Falling off a chair and adventures in time dilation, the theory of relativity and accelerated skull fragmentation.
While standing on a chair a couple of weeks ago, I slipped and fell backwards onto a tiled floor. I was in the garage at the office and I had to stand on the chair to reach a door bolt. It’s hard to gauge the distance I fell, but I’d guess my head travelled at least ten feet before introducing itself to the floor at high velocity.
But the thing I can’t forget is that I experienced an amazing time dilation. As I was falling, this is exactly what I thought: ”…Shit there’s nothing I can grab on to to stop this…. I’m just going to have to fall…. Hmm… This is taking ages… So this is what it’s like to experience time slowing down… … … This is incredible…. I think I’m going to hit the floor soon… OK I need to try to relax….”
BANG.
Luckily when I landed on the tiles my tail-bone, hip, and skull took most of the hit. Wait did I say luckily? I meant painfully.
Still, an amazing experience.
Imagine how terrifying death would be if we didn’t have sleep. Every night it shows us that it’s not so bad to not exist. Sleep is there to comfort us. Sleep is the little death.
Once upon a time, a singer/song writer.
I tried my hardest. I wrote the best lyrics I could write, with the best chords I could come up with and I gigged those songs with the best musicians I could find. I did this for 13 years.
Nothing happened.
All the gig venues stayed small. All the mailed out demos remained unanswered. All the Hot Press reviews remained unwritten. Despite trying everything I could think of, despite trying harder than I had ever tried at anything I had ever done, nothing happened. Slowly the flame went out, until eventually I had to admit I was sitting in the dark.
I realised that despite what I’d been taught by numerous inspirational movies, sometimes you try your hardest and nothing happens. Sometimes you’re just not good enough. So I decided to stop before I started to embarrass myself. That’s what you have to do I think: Stop, and if you have enough heart left in you, trim the gray hairs, shave the balding head, and try be something else. Learn to live with the fact that you need to make your dreams smaller.
Sleep.
It’s an odd ol’ thing. I’ve been abusing it for years, going to bed at 4am, getting up at 9.53am to start work at 10am. Napping from 1pm to 2pm. Work some more. Another nap from 6pm to 7pm. Ad-hoc micro napping. Gorilla slumbering. Sporadic snoozing.
This had been pretty much my cycle for 6 bleary years. And it worked well for me. I’d made my peace with it. I’d become a sort of human-cat hybrid except without their cuteness, flexibility, sharp vision, fur (mostly) and ability to always land on my feet (usually land on my face).
But now I have a DAY JOB. It’s goodbye working from home, goodbye flexi-time, goodbye midday naps, and hello commuting misery, hello mornings cold enough to slice your extremities off, hello workmates who come in to cough and sneeze all over you, and to top it off…. I have to get to bed by midnight. Midnight! What am I, 9 years old? NOW I remember why everyone complains about it. You get home, eat, scratch your ear, then it’s time for bed. WhatInTheWhatNow? Where’s my Travors time gone?! Where’s my life gone?! Where are my pants gone?*
Meh. I’d probably only waste it anyway (Ref: My 20s).
*Possibly unrelated.
On Interviews, in honesty
I rarely get nervous doing interviews because I usually don’t really want the job, I know that sounds a bit nuts but how often do you do an interview for the perfect job? And if it’s just about doing something as mundane as a corporate skill I’m capable of in order to earn money, why should I be overly concerned getting the job? How boring.
Unless of course you’ve run out of money. Then you need the job. I think that’s where most of us are, in need of money; very few people are lucky enough to have the right combination of education, financial backing, circumstance and direction, to work at a job they actually enjoy.
Now, say the interview was for a job that entailed reading, writing, playing music and a nice daily run - then I’d be nervous. I’d want that job so bad I’d be sweating buckets. I’d be sitting in that interview chair surrounded by a sweaty pond made entirely of human desperation. I’d sit up all night thinking I have to get this! I was born to do this!
Which reminds me, last week I did an interview for a job that sounds really interesting to me (sort of a Web PM role with room for creativity and use of social media), and I discovered that I was incapable of speaking a word out loud that I’ve always pronounced perfectly in my head: “Advocacy”. I tried so hard to say it correctly that I actually ended up stuttering at high volume “A….A…AAAAAVV-A-A-A-DD…VVVocyyaaaaaoccaaacy, AAAadddvu… AAAWAWAWAW… ARRGH, um, promoters…!!!”
Man that was embarrassing. Still, I got asked back for a second interview ;-)
What was the ‘last straw’ that finally pushed you over the edge to become a vocal atheist?
There was no “last straw” as such, it was just a gradual process. I guess Dawkins’ call to arms in The God Delusion may have helped, but I was vocal long before that came along.
For all of my teens and most of my twenties I was crippled by shyness and a lack of self confidence but once I learned to trust myself, I began to be a lot more outspoken on my scepticism of religion and the idea of a divine supernatural being.
I can tell you when I became absolutely sure I was an atheist though. Despite the vast amount of catholic dogma I was subjected to as a child (Including 7 years as an alter boy and 3 in folk group), the seeds of doubt grew in my mind over a period of time from around age 11 to 17. I began to realise I didn’t believe in the concepts of religion or the existence of a God (I think it’s important to separate the two) that I’d been force-fed since childhood, and instead had started to formulate ideas about what I really thought life and the world was all about. My ideas lacked cohesion and clarity though. Then at the age of 17, I read The Crow Road by Iain Banks, and it all fell into place.
