However the concept of luck has changed. Alain de Botton writes in Status Anxiety:

“As man’s power to control and predict the behaviour of his environment has developed, so the concept of luck or of guardian deities has lost its potency.”

As some of us realised it’s probably best not to believe in a goddess who clearly has trouble getting dressed in the morning, and so the concept of luck moved from being prescriptive to descriptive.

In the descriptive sense of the word, luck is used to describe a situation where a person is affected by a random event over which they have no control. The effect of the event can be good or bad depending on the intention of the person.

When it comes to talking about events it’s helpful to borrow an idea from risk assessment. We can define events in terms of being:

• Deterministic - an event which can be predicted time and time again as the process is exact e.g. measuring the length of a table.

• Random - an event which cannot be predicted usually because the process is unknown or inexact e.g. rolling a dice.

When it comes to random events it makes sense that some people will encounter more than others throughout their life, and we could say they are luckier. Or in the case of Tsutomu Yamaguchi extremely unluckier:

On the 6th of August 1945 Tsutomu Yamaguchi had finished a business trip and was preparing to leave Hiroshima. At 8:15, whilst Yamaguchi was walking to the Mitsubishi Shipyard, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb 3 km away.

Yamaguchi on waking up after the initial explosion:

“When the noise and the blast had subsided I saw a huge mushroom-shaped pillar of fire rising up high into the sky. It was like a tornado, although it didn’t move, but it rose and spread out horizontally at the top. There was prismatic light, which was changing in a complicated rhythm, like the patterns of a kaleidoscope. The first thing I did was to check that I still had my legs and whether I could move them. I thought, ‘If I stay here, I’ll die.’”

Skip back to May 28th - a Target Committee led by Major General Groves Jr was asked to nominate specific targets for bombing. They nominated five targets: Kokura, Hiroshima, Yokohama, Niigata and Kyoto.

However on July 25th Kyoto was removed from the list. In the words of U.S. Army Intelligence Service officer Edwin O. Reischauer:

“The only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.”

You could say that the people of Kyoto were extremely lucky not to be targeted. Their fate was firmly in the control of President Truman who upheld Stimson’s decision.

Unfortunately for Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto. On the 9th of August, three days after the Hiroshima bomb, Yamaguchi was back in his hometown of Nagasaki. After being treated for severe burns he reported to his company director:

“Well, the director was angry. … He said: ‘A single bomb can’t destroy a whole city! You’ve obviously been badly injured, and I think you’ve gone a little mad.’ At that moment, outside the window, I saw another flash and the whole office, everything in it, was blown over.”

An inexact process created an unpredictable outcome which meant Yamaguchi was in the wrong place at the wrong time twice. Assuming he was intent on not being hurt when he went to work those days, he was on the end of some extremely bad luck.

Make your own luck

As random as luck is we humans don’t like to give up control. Alain de Botton continues:

“While it is granted that luck maintains a theoretical role in shaping the course of careers, the evaluation of people proceeds, in practical terms, as if they could fairly be held responsible for their biographies.”

This begs the question - can we make our own luck? Martini seem to think we can:

In the video the ‘successful’ version of this chap is being confident and impulsive. He takes a chance and it pays off (I’m not sure if the women feel that way). Of course it’s marketing, so Martini aren’t going to show him tripping over whilst running for the car.

Luck is an attitude. You have to be in it to win it. Winner’s make their own luck. The harder I work, the luckier I get. And to quote Randy Pausch:

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

All these phrases are well intentioned and are basically saying that if we put enough work in toward a particular goal, we can try to move events from being mostly random to being mostly deterministic. To quote Risk Quantification by Condamin, Louisot and Naïm:

“Knowledge is the reduction of uncertainty - when we gain a better understanding of a phenomenon, the random part of the outcome decreases compared to the deterministic part.”

However we still can’t write off random events and luck. A nice example from Risk Quantification is that of calculating risk of a machinist:

“When working with a specific device or machine, the possibility of a misuse leading to an accident depends both on the experience of the user and on the complexity of the device. ‘Experience’ and ‘complexity’ are the key drivers for this risk. However, these drivers are not sufficient to create a deterministic model. If we know the user is ‘experienced’ and the machine ‘simple’, this does not mean there is no risk at all. Several other factors can interfere: the user may be tired, the machine may not have been reset properly by the previous user, etc. The occurrence of risk is still a random event, but the probability of this event depends on the drivers.”

By working to turn an event from being mostly random to mostly deterministic we’re relying less on luck for a successful outcome. In fact the more work we put in to make the event deterministic the more a successful outcome is certain and an unsuccessful outcome would be unlucky!

Luck and talent

A great example of how luck plays a part in success is through ‘regression to the mean’. This is the phenomenon whereby if a variable is extreme on its first measurement it will be closer to the average on the second measurement, regardless of any causal explanation. It’s also the reason I’ve not been able to replicate a top ten place in the addictive snake game slither.io and why it’s unlikely that Leicester City Football Club will win the Premiership again next year (they won this year’s with odds of 5000/1).

Daniel Kahneman writes about regression to the mean encountered in a skiing competition in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow:

“Each athlete has two jumps in the event, and the results are combined for the final score. I was startled to hear the sportscaster’s comments while athletes were preparing for their second jump ‘Norway had a great first jump; he will be tense, hoping to protect his lead and will probably do worse’. The commentator had obviously detected regression to the mean and had invented a causal story for which there was no evidence. The story itself could even be true. Or perhaps not. The point to remember is that the change from the first to the second jump does not need a causal explanation. It’s a mathematically inevitable consequence of the fact that luck played a role in the outcome of the first jump.”

As Kahneman puts it:

Success = talent + luck
Great Success = a little more talent + a lot of luck

People aren’t always willing to accept that good luck might have played a part in their success which is understandable as they might feel it undermines the work they’ve put into whatever they are trying to achieve.

Kahneman has another example where he looks into the success of mutual funds.

“The successful funds in any given year are mostly lucky; they have a good roll of the dice. There is general agreement among researchers that nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not–and few of them do–are playing a game of chance.”

Kahneman studied the investment outcomes of 25 anonymous wealth advisers when he spoke at their firm. He was prepared to find a weak existence of persistent of skill but was surprised to find that there was no existence. In this case Success = Luck. Understandably the advisers refused to believe it.

“The adviser's own experience of exercising careful judgement on complex problems was far more compelling to them than an obscure statistical fact. When we were done, one of the executives told me with a trace of defensiveness, ‘I have done very well for the the firm and no one can take that away from me.’”

The case for luck

Have you ever thought that there was a particular decade of music from which the majority of songs were brilliant? With me it would be the 80s and I didn’t even grow up with that music so I can’t play the nostalgia card. I have an 80s playlist on which I would be hard pressed to find a rubbish song. Where as with today’s music (excuse me whilst I put on my pipe and slippers) there’s loads of rubbish being played on the radio.

The problem is that I’m succumbing to survivorship bias. There are actually plenty of terrible songs made in the 80’s. Just look at this:

The 80s may have even been the most boring recent decade for music. However as new generations are presented with new music, the worst songs from the previous generation get faded out of existence and the popular songs survive. They end up getting added to an 80s hits playlist which I end up listening to, succumb to survivorship bias and mistakenly think that the playlist is a representative sample of all 80s music.

