Journal 2021-11-25

My story so far is partly one of failing at everything, but doing just about enough at the last moment to scrape over the line. As the years ticked by, I eventually crawled a fair way. I have no regrets or pride, just bemusement.

Random Thoughts:

It is satisfying to warm up in front of a fire after numbing coldness.

Why don’t people read audiobooks on camera with autocue? Listening is great, but it would be nice to have an option to see the complete performance. Reading as a spectacle used to be a thing, e.g. Charles Dickens and his grand tours.

DIY teaches: know thy tools.

I love and hate ambiguity.

[Insert Here] is overrated.

Journal 2021-11-13

To be open with yourself and the world, and not concerned with how that is perceived, is freedom from a prison of mental constructions; however there is a lack of empathy, poetry and charm in being blunt with people, or saying anything that comes to mind. The happier circumstance is to connect beyond words.

Random Thoughts:

AI assistants combined with augmented/virtual reality will transform human experience. Artists could create paintings digitally and 3D print the paintings into the physical world, automating the textured brushstrokes with the help of AI. Exact textured cloning of existing masterpiece paintings would be available as home printouts.

I’ve met some real idiots in my time, most of whom were in the mirror.

Journal 2021-11-12

I’m writing the flow of what comes into the imagination, without constraints or thinking too hard about how its coherence and construction. After a while of doing this each day, it amounts to a body of work I can then review, edit and refine. I’m hoping to finish a first draft by the end of this month.

Random Thoughts:

I like to sit in front of a fire and read/write.

RAW – Read And Write. 

There is always a way, even though you don’t see it at the moment. Turn around and look again.

I’ve noticed that the last few problems I’ve had to deal with have resulted in upgrades to skills, or gaining knowledge I didn’t have before.

Journal 2021-11-11

My engine is fuelled by plants, which means the system is cleaned, rather than clogged up with rotting flesh.

There is an irony when people dictate the morality of others, while actively supporting the meat trade. The single biggest thing that most people can do to make a positive change in the world is to stop eating animals, so as to help end the mechanised suffering we perpetrate on other creatures and the planet.

Journal 2021-11-07

Fortunate people often come up with stories and beliefs that justify their own lofty positions in life, looking down on the suffering they could otherwise do something about.

If you have a lot of surplus money, it is your responsibility to spend it well, otherwise you are squandering those resources and other people’s lives. Andrew Carnegie’s quote from a prior era is a bit harsh, but has some truth to it: “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

As Carnegie discovered, there can be a lot of personal fulfilment in spending well.

Random Thoughts: 

It is liberating to say what you think and feel, not beholden to what other people say you should think and feel – or to what you think they want to hear.

I wasn’t at my best in an institutionalised setting.

Journal 2021-11-04

Experience something.

Initial feeling happens.

Mind overrides and reasons a recommended alternative.

Go back and revisit the feeling.

What is the feeling telling you?

There is probably more evaluation in that feeling than the clumsy thought cogs, which are usually powered by fear.

Random Thoughts:

What is the definition of someone who believes that religious texts were written by fallible men, not God – but who has a belief in a transcendent divinity that inspires the human heart?

Hobbies include: staring at my phone.

Journal 2021-11-03

Wanting to know how everything works can be exhausting, distracting, and fascinating.

Random Thoughts:

Live today before you decay.

If you find meaning in your job then working is living.

10,000 years ago or so, humans had only wooden and stone tools; and were foraging or hunting each day like any other creature on this planet.

Humans first navigated the globe about 1,000 years ago, with the Vikings probably the first to cross the Atlantic in either direction, reaching Newfoundland for certain in 1021 AD.

We are currently experiencing the non-naissance period of the arts.

A painting is not the brushstrokes.

Flies

Love desecrates the strangeness.

We pray under crosses, owned by Man

and grovel to bosses, slaves to a plan:

Trapped in the web, of their endless lies,

to be spun from a thread

and eaten like flies.

