“Keep your friends close!” … And then keep them closer. Your family too. Nothing else really matters.

(Yes this post is probably cheesier than your feet, and yes I enjoyed playing with the felt-tips.  Goodnight…)

Song of the Day:  Eels – Climbing Up the Moon (Jon Brion Remix)

I’ve always loved Eels, and here is a remix which manages not to subtract the genius within the original.  This is quite simply one of the most beautiful, poignant songs ever written.  It’s claimed that writer, E, wrote it in the aftermath of a number of his family members passing away, and when I listen to this it feels like E is sharing his innermost thoughts and feelings with me. I like the fact that this song isn’t well-known and overplayed, I think if it was it’d take away the magic.  This song is my secret weapon, a hidden gem, and now it’s yours too:

Just be honest and true,
And love all you do.
Then somehow, what you’re looking for,
Will find a way to find you.

But – even if it doesn’t,
At least you were honest and true
And loved what you do

Our honesty is the one of the best gifts we can give to those around us.  It is also one of the best gifts we can give to ourselves, and we don’t even have to wrap it.

Sometimes, we waste too much time dealing in that which is not ‘fact’:  making decisions on the basis of what we ‘think’ as opposed to what we ‘know’.  The reality is that life, and a lot of the things within it, are uncertain.  We don’t always have the benefit of evidence when assessing things, and without that there will always be a complete myriad of different perspectives by which to interpret the same thing, sometimes creating a confusion we can spend many hours trying to (unsuccessfully) ever figure out.

But what might help, and what we can do at least, is understand ourselves – and this comes only from being honest about our feelings and emotions.  The better we know ourselves, and the more we acknowledge the ways in which we think and feel, the less time we will spend languishing in the bottomless depths of uncertainty.  The right choices for us will become more apparent, and we can sooner identify the things we need to pay attention to from those which are nothing more than pure, fabricated speculation.

I think that repressing emotion is one of the most damaging things you can possibly do to yourself, and it happens a lot – people bottling up their real feelings to save themselves from the discomfort of how an acquaintance, or maybe even themselves, might react to the truth.  This may seem to make life easier sometimes by avoiding any complicated, immediate repercussions, but in the long-term it leads to confusion and stress whereby one cannot differentiate between their own feelings, and those of another, and ultimately this leads to unhappiness.  A life which isn’t yours.  This even extends to what’s on the outside.  Are we doing the job we love or the job that has the salary we think we should be earning?  Are we wearing what we feel good in or did we select our attire today on the basis of what we think particular other people will think we look good in?  Do you hide your tears because you have the strength to or is it that you just don’t want people to realise the shocking truth that you are, in actuality, just a mere human being?  The latter option in each of these situations are a form of repressing emotion – an inability to say, “Actually, what I really want, and how I really feel, is….”.  

And if you cannot say those words, you’ll never end up getting what you really want from your life.
And that’s a pretty grim prospect, right?

And if we’re living a life which isn’t really ours, and saying and doing only what we hope will please others or save ourselves stress, we are only intensifying the scope for misunderstanding and miscommunication which is already responsible for the waste of so much time and emotion.  We are finding it harder to make our own decisions because our minds are messier, and we are finding it harder to express our feelings to others because we’re consequently unsure how we really feel, so when we speak, is what we’re saying even the truth at all?  And if even we’re not sure what we mean, how the hell is the listener going to interpret it?  Such misunderstanding can be dangerous, occasionally responsible for the erosion of once-beautiful friendships and relationships for no real reason at all besides a lack of clarity over the true intention of what was said or done.

We can’t always determine the way in which other people will interpret the things we say and do, but by being honest and true we can at least reduce the chances of misunderstanding.  It’s not always easy to be an open-book, metaphorical nudity in a crowded room, but keeping up a lie is much, much harder.  The honest approach is also much more fair on those around us even if the things we truly think and feel don’t necessarily reflect the way they might hope we think and feel.

The only people you need in your life are people who respect your true thoughts and feelings even if they don’t always agree with them.  If somebody can’t do that, why the hell do you care about that person anyway?  Say goodbye.  That’s a person with the potential to fuck up your life before you’ve even realised it.

The more honest we are with ourselves and the more we understand ourselves, the less time we spend agonising over the limitless what’s and if’s.  It is what it is.  We are who we are.  We meant what we said and we said what we meant, and if everybody was able to do that – maybe misunderstanding could join the likes of legwarmers and trouser-skirts and be just some ugly thing of the past.

Be true to yourself always.  You’re never going to regret a thing that way.

Song of the Day:  Collin McLoughlin – Titanium (cover)

I always like a good cover song but this is just beautiful.  ‘Nuff said.

Just lately, in various settings, I hear the following mantra yelling into my ears:

Less thinking about it,
Less talking about it,
More doing it.