What’s this got do with luck? I hear you ask (get on with it). Well survivorship bias can be found in many things we analyse from books to machinery, business and people! When we look for stories of people to aspire to and inspire us, we won’t be looking for the stories of people failing. We look to the stories of success and that's what we get fed through media, interviews, documentaries, biographies and books bestowing advice.

By ignoring the people who worked hard, haven’t had good luck and have not been successful we begin to realise that although our heroes may have done something special they were also pretty lucky. By acknowledging luck in success it helps ‘ground’ the people we aspire to and make our beliefs a little more realistic. When we set out to succeed, the chance of failure due to events out of control needs to be a possibility.

Luck also counteracts the downsides of Meritocracy. This is basically the belief that a person’s success, status and power is defined by how talented they are rather than their class or privilege. With a meritocracy, instead of passing power from parent to child, the power is passed to the most able and talented person. By promoting equal opportunity for education anyone can succeed as long as they work hard at improving their talent. Not only that but their success will be deserved unlike those who gain success through inheritance.

If you need confirmation that this system works just have a look in the biography section of your local bookshop. You’ll find many rag to riches stories of people knuckling down, defying the odds and succeeding, or maybe that’s just survivorship bias?

Alain De Botton talks about the problem with Meritocracy:

“If the successful merited their success, it necessarily followed that the failures had to merit their failure. In a meritocratic age, justice appeared to enter into the distribution of poverty as well as wealth. Low status came to seem not merely regrettable, but also deserved.”

Meritocracy might work in a perfect world where Success = Talent but this isn’t the case.

Take the story of Fella, a student living in poverty in Oklahoma who wanted to become a doctor, but was unable to get a scholarship to fund first-rate college education. Katherine Boo writes:

"Fella was an A student at a good math-and-science high school, and a state champion in church oratory. Corean [his mother] had hoped that his achievement would bring him scholarships and a first-rate college education. But as Pastor Young, a former high-school basketball player, observed from his pulpit, colleges recruit inner-city boys with athletic talent, not inner-city boys with good grades. (The vast majority of black students at selective colleges are from middle- or upper-class families.) Fella wasn’t big enough to be a serious college football player. ‘It’s fun, I like it,’ he said. ‘But the human brain, the science of it—that’s what amazes me.’”

Fella ended up getting a job in a warehouse and stayed in Oklahoma to attend college.

Without luck Fella failed to get a scholarship because he wasn’t talented enough - therefore he deserves his failure. Why should he be helped? Fella even believes this:

“I don’t know about any colleges, really," Fella said, “though if I don’t get scholarships I can’t blame anyone but me. They say the money’s out there. I just can’t say for sure where it is.”

With luck in the equation we realise that Fella was unlucky to have been born into poverty and that he doesn’t deserve what happened to him. With this view people who are in a position to help might be more likely to.

Perspective

Luck is an important factor of success. It changes the way we view people’s achievements and our own achievements. It affects the way we view people’s status and our desire to help them.

I don’t think we can create our own luck. I think we can put ourselves in a position to experience more random events (over which we have no control) and which generate both good and bad outcomes. We can experience more luck.

Or we can work towards something to make it more certain. We can make our own certainty.

But luck is as much a ‘thing’ as the word green. It exists as a noun to describe random chance over which we have no control. However we do control how we deal with the unpredictable and much of that is down to perspective.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi may be one of the unluckiest people - a combined total of 109,000 - 226,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. However, maybe Yamaguchi was extremely lucky to have survived and lived to a ripe old age of 93.

The great thing about to-do and check lists is that, not only can you pretend you’re working for NASA (I recommend a spiral bound notebook and walking around as if under low gravity), but they also keep your Procrastination Monkey occupied (they help you focus).

It was David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) book which sent me tumbling and, from that point on, no to-do list would be complete without an inbox, projects, subtasks and checklists. Oh, and it needed to be cross platform so I could use it on OSX, Windows and Android. I had about as much chance of finding the perfect to-do list as I would have finding a needle in a haystack whilst the haystack was on fire. Toasty.

Although I’m a fan of writing things down to help me remember (just take a look at my notebooks), I prefer something of the digital variety to track my tasks. I tried Remember The Milk and Wunderlist (no subtasks at the time), Things (perfect but not cross platform), NirvarnaHQ (I can’t even remember why I gave this up) and Doit.im (everything I needed but it didn’t feel nice to use). Eventually, 6 years after I read the book, Todoist and Google Keep were built.

Todoist was perfect - it embraced GTD, felt well built and was cross platform. I eagerly started using it for work. Around the same time we started using a Kanban board to keep track of our tasks. My tasks were all on this board. Gradually I forgot to open my perfect GTD app in the morning. After all that time I had no need for it.

On the other hand I was actively using Google Keep for my personal to-do list. I used one card as an Inbox and transferred 3 tasks across to a new card each day. It was quite satisfying keeping the completed cards around but transferring tasks was a pain, and at the time there was no iPad app.

I had reached peak rabbit hole. Just like I have with this analogy. Woe is me!

Hello Trello

We had used Trello at work in the spirit of throwing everything against a wall to see if anything would stick. Trello made a satisfying ‘splat’ in our initial enthusiasm but began a sad, smeary journey down the figurative wall and was eventually ignored because no one wanted to clean it up. I was a bit sceptical to say the least. However, Trello aced my Google Keep system: it was cross-platform, the tasks (represented as cards) had checklists, comments and labels, they could easily be moved from column to column or board to board. Trello ended up being a joy to use.

At first I created a ‘Do’ board and set up 3 columns: Inbox, Today and Done.

I then went on to create a set of Feeder Boards which would keep track of projects and similar tasks. These would feed into the Do board. I also created a set of rules to fine tune the system.

Feeder boards

As with any to-do list system, adding all the tasks into one Inbox means it can get too long to manage. Breaking the tasks into their own boards based around themes helped make the system more manageable and meant they could have their own rules. I’m thinking about creating one for spring cleaning… joy.

Want

It only took 32 years for me to realise that I should probably expand my horizons past cheese and beer, sit down and have a think about what I really want from life. So that’s what I did. I wrote 2 lists which went on to fill the inbox of my Want Trello board:

• Want (kids, more time with parents, more independence) - I felt these in my gut.
• Maybe (marriage, travel, garden) - A nice-to-have but not a priority.

After reading Paul Graham’s article The Top of My Todo List, I realised my Want board didn’t look corny enough so I decided to label some of the cards as Dreams (unfortunately Trello does not have rainbow labels or cloud shape cards).

If I catch myself daydreaming about a particular item on the board I mark the card with a label. For instance, I sometimes catch myself thinking about sitting on a porch looking out at the starry night sky or running a pizza joint. By adding these to the board and labelling them I’m, at the very least, giving myself a chance to investigate them.

The Want board also has discover and review columns. I also try to write ideas on how to get ‘what I want’ sooner and what the value of the task is.

Boost

Brace yourself for something which sounds like it’s fallen off the back of a self-help wagon: in the spirit of the “lean in” and “celebrate my achievements” parts of my Life Philosophy (I just shuddered a little bit), I wanted to encourage myself to try things which might make me feel uncomfortable to help boost my confidence.

The Boost board would also double up as a place to keep track of my achievements, however small. Without this board I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have donated blood for the first time, gone on a couple of long bike rides, handed in my notice at work or fixed a hole in my Chinos instead of buying a new pair. Does looking over these small achievements make me feel invincible in the face of anxiety? Hell no, but it’s worth a try.

