Three's the magic number

It's amazing how easy it is to get overwhelmed by best intentions. I'm a greater planner, amazing list maker and totally cutting-edge dreamer. Man of execution? Not so good...It's as if I've got way too many brilliant ideas on how to improve the way I make a smoothie or refine a press-up or work my finances out. So I've taken on board the art of simplifying things in life. In order to get a bit more focus, I've just got to cut back on a lot of the great strategies that are just proving to be a distraction. They can just wait.

So what I've been trying out over the last few weeks is the 'Rule of 3'. I think I fell upon the concept in a book or on the internet some time ago. Basically, it's all about keeping things a bit more bite-sized. Rather than write a list that goes on for ever, just target three things that you want to accomplish or at least attack today. I'm sure you can think of a thousand other things that you want to be doing but by at least getting those three things out of the way you know you've been making progress.

And it's certainly been working for me.

Push it

It's amazing how time flies when you're really not doing anything of any worth at all. Earlier today at work I was writing a(nother) list of things that I really, really must sort out and realised that I'd been having these same thoughts only last week. And the week before. Etc. And it's not as if I don't want to get some of these things done but...Well, to be honest I probably don't really want to get some of these things done. But I NEED to get some of these things done.

And so here we are today looking for inspiration for getting on with stuff. A few things did come to mind, though, when I was procrastinating earlier. Firstly, doing, doing and doing again really doesn't necessarily get you anywhere soon. You're always doing something simply to complete it and never really enjoying it. So it's time to do a bit more of this "being" bit that the gurus keeping guiding us towards. Busy for busy sake isn't very healthy. On the same tip, I was thinking that by "being" more I could actually find a way to make the chores and tasks more interesting and entertaining. Put the "fun" into "functional", and all that. And by making the process more like play I can then appreciate the discipline required more as a skill that you develop and augment over time.

Well, this is all very stream of consciousness as you might or might or not have guessed. Bottom line is I know that there are things I want/need to do and I have to push myself in a way that works best for me. Okay, back now to tidying my spare room with some Marvin Gaye to sing along to in the background.

The look of love

I was watching one of those makeover programmes the other day. You know the type - Joe Bloggs or Jane Doe has a negative self image of themselves which ultimately limits their ability to see their true potential. The episode in question was about a woman that ran a slimming club, having in the past lost something like 80lbs in weight. In front of club members she carried herself well, being the embodiment of what you could achieve if you put your mind to it. And yet she still had deep-rooted body issues. She was regularly putting on a performance for club members when in reality she held herself in such low self esteem.

Suffice to say she managed to be suitably inspired during the programme to re-wire the way she saw the world and felt far more comfortable about who she really was. And it got me thinking. You occasionally hear stories about celebrities that seem to have everything that anyone could desire and yet they are desperately unhappy or lonely or lost. They experience the human condition as much as the next person and yet are elevated by others to be a bit more than the rest of us. But they are just like the rest of us. Yet it's amazing how much we project ourselves into the realms of other peoples' worlds wishing, hoping and all that to be just like them. If only we planted our own feet more firmly on the floor, took in the view, enjoyed the journey and kept ourselves with ourselves.

It really is easier said than done and, yes, it's a sweeping statement but as I've said before: comparison really is the mother of all misery.

Yesterday once more

Well, my little dalliance in ‘Facebook stalking’ (it’s not actually stalking but you know what I mean) opened a small can of worms and got me thinking about other girlfriends from the past. For some reason I started thinking about Rachel. She seemed to tick so many boxes – beauty, simply lovely deep down, very coincidentally went to school with my best female friend and loved some of the obscure left-field grooves that I was into at the time. And if that wasn’t enough she also taught at my old school (after I’d left, of course). We looked like a lovely twosome, if I do say so myself. Hot to trot. Talk about a match made in heaven. And yet it wasn’t quite.

At the time, it didn’t work for her and she pulled the plug. And in hindsight I’m glad she saw it in good time. We were kind of like your fake Louis Vuitton purse - it seemed great from a distance but up close and personal you could see it wasn’t real and only served a purpose. Life throws up one or two of those type of situations from time to time, in various guises. Like those: “would we really be friends if we weren’t homesick and thousands of miles away from home?” or “is this really me or am I just doing this because everyone else is or thinks I should be?” Sometimes it’s unclear but sometimes, deep down, you just know. You know what is really you. As for Rachel, she was a lovely girl. Shame she’s not on Facebook…

Yesterday

Used in the right way, Facebook is a brilliant innovation. For me, it’s a way of staying in contact with friends and family living on distant shores without the need of having to put pen to paper (though I must confess there's something special about receiving a handwritten letter, rare as they are now). It’s a great way of staying connected and having a window into friends' worlds and vice versa.

