Does Anyone Care What I’m Thinking?

Not one jot.

I’m basing myself in NYC for a bit.

Several reasons — meetings with clients, creative stimulation — energy reboot. All of that together with an urge to escape the same old and avoid becoming a cliche.

I love what I do and can’t imagine not doing it. I know an awful lot of folk aren’t that lucky. For many, it’s a constant battle to stay afloat let alone be joyous.

The hardest fight we have is between who we are and who we want to be. The toughest bit is working out who we want to be in the first place.

We often don’t find the thing that will make us happy, because we can’t let go of the thing that was supposed to.

May the bridges I burn light my way.

Our Own Worst Enemy

Ernest Hemingway said -

“I understand. That’s the trouble. I understand. I’ll understand all the time. All day and all night. Especially all night. I’ll understand. You don’t have to worry about that.”

Ernie nails it.

I’m at my problem-solving zenith between midnight and 4–00 am. I just can’t switch it off. It’s a curse but I trade on it.

But understanding — that can be elusive.

Like everyone I speak to, I’ve stopped listening to the news and definitely can’t watch it. Because I try to fix problems I need facts and evidence, not gas and trash. What I don’t understand is how they get away with it.

I heard the news today — oh boy.

A billionaire in government sympathising with the country. A country that struggles to pay their bills while he struggles to make a contactless payment. So rich he doesn’t ever pay for anything.

A helpless proportion of the country simply unable to make a payment — contactless or otherwise. A population dangerously distant from its administration.

“History is the propaganda of the victors.” — Ernst Toller

I’ve given up the rage and anger over these successive shocks. I am not shocked anymore and how awful is that?

It was no fun realising how corrupt our systems are and how incapable we are of stopping their crimes and bringing the individual villains to justice.

Whether the politicians or the industries I once held in esteem makes no difference. They’re dead to me.

“The process of creating advertising is an ongoing struggle between two equal and opposite forces — talent and bullshit.” — Bob Hoffman

Advice For The Journey

I’ve picked up thousands of tips, aphorisms and little nuggets along the way. They’re in my mind somewhere but here are 21 favourites to chew on

1. Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.
2. People can’t always control who their circumstances turn them into.
3. If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.
4. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
5. Your future begins with your next thought.
6. You may be too this or that for some people. Those aren’t your people.
7. Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?
8. Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.
9. If someone treats you badly you have to remember there’s something wrong with them, not you. Good people do not go around destroying other people.
10. We didn’t understand as children that our parents still had work to do on themselves.
11. I stop explaining myself to people when I realize they’re just going to judge me anyway.
12. You just have to surround yourself with the things that make you grateful to be alive.
13. I’m a fucking butterfly now. The caterpillar games are over.
14. The best things in life are often waiting for you at the exit ramp of your comfort zone.
15. The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind.
16. Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.
17. The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.
18. Life begins where fear ends.
19. The forests grow back with patience, not rage.
20. The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.
21. In search of reality, the mind becomes your friend, the soul becomes your path and the material world becomes your illusion.

In Closing

Unless we can shift our mindset and level of thinking it’s unlikely much will change. It’s also unlikely that the 21 concepts above will shift your fortunes.

This sentence probably sums everything up for me — “The reason we don’t find the solutions to our problems is that the answers to our questions interfere with our concepts.”

I didn’t write this. I wish I knew who did and also wish I had.

“A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp.”

“And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade.”

“I have lived my life on these moments.”

“It’s not that I’m so smart. I just stay with the questions longer.” — Einstein said that.

“Opinion is the wilderness between knowledge and ignorance.” — Plato

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”