Hamlet - modern adaptation

[Jack knocks on the door].
JOHN: Who is it?
JACK: The question is, my friend: is it better to be alive or dead?
JOHN: Is it nobler to suffer what luck throws at you, or to fight against all those troubles and end them?
JACK: To die is to sleep – a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life gives us.
JOHN: That’s an achievement I wish for. To die, to sleep – to sleep … maybe to dream. Ah! But there’s the catch! In death’s sleep who knows what kind of dreams might come, when we go there. It must make us pause. This is the tragedy that stretches out our sufferings for so long!
JACK: Who would put up with all life’s countless humiliations and abuses – the unfairness and injustice – when you could simply pick up the knife and call it quits?
[A knife is slid on the ground under the cubicle door].
JACK: Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life?
JOHN: Unless they were afraid of something after death – the undiscovered country from which no visitor returns – that gives no answers and makes us stick to the evils we know, rather than rush off to find other ones we don’t? Fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural impulse for action is lost in thought.
[John gets up and opens the cubicle door. No one is there].

Journal 2021-10-29

To do priority list:

1. Finish the novel.
2. Finish developing the App prototype (MVP).
3. New trading algorithms released.
4. Film the screenplays and other performances.
5. Claim my free pensioner’s bus pass.

All part of a 3 year plan (with the exception of point 5).

Random Thoughts:

I’m now less keen on the phrase “so meta”.

Journal 2021-10-23

Thoughts can cause distortions and distress. Accumulated thoughts can cause a state of mind that seems impossible to escape.

The power that things and situations have over you disappears with the absence of thought.

You can’t think your way out of thinking.

To try is to think. To be is to live.

Journal 2021-10-16

The seven standalone short stories are: The Outer View, Night Fire, All The World’s A Stage, Human World, How I Became Prime Minister, Doomsday 1066, The Viewer. A combined version ties them together as a novel.

Each of the seven short stories have an adapted screen time of about 45 minutes. And they are all connected. The first two could be parts of the same story.

Journal 2021-10-13

I’ve gone through phases of mainly focusing on, in turn: music, songwriting, singing, and artworks. The next up is writing, then performing what I have written. None of the activities are switched-off. It’s just I start to feel pulled more in a different direction.

Random Thoughts:

I’m winning at being slow.

Journal 2021-10-12

Skills and knowledge can now be learnt at any point in life because the resources are openly accessible. What is truly valuable is a learning that inspires the imagination to create rather than repeat.

Random Thoughts:

Artists observe. Intense feelings of empathy are welcome but lead only to misery if overwhelming.

I don’t think life is about the number of points scored, or marks totalled on both sides of a ledger.

Reliving memories of things going wrong can cause worry when presented with a similar situation. It is better to have learned, so the replay isn’t necessary.

Journal 2021-10-11

Why do answerers never say why “that’s a great question” is so great? I also would like to know why other questions aren’t that marvellous, with details of the grade achieved, percentile scored, and marks out of ten for effort ;)

Journal 2021-10-10

Sunday is my favourite day of the week, but I wouldn’t want every day to be Sunday.

Saturday is when I can work a full day on what interests me most. I plan no work on a Sunday, but ironically this can be my most productive day because it’s usually when the best thoughts and feelings occur.

Random Thoughts:

Less than one workout per week generally sees a deterioration in fitness or strength. Once a week is the minimum to maintain athleticism in the short-term; twice has marginal improvements; three to four times sees consistent gains; more than four has diminishing benefits.

In One Billion Years

Humans came along for the ride at the halfway point between life beginning on earth, about 4 billion years ago, and life ending in another 4 billion years, with the melting of the planet’s surface under an intensifying sun. Science fiction and other human projections are typically set in the myopic near future of at most a few thousand years – well how about an amount that is actually noticeable in the life of earth, say in one billion years?

Links

I’m at ReallyBobster on the main platforms. The complete list of my links is here: Links

Journal 2021-10-07

Sonnet 18 sounds great when repeated in a vocal melody with Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.

Random Thoughts:

It is more fulfilling to create than consume.

Journal 2021-10-01

Tip: The French in particular love it if, when visiting their country, you speak English at them and expect to be understood. Try also repeating yourself more slowly and loudly, as they might not have heard the first time.

Random Thoughts:

Add depth to 2D habits.

Who you choose to spend your time with is the most important decision you can make.

Getting what you want can be the worst thing ever to happen to you. Not getting what you want can be the best thing ever to happen to you. And vice versa.