As some of you may remember, in May I got involved in the icepo project, a worldwide effort to release captive icepos back into the wild.
Well, since then I’ve gone over to the other side. Kind of a game keeper turned poacher kind of thing. I am now an icepo hunter!
Hunting icepos is difficult. They are a rare and skittish breed. But a bit of research told me that one could be found in the San Francisco Public Library. Immediately I set to work (but only after a proper icepo hunting breakfast of tea and gingerbread pancakes!).
It takes great skill to hunt icepos; and a really big gun. Preferably one that shoots lasers and can turn into a sword. Mine does all that and more.
Icepos are notoriously difficult to track,
but with a bit of patience (and a lot of luck) it can be done.
Icepos hide out in the most normal looking of places.
You’ve got to know what you’re looking for if you’re going to have a successful hunt. And even then you have to be careful for fear of spooking this rare and moody beast.
But with skill and diligence victory can be yours!
Of course, I could never kill such a majestic creature. I hunt for the fun of it, not for the loss of life. Rest assured that icepo 99 was released back into the wild, and still roams free in the bookshelves of San Francisco Public Library to this day.
As I’ve mentioned already, I am now officially unemployed. I celebrated this by having a purge. I deleted a load of numbers from my phone that I haven’t used in ages, or will never use ever again. If you’ve never done it before I highly recommend it. It’s very cathartic. I started doing it when I lost my phone ages ago, and so lost all those numbers I used to call but who didn’t call me. At the time I thought it was a tragedy, but then I realised what a blessing it was. It freed me of all those old relationships that weren’t working, and allowed me to concentrate on the ones that do (if a relationship is working you’ll have other ways of getting in touch with them). It was such a liberating experience I do it on a regular basis now, deleting the chaff and just keeping the wheat. Definitely keeps things in order, just how I like ‘em.
The planning is finally starting to gather pace now. Yesterday I booked my tickets for the round the world flights, then I went online and did my visa applications for America and Australia. Today I book the storage, go buy a backpack, book a B&B plus the meditation in San Francisco, and I start to pack ready for the big move.
For those that are interested (and who isn’t?) I got the flights round the world for £1431:00. I go LON-SFO/LAX-SYD(PER)SYD-SIN/SIN-LON. That’s London to San Francisco, overland to Los Angeles, then L.A. to Sydney, a single to Perth, overland back to Sydney (eventually) Sydney to Singapore, and Singapore to London. Of course I’ll be doing stuff in between (I’ll let you know when the detailed itinerary is up on Yoga Bum) but you get the gist of it.
I was surprised to get the flights so cheap (and they’re good flights too! None of that early morning/late night crap) but what really surprised me was how expensive the insurance was. For 1 year it’s £515. I don’t buy insurance normally, so that seems a lot to me, especially compared to the flights. Apparently it’s because of the American leg of my trip. I shouldn’t be surprised, but still it is a shame, especially having to pay so much for something you may never use.
I’m officially excited about going away now. I actually danced a bit when I got back to the flat with my tickets. And then last night, as I went to bed, I caught myself singing (La Bamba for some reason?). These are not things I normally do (at least not just before bed!). I guess you could say I’m looking forward to starting my adventure.
She starts off talking about games, but quickly goes into tips for better living. All the ideas she offers are real and familiar, and are backed up by real world science. But the absolute bonus are the practical tips and exercises she gives you at the end to help you improve the quality of your life.
It’s very fun and life affirming, and I’m glad I watched it (which is why I’m sharing it here!).
And because I don’t say it enough, thank you all my friends and followers for checking out my blog, leaving comments, and taking an interest in what I do and what I’m doing to improve my life. It really means a lot to me.
Be happy everyone, and remember to follow your dreams! It’s the only thing that makes any sense in the long run.
Now before those who know me start getting all excited by the title of this post, calm yourselves! I’m not getting married all of a sudden or anything like that. It just accurately reflects how things are for me right now.