Job

I created this board to investigate different careers. If anything takes my fancy, no matter how random, I add a new card to this board. I then spend an hour researching that career and will stick it either in a Maybe column (for further research down the line) or Nope. I write on each card why I do or do not want to do this particular career for future reference.

A nice example of this board working is when I investigated being a paramedic. I’m happy to admit that intense pressure, broken bones, blood and taking care of drunk people are not my cup of tea. In the Nope column that card went, but not without giving me the idea to do a first aid course. I stuck that idea in my Boost board and got it done last year.

Rules

The more I’ve been using this system, the more I’ve realised it needs some fine tuning and these rules tend to help.

Limits

It can be disheartening if it doesn’t look like you’re getting through many tasks. I set an arbitrary limit of 20 on the inbox. If I want to add a new task then I have to remove another.

I also added a maximum of 2 tasks to the Doing column to be done that day (I can do more if I get the first 2 complete). I tried upping this limit to 4 but I wasn’t getting through the task after a full day of work and it would make me anxious and grouchy in the evenings.

Review

I have a Review repeating task, which sits at the bottom of the Do inbox, and gradually moves up as I clear it. Once the Review task is at the top I review all the Feeder Boards and fill up the Do inbox with new tasks, then move the Review back to the bottom.

Repeating tasks

I have a couple of a repeating tasks, like Re-organise, which always stay in the inbox and have their own label. When a repeater hits the top of the inbox, I’ll duplicate the new card in the Today column and move the repeater to the bottom.

Focus on the value

I found that by having a reminder why I was doing a particular task would help jump start me into doing it. So I try to add the value of the task into the description. This is a great time for using the 5 Whys technique if I’m not sure.

Discover

A couple of the Feeder Boards have a Discover column. This is for large tasks which need research. When a task moves into the Discover column, I create a new Discover task in the Do board. Once that Discover task is done, I will have a set of subtasks I can add to the original card. The original card moves from Discover column into the Doing column and I add the first subtask to the Do Inbox - if there is space during the review phase.

Month off

A new idea I’m trying is to take a month off every fourth month in a year, and clear out my inbox. Once in a while it’s nice not to be beholden to the to-do list. I found that I would have the occasional month of low productivity in which I would just ignore my list and this made me feel guilty. So it made sense to give myself a break!

Do it

I've slowly dragged myself out the procrastination hole and I'm pretty happy with my current to-do list system. It’s not perfect, the names of the boards are pretty terrible, but I’m happy to end my search with Trello and keep on tweaking. Well … that is until David Allen writes GTD 2: The Return of the Repeating Task.

What philosophy lacks in its ability to generate an income it makes up by helping people find fulfillment, cope with grief or even to decide whether they should buy a new pair of shoes. Philosophy is there for when you put down your shovel and wonder why you’re digging the hole.

I first read about the idea of a ‘philosophy for life’ in William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life. Up until then the image of philosophy I held in my mind was that of stuffy old men pondering the futility of our existence. Imagine my surprise in finding out that Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (or more famously that old guy who dies in Gladiator) had used the same philosophy to guide him through life as William Irvine had written about in his book.

Stoicism

This particular branch of philosophy is called Stoicism. The Stoics were guided by the following concepts:

In Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations he often writes about ‘living in accordance with nature’. There are things which are part of nature - life, death, illness, other people’s opinions, the fact we age or our sexual preference - over which have no control.

“Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they ”

If we focus on being virtuous, doing good, putting the world in order as best we can (which is something we can control) then we don’t need to worry about what people think of us as we do it. Do you think a bee would care about your opinion on it’s honey making skills? By accepting the parts of nature we can’t control we can reduce anxiety and find tranquility.

Stoics prefer to embrace rather than ignore the fact that bad things will happen to us. It’s not nice to think about loved ones dying but it’s going to happen at some point. You can either ignore it and wonder how the time you could have spent with them slipped through your fingers or you can acknowledge and do something about it. By spending a little time thinking about what we could lose we can learn to be grateful for what we have got. This type of negative visualisation is only to be done occasionally and without worry. It encourages us to enjoy lifes pleasures but not be attached to them.

“After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, [the Stoic] will go on to express his delight in even having a glass.”

Something a little different

If Stoicism doesn’t sound your cup of tea then there are plenty more we can learn from other Greek philosophers. These videos from the School of Life will do a better job of explaining them than I could so give them a whirl!

Plato

Aristotle

Epicurus

What philosophers have in common is that they study life and provide feedback on how we can better deal with it. I believe there are plenty of people doing this today and modern philosophy can be found in many places if you look for it:

Nic Marks set out to discover what made people happy and what would increase their wellbeing. He found 5 common things people could do:

1. Connect
2. Stay Active
3. Notice
4. Give
5. Keep Learning

Stephen Covey created the 7 Habits of highly effective people.

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, and then to be understood
6. Synergise…
7. Sharpen the saw

Even something as simple as the poem ‘Dust if You Must’ by Rose Milligan can provide us with philosophical guidance:

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

I was going to get up and clean the house but now I’m going to stick with writing this blog post. Thanks Rose.

Creating your own life philosophy

A life philosophy is basically a set of techniques and advice to guide you through life and as such you can form your own. Have a think about a set of values or principles you could use, write them down and stick them in your wallet. If you find yourself needing a bit of guidance pull out your list and go with it. Here are mine - they are tailored to my personality which is kind of the point:

1. Know yourself - Thanks Plato! I’m only just beginning to realise how important this is. You need to know the foundations you are building on.
2. Keep it simple - Thanks Kelly Johnson! Most things work best when they are kept simple.
3. Lean in - Thanks Aaron Schwartz! Basically if you’re in an uncomfortable situation don’t shrink away but tackle it with enthusiasm and energy.
4. Be independent - I’ve lived a sheltered life and rely on other people quite a bit. This is to encourage me to reach out by myself more often.
5. Be social - Staying in touch and having healthy relationships is incredibly important. As someone who finds socialising hard and not that fun but wants to be part of the conversation the more practice I get at this the better.
6. Celebrate my achievements - Thanks Lara Hogan. I owe this one to the donut manifesto. For some reason I crave the approval and praise of others. So I feel like I need to look to myself for praise rather than other people.
7. Treat your body well - The longer I can keep my body from degrading the longer I can keep doing the things I like to do.
8. Find virtue - Thanks Marcus! If I know I’m doing something of value then I don’t need to worry about what other people think. For example I would worry a heck of a lot over how long I was taking to code and what other people thought about that. Focusing on doing a good job and doing the right thing would ease the anxiety a little.
9. Take the risk - I’m not much of a risk taker and I should do a little bit more. You know, like quitting a job I’m not enjoying.
10. Creation over consumption - I sure do love to consume. Books, TV, games and food. But these are rarely the things I imagine myself doing. I usually think about playing guitar, writing or gardening. This is a reminder to try to prioritise creation over consumption.

I have used these principles to help make some big decisions recently but I don’t follow them all the time. In the spirit of keeping it simple I wanted to boil down my values and principles further into a really simple life philosophy. I’ve read a lot about life and happiness, and these themes kept cropping up:

1. Health - First and foremost look after your health so you can keep doing what you like for longer. You can’t follow the next two principles well if you’re ill or dead.
2. Social - This is extremely important for keeping you happy and healthy for longer.
3. Do - Once you’ve got the other two principles sorted try to fill your time by doing the things you really want to do. Work out what you want from life and pursue it.

