

We’re all molecules bouncing off each other, if you believe the physics. I don’t pretend to know but many do because they don’t want to appear stupid or ignorant. Our egos are our downfall.

Everyone on Twitter is decrying the Revenue Sharing programme’s closing down and the ‘original content’ scheme is starting with nigh on impossible stipulations to earn from it. Honey traps! I knew the Revenue Share was going to implode before it had even gone live. You can’t turn a social media platform into a job. It doesn’t work that way but so many are so desperate for it to be true.

We’re afraid of the slog.

We’re afraid of taking time.

We’re in such a hurry to make things dependable rather than resilient.

We’re also terrified to admit that intelligence really does make a difference!

You know what I’m going to say – don’t wait for others to give you what you want. Give of yourself – your motivations and your efforts.

I do laugh at myself sometimes.

I have grand aspirations of devising the perfect system, the absolute ideal way to spend my day. Case in point, I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve attempted to put together the perfect schedule to ‘get my work’ done and to organise my life.

This is where some of the laughter comes in – because I am already far above average in efficiency and effectiveness. I get the job done yet I have an enormous streak of perfectionism in me. It’s debilitating at times.

After version, let me think, 20, 30? Not sure, haha (more laughter!) I’ve decided (again, hehe!) that getting the work done on any given day doesn’t need to timestamp. The sense of satisfaction is what counts.

Freedom and Flexibility are greater than planning and rigidity.

Bear with me! 

I take this path very often and I still marvel at this wall. When I moved back to my village, there was a very powerful storm which took out many of the walls here and, including this one, lay lying in rubble for months at least.

When I started to see this one, I was so pleased because it looked a real mess!

Now, you will see from the picture, the obvious dividing line between the wall that remained intact and the wall which was rebuilt. The beautiful thing though that, even looking so new, it’s all the same stones that were relaid but the reinstated blocks were given the mother of all cleans.

They’re the same stones but given a new lease of life.

We think we have to constantly reinvent ourselves (it’s language that’s used for pop stars, artists, etc.) but we don’t. Our intrinsic natures remain solid and pure. That’s the beauty of this wall and of each individual person on this planet. We have our own place, we dwell in our own niches.

We are good as we are we just need to be true to our place and our callings. And the beauty is, those stones in their proper place all support each other.

People make tall claims. I hear it often.

I’ve just read a comment in a private Telegram group I’m part of remarking on a grand country house another group member had been staying at…

“Unfortunately we don’t have the tradesmen who could build anything like this anymore. All by design.”

I read this and thought, oh, is that right? You know that do you? Are you providence? You have all the answers, do you?

Tall claims often walk hand-in-hand with ego – a desire for everyone to match your beliefs – there’s a gloominess in it but worldviews can be all-consuming, myopic – very difficult to see out of.

Just because you don’t hear about a particular skill, a rarified specialism, someone’s marvellous gifts doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And this isn’t me being Pollyanna. In a world of billions of people, you honestly believe there aren’t people who could do extraordinary things.

A lacking worldview.

The most fascinating thing I see in people is their willingness to live and think tinily – if I believe it, it must be true.

Dangerous. 

Most days, I walk past the primary school I attended in the late-80s and early-90s. I often imagine the teachers coming to me and asking me to give a talk to the young children about what advice I would give them.

“Don’t wait!” is always the first thing that comes to mind.

If there’s a project you want to do.

If there’s something you want to write.

An artwork you want to produce.

Start taking photographs of local beauty spots.

Don’t wait.

It’s good guidance at any stage of life.

Now, don’t be a twat and imagine I’m suggesting they should start having sex really early (the reality is many children do but, of course, it’s not advisable). It’s why it’s so difficult to talk with people these days as everything’s so fucking extreme.

Start to row your own boat, that’s what I’m saying.