If there’s one thing I will admit to upsetting about, it is the amount of content I write, and how long it takes me to do it. I don’t really feel like I have done a proper day’s work unless I’ve created a bare minimum of 1000 words of usable content for my main website. Usually I go for 2 to 3000 — this might seem like a lot, but a lot of it is very repetitive, and as I use voice recognition, I can sometimes create text almost as quickly as I speak. Looking back on what I have produced over the last 20 minutes, I’m reminded that voice recognition is even faster when it is being used to tell a story, rather than to write out a list, or to create more specific text, as is often the case on my main website, as I need to list lots of different place names, which it can easily get wrong. My personal best so far is around 2300 words in one hour, but I’ve already done 900 words in 20 minutes, so I think it is time to smash that previous record.
I hope the text both above and below this point continues to make perfectly good sense — although I’m going for a bit of verbal diarrhoea here, there’s no point in writing total nonsense, as I want readers to come back to this blog, not be scared away! I’m also trying to make corrections as I go along, but do please forgive any I miss.
So what am I going to write about next? Sorry to disappoint, but I think it is time I switched back to my other website, I’m sure I’ll have more for Mind Pilot later on today.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that I had 365 so-called friends on Facebook — one for each and every day of the year. Why do I say so-called friends? If you’ve watched the movie ‘Fight Club’, you will be aware of the concept of the singleserving friend — somebody who you just meet once, and with whom you have to go through the usual rigmarole are talking about where you live, what you do, your family etc, whilst always maintaining an air of pleasantness, so avoiding anything too deep or controversial. Thanks to social networking websites like Facebook, we can now even have zero serving friends — people we have never even met, but who know quite a few of our mutual contacts, and who want to put it in their larger network.
I’d quite like the idea of meeting up with one person every single day of the year, but somehow I just don’t see that happening. Maybe it would be a good social exercise to try and meet up with one ‘Facebook friend’ (i.e. someone who I wouldn’t get in touch with by other means such as e-mail or mobile) each week, and see what happens. On the other hand, I’m still slightly nervy about just how much information people can get about you if they want to start digging. Still, this website is here now, and it is here for a reason, so as I continue to write, I hope more people out there come to read.
1:10 pm
As I’m putting up this morning’s posts, I hear myself ask how this blog might come across if things are going really well, and my posts just seem like gloating. What a stupid question! That’s why I called this website ‘Mind Pilot’! Right now, I might not feel like I’m in a position to give other people that many success tips, but if I can consistently keep myself in good spirits, why shouldn’t I? The idea of this website isn’t too spread a whole load of misery about how difficult life is — in fact, most of the time, it is quite the opposite. The aim is to show how a few simple steps can help even the most chaotic minds to stay positive and to stay in focus.
Of course, there is going to be some turbulence along the way, but even if I am having a relatively smooth ride, I hope I can share enough tips to help other people experience the same.
1 PM
Well, I’d produced some good content, even if it was just for this blog, rather than for my main website, and I decided to go online at last, but for what? An hour and a half has passed, and what do I have to show for it? Actually, there was a potentially useful e-mail request from another blogger who wants to do an interview with me. I’m not sure how useful the interview itself will be, but any opportunity to get more links into my website will have to be a good thing. Why don’t I go around asking people I know for more links, for anyone out there who doesn’t know how the Internet works, having inward links pointing at your website is very useful for staying up in the search engines.
So I have tried to thread my blogs together, and I guess I’m approaching that time were Mind Pilot will be wide open for anyone to read, which is quite a daunting prospect. I’m not quite ready yet for the possibility of anyone I know to go crawling round this website reading up about my ups and downs, but it will happen sooner or later. In the meantime, I just want my blogs to be properly indexed, so people can find them on all the different blog feed websites and leave comments if they want to. This all seems like so much effort to set up, and of course I’d much rather be getting on with writing stuff. So actually, that time online wasn’t too bad after all, I think I will come back to this more technical stuff later on.
Looking back over this blog, I’m sorry for the large gaps between posts, and for the fact that posts tend to come together in clumps. As of yesterday, I seem to have gained a lot more momentum to keep this blog up to date, mainly because by putting all my thoughts down in an open diary, I feel much more committed to stay focused and get things done.
I won’t make any false promises — over the next few days, I’ll probably make at least five posts each day, but when this calms down, I think a more realistic target would be to make at least one post each week, rather than to expect a daily post, which I know is unrealistic. I might also dig out some diary notes and fill in a little bit more about what’s been going on in the months in between the gaps, but I think it is far more likely that I will keep this up to date with fresh goings-on.
I hope that breaking down a bike ride into steps is useful — it worked for me last Friday, but I’ll admit I was still pretty lousy over the weekend and on Monday. I did however manage to draw up a list of other simple (and perhaps not so simple) activities which could be broken down into a series of enough steps to make them all seem doable. Some of these might need a little bit of teamwork, whereas others are a bit more historical, but they can all be broken down:
Personal routine:
- Developing a smile.
- Getting up in the morning.
- Staying awake through the day.
- Creating web content (using voice recognition software). Specifically — creating the first thousand words each day (always starts with one word).
- Having a social life.
- Meeting new people.
- Other exercise methods — go for a run, go for a swim, go to the gym.
- Sociable exercise — racket sports, a game of football.
- Catching up with old friends.
- Letting off steam.
- To stay ‘on message’ throughout the day.
- To enjoy the weekend.
Long-term goals:
- To see more of the world.
- To learn a new language.
- To build a business.
- To get out of debt and build assets (again, the amount should be specific).
- To have — and keep — a tidy house.
Relationships:
These might be harder to set as ‘goals’, as that’s not the way these things should play out, and as they involve other people, but it is always possible to control some of the steps which are needed to make things happen:
- To go out on a date.