It’s not very catchy but it makes sense to me and is easier to remember. I hope this inspires you to have a think about what you would include in your own life philosophy.

“As surgeons keep their lancets and scalpels always at hand for the sudden demands of their craft, so keep your principles constantly in readiness for the understanding of both human and divine.”

I remember cycling to my then girlfriend’s house. It was the furthest I had ever cycled. It was a fresh, bright morning and quite invigorating. In my backpack was a gift-wrapped box which, when opened, would bounce up little plastic butterflies. Handiscraft which would have made Blue Peter proud. I also had a standard issue rose or two. I then proceeded to sit and wait outside my girlfriend's bedroom window until she opened the curtains (with some gentle nudging from me via text) until: SURPRISE!

Many years down the line I remember opening a present from my then girlfriend: a beautiful wooden-sculpted statue of two people in an embrace. “What a lovely, thoughtful present.” I would have thought to myself if I wasn’t a dick at the time. “Okay… well this is nice but you’re going to get me something I wanted, right?” is what I actually thought. As we walked around that day I steered us off towards GAME.

After grand gestures turned to meals out, which turned to meals in, which turned to a bland exchange of presents - Valentines had become an excuse to treat myself.

I don’t know at what point I was able to take a step back and see how I had gone from the romantic to the capitalistic end of the scale, but at that point I put on my Angry Cynic Hat, climbed upon my high horse and decided that Valentine’s was load of tripe.

Upon my high horse (Terry is quite a tall horse) I could see that society had created the expectation that on the 14th of February, mostly men should surprise women, and the expectation that mostly women should be expectant of a surprise from men (society is confused in how LGBT couples fit into this expectation so chooses to ignore them). Upon my high horse I sat and wondered if anyone knew why we did this. Was it the remnants of a mating display? Whilst animals are watching their nature programs do they think the male of the human species has it easy when they can just roll up to a petrol station and buy some flowers to attract a female? The peacock spider must be livid.

Saint Valentine’s Day began as a religious celebration to honour the roman saint Valentinus. One of the most popular martyrdom stories created about him told how he would marry soldiers who were forbidden to marry, and also how he healed the daughter of his jailer. There are also records of romantic poems being sent throughout the middle ages:

Your desert can none other deserve,
Which is in my remembrance both day and night.
Before all creatures I you love and serve
While in this world I have strength and might.

Valentine’s, as we know, became really popular in the 1700’s when some bright spark realised that instead of people coming up with their own poems, or getting them from the The Young Man's Valentine Writer, they could just mass produce them on cards. Jump ahead a couple of centuries and the cold hands of capitalism got its hands around Valentine’s neck and now £1.9 billion is spent on chocolates, flowers and plastic handcuffs. Valentine’s moved from religious to romance, to forced romance with a light sprinkling of tat. Personalised Marmite jars anyone? To me, Valentine’s conjures up images of dimly lit Chinese restaurants with sickly pink tablecloths, tea lights and roses on the table.

The worst thing about Valentine’s (if you think my high horse is tall you should see the height of my ‘Angry Cynic Hat’) is that there’s something pathetic about being told by other people when you should be romantic and how you should do it. Society has created the equivalent to a recommended yearly allowance of romance and it’s sad to hear conversations about people being in trouble for not treating their partner on the 14th. I can’t think of anything more romantic than being romantic on any other day than Valentine’s day.

It’s not much better being single. You’re constantly bombarded with sickly marketing, pointless Valentine themed products and ranty blog posts, like this one, reminding you of your terrible burden. Luckily South Korea has you covered, on Black Day (April the 14th) if you are unfortunate enough not to receive chocolate on February 14th or March the 14th (depending if you are man or woman) then you are shepherded by the gentle push of marketing to go out and wallow in your singledom by wearing black and eating black food.

So how can we make Valentine’s day better? Well for a start we can give Cupid the cold shoulder. He’s basically the personification of a date rape drug - shooting his arrows and forcing people to be in love without their consent! Terry Pratchett had the right idea: the only way to kill a god is to stop believing in them and the same probably applies to Cupid and his cronies.

On a more serious note, we have to look at where we get ideas for romance. It has to be media and marketing which set our expectations. Why else can we only declare love for each other in the pissing rain / at the airport / at a press conference after a string of mishaps set-up by Richard Curtis - the puppet master of love? Love and romance isn’t something we really share or talk about in everyday conversations. That’s because romance is something more than a mating display. Romance is being nice to someone, giving something or helping someone. It’s a way of saying I see you and I know you. Romance is personal.

In Amanda Palmer’s book, ‘The Art of Asking’, she tells the story of her father-in-law’s death. Amanda wasn’t able to console her husband as they were both in different countries and busy with tours. She had this thing where she liked him to say words like tomato, banana and schedule in his ‘stupid english accent’. So she asked her assistant, who was in the same country as her husband, to be the last person in the queue at his book signing. Her assistant proceeded to place a tomato, banana, schedule on the table and received a heartfelt smile. This blows plastic handcuffs and a dodgy dinner date out of the water. If romance is dead, it is because society has beaten the heart out of it.

Add to that a sprinkling of inspiring and motivational creative media spread through our favourite social networks. I’m looking at you Jason Silva:

“That is why love simultaneously fills us with melancholy, that’s why sometimes I feel nostalgic over something I haven’t lost yet, because I see it’s transience.”

Woah! That was like getting hit in the face with a wet fish of motivation.

Add to that a dash of inspirational advice passed through generations. I’m looking at you Marcus Aurelius:

“How small a fraction of all the measureless infinity of time is allotted to each one of us; an instant, and it vanishes into eternity.”

Never has the Arrow of Time weighed so heavy on our shoulders and, bless us, humanity has tried to come with it’s own advice to lift the burden: “Follow your passion.” and “Do what you love.”.

Do what you love

Four simple words to sum up what seems like an impossible task. You may as well tell someone to win the lottery.

“Find your job boring? Well, just win the lottery!” Easy for you to say; hard for me to do.

The problem with ‘do what you love’ and ‘follow your passion’ is that they make a number of assumptions:

That we know what our passion is.

The way I see it, passions are not generated over night, they’re created through long hours of slogging away at something. Something which probably at first seemed pretty dull. As you get better at it the more you enjoy it and the more passionate you become. You can become passionate about work, hobbies, people, even moss or clouds but I think it takes time, patience and dedication. So the likelihood is that we have yet to work out what we really love doing. How can we ‘follow our passion’ if we have yet to develop one?

That our passions can generate enough money to enable financial independence and that we want to monetise them.

If we are lucky enough to have developed a passion what is the likelihood of us being able to make money from it? If your passion involves creating something which you can sell then you have a head start. But what if your passion is looking after your kids, reading, socialising or helping your community? You could probably work in a school, a library, a bar or community center but then you are at the mercy of employers dictating how you use your passion. It may be that you’ll have to fund that passion with a job you may find unfulfilling or boring.

The web industry is particularly good at pushing the passion agenda. It’s not only a requirement that you can do a job and take an interest in it but you have to be passionate about it. You need to attend meet-ups, work on side projects, learn in your free time, to basically be stuck at your computer during your waking hours. You need to live and breathe web development. Only to have your passion beaten out of you with mundane projects.

Personally, web development was the closest thing I could call a passion which I could monetise but it has been wrung out of me, mentally (fatigue) and physically (RSI T-Rex arms). I don’t want the same thing to happen to writing and that is why I won’t be pursuing it as a career.

