I’m a heavy smoker and I hate it, I’ve enjoyed smoking for many years but I hate the fact that I do it and even more so now that I have kids.
Smoking is a crap habit, it wastes my money, it ruins my health and it jeapordises the future of my family.
I have had relatives die of cancer, I have a history of high blood pressure and heart related bad stuff in my family… is it worth tempting fate?
I just went onto google to go and have a look at images of lung cancer and nearly puked up, it is a very scary thought to die a horrible painful death, it’s a worse thought for my wife and kids to have to watch that.
For years I’ve had a love affair with smoking, it has been my crutch and also my burden, it’s given me space to think and be creative but what benefit is creativity at the expense of death. Seems to me that there’s actually no point if you look at it honestly…
My three year old daughter is shit scared of the fact that I smoke and that it could kill me, I’m scared that it could kill me, I’m also scared of the fact that if I stop smoking I could die of lung cancer anyway so why bother.
Today I haven’t smoked, hearing my daughter on the phone asking if I had been smoking is a potent thing, I don’t want to let her down, Caroline hasn’t smoked since she got pregnant and she also nags me on a day to day basis.
It’s time for it to stop. I know I have uttered words to do with stopping before, I just hope that this time I manage to keep it going…
Don’t watch this video if you are of weak stomach but if you smoke, time to wake up and smell the coffee, we are not just killing ourselves but the people around us to…
How many times have you thought, “Wow… what a great idea, I must put that on my to-do list?” but have never followed through? I wrote a while back about maintaining focus and I guess this ties in a little bit and definitely follows on, this is the topic of “Pulling the trigger”.
After putting on The Highland Fling 2008 - The browser and beyond, I knew that I had to write a post about how wonderful the day was and how much it meant to me but I also knew I wanted to write something other than a carbon copy of what people were expecting.
Back in 2006 when I had the concept for doing the conference it scared the crap out of me, it was something that I had never done before, it was outside fo my comfort zone but I still went ahead and did it. I pulled the trigger!
Many times since I started working for myself I have had ideas rush past me and I have never acted upon them, I didn’t pull the trigger, I didn’t reap the benefits from pulling the trigger either. Although I don’t regret much in my life I do regret not having acted on a lot that has been on my mind, that said there is still a lot there which I do plan on acting on.
I was once told that an idea means nothing unless it has been put on paper, recorded in some shape or form otherwise it will be forgotten. Very wise words indeed. I envy designers and their fascinating mood boards, I miss the frenzy of a brainstorm in an agency environment and I wish I kept a digital scrap book to act as my idea sponge. I think it is really important to find a way of storing these waves of ideas that rush over us, a net for catching all the cool thoughts we have. I’d maintain a wiki but they bore me and to be honest I find them confusing as they grow arms and legs and then before you know it they have turned into a monster.
The Highland Fling was set up to help inspire people, to bring together like minded people and help them forge new ideas, relationships and plans for moving forward in what they do every day. I have encountered a wide variety of hurdles in doing the event but I have always done my best to get over them and move on. To do this I had to decide on what I wanted to do about it and pull the trigger!
Pulling the trigger is a final act, once you’ve done it you have commited (hopefully not an act of homicide), you’ve made a final decision, you’ve said to yourself that you are going to do something and you’ve crossed the line, there should be no turning back.
Perhaps this article is not really my follow up to the conference, I’ve been a very busy man over the past three years and I’m wondering if this is an introspective look at where and when I pull the trigger.
To be honest I think I have using a sub machine gun of late, I organised The Highland Fling whilst working on contract and dealing with my own clients at night, having house rennovations done and to top it all off I got married 3 weeks ago on Friday and I’m now down in London contracting.
Pulling the trigger? I think I just fired a cannon!
One thing that I’ve realised of late is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much, I fell into a trap where I felt I should be writing about certain things instead of just being myself. I presented myself with a mental hurdle which prevented me from writing about whatever came into my mind, free thoughts for the public.
I’m glad I’m over that hurdle now and look forward to pulling the trigger on a more regular basis.
The world is a crazy place, fast moving, high intensity, non stop action for all of us but do any of you actually know what is going on? I have been working away from home for the last 2 weeks and have had a little time to step back and take a look at the chaos that ensues around me, and chaos it is… especially in the big smoke that is London.
Blistering heat, commuting and agency life are some of the things that I have had to deal with on a day to day basis which is the complete opposite from normal. For the last 2 years I have sat in the cave that is my office, devising my plans for world domination and trying to make a bit of cold hard cash but now I am out in the open and taking deep breaths of life.
Fat men on motorcycles, pushers crying “BUY WEED”, hostile beggars, tens of thousands of flip flops, sweaty undergrounds full of nobody talking. A far cry from my cave!
So what is going on? I read 3 papers a day just now, I think they hand them out for free just to try and switch us on to things we don’t really care about, or are they trying to tune us into what they want us to think? A potent question. I like the concept in the film Pi where patterns can be found anywhere and that there is order to chaos, it’s all in the numbers.
The cool thing about the film is all the religious connotations when a Jewish mathematician gets involved as he is also looking for answers through numerology and number sequences in The Torah. It ties in with a book I read a long time ago called The Bible Code which is essentially all about the original Hebrew text version of the Bible being like a giant word search that contains everything that has been, is and could be.
I am not a very religious man but have enjoyed a good few conversations about the chaos that is life and where we are from, where we are going, what’s going on…
Ever since getting Sky HD, I have been watching loads of programs about the physical aspects of biblical topics, real life tie ins with what I have been told over the years. I find it fascinating to see evidence to substantiate these stories of great things, conquests, sacrifice and mystery.
I had a conversation the other day about all of this and Paulo put it in one of the most amazing ways I have ever heard. He placed a big box of wine on the table in between us and said “This is religion”. At first I thought he was taking the piss but then he went on to say that no matter which way it is looked at, nobody can ever have exactly the same perspective of it. Even when the box was turned so that I was looking at what he had been looking at and he vice versa, there was still no way that we were seeing what the other had seen. Such a simple but clear way of putting it.
We talked about the universe working on different frequencies and that we are just antennae picking up signals, we talked about M-Theory and Multiverses, I played devils advocate and brought up aliens… A really enjoyable and deep conversation, the type of conversation that I miss having now that I work so much and don’t really get out.
So, the rat race is on, I don’t think any of us really know what is going on, we all struggle day to day to get by, some of us believe what we are told, some of us think outside the box, some of us give up and kill ourselves, most of us strive for something, some of us couldn’t care less.
For me, I have a family to look after now, my life got difficult but having a family made it a lot more simple, I have focus, I have written before about maintaining focus which is another topic but it does cut out the crap in your life and allows you to just get on with it.
Unfortunately I consider myself to think outside the box, so although I think I know what is going on, I know I am probably wrong and that there is so much more out there to discover…
I’ll keep you informed should I find any answers but until then, if you think you know what is going on then please do share…
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