And then, of course, there’s the other side. I found myself indulging in something I didn’t really think I was about – Facebook stalking. Snooping is one thing but going a little deeper is something else. Okay, for some context: it was a boring Sunday night, there was nothing decent on TV so I clicked onto Facebook to skim through a few friends’ pages. While browsing through one friend’s profile, I fell upon a name from the past that had commented on his page. It wasn’t so much the name itself but the name I associated with the name. The comment was basically from a woman called Jo, a friend of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I hadn’t seen or heard from this ex since the heady days of the mid-90s. But having seen Jo's comment I thought “to hell with it” and started digging.

Before long I found myself scanning through some of Jo’s photos (she had kindly not limited access to her pictures which enabled random strangers like myself to view them). It did feel kind of creepy snooping in this way - I hadn’t been invited as a “friend”, Jo probably wouldn’t even remember me from Adam, I didn't even know whether they were friends and, heaven forbid, what would she think if she found out. But there I was looking through her photos, her family events and her memories in search of something vague on a distant ex of mine. And without having to dig through too many holiday pics and bithday parties photos, et voila - there she was. The first picture of the ex I discovered her new surname. The second, her new baby.

Yes, it was a little bizarre. But what surprised me most was my general reaction. Okay, the memories started streaming back about a female that I had fallen head over heels for during a fairly fleeting but intense few months. I had thought a number of times over the years about where she was now, what she was doing with her life and what I would say if we ever bumped into each other. And now 21st century technology had given me a window in. But looking at the pictures was an eye opener. She looked exactly the same now as she did back then. Still cute, still elfin, still with that cheeky glint in her eyes. But, strangely, I couldn’t actually recognise her. Or, more is the point, I couldn’t recognise myself. I couldn't recognise or connect with the feelings of the past. There was no skip of a heart beat, no long deep breaths, no pining. It was just a picture of a pretty girl that I once knew. And I wish her the best. I'm glad I found the pictures. Thanks Facebook...

That's what friends are for

It's odd how our lives evolve. One minute you're a gangly teen running headless around a rugby pitch, freezing your extremities off in shorts big enough to fit your dad (and in the knowledge that you're meant to grow into them), and the next minute your sitting in a warm rugby stadium with two of your old team mates decades later many pounds, miles and realities away from those halycon days in south London. And so it was that three great school friends living on three different continents met up at the world famous sporting event, the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tournament. The event (a seven-man version of the sport) is the biggest of its kind in the world - a festival of noise, colour, partying, the coming together of cultures and, of course, top-class rugby over a weekend. I would heartily recommend the occasion, though clearly it suits a certain disposition.

I'd been to the event a number of times before and it's a great occasion for making new friends, some fleeting, some a bit more lasting. But this time around it was about friendships that had stood the test of time and distance. We have all moved on a fair bit in our lives and loves. And wherever any of us is the world, there's at least the knowledge that there's a certain connection still going strong out there. So here's to friendship! And it was great to see that I was wearing better than they were, which is always nice....

I dream a dream

I went to dinner a couple of nights ago with a friend of mine, doing our periodic catching up session. We always have a decent chat about life and she’s always an interested and interesting individual – very bright, quite driven and always seems to know where’s she’s at. For all my moments of insight, I can be a bit flaky or lacking in confidence to push on, so it’s always nice to hear her version of the world. The interesting situation this time, however, was that my friend had recently had a few realisations. She left a job she really liked a few years back as she felt that she should be going further and faster up the ladder. So she took time out to do an MBA. Following this she managed to find her perfect job working for a development agency. On top of that she met and fell in love with a guy that ticked all the right boxes.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always march in a straight line. She told me that her perfect job had sadly not lived up to expectations. Or to put it another way, she absolutely hated it - the hours were awful, the bureaucracy was excessive, the business focus was all out of kilter, the people were a complete waste of time. At the same time as this disillusionment with work, her boyfriend of four years decided that he didn’t feel it was working for him – he was a bit younger than her, he was still finding his feet and they were in different places. You know the story.

She's had time to adjust to the new reality – dreams can come true but they don’t always turn out the way you expect. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to dream. It just means we have to adapt sometimes. Time for Plan B.

Somewhere over the rainbow

I've been doing this blog thing for a while now and it only just came to me that I haven't got into the habit of putting on photos with my comments. Admittedly, some of it was down to pure techno-ignorance. Something so simple was something so beyond me. Anyway, it was time for a bit of trial and error. So I thought today, "Why not give it a go?". So here we are. And there's something I love about rainbows and that feeling of pureness in the air and regeneration. After the storm comes the rainbow to say that everything's okay again. I like that.