That we are able to actively work on our passions.

As I write this article I keep giving side-long glances to a black box in the corner of the room. If it could speak it would be calling to me in hushed tones: “Play me, just one hour won’t hurt, think of the worlds you can visit, the fun you can have!”

But one hour soon becomes 2 or 3 and gamer guilt sets in. When I said web development was probably the closest I had to a passion it was because I’m keeping gaming safely locked up in the shame box of my mind.

I love gaming. I mean I really love it. It’s a great medium for storytelling and lets you experience a plethora of emotions. I could easily be passionate about it and could probably monetise it. But I won’t because I know it will swallow up my time and it will mess up my T-Rex hands even more. In this case I can’t ‘do what I love’.

That all work is equal.

While we’re all doing jobs we love, which let us grow and feel fulfilled, who’s going to do the work which is basic, uninteresting, unfulfilling yet essential?

Let’s not forget why work exists in the first place. Work exists because someone else doesn’t want to or can’t do something. Work isn’t supposed to be fun. Work is a transaction. To be snobbish about the kinds of work people do, does those people doing the things we wouldn’t want to do a disservice.

Better Advice

The intentions behind ‘follow your passion’ and ‘do what you love’ are good but I think it’s lazy advice. They skip an essential question:

Do you truly know what you love doing and could you do it 38 hours or more a week?

We need to give better guidance to people who want to use their time wisely. And when I say wisely I mean: as best as they see fit. It’s not up to us to judge how people spend their time.

It’s okay to want to enjoy your job, just like it’s okay for someone to find their job boring and to complain about it. That’s part of life - like complaining about a dodgy knee.

Finally, be skeptical of people who love their job when their job revolves around telling other people how to love their job. I’m looking at you self-help gurus! More importantly be skeptical of cynical bastards like me dishing out career advice. It doesn’t really matter what you do in the end, you’ll probably be re-incarnated into a pig anyway, if you do here’s three words of advice: Baa-ram-ewe.

4 confusing hours later you’ve packed it all up and put the box on the shelf with the rest of the games, never to be touched again. It sits there, abandoned with a look of resentment on its artwork “Stupid human. How can you not enjoy me? I’m glorious!”

Luckily I’ve only had one box sitting on the shelf looking at me with resentment, which is a pretty mean feat considering it doesn’t have eyes. Thankfully Munchkin has been sent on its merry way to a charity shop with the rest of the abandoned toys. Say hi to Woody!

I thought it was about time I wrote about board games again and wanted to compliment my first foray into board games and my Board Game Resources list with a run down of what I’ve enjoyed, been baffled by and designated to the Pile of Shame over the past year.

Patchwork

Tetris vs quilts. It’s a bit of a strange concept, even for board gaming. How do you make building a quilt into a competitive, engaging game? But it works! It’s a quirky, two player game with simple rules. You have to fit together randomly-shaped patches to fill up your quilt leaving as little space as possible, manage your number of buttons to buy new pieces and try to steal pieces your opponent might want before they get to them. Patchwork is really enjoyable and if you are going to buy one game this year I would recommend this.

Ticket to Ride

I bought Ticket to Ride after being recommended the 10th Anniversary edition. It comes with a huge, colourful board and little trains - some of which hold tiny giraffes. So adorable! You basically collect trains to claim railways across America. You have destination tickets and score bonus points for connecting cities, or you can just block your opponent in a complete dick move. Either way I completely suck at this game. I don’t know what it is about collecting adorable giraffe trains but they have yet to bring me any luck. Which means it’s become a Ticket to Urghh. One for the kids, you know in 10 years time when they’re old enough not to choke on those evil giraffes. Now that is planning for the future.

Goblin Quest

“Wait what? This isn’t a board game! It’s a Role Playing Game!” I hear you shout. Well if you know it’s an RPG then you probably don’t need me to tell you about it. Move along, move along. If you’ve never tried an RPG before then I highly recommend giving this a whirl. It’s relatively simple to pick up, has a fairly short play time and is completely bonkers. Oh, and it comes with a Sean Bean quest variant. The only downside I found, after a bad run of dice rolls, was trying to come up with many spectacular ways Keith the Goblin could fail at doing something as simple as walking up some stairs. If you decide to buy the PDF version you’ll need a sympathetic printer.

Dominion

Cards, cards, beautiful cards! 400 to be exact and then 500 in the Base set I had to buy after I accidentally bought an expansion pack first. D’oh! To be fair it only said ‘expansion’ in tiny writing on the back of the box and the shop didn’t have the standard game. Forgive me fellow gamers!

But still that’s 900 cards to get my teeth into. If you like cards, shuffling cards and deck building then Dominion is the game for you. You collect cards, improve your cards, remove your cards, flip over tokens er… and cards. All the while fending of other Monarchs as you fill up your treasury, build castles and send out spies!

Roll for the Galaxy

If you’ve an aversion to cards then… dice, dice, beautiful dice! 111 to be exact and this time I bought the correct game. Ha!

If you like rolling dice, shaking dice, and -deck building- okay there’s no deck building but you do trade dice for cards which you collect to expand your -dominion- galactic empire all the while fending off other galactic emperors as you try to fill up your resources, colonise planets and send out space ships (dice)!

Another highly recommended yet slightly disappointing game. Collecting dice and expanding my card galactic empire is fun but I kind of wanted more interaction with other players other than guessing what they were going to do next. Maybe if I could send some dice over to their empire to nuke their dice.

Also Roll for the Galaxy has the loudest dice cups you’ll ever come across. It’s like your skull is being attacked by a hundred tiny, badly organised skeletons. Still, you can slam your cup down and shout in the voice of Thor “More Dice!” which is quite satisfying.

Sushi Go!

And the award for cutest artwork on a card goes to… Egg Nigiri! You and your friends will scramble for kawaii styled sushi as it passes on the conveyor belt (passing cards around) hoping to collect specific groups to score bonus points. It’s gameplay is original and fun however the main problem I had with it is that I bought Patchwork afterwards which is much more fun. Sorry Sushi Go! onto the Pile of Shame you go.

Dead of Winter

A good test for a game is whether you can start playing it at 8pm on a Friday night in a busy pub. By heck we gave it a try and we managed to survive spilled beer, drunken banter and a zombie apocalypse. I do remember thinking if we hadn’t won the game after a few hours of explaining, patiently waiting for slow players and manic quarterbacking I would have probably flipped the table. Although come to think of it the tables were quite hefty and it would have made a mess, so maybe not. Dead of Winter is a game you have to emotionally prepare for because there’s quite a high probability you will starve to death, get shot or worse: Sparky the Dog will get eaten. It’s got lots of scenarios to keep the game interesting but it is one you have to invest time into - even just setting the bloody thing up takes a while. It’s worth it though and is a really fun way to experience the zombie apocalypse.

And the rest...

Pandemic, Love Letter, Netrunner, Cash ‘n’ Guns, Lords of Waterdeep and D&D over Slack.

On my radar for next year:

Tail Feathers
Funemployed
Spyfall
Forbidden Stars
Pandemic Legacy
Game of Thrones
Two Rooms and a Boom

It certainly is a good time to be interested in board games.

And so it turned out that she had died.