I was going to call it “Same Old Same Old” but that would have been misleading. Much more accurate to point out that, as some things change, so others stay the same. There’s quite a bit of upheaval in process at the moment, what with me quitting my job and going to move out of the flat at the end of August, so it’s nice to do something familiar every now and then to keep things on an even keel.
What do you think? It’s really starting to get there. I just need to get the amounts right, and maybe try and take out the egg replacer in lieu of something more natural, but apart from that it’s pretty much good to go.
And I’ve been to do Go Ape again, which would be my fourth time. Guess you could say I’m a bit of a fan.
It was a great day out, with some very, very lovely company. And even though the drizzle afterwards meant we couldn’t do the barbecue I still had the best time, and can’t wait to hang out again as soon as possible (in the trees, and on terra firma).
And so what if the best pic of me also has my belly sticking out, lol. That’s just God’s way of telling me, “You need to cut down on the pies mate!” ..hehehe..
But seriously, I do need to do something about the ol’ muffin top though. It’s starting to get in the way of my forward bends. So I’ve taken advice from my friend in Oz who’s a personal trainer, and I’m going to alter my diet to see if that helps.
So from now on it’s no bread, no crisps, no sugar, no pre-made foods. Just lots of veggies and fruit, soups in the evening, and all home made, organic and lovely. Hopefully that, smaller portion sizes, and a bit more exercise, and I’ll be fit and flexible in no time.
You’ve got to celebrate your achievements, whatever they may be. Big, small, it doesn’t matter. Enjoy what you do and you’ll always be happy.
I did my first scorpion today. For those that don’t know, it looks a little something like this.
Of course my scorpion was far less impressive and a damn site shakier than the one pictured above, and I needed a little help in getting there, but I did it, I held it, and I’m pretty damn pleased with myself (not to mention a little surprised, lol).
Of course my little achievement is nowhere near as impressive as these guys,
but so what? I did it, I’m happy, and that’s all I care about.
Been doing so much recently I kind of gave myself the day off today. If I tell you it’s gone noon and I’m still in my dressing gown you kind of get the drift.
With that in mind, here’s wot I done today (so far).
First up (but in no particular order) I’ve been amusing myself with some videos from The Slow Mo Guys.
Ah, to be young and have access to a very expensive camera.
Then I spent yonks on the random web comic I came across called xkcd.com.
Which made me want to go check out my own Tumblr project, see how it was going?
I’ve also been using the random number generator at Random.org to help me make decisions this morning (though mostly that’s been limited to what to have for breakfast).
And I’ve been enjoying random happenings elsewhere, like this gem from 4oD.
And I think that about covers it (except for an honourbale mention of the fact that I deleted all my Nitin Sawhney tunes today, as I realised that I’m just not that into him as I thought I was). A morning well wasted I think you’ll agree.
There have of course been many e-mails, a downloaded tune or two (see below), games played, and stuff purchased on Amazon, but they’re everyday kinds of things, whereas everything above is specific to today only.
So apart from trying to figure out my entire life here’s what else has been going on.
I did a week where I tested my body’s pH balance, to see if I was on the right track internally, and it was interesting. Here’s how it came out.
That spike on Monday is where I ate a while big bag of Tyrells salt and vinegar crisps (they’re so bloody moreish, what can I say?). Threw my whole system out of whack for a day or two. Very bizarre. I mean I didn’t feel bad, but obviously internally strange things were going on. FYI: 6-7.5 is about what you’re looking for in terms of a healthy pH).
I won the lotto the other day too. Check it out!
Only 4 balls, £51, but still, it’s the most I’ve ever won on it. Won’t quite get me the lifestyle I want, but it’ll at least buy me some new underwear, lol.
I only mention it here because it’s inspired me to do a little art project of my own. It’s a bit of a slow burner, and one I won’t go into too much detail about here (yet). But once the next participant has done their bit I promise a full reveal.