- To build a relationship.
- To get married.
- To start a family.
- To keep the rest of the family happy.
Last Friday when I was still in the doldrums, I asked myself what steps I’d have to take to stop feeling self-pity, get out of bed, and go on a bike ride, which I always enjoy. I wanted to break this down into every possible detail, so I would always be able to repeat it again next time I felt low and needed to dangle myself a rope to pull myself out of the pit. Here goes:
From bed (alive enough to be writing in diary, but otherwise not doing much) to bike in 24 steps:
- Step one — and most important of all — decide that this bike ride is going to happen!
- Complete writing down whenever I am working on — just make headers to come back to later, it will always be much easier to complete anything worth finishing after the bike ride anyway!
- Put pen down.
- Fold up notebook and put it to one side.
- Lean forward, throw off duvet.
- Get out of bed.
- Swap T-shirt for cycling top.
- Swap pyjamas for cycling trousers.
- Go downstairs and put on outer garments.
- Make up water bottle and energy drink.
- Put on cycling shoes.
- Take a bike rack.
- Put water bottle in a holder.
- Find pump, tyre levers etc and put in place.
- Find keys and put immediately in back of shirt pocket.
- Find gloves.
- Find helmet.
- Put on gloves and helmet.
- Walk out of front door with bike.
- Climb on bike.
- Turn left to start slowly pedalling down the hill (can turn right, but that is more work).
- Turn left at the bottom to start heading out of city.
- Begin accelerating to decent cycling pace.
- Enjoy the bike ride — the rest is easy.
10:30
After finishing one blog post, or other page of content, I often feel a desire to publish it as soon as possible, and then sit in earnest waiting for feedback. This is, of course, totally futile. I don’t know what the figures are across the web as a whole, but I would guess that the vast majority of blog posts are entirely for vanity only, and that they will do well to get 100 readers during their lifetime. Does that make blogging pointless? Of course not, after all, a weblog is really just an online diary, and most people who keep diaries and journals don’t ever expect them to be published. Ironically, a diary was often something to be kept secret from anybody else’s prying eyes, yet people are prepared to share almost anything on the web. Perhaps I don’t really want any instant feedback after all, especially when this particular blog covers topics which are so personal in nature, but I think my vanity would be better served if I knew that there were people reading it, and that there were a few people out there who would either helped enough, or provoked enough, to leave a comment.
Whatever the case may be, I’m feeling extremely disciplined in myself today, so this post isn’t going up until later on, and by the time it does go up, I hope to focus on so many other things that I won’t really care if and when it gets a response.
Wednesday 11 March 10:05
After staying up so late last night, I am somewhat surprised that I seem to have so much energy this morning, but I’m not going to complain. In fact, I could have quite comfortably got up half an hour earlier, but I wanted a little argument with myself about whether I really should be making a start after so much less sleep than I have been having over the previous week. Of course, this was totally futile, as was my thoughts about whether or not I was a ‘naturally’ optimistic person, or whether I tended towards pessimism if I didn’t keep myself in check. Of course I would tend towards pessimism if I gave myself that kind of opportunity! But that’s not the real me, most of the time I like to get things done, take on new challenges, and enjoy life. That was made a lot harder last year as I was recovering from the mental volcanic eruption I suffered at the end of 2007, but just because I go through a particular challenge for a year does not mean that I should accept that as my usual mental state.
So what are my plans for the day? I guess I better start making some fairly soon, otherwise I will let the day disappear before I know what has happened. However, this is much easier with the discipline of starting the day with a modem disconnected, so I’m not rushing around distracted by a whole new e-mails when I haven’t even dealt with any of the numerous issues which were raised last week. So if I’m going to check any e-mails, I certainly need to start with the ones I have already received first. I hope that I can get back into the swing of things by writing some new content, but I also know that doing this alone can be extremely taxing mentally, and that I need to find a creative outlet where I’m feeling like I’m making some progress. I think I have a few artistic ideas which I want to explore in this respect, so maybe I’ll ‘bag’ a few blocks of content first, and then start working on this. I also have loads of photos which I’ve never even taken off the digital camera memory card, but that would probably take several days, and there are some drawings I would rather do first.
Today is bin day, so I can give myself a small pat on the back for taking the bin out last night, but when will I take myself out for some exercise? Yesterday, I left it until twilight before going for a jog, but I’d much rather go out for a bike ride in full daylight, especially as I have a circuit around Coleshill which I want to compete properly. I should really be aiming to leave at around 3PM for this — that still gives me five solid hours to do a nice mix of something ‘useful’ and something ‘creative’ (yes, of course the two do overlap in some places). It isn’t just enough to say to myself that I should leave at a certain time — I need to start getting things ready now. How about hanging up my cycling jacket by the door, pulling my helmets and gloves somewhere close to this work desk, where I can constantly see them, and how about typing up those little steps that I mentioned yesterday that breakdown that seemingly huge barrier between the good intentions of going for a bike ride and the reality of actually doing it.
Tuesday 10th to Wednesday 11 March 02:45
It might be a bit late, but here’s a few thoughts from my notebook about giving myself for a few pats on the back for today:
- Well done for finally getting up (eventually).
- Well done to actually staying up today, and not re-coiling it back to bed.
- Well done for all those blog posts. It doesn’t matter who reads them, they should be extremely useful for my own reference.
- Well done for putting the ‘ slump escape plan’ into a diagram — or at least making a start on this.
- Well done for taking one of the ways our suggested on a diagram and going for a jog.
- Well done for keeping the Internet disconnected when starting each new computer session, so stuff got done instead of being permanently delayed due to distractions.
Note — really need to keep this up with regards to the modem. As long as that cable stays out, the focus is on productivity and creativity, not distractibility.