When I came back from Wales I sorted the post and found a Cooper’s Catalogue (think JML for old people) - it had a vast array of useful stuff such as an omelette makers, thermal knee warmers and potato bags. It also had a Bird Feeding Station - hinged roof, separate seed and peanut sections, suet cage, fruit pin, mealworm plate - this was the Sunseeker of bird apparatus. I thought “That’s Grandma’s christmas present sorted… then again, maybe not”. Looking at it now, it had no Squirrel Deterrent System. Amateur.

It’s easy to not think about it because my everyday routine has not changed, but when I get to one of those moments when I expect Grandma to be there and she’s not I’m sure it will hit home. She won’t be there to talk to on a Friday night, she won’t be sitting reading the paper when I walk past her window, she won’t be standing in her kitchen watching the birds.

The thing is, although she had a long life, I never really knew her. I only knew the side of herself she presented to me. I don’t really know the struggles she had, the types of relationships she had with other people, it’s only when you get older do you realise it’s okay to ask questions which are deeper than ‘How are you?’ and ‘What have you been doing?’. People lead interesting lives they often don’t mind talking about. All it takes is someone to ask. I need to remember to ask more often.

Her life will serve as a reminder that as we get older we lose our independence. We lose the ability to drive and then to walk down the road. Life comes along and casually takes away your ability to speak or read. Next your bed ridden. You’ve lost your social life, your independence, and ability to entertain yourself. Yet through all this Grandma managed to keep a sharp wit and was quick to smile. She was grateful for what she had and often told me that she felt lucky.

She also serves as a reminder at how quick time goes. We celebrated her 90th birthday in 2006 yet it only feels like a few years ago. I thought she was guaranteed to shoot past 100 years with no problems, she was in such fine fettle! It makes me want to shout at older people “Get out and go do things while you still can”. It’s naive to think you’ll live past 100 - there are currently 13,500 people alive today who have lived that long in the UK. The chances are you won’t. Grandma had 17 years on the average life expectancy of 82. That’s enough to see one of your grand-children grow up. The longer you can delay losing a part of your independence the better. So as Dylan Thomas says “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

It just so happens that another Grandma I admire died this year. Terry Pratchett’s last book The Shepherd's Crown deals with the death of one of the Discworld’s most endearing yet formidable characters: Granny Weatherwax. Being a Discworld character, Esmerelda Weatherwax is in fact a witch, but with the usual Terry Pratchett spin. A witch’s work involves: a no nonsense attitude, lots of common sense and an abundance of hard work. They’re the midwives, doctors and sometimes chiropodists of the Discworld. There are qualities in Granny Weatherwax that I saw in Grandma - independent, proud and respected. Yet Grandma had many more I admired: She loved to talk about her family and great-grandchildren. She had sharp wit and yet didn’t mind being a bit silly. She had a no nonsense attitude but was a little bit superstitious. She kept active. She was always happy to see her family. Grandma was my Granny Weatherwax of the Lakes, well at the very least, of the village!

Although she’s gone she now lives in the minds and memories of many other people. Here are a few of mine:

One day I walked into Grandma’s kitchen, she was stood by the heater, which I imagine was a place of comfort for her as she could watch the birds, see out to the hill and be warm whilst doing it. I asked what she was doing: “I’m just watching that fly climb up and down the window. Silly, really.”

We used to share a phone line so when I managed to get to the phone first and start talking to a friend, hard-of-hearing Grandma would come on:

“Hello, Hello?”

“It’s okay, it’s for me Grandma.”

“Hello, who is it?”

“It’s for me Grandma!”

“Oh, okay”.

And the phone would click off. I’m sure that used to make me smile or maybe it made me roll my eyes?

Grandma didn’t mind getting stuck in with the games at Christmas and when we introduced her to ‘Celebrity’ - basically a combination of celebrity names in a hat, teams, timers and charades - I’m not really sure she got the concept. But, by heck, she gave it a go, playing her own version of the game. She spoke during charades, did actions during the word phases, just straight out told us the celebrity's name, all whilst adamantly denying that she had added Lionel Blair to the pot. It was great fun.

Also, jam and butter on bread, egg sandwiches, sausage casserole, ginger biscuits, coke floats, her telephone voice, Brasso, Mrs McGee’s Dead, saying goodbye when I left for university, getting in her bad books for leaving it until Sunday afternoon to say hello, walking over to the bureau, the way she would hold a pen, maybe talking a little too loudly about other people when they’re in the same room, that clock with the bird-call chimes, waving as she drove past when I had opened the gate and many more.

Often when she finished telling me a story about her past or updating me on the happenings of a family member she we would end with: “Well that was a long story”, as if she felt guilty for keeping me there. The stories were never long, occasionally there may have been repeats but who doesn’t forget who’ve they’ve told what? Looking back at her life I can, for once, say “Yes, Grandma, that was a long story and a good one at that”.

Out of the fear of making you feel uncomfortable I was going to write this article as a story about someone else and at the end I would write “SURPRISE! It was me all along, sucker!”. Not only would that have been rather dickish, it would have contradicted my parting wisdom: ‘it should be as easy to talk about mental health as it is to talk about bodily health’.

So, dear readers, are we sitting… uncomfortably? Even I rolled my eyes at that one.

(Don’t Fear) The Reaper

Once, whilst lying in bed I imagined a rope hanging in my room, I knew deep down I didn’t want to kill myself but I imagined the rope nonetheless. This would happen occasionally, it could be a gunshot or a knife cut. Nothing gory and always just a flash of imagery in my mind. I’ve heard people say flippant comments like “oh, kill me now” when they’re working on a tiresome task and I felt that these thoughts were a bit like that, but obviously more involved.

I can remember having these thoughts for a few years, and how they were particularly frequent around a time when I was having a bit of relationship trouble. I wasn’t afraid of the thoughts, although they were distressing and tiring, I was more afraid of them not being normal. They certainly didn’t seem normal. “Who in their right mind fantasizes about suicide?” I thought to myself.

Of course, this is why I never told anyone about them and instead, did what everyone advises not to do, but secretly does do when they might be ill and aren’t being watched - searched the internet.

No One Knows

Not really knowing what to search for, I stumped for ‘is fantasizing about suicide normal’? I took it as a good sign that there were no results from the Daily Mail proclaiming I had cancer, or indeed, the cure for cancer. Most of the info however, related to people who had attempted suicide, were deeply depressed or were fantasizing about how to kill themselves. I had never attempted to kill myself (other than nearly boring myself to death attending lessons on compilers at uni), I knew I wasn’t depressed and in my thoughts I have no control over the method.

Next stop, Reddit’s suicide support group where I found this gem:

“It’s not fantasizing about suicide but fantasizing about change.”

“Ah, so these thoughts may be a manifestation of my desire to change?”. If I was laying in bed, thinking about spending part of the day with someone who is overly opinionated about politics, which was then accompanied by a quick flash of a knife to the throat, then it was only a sign that I wanted to get out of the situation and not that I wanted to hurt myself. Relief.

But what if? I’ve heard it said that people shouldn’t commit suicide because it’s selfish. That when someone has decided to end their time on this world, pinch the flame of the match of their life, to no longer exist for eternity, that in a fit of realisation they’ll suddenly think “Stop! I was going to action that marketing report for Bob! How inconsiderate am I? I should continue suffering until at least end of play today”. I think the very fact that someone has rationalised themselves into suicide means they’re not in the right frame of mind to stop themselves.

So ‘what if?’ to me was ‘what if I get deeply depressed, am not in the right frame of mind and do something I would regret?’

Another great piece of advice from Reddit which they regularly dish out - “Go and see your GP!”