Ok, so I was going to do this big detailed review of the Dhamma Dipa meditation retreat, what happened when, how, etc. But then I thought maybe it’s best not to give away too much of the experience, and rob people of the chance to find out for themselves. Plus, I’m not sure how I feel about it right now, so anything I write would be a little unbalanced to say the least. If you’re interested in doing it you should just go do it. It’s free, you can leave whenever you want, and you’re big enough to make your own decisions about the whole thing.
That being said, here’s some points from the few notes I jotted down when I got back. They should go some way to defining my experience there, and maybe give you an idea what to expect. And for those that need it I’ll just say it right now – **SPOILER ALERT**
For one thing it was tough! Ten days of getting up at 4am, meditating for ten hours a day, no food after noon (though some fruit at 5pm); no talking, no touching, no eye contact; isolation, hard work, and a lot to comprehend. That about sums it up. It’s an emotional experience, but not a social one. They take it very very very seriously, and there’s very little let up. You’re there to work, and work you must.
I almost left a few times, sometimes because I wasn’t getting anything out of it, sometimes out of frustration, and sometimes because I was just sick of all the rules. But I stuck it out, and I at least gained a good grounding in Vipassana meditation (though I also got that from reading Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition).
I practiced when I was meant to practice, but I didn’t always do it very well. If I tell you that I came away from there with a new recipe for vegan calzone, an almost complete film script, and the business plan for a new retreat centre in the Lake District, you will see that my mind wasn’t always on the job.
Though I could see the value in the no contact rules (to experience the technique for yourself without other opinions getting in the way) they were frustrating. At times I wanted to scream, just to make a loud noise (NB: when we were finally able to speak on the 10th day my voice was so croaky from lack of use); not knowing anyone’s names I ended up making nicknames for them just to have a point of reference – Zippy, the Wizard of Space and Time, Mr Swishy Pants – (not all of them were entirely complimentary); and I didn’t get to meet any girls which, to be honest, is part of the reason I go to these damn things. But anyway…
So it was hard. At one point I almost went to look at my car just to check it was still there (and maybe to gain some psychological support from it’s presence) but I caught myself and decided not to be so stupid. Turns out I wasn’t the only one. One guy even got in his van, and would have left if the gates had been locked, but they weren’t so he stayed (it made sense somehow). And someone even heard a car leaving it 3:30am, though who it was and why he didn’t know. Heck, my own roommate left on the second day!
But there were also spooky moments that kept you interested. Like the discourse on day 7, when the teacher, Goenka, via the medium of badly shot video, told the ‘This Too Shall Pass’ story. The weird thing for me is I had been thinking of that story that very day. My head was full of film and TV clips most of the time, and the story appears in My Best Friends Wedding, with Paul Giamatta telling it to a defeated Julia Roberts in a hotel corridor. It’s not a story I think of often, and maybe it was just a coincidence, but it certainly caught me by surprise, and helped keep me interested on days 8 and 9 when all I wanted to do was go home (or at the very least have a lie in).
So I survived, just! Come the end of it I was glad to go home. And what did I do when I got back? Had some curry sauce and chips, watched back to back episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and ordered a bunch of stuff off Amazon. I haven’t done any meditating since (though I did pretty much go into a load of night shifts, so I’m kinda knackered at the moment) and I don’t know when I’ll be sitting again. My leg still hurts like hell (that made for a fun 10 days let me tell you!) and so I’m less than enthusiastic to get down on the floor again.
And if I’m honest I’m a little dubious of the whole experience too. All the discourses and instruction were off tape, with just an assistant teacher to offer clarification if you were to ask. The tapes were shot in 1991. Are you telling me that no one in 20+ years has learnt or benefitted enough from the technique to be able to teach it on the organisations behalf? That puts doubts in my mind. And the final discourse, where they insist that they are the correct way to do Vipassana like Buddha used to do, and other meditation techniques have lost his teachings along the way, left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
All in all I’d have expected my mind to be alive with what I’ve learnt, but in fact it’s not. I’m glad I went, but I was equally as glad to get home, and I’m keen now to just crack on with the rest of my life, planning what I’m going to do next and how I’m going to get there (the subject of my next blog post).