The Crow Road reflected back at me every suspicion, doubt and thought I had on religion/God/life, in perfect clarity. It was like someone had reached inside my head and put my jumbled ideas in order. It was a profoundly comforting thing to realise that there were other people who thought the same way I did. I recently reread The Crow Road and even 19 years later it still perfectly summarises the foundation of my atheism.
The Thinking Place.
If, like me, you grew up on staple diet of 80s movies then you’re probably already familiar with The Thinking Place. If not, watch a bunch of 80s movies and you’ll begin to recognise a gradual series of events that lead up to The Thinking Place, something like this:
Boy from the wrong side of the tracks meets upper middle class girl with over protective father (preferably ex-army and still sporting the crew cut). Over protective father doesn’t want Johnny-blue-jeans anywhere near his beautiful (if a little wishy washy), porcelain, academically gifted daughter.
Duckie (Jon Cryer) visits The Thinking Place in Pretty in Pink.
First: The father tries to bribe the boy to stay away, but Johnny’s honour is strong and his love true.
Second: He threatens the boy to stay away, but with love in his heart Johnny has no fear, even when grabbed by the scruff of his scrawny neck and flung out the door into a rose bush.
Finally: He locks up his daughter in some fashion and when the resilient (and let’s face it, slightly dim) boy calls, he is told she doesn’t want to see him anymore.
Boy rings and rings, but she never answers (phone has been confiscated).
Boy is in despair.
Boy is lost in a deep melancholy ocean of emotions.
Boy goes to The Thinking Place.
It might be a little pier overlooking a lake, a tire swing hanging from an old oak tree, a bench on a hill with a view of a neon bathed town, or a small wall for leaning on while looking out to sea (a gentle wind will of course tousle hair in slow motion). The serious thinking happens here, it’s a slow process, requiring a soundtrack of tortured electric guitar with a slowly ticking drum beat, presumably to signify the passing of time (and not the slow rusted clockwork of our hero’s brain). Then after some time a divine answer registers on Johnny’s face and he’ll nod his head in understanding, perhaps with a clenched and slowly shaken fist.
You know the rest, you know this movie. Boy climbs a tree to dizzy girl’s window and together they persuade the furious father that their love is true. And besides, Johnny–blue-jeans can get him a discount on an oil change and tire rotation at the garage he undoubtedly works at.
Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) visits The Thinking Place in Lost in Translation (A 2003 Thinking Place).
As a dutifully self absorbed teenager I was always on the look out for an emotionally tortured situation that would give me the opportunity to go to The Thinking Place. My Thinking Place was a little spot on a coastal path, overlooking Dublin bay. I had to walk two miles to get there, then I’d light up a cigarette and try to tune out the little old ladies behind me walking their dogs, with pooper scoopers clenched in their mitten-clad hands.
But the thing is, the point of all this is, once there I always encountered the same problem: The Thinking Place was unbelievably boring. And I could never think of a damned thing to resolve whatever flimsy excuse I’d come up with to go there, partially because my dilemma was usually so unsubstantial it didn’t warrant a solution in the first place and partially because I was a moderately dull-witted lad. Also, it was always bloody freezing and always on the verge of a brutal rainstorm.
As I stood there trying to keep my stupid floppy hair from blowing onto the end of my cigarette, invariably my thoughts would turn to how cool my little brother’s Nintendo Gameboy was and how nice it would be to play Tetris on it for a few hours. Eventually the temptation would get too much for me and I’d turn and scamper the two miles home. The whole decision process usually took about three minutes.
Well I guess it was thinking of a sort.
Neil Gaiman on feedback
I remember reading a post on Neil Gaiman’s approach to feedback a while back and it stuck in my head, so I thought I’d share it.
Basically he says: If someone tells you there’s something wrong with a particular part of a piece you’ve written, then they are right and you should review it, but if someone tells you there’s something wrong with a particular part of a piece you’ve written and exactly how you should change it, then they are wrong, and you shouldn’t follow their instructions.
What do you think of this advice?
A French Kiss and my first lesson in the mysteriousness of the human female.
I was 11 years old when I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Natalie. She had greasy hair, grubby clothes and a pretty gritty vocabulary too. My dad affectionately referred to her as “Bar-of-Soap”. At least I think it was affectionately.
As inhabitants of Dublin’s impoverished north inner city, we engaged in all the usual pastimes for two kids of our age: hanging about streets, eating sweets (tenpenny mixtures: ten jelly sweets wrapped in a cone of paper) and visiting the swimming pool followed by a treat of a potato in batter from the local chipper (a thick slice of potato, deep fried in batter… arteries… clogging…).
When not engaged in any of these pastimes, we were kissing. Kissing in our little shack made of liberated freight pallets, kissing in the park, kissing in a lane-way, kissing under the bridge, kissing until my jaws felt like I’d just spent four hours trying to unscrew a light-bulb with my teeth.
One day whilst engaged in some kissing, hidden in an industrial estate by a murky green canal, the subject of the French Kiss was discussed. After some conversation on the possible geographical origin of the aforementioned snog, Natalie suggested we give it a shot, and instructions were imparted as to how the French Kiss should be performed. Steeling myself for this voyage into the unknown, I instigated and executed the requested kiss flawlessly.
After about a minute we stopped.
Natalie looked at me, round eyed and dazed, said “So that was a French Kiss”, then slapped me resoundingly in the face.
And that ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to the mysteriousness of the human female.
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