Which is why I found myself, very early in the morning, rubbing sleep out of my eyes and sitting with a GP:

"Is there anything else I can help you with?" said the doctor - after softening her up with some of my ‘getting old’ ailments.

Sorry to spoil your early morning but here comes a heavy hitter - I thought.

“Is it normal for people to fantasize about suicide?”

"Hmm… No"

Cue my best Captain Picard facepalm impression.

It was hard enough asking the doctor that question, but when she asked me to describe my thoughts - to actually vocalise and describe them - was in my opinion up there with character building, social extreme sports such as attending an all female Zumba class (which I have done), or announcing to a lecture hall that you’ve got piles (which I’ve yet to do). My face was clenched (not from piles), I hesitated on every word and in anyway possible made sure it didn’t sound like a big deal. “I don’t feel any pain, there’s no blood, it’s just like what other people say but I visualise it, I’m not depressed - no biggie. Just wanted make sure everything is tickety boo.”

The doctor was actually very good about it, gave me a sheet to fill in to check for symptoms for depression (all clear) and referred me to a ‘wellness’ clinic, of which I had no idea was even a thing.

The Passenger

A month or so later, I was hastily walking around a carpark trying to avoid people who could hear me talking about my deepest, darkest problem over the phone. Whilst giving side glances to someone out for a cig break, I took a phone call from a rather friendly therapist (who will forevermore be known as Jane Doe) who quizzed me for an hour on all sorts of things to get a grasp of the situation. She then offered a couple options, if I was up for it: counselling to explore the emotional side, or some CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sessions to help me manage my problem. I opted for the ‘Silver Plan’ in the hope it might come with a complimentary car air freshener, or ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here…” tote bags. But, little did I know, I was having my first session there and then.

This was also the first time I heard about Intrusive Thoughts.

Intrusive thoughts

Jane told me about thoughts which were out of a person’s control, went against their very nature, which made the thoughts quite distressing. Thoughts such as driving along a road, getting to a corner and thinking ‘I could just keep on going and I would end up crashing’. Thoughts like ‘I wonder what would happen if I punched this person in the face’ whilst talking to someone. Thoughts which everybody gets from time to time, but very rarely speak about.

This was the key. During face to face sessions there was a moment when the Jane handed me a sheet on which was listed the stats on the percentage of people who have normal, intrusive thoughts. For example 34% of people think about fatally pushing a stranger, the same amount think about swearing in public, 50% have thought about hurting a family member or 55% swerving into traffic, 48% thought about having sex with an unacceptable person. What all of these thoughts have in common is that they disturb the person who has them and instead of the thoughts floating past on a stream of consciousness, they get stuck, drawing the person’s attention. This can make the person distressed because it’s hard for them to see these as harmless thoughts.

Knowing this was such a relief. I learnt not to pay intrusive thoughts too much attention, and that in my case they were also tied to anxiety.

So how do I go about managing anxiety?

Cognition, autonomic and behaviour (i.e. the cycle of shit)

Thinking shit makes you feel shit which makes you behave like shit which in turn makes you think shitter shit. All the while outside shit adds to your shit. Taking lawnmower-gate as an example: fear of the unknown about what will happen when I ask for a lawnmower will make me feel anxious which makes me more likely to avoid the situation which makes me think “It’s a bloody lawnmower you should just be able to go and get it”. Which leads to “Why do I have to mow the bloody lawn and why do I have to work on an allotment where people will judge my grass cutting skills?” Which is, in turn, irrational because they aren’t judgey people. Enter anger and frustration which might make me snap at my lovely lass and so it continues.

The techniques I learnt during CBT help me realise when I’m in the cycle of shit and break it.

Worry and rumination

I was asked to keep a worry diary so I could see the type of things I was worrying about and for how long. This is a great exercise that I would recommend. It turns out that I don’t worry about where I’ll find the latest cat video to share with the world, but mainly about not being quick enough at the work I do and, surprise, surprise, social situations.

Next up was to practice ‘worry postponement’. Basically writing down any anxious thoughts you have, and reminding yourself you’ll worry about it later. Then during a designated period - of say 30 minutes - go through each worry and either cross it off if it was irrational or come up with an action plan to sort it. This is to help cut down on the amount of time spent worrying and although it’s really hard to stop worrying about something, having a plan on how to deal with it really does help.

I used this technique to stop getting ahead of myself when ruminating, for example telling myself “I will worry about getting a puncture on my bike, when I get a puncture on my bike. Not before.” or “I only need to worry about a social situation once I’m through the door. I don’t need to worry up until that point.” It would be like, if you were leaving your job, worrying about an interview before you even got an interview. In lawnmower-gate terms it would be focusing on getting to the door of the shed the old folks sit in, before going in and worrying about what happens.

Unhelpful thinking styles

There is a whole host of unhelpful thinking styles: labelling, overgeneralisation, emotional reasoning, personalisation and the one which jumped out for me was ‘jumping to conclusions’. I found that I was anticipating people’s reactions to things which, really I had no idea how they would react, this would lead to catastrophising and which would give me fuel to avoid the situation. I didn’t even know I was doing it but once I had been made aware, I realised I was doing it quite often. This allowed me to challenge my assumptions about people.

Mindfulness

“Oh dear”, I thought, “Mindfulness again”. I’d seen Mindfulness gradually seep into the mainstream over the past few years and it has become a bit of an overused buzzword. Mindful eating, mindful exercise, mindful business, even mindful birthing? I think if I told my lass to ‘focus on the moment’ whilst she was giving birth I would soon be focusing on a well aimed slap. However, all though quite cynical, I do rather like the concept. I’d read about ‘flow’ - the process of being so fully involved with the task at hand that you forget about time passing. Gaming is great for this.

I’d also read about the Stoics who thought that by focusing on the value of what you were doing, to know that you are doing something ‘just’, then others opinions become inconsequential:

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.” - Marcus Aurelius

So just focusing on the moment in a non-judgemental way can be a helpful technique in managing anxiety. I’ve found it particularly useful in social situations in which I would look inwardly, focusing on where I should stand, who I should try and talk to, what would happen if I couldn’t find anything say. Jane told me that in these situations I should just concentrate on the task at hand and try to enjoy it. Help out with the BBQ, set up the game or try to just focus on what other people are saying.

Times Like These

After 10 weeks and 6 CBT sessions I’m less worried about intrusive thoughts, and they occur less frequently because I’m less anxious. There’s still a way to go but I found the whole process invaluable. It led me to think that I could understand why people might cut themselves, it must feel like a pressure release from anxiety. I count myself lucky that I do not suffer from panic attacks, OCD or other ways anxiety can manifest.

The brain is such a complex thing with many paths to follow but it’s stupidly easy to run up against brick walls. I’ve still not borrowed the lawnmower. Even though I know there’s nothing there which will cause me ill-will, there is still a wall in my mind which needs some work and the thing about walls is that they do take work to break. There’s no ‘manning up’ bullshit to help break through, they don’t work like that. What does help is a leg up from someone else.

It’s taken me a few weeks to write this post. Not that I was really afraid of putting myself out there, but that I needed to write it in such a way that it wouldn't scare people or make them worried. But, hey, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions about how people will react. One day I hope it really will be as easy to talk about mental health as it is to talk about bodily health.

“Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom… except that part over there marked ‘Petting’. You must never go there.”

