How’s your job? Achieving what you set out? Maybe you should make a plan. List 5 goals you want to achieve in the next ten years and then make a plan to tick them off. What about your mind? Are you relaxed? Maybe you should focus more on relaxing. Learn to switch off. Start meditating. Do more exercise? Is the diet working for you? 30 plants a week is what you should be aiming for, you know. Yeah that’s more than 5 a day. Drink water. 64 oz. What? It’s about 1.8 litres? No, I don’t know what that is in pints.
Are you getting the most out of life? You’re getting on, now. You probably won’t write that novel or start your own company but are you doing what you should? What you want? Have you got a bucket list? Visited all the countries you want to visit? Been bungee jumping? Read all the classics? Learnt a language? Read a book in a second language? Sounds like you’re falling behind.
Do you spend enough time in nature? A mix of green and blue therapy, if you can. Get close to water and spend some time in a forest. Stroke a dog. Look deep in to the eyes of a horse. Fuck a squirrel. No, not that one. Don’t do that. For the love of god don’t do that.
Listened to all the podcasts? You know some people listen to them at 1.5 times the usual speed in order to get through more of them. Hurry up. Be like Dre (remember him? You forgot about him, didn’t you) and move on to the next episode.
What about your family? Are the kids learning enough? Are they intellectually, socially and physically challenged? Spending enough time with your parents? Won’t be long before you don’t have the chance. Make the most of it. Cherish it. Play scrabble with them or take them to the pub. Eat some plants with them or have a water drinking party. Stay in touch with your friends. Get in touch with your old friends, don’t lose touch, it would be a shame. E-mail your exes and say you want to be friends again. Project love into the world. Be healthy. Be happy. Go to hell.
What a pile of shit, eh? When did we become so bloody obsessed with trying to maximise the balls off everything? Why do we want to get every last piece of life measured and maximised instead of enjoyed and savoured?
I’m not sure I’ve ever looked back at my happy memories, and I’ve nostalgically looked back at many, and thought “man that was a deeply efficient time”. We remember the chaos and the carnage, the moments that burn their way into your consciousness because of a depth of feeling (even if that feeling is one of burning shame….)
Imagine talking to your ancestor from the medieval ages. You explain to him or her that you are tracking the number of steps you take every day because you want to do a minimum of 10,000, and that you need to get 90 minutes of deep REM sleep to ensure your cognitive powers are firing tomorrow. I’m willing to wager he’d sip his turnip juice and then tell you than you are like a second frost on their pumpkin patch and welcome in his hovel no more. To be fair, your grandparents would probably also think you’re an idiot. Perhaps they already do.
I’m not saying that we need to quit our jobs and live in the woods and say things like “I earn less but I smile more”. I’m suggesting that we spend more time doing nothing at all. Sit and stare, like a horse next to a wall. (I once saw a horse standing still in a field but his nose (muzzle?) was a few inches from a wall. He didn’t look like he gave a shit, he was happy. It stayed with me.)
I guess this is at least half inspired by one of the podcasts I’ll link to below that says we need to slow down to speed up. The theory goes that we need to do less stuff, work at a slower speed, and obsess over quality. It’s one of those theories that I reckon will get traction with people, mostly because it tells us what we want to hear - namely that we just need to learn to chill the fuck out a bit and start doing less shit.
My intuition, somewhat helpfully, is leading me to believe that we should listen to our intuitions a bit more. There’s a message from within that is being drowned by bullshit messages from without.
I am fully committed to maximising the times I do nothing. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Content Time
Who is this anonymous internet artist? They should be famous. I love this site. Subscribe now before they’re global to get some cool credits.
‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
Do you sometimes wonder if everything is getting shitter? That’s because it is.
When do we stop finding new music?
Interesting, and pleased that my borderline obsession with liking new music that you haven’t yet heard means this doesn’t apply to me.
Podcasts
The Gatekeepers. I’ll include a trigger warning about themes of suicide and mental health challenges. Good chance it’ll encourage you to leave the hellscape of social media behind.
Does America Own Britain? Yes, according to these lads.
Is Britain going to get worse and worse? Yes, according to this lad.
Books
Jesus this was some fucked up shit. Loved it. Read it if you haven’t.
It’s about a trip up Everest that went wrong. Very badly wrong. There are over 300 dead bodies littering that mountain. Each one of them was a highly motivated and high achieving person, so maybe it’s ok just to calm down a bit, eh.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
My life is really boring compared to this guys.
There’s a man that fucks squirrels in our local wood. He’s got a poster with his number to call if you see one. Only the grey ones though. Never touches the reds.
This was excellent. Saw a thread about a cat who's favourite spot was an inconvenient place, at an unusual angle, far too close to a fence but went to it every day and sat. Seemed content. When our cat did that, we knew it was the end. I think as long as the animal is quiet and not making a lot of noise, it's probably OK. Miaowing loudly gave the game away. Probably the same in humans, too. Sit somewhere and shout and it's game over.