Because, the truth is, when it comes to what’s going to happen next:  I don’t really know anything.  None of us do.  We might think that we do, but we don’t.  Chinese whispers reverberate around us the whole time, and the truth gets distorted at every utterance of it to the point where… nobody really knows anything.  Even as soon as tomorrow, we may have an idea of what we’re going to be doing, but we don’t really know what it’s going to feel like – we don’t know if the traffic is going to delay us, who we might meet along the way, or what we’re going to see out of the window.

This is a life in which anything can happen at any time, so why do we only remember that sometimes?  Too often, it takes tragedy to remind us how life and the future are under no guarantee, and how lucky we are to be alive.  We hear of tragic stories on the news, or attend funerals, and vow to start making the most of every single second we have, but how many of us actually stick to this promise?  Such sentiment is too often short-lived – quickly forgotten once we realise that the trains are cancelled due to signalling problems, or that it’s raining outside…all minor inconveniences which become over-dramatised the second we forget how lucky we really are, just to be here breathing.

I used to be a ‘planner’, but time and time again I realised how it can be such a waste of time… blueprints which were so carefully arranged but ended up tossed in the bin with the objectives crossed out and amended as time went on and the conditioning factors gradually changed shape in the heat.  I still regard a bit of planning to be a necessity – a direction we need in order to keep ourselves looking forward – but when we put too much time and detail into those plans we are inadvertently setting rigid guidelines for ourselves and reducing the amount of space left for that factor of surprise to filter it’s way into.  It’s that factor of surprise which ultimately stops life from becoming a mere repetition of routine, day after day.

Essentially we only have one moment to ever do anything, and that is now.  If we really want something in life, we have to start working on it right now.  No more meticulous planning, just action.  We need to stop delaying our dreams until days which may never come, and start making the most of the present moment so that we can keep our lives full of surprise and retain the potential for new ideas to filtrate through.

I’ve come to the realisation that I’m never going to know whats going to happen to me next, and you know what? I’m not afraid of that anymore.  A good book is one to which you don’t know what the next page will bring.  Spontaneous is the key. I never thought I’d be the type to be able to plan and book a holiday just a few days before going, and I never thought I’d be so comfortable not knowing what I should do next in life but…

…I’m happy just to be here breathing, right now.  It’s time to really make the most of that, and squeeze as much juice out of each moments as possible.

Song of the Day:  Mexicolas – Take Off

“I know you’ve got a fear of heights, but everything will be alright”

At the start of each working day, as my train pulls into Ashford International station, I look around at the smoggy skies, take a deep-breath and step off the train to begin my 15 minute walk to the office.  The station is typically large and austere looking, and in order to exit you must first ascend a set of 30-steps up to ground-level.  I won’t lie, I hate those steps, but like most people I begrudgingly take them anyway.  Each time I begin my mountainous ascent (pass me the Red Bull will you?),  I notice a notably overweight man from my train is waiting gormlessly below for the elevator to take him up instead.  To say it irks me is a slight understatement.  Depending on my mood (which usually isn’t good having had five hours sleep), the sight of this completely able-bodied guy waiting for an elevator which will take quadruple the time to arrive as it takes for one to combat the stairs, can absolutely infuriate me.  I have never known myself to be so perturbed by such obvious laziness, and occasionally I wonder if this daily sight is but a tiny vignette of a much larger picture of a full-blown epidemic which is sweeping modern day society.  Amidst my scorn, a voice within suddenly reminds me of some of my own lazy habits – the inability to turn down lifts, and a dependence on microwaveable dinners when pressed for time, to name just a couple.  It began to dawn on me that I was probably being hypocritical in finding myself so incensed at the laziness of Elevator Man.  Maybe the fact is that we’re just all a little lazy; and with each new invention – from the elevator to the automatic hand-dryer –  it’s getting worse.

My mum loves to remind me about how people in the olden days were much more energetic and hardworking than people today, “Yooouuuuuuuur grand-mother used to have to take the bus from Faversham, then walk to Canterbury West train station, take the train to Ashford, ride a donkey to Folkestone,hop-scotch through the harbour and float across the English Channel on a lettuce leaf before she got to work!” she would say after I started fussing about the inconveniences of my, by comparison, relatively tame commute from Canterbury to Ashford.  And she had a point.  I don’t doubt that the generations before ours were a lot more physically active than we are.  There were significantly fewer cars, fewer televisions and no internet-related distractions!  People had to actually – wow, oh my gosh, I can’t comprehend this part – people had to actually physically DO things for themselves!