Still with me? Deep breath now - I plan to write a hell of a lot more. And I reckon you should too.

The thing about writing is that it’s like speaking when you’re at your most eloquent and you’ve had time to think.

It was reading Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, which he wrote in 1920, that got me started. He recommended carving 90 minutes, 3 times a week out of your schedule to spend on doing something you feel important. I just started with 90 minutes a week and used it to sort through some of my thoughts and opinions on ‘things’. This naturally led me to think “these might be useful for other people” so instead of keeping them locked up in my notebooks I put them out in the wild.

That, an opportunity to carve out a little chunk of the web for myself, combined with I’m sure, a light sprinkling of narcissism, nudged me into deciding to write something once a month for ten years. A set period of 10 years because it should give me enough time to see my opinions change and, from my past experiments, I found it was always good to have an end date.

Now, somehow for the past year I’ve managed to keep at it and I put that down to a number of things:

I’m writing for myself so I’m not too bothered whether anyone reads my articles or not, well I’m bothered enough to actually put them on a website, but it just reduces demotivation if I don’t get many views. More importantly this means I’m going to write about things which interest me and will therefore keep me invested.

I’ve discovered the best way to get things written is to ride the wave of enthusiasm an idea creates. Once the enthusiasm runs out it’s a bit silly to keep plugging away. This happened on my post about being 32 and it was a killer. It was like running into brick wall and the writing loses its flow. It’s easy to come up with ideas but when it gets down to the research it can soon become boring or too big a subject to tackle.

I make time for writing. ‘Getting to know myself’ is probably one of the most important things I’m doing at the moment so I don’t mind making time for it. Hopefully good things will come.

A rather lax monthly schedule has been just right. It’s surprising, or actually it’s not surprising, how quickly time goes so it doesn’t take long to build up some content.

It’s also been interesting to get responses to the articles from friends and family. I’m still not sure about a comments system. They’re not a great format for discussion but then without comments the discussion gets lost on a Facebook or Twitter timeline. I might implement them one day but it’s not a priority.

So how can you get started writing?

It’s super easy to get started but probably a little harder sticking with it, the whole process takes me around 4 - 8 hours. You basically need:

• Somewhere to store ideas
• Somewhere to plan them out
• Somewhere to write them out
• Someone to proofread them
• Somewhere to publish them
• Somewhere to share them

I jot down ideas and subjects which might interest me in, you guessed it, a notebook. If I’m not near a notebook I’ll e-mail them to myself to jot them down later.

Then I plan them out, noting down important points I want to get across, what questions I want to research and answer, trying to form a basic structure with bullet points or titles. At this point I should have a good idea whether I want to write the damn thing.

Next up it’s time to get it into a word processor to fill it out. I use Google Docs as it’s easy to share for proofreading and it’s available anywhere with an internet connection. Time for a shout-out to my lovely lass for proofreading! She’s saved many a person from the onslaught of my bad grammar.

I recommend starting with Medium to get your words published. I reckon it’s the best blogging platform out there at the moment. You can get publishing straight away and it’s got a great ecosystem which will help in getting other people to read your words. I prefer to keep my writing in my own ecosystem and under my control so I use Kirby which is a content management system, which I host with Gandi.

Once you’ve written your article and you’re happy with it, get it out there and share it with your friends!

Time for the science

In the spirit of hypocrisy, after saying I’m not too concerned about statistics, here’s a section dedicated to... statistics! I’ve been lucky to get a few people looking and that includes you, so many thanks. The main thing I’ve learnt from these stats is that people really like Notebooks. Here’s ‘Notebook Mountain’ which has demoted the rest of my articles to mere blips on the Google Analytics life-line:

As for the rest of them, here’s the past year in popularity order:

• Notebooks (1,621)
• Basic Income
• Board Games
• Choosing A Vocation
• 32
• Sleep
• Increasing Empathy
• Five Whys
• Your Three Selves
• Walking
• Ghosts
• Christmas (34)

Get going

You! Yes you, should try writing. If you need a hand getting set up, let me know, I’d be happy to help. They say writing is good for the soul, just make sure you don’t spill chicken soup on your nice notebook.

I’m ashamed to say that I only became aware of the usefulness of notebooks after I got caught up in ‘designer’ culture. Many of the design interviews and articles I read contained a photo with some sort of diagram in a notebook usually accompanied with coffee and Apple product in tow. So when I saw a notebook which kind of looked like a Moleskine in Asda I jumped at the chance of becoming an ‘authentic’ designer type.

I’ve since learned that notebooks are, actually, bloody brilliant. The good quality ones provide a tactile pleasure akin to burying your toes in sand or running your hands through soil. Smooth paper, soft leather covers, a satisfying twang from the elastic and most importantly they’re a pleasure to write on.
My note books have seemed to take on their own personalities so I thought I would write a little about each one:

The First

My first ‘proper’ notebook is probably only 7 years old and what a beast it is. Asda’s standard notebook is like someone tried to carve a Moleskine out of wood. I’m surprised ‘home defence weapon’ wasn’t listed as a feature - you could bludgeon a burglar with this thing. The cover is so hard it would probably save me from a bullet and the paper is like cardboard. It’s the tactile equivalent to a punch in the face, however, it’s served me well.

The Gift

A kind Redditor not only sent me a notebook for Christmas but also drew the mighty Great A’Tuin (from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld) on the cover. This has become the notebook version of the ‘Donut Manifesto’, somewhere to note down stuff that I’ve done that I’m proud of, because I’m rubbish at celebrating my achievements.

The Heart

In Ancient Egypt it was said that when a person dies, their heart would travel with the deceased into the afterlife where it could be weighed for final judgement. If I lived in Ancient Egypt, I would save them some time and send this notebook instead of the heart. The idea for the use of this notebook came from realising that the journey home at the end of a weekend away was kind of sad because the event was over. It’s strange to think about this before an event has happened. “In two weeks time we will be heading back and it’ll all be over.” So I decided that I should keep a quick note about what happens at the events so I can remember them a little better. It certainly makes me feel better.

The Companion

My trusty reporter’s notebook is a little frayed and cumbersome but does the honorable job of carrying my worries and anxieties when I don’t want to deal with them straight away. Sometimes it’s best to postpone these things until you’re in a better frame of mind. At a later date, if what I note down is worth worrying about I’ll transfer it to the Stalwart and make a plan to deal with it. If it’s not then it get’s crossed off the list.

The Stalwart

Carries my ideas, lists, thoughts, diagrams and doodles. It’s a reliable friend and is always there when I need to plan stuff out or think things through. It likes to travel in my backpack when I go places (and invariably doesn’t get used). Slim and sturdy, this is the brain and the brawn of the outfit, like a presidential body guard it protects my thoughts from the dangers of modern life (tea spillage).

The Floozy

The Stalwart doesn’t know it but I’ve been cheating on it with with another notebook. It started off all innocent. It was to be used just for planning my articles but it seduced me with it’s soft front cover, flexibility and luxury of space. It became such a pleasure to use that I succumbed and started to use it for all kind of things. This is probably my favourite of all my notebooks. When I talked about tactile sense, this has it all: large smooth pages, a soft cover which can be folded round, a hard back cover to give stability for writing.

It’s common advice to spend money on experiences rather than objects but I believe it’s okay to spend money on objects which give you a good experience. My advice would be, if you haven’t already, buy a good quality notebook, a cheap Bic pen, smooth the paper with your hand and get scribbling. Enjoy!