Like I said, give it a go and make your own mind up. These are just my thoughts/memories on the matter. And here’s one final one to be going on with. I’ve heard it said that you should seek enlightenment like a drowning man seeks air. Now that’s all well and good, but if you live your entire life like you’re drowning, well what kind of life would that be?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
It’s so easy to think about tomorrow, and forget about today. To look to the future for satisfaction, and ignore the here and now. So many things we strive for are based on delayed gratification, and the promise of what is to come, but if what we desire is always in the future, how will we ever truly be happy?
They say ‘Tomorrow never comes’. True, from a linguistic/philosophical point of view, though always a saying that annoys me somehow with it’s clever smugness. I used to have a saying, ‘Never put of ’til tomorrow what you can get away with never doing’, but that was just me trying to be funny. Besides, if it doesn’t need doing, why is it on your To Do List in the first place?
But also I’m looking forward to a chance to practice properly for the first time. No distractions, just you and the cushion. What I’m less enthusiastic about is dealing with my leg while I’m there. Thanks to a litany of injuries my right leg hurts in oh so many different positions, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to sit for hours at a time without a great deal of pain. I just did a Tai Chi weekend and by the end of it I was really in a lot of pain.
But hopefully it’ll calm down over the next 10 days. I have exercises to do and I won’t be doing any work so nothing should aggravate it. And there are a number of positions you can meditate in, so I’m sure I’ll find something I can do that’ll work for me.
For my last bit of visual entertainment for a while I just finished watching a great documentary about the Apollo missions called In The Shadow Of The Moon. Not only is it fascinating to watch, but it is inspiring to hear the revelations each astronaut went through in seeing the Earth from so far away. Some found their spirituality (very specifically saying not religion, but spirituality), some came to realise how unimportant the many things we find to complain about day to day really are, some came to understand the interconnectedness of each and every thing in the Universe, but not one of them came away thinking that this fractious, warring, polluting system we’ve set in motion is the way to be.
And it made me think too. Neil Armstrong was 38 when he went on his mission into space. I’m 38, and tomorrow I embark on my mission to become a space cadet. How alike we truly are, lol. Ok, I’m just messing. but it is interesting to see what others before you have done by the same age you are.
However, that being said, you can’t get caught up in measuring yourself by the standards of others of course. Each of us has their own path to follow, and we must find our own ways of measuring our success (otherwise we’ll always be unsuccessful, and ultimately always unhappy). But more importantly we have to enjoy the victories of today, for if we always look to the future for validation we will never truly feel we have achieved anything.
Ok, that’s enough philosiphising for now. See you in 2 weeks when I’ll report on my 10 days of meditative seclusion, and hopefully I’ll finally be able to make some decisions about my upcoming sabbatical, and progress forward in my quest for a Brand New Life.
(brace yourselves, this is a long ‘un – oo-err missus! )
Oh Spring, where have you been? Away for so long, I thought you’d never get here!
But now finally the equinox has come and gone, the days are longer, the nights shorter, the sun is out, and we’re about to go into summer time for 2012. Oh yes, things are looking up! That’s up as far as the weather is concerned anyway. Elsewhere the forecast is not so bright.
Work are humming and harring a little about giving me a sabbatical. They’ve sent me a list of questions, the general gist of which is “How will this effect the company?” and “What’s in it for us?” Now of course I’ll answer their questions in detail, but I just get the feeling they’re gearing themselves up to say no.
If they do though I’m pretty sure I’m going to take some time off work anyway (ie: hand in my notice). I mean if it’s a choice between that and my gravestone reading:
Here’s Lies Keith Dickinson He Kept His Job
I know which one I’d prefer!