Can you even imagine what it would be like to return to a life without the internet?  You know, when if you wanted to talk to somebody you always had to actually to wibble your lips and vibrate your vocal cords?  Can you imagine a life before the television remote?  When you had to move your legs to get you to the monitor in order to change the channel?  Yet, here we are in 2012  screaming blue murder if we can’t find the remote (Afterall, there’s little use for a television if you can’t channel-hop without needing to desert the indentation on the sofa that so closely resembles the shape of your buttocks, right?).  Finally, to use an example on top of another example – can you remember those laborious times when you actually had to type in the whole web-address rather than just press one button for the app on your Smartphone?  I don’t blame the older generation for thinking that ours is lazy, not when you consider things like this.  The worst thing?  I see no sign of it abating – only amplifying.

All around the world, successful entrepreneurs are busy raising a toast to the phenomenon of laziness.  They are the ones who make millions from the concept that society seems to wish things were a little easier and faster.  As they carve a delicate incision into their pan-fried foie gras, they are probably chuckling at the thought of global debt and are instead concerning themselves with how they can make millions from the invention of gadgets that will change the world.  “Brushing my teeth can be such a chore, sometimes I even get cramp in my wrist… maybe we can create a wireless device that moves the handle for us.  It can be instructed to sweep each corner thoroughly and can be recommended by the most famous dentists across the world.  The suckers out there won’t know how they ever lived without one!  I’ll finally be able to afford that castle, with the invention of the Toothatron2012!” Sounds stupid, right?  Then again, I expect the conversation between Mr D. Ishwasher, creator of the dishwasher, and his team of mechanics probably went along similar lines… “we could all benefit from a bit less scrubbing”.  Lovely, but the question is, when does it end?  If we carry on at the rate we are, will we ever have a need to leave the house?  Even popular forms of outdoor exercise can now be conducted from behind a television screen via the mediums of a Wii Fit of Xbox Kinect.  In the year that will see London host the 2012 Olympics, I can already foresee abstract scenarios of the Games in years to come – the Torch being transported around the host-country via in-built Sat Nav and radio control – notable civilians taking it in turns to reign over the remote…

And then of course, there’s gadget-fever – more hideously over-priced items doing more things that we’ve come to feel we can no longer live without.  The only thing I can’t criticise are the networking advantages.  I think it’s great we now have so many different ways to contact each other – it helps us to maintain our relationships, and is a damn sight greater than having to depend on land-line phones to speak your nearest and dearest… but apart from this, I don’t really see much benefit of all of this new technology.  Suffice to say we live in a recession. Suffice to say that half the world’s population are living on $2.50 a day.  Suffice to say that each time the earth completes a rotation, 22 000 thousand more children have died from poverty.  And by comparison, what is the rest of the world doing?  We’re fucking about spending hundreds of pounds on pieces of plastic so that we can be entertained by talking giraffes on plasma screens. I’m not for a moment suggesting that I fail to see the fun in these items, just that it makes me nauseous to think of just how swept up in them society has become.  It doesn’t seem like it was too long ago that a friend was belittling my mobile phone because it didn’t vibrate when it got a message, like all the cool phones of that time did.  In reality this was over ten years ago now, and as we all know, phones nowadays do much, much more than merely vibrate.  You can virtually live your whole life through your phone, or so it seems, and whilst I too admit to being a sucker to the temptation and a huge fan of my smart-phone, it still makes me sad.  Walk past an Apple store the evening before the latest iPhone is released and you’ll see an entire campsite of people with more money than sense forming a queue.  They’ll be sat upon fold-up chairs, thermos flasks in hand, enthusing together over the great new ‘specs‘ which the new iPhone promises – jargonistic drivel of which the stand-out point is that the new version is 0.5 millimeters slimmer than the older one.  Oh, and it has an in-built assistant that allegedly answers all your questions, because apparently you don’t have the capacity to work out the answers for yourself.  Yes, that’s another thing about this century, you don’t actually need a brain anymore.  Forget about consuming the omega oils in fish and stick to chips instead – computer chips, that is!

Well personally, I feel as though I have reached my technology quota.  My 2006 model MP3 player, 2010 model phone, 2009 model digital camera – these items suit me, I require nothing more in the way of features or speeds or applications and feel like nothing in the past two years’ worth of technology releases have appealed to me in the slightest.  Unless these items break, I will never wish to buy later models.  In time this will probably mean I start being ‘the one with the oldest and crappiest phone’ again, or maybe I’ll end up succumbing to later models and inventions just like I did when I bought myself an mp3 player despite dismissing the concept for years on the basis that ‘music sounds better on a c.d’.

Either way, I’m satisfied for now – so stop thrusting the Apple down my throat, keep your Wiis in the toilet, and give me a proper smile – not just a couple of pieces of punctuation arranged to resemble a face.

There’ll simply never be anything, like the real thing.

Song of the Day:  Wakey! Wakey! – Twenty Two

Alternative pop from NYC, so featured in One Tree Hill (songster Michael Grubb has a cameo role, apparently).  A short reminder of how under-rated whistling has become.

