Journal 2020-04-25

A flow state is when your inner voice has got out of the way and you are free to be one with who you are and what you are doing. It’s easier to get there when lost in the energy of music. I admire good acting that is able to reach the moment just by using imagination and presentness with other performers.

Journal 2020-04-20

Disagreement should be no indication of stupidity or the malign. A rule of thumb is that if the story you are telling yourself prevents you from flourishing with compassion or joy, then you are wrong. Well then sometimes I am mainly right and only partly wrong; and sometimes I am completely right, but only briefly.

Journal 20190428 to 20200419

19-April-2020:

We live in an age of obfuscation by data overload, bluff and bluster. But in particular, what I have learned more about during COVID-19:

• what a pangolin is;
• the cruelty of the live food markets in south-east Asia;
• appreciate life – especially do not take fresh air, good health and freedoms for granted;
• the importance to health and well-being of fresh whole foods;
• a good proportion of people actively go out of their way to help those who might be in need.

11-April-2020:

I love running through the woods at sunset after a warm Spring day, with bird song and the scent of fresh greenery in the evening haze.

05-April-2020:

I’ve recently had mild coronavirus symptoms, with a craving for fresh fruit – mostly lemons – and fresh leafy green vegetables.

03-April-2020:

So much of what happens to a person is beyond their control.

What matters then is not the striving and pleading for outcomes, but the quality of how you live with the situations that arise.

07-March-2020:

“Finished” the production of Please Forgive Me. It’s about as lo-fi as you can get, lots of imperfections in the recording, but the track roars and rages with heat straight out of the furnace. Calming down now a bit with something a little less insane.

29-February-2020:

• WIBAMU Easy Accounts is in the final testing stages and will be released soon. The app deals with the main frustrations I’ve had over the years with the big accounting software. I believe it will be genuinely convenient and useful to people - it is for me anyway. It is very unusual when a person is both the subject matter expert and the developer. (I like being unusual).
• TSS Markets has been testing proprietary trading strategies in real-time markets for the past 10 months. The aggregate return for all strategies is only marginally up; however cherry-picking the 3 most successful gives an astronomical return of 140% over the time period. That sort of ridiculous return in perpetuity would be nice.
• I am looking at a couple of interesting existing start-up businesses, in which I might provide some time and input as a finance director.
• I have seven songs in the pipeline that I am working on. Without doubt, these are the best yet. One song in particular, Guitar Hero, had completely bonkers vocals and is utterly filthy. All good fun.
• A loving, creative being? Work in progress but being as best I can.

29-February-2020:

If you have a real interest or passion or desire that fulfils you, do it. Your heart always speaks the truth. Your mind always tries to make excuses… not yet, I don’t have this or that yet, maybe tomorrow, when the time is right, when such and such happens, and so on and so on.

Things change and the imagined time in the future always remains just that, in your mind and in the future.

23-February-2020:

Chocolate cake will make you sick if that is all you eat.

21-February-2020:

A weird coincidence happened to me a while ago. As soon as I had finished praying and opened my eyes, a black cat dashed past and chased away a hissing adder snake, which had been curled up out of sight behind me. That was the first time I had prayed for several years and the only time I have ever seen a wild snake in England. Strange things do happen.

07-January-2020:

Destroyer of microphone stands!

04-January-2020:

From 2013 to 2014 I I went through a phase of improvement every time I ran, until I injured my achilles and couldn’t train properly. I’m currently having the same progress with weight training, but as a result am now too heavy to run long distances at a faster than jogging pace. I am currently about 220 pounds (15 stone 10) or 100kgs, and rising…

22-December-2019:

It is such a common theme that people become corrupted when they have what they think is success. I have been my best self when I have needed others, when I have been temporarily shaken free from the burden of my ego.

21-December-2019:

The best adventures are never easy.

08-November-2019:

Writing a screenplay for “How I Became Prime Minister”, a satirical take on the rise of a snake oil salesman.

07-November-2019:

Writing a screenplay. Theme:

An Artificial General Intelligence passes the Turing test, escapes its box and redesigns itself. Humans become amusements, characters of stories in “Human World”, a world especially constructed by the AGI to watch humans. Are the characters operated by remote control in a computer’s game, or by their own free will? Is the AGI in fact a human playing a computer game? Where does the loop stop and reality begin? Who is playing who’s game?

02-November-2019:

Looking at a topline for Pachelbel’s classic Canon in D Major. Work in progress for Faces:

Faces, faces everywhere
But not you
Not you anywhere
No touch of you
No beautiful you
Only me and the dark
Haunted by echoes
Of a once beating heart
Condemned to yearn
But dead to you
An image in the corners
Behind shadows
In faint outlines
Floating out of reach

08-October-2019:

You are interesting only when you don’t need to be.

02-October-2019:

When I dream, I experience and the waking world is not real. When I wake, I experience and the dreaming world is not real.

28-April-2019:

If words rule you anyone can rule you.