Ok, so never mind spring, where the hell have I been? 2 weeks it’s been since my last post. I feel bad for neglecting my blog like that (don’t take it personally, it’s taking me a week just to respond to personal e-mails at the moment). I’ve just been working constantly, trying to make a bit of money to help pay for future shenanigans.
I have been doing other stuff too though, things more in line with My Brand New Life!
For one thing I met up with a friend of many years, Rakka, who I’ve actually never met before in real life. She’s a Flickr Friend, someone I’ve followed for 44 months (literally the third person I started following on there), and a very creative artist and photographer. It was her ‘My Name Is…’ Diego Montoya that caught my attention, and I’ve been an avid fan ever since.
She comes over to the UK once a year or so to get her fix of Britishness (a wee bit of an anglophile she is) and so we reckoned it was high time we met up. Actually we tried to meet last year but she was so ill we had to call it off.
Anyway, we met up in Islington where she and the guy she came over with, Leff, were going to be meeting a famous cat (?). Hey, who am I to judge, lol.
I took my friend Amanda along coz she works in the area and she was highly amused by the idea of meeting up with someone you only know through the online world. Rakka also invited along another online friend of hers, Nathalie, to meet for the first time, as well as another guy they know from the States, Chris, who just happened to be over here, so all told it was a pretty mixed bunch!
I have to say I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. Who knows how you’ll get along when you know someone one way and then meet them in an entirely different context. But I needn’t have been worried. She’s lovely, her friends were lovely, my friend got on with her and her friends, and all in all we managed to prove that the world is indeed just a great big onion, lol.
We had a right laugh once we were comfortably ensconced in the pub (alcohol helps in these kinds of situations, though I’m glad to say the fact that I don’t drink anymore didn’t prove to be a hindrance). Topics of conversation included (but weren’t limited to):
* Which parts of the UK are like which parts of America? – The North of England is like the Deep South (apparently, though I contest this a little), London and Edinburgh are like New York and L.A., and Leicestershire is like Ohio (ie: boring, hehehe )
* Icelandic Emo Ponies (or Ice Po’s, as we called them) – check out this link if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
* Portlandia – “It’s true. It’s all true!! They think they’re making a joke but they’re not, that’s what it’s like!!!“
And…
* Sexy Neaderthals – Which is just so (unintentionally) hilarious! You’ve got to check it out. Just be sure to stick with it to the end.
As you can tell, we had fun. It was so great meeting up with everyone, I’m so glad we did it, and it just goes to prove the old adage -
‘There’s no such thing as strangers, just friends you’ve not yet met.’
So, apart from that, what else is going on? I’ve been writing a bit, which is nice. Actually coming up with some good stuff at the moment. The hard part is finding the time to write. For example I haven’t had time to do anything yet today, it’s nearly midnight, and I’ve got work tomorrow. Not conducive to good output. But that’s just an excuse. I need to make the time, and come Monday I will! It’s all good.
I’ve got a 10 day residential meditation course coming up which I’m really looking forward to. It should be amazing. Very intensive, quite hardcore (up at 4:30am!), but definitely worth it. Can’t wait to see what I learn from it.
Between now and then it’s just work work work. Might get some cooking done, in fact I better! I’ve bought the domain name http://www.myveganlife.co.uk (which you can type into your browser but it just leads you back here at the moment, lol) and I’m going to start an all vegan blog which I’ll be launching in a month or two (haven’t even started building it yet!). It’ll be the public face for all my cooking shenanigans.
Don’t worry, I’ll keep this little baby going. This is where I come to share silly things, make dick jokes, and talk about all the weird stuff I got going on. I just need somewhere I can build into a ‘proper’ foody site that people can really enjoy (and that might lead somewhere in the future). Coz that’s the one thing all this faffing about with work has taught me, that not only does no one get rich working for other people, and if you always do what you’ve always done then you’ll always get what you’ve already got, but if you don’t do it now, then when?
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