Everytime I find myself in need of a little inspiration or focus in life, I spin my chair around and look at this:

I am sucked into its beauty and mesmerised by its enormity.
I glance at the different areas and read all of those place names I’ve never heard before:   Inongo, Saltillo, Hengyang and more.  So many more.
I contemplate the mass variation of things going on at this exact moment in time, and it taints me with disappointment that I cannot be everywhere at once to see it all unfold right before my very eyes – to feel each feeling, to hear each noise, to smell each dish…

…to have my eyes opened wider.

I think about all the places I have been,
And all of the things which I have seen,
but – perhaps more pertinently –
All that I haven’t.
Yet.

And then I spin back around on my seat to continue with my work and think about what to have for lunch, but maybe now it won’t be the usual crumpet covered in marmite.

|| Pause:  A moment to remember that there is always something more. ||

Song of the Day:  Hospitality – Betty Wang 

I found this band on Spotify the other day whilst trying to find bands similar to American indie-pop outfit Tennis.  Hospitality hail from Brooklyn, and this is my favourite song from their debut album which was released in January this year.  Fun, catchy barbeque music.  Trying not to smile when listening to this song is like trying to consume a whole jam doughnut without licking your lips.  Enjoy.

If there’s one single word in the dictionary that is over-used, sometimes abused and often misunderstood it is this one:  success.

Success seems to be the one thing that everybody in the world wants.  Everybody wants to walk away from the great exam of life with a decent grade, and this ambitious attitude in itself is no bad thing, but it becomes a problem when we begin to lose sight of what success really means, and what it’s truly about.

We live in a society which has poisoned itself with superficiality, a society which has become so obsessed with beauty, status and the acquisition of material goods that it has left many feeling inferior and self-critical that their achievements do not compare to those of others.  All too often, life seems akin to a big race or competition  in which everybody wants to be a ‘winner’ and, most certainly, nobody wants to come last.

But despite what we are so often made to think:  success is not about money.  It’s not about status.  It’s not about power.  It’s not about having model-looks and it’s not about mass popularity – in other words, success is not about the factors from which others often tend to judge us.

Success is simply about being you and being happy with you.  It’s about spending your life doing the things you love both in your career and in your free-time.  It’s about being a good friend, and making true friendships.  It’s about having fun.  It’s about believing in yourself and the way in which you conduct things, it’s about being at peace in your own company,  it’s about having a loving mindset, a respect for everybody and above all, it’s about having enough respect for yourself that you can resist any pressure to change into what you think other people think you should be. 

Real success comes from pursuing true passions, not from trying to impress anybody with your power or status.  It is most certainly not a race, and it is most certainly not a competition.  If it is viewed that way, we will constantly be left wanting more rather than enjoying what we already have.  Success is deep within all of us, and it’s just waiting to be discovered.  It is not something which is found only by being the best at something, it’s found by being our best, and that is something we can all achieve, without exception.

Song of the Day:  British Sea Power – Carrion

Classic British indie-rock.  These guys go from strength to strength, but it is their earlier releases that seem to be the best.

A cup of tea and a pen, and a Sunday afternoon.  
The call of seagulls filtrate through my bedroom window.  I look outside to spot them and my eyes are instead met by the calm of a clear, white sky.  Lighter evenings.  Longer days.  Spring has arrived and with it has come a new chapter in this incomplete novel of life for which we compose our own storyline .  As the smell of roast lamb makes it’s way up the stairs, I look at my work and remind myself that it’s time to focus, Sophie, focus.

Sunday afternoons are the chill-out time of the week, the time to relax, the time to focus within, to inhale-exhale, to light some candles, to listen to instrumental tracks, to feel at peace.

Every other day of the week is usually so busy, so frantic.   Our time to reflect is lost in the constant movement and pushed further and further down our list of priorities, below the likes of ‘create that spreadsheet‘ or ‘buy those train-tickets’.

But Sundays.  They make me think about everything that’s really important in life.  Family.  Friends.  Life experiences.  Travel.  Adventures.

Sunday is the day when all the negative things in life become irrelevant.  A day to let go of our worries, a day to acknowledge and walk away from that which is holding us back, a day to shelve any anger and a day to forgive.  The horizons in front of you are broad and bright when the body is free of negativity and full of love and passionate desire.

Sundays are for getting nostalgic for the past but excited for the future.  A day of appreciation and anticipation.  Fond memories twinned with the birth of new dreams.  New targets and ideas.

A sense of exuberant spirituality.
Life is here and we are living it.

I love them all, on Sunday afternoon.

Happy Sunday, my friends.

Song of the Day:  Jean-Michel Jarre – Computer Weekend

A classic piece from the French master of electronics.  One of my favourites for a Sunday afternoon.