My third blog post

Ideal Job #1 - successful novelist
This ranks as my all time number one job. You can work in coffee shops (with beret), cocktail lounges or even the beach and you have an excuse to ask anyone ANY question. People expect you to be eccentric and you get invited to parties.... now an unpublished novelist is a completely differnet kettle of fish

Kari Byron is it!

23 out of the last 25 hits for the last 24 hours have been Kari Byron hits. My blog has gone from a tiny 3 actual hits a day (not counting all the automatic crap that hits it) to 18 in a day..... with everyone checking out the same page. It makes sense though... as I mentioned in my previous post she is the hottest girl on TV. I agree with the general internet consensus... she looks way sexier in real life than in the FHM shoot.... which backs up my theory that you can't act sexy, you can only let the sexy out.

BTW this is not going to become a Kari Byron fan blog.

chill out

Ahh the mind ticks overtime….. One of my fish died (I have tropical fish), I got sick and everything seems really boring at the moment. I started thinking about the pets and the people that have died… what life means and the variety of experience that you can get in life. I started to contemplate all the usual ways of filling my time. I could start practicing the harmonica, exercise, go out, drink to excess, meditate, read, join the SES (state emergency service) or write but none of that is likely to float my boat. What ails me is deeper than that.

I came across a zen website that made sense to me. It cut through my haze and got me thinking about what would really make me happy. I’m not keen on having kids which seems to be the way that most of my friends are following. I think I have been focusing too much on ‘doing’. I think about how I can make my life better… more fun. Every time I see people in worse shape than me, severe disabilities, homelessness and just the absolute shit that life can throw at you I realize that I have nothing to complain about. Don’t get me wrong I know I’m whinging and the blog world is full of people who think that the world owes them, this is how I’m feeling now.

Alcohol won’t make me happy, business won’t make me happy, sex won’t make me happy (well maybe a little happy, but not as a life mission). I think I’m pushing too hard to extract meaning from things that have no meaning. Time to shut the brain down. I’m thinking too much, I need to just go with the flow.

To quote the website that got me thinking (http://www.deansluyter.com/pages.cfm?id=177);

No beer left.
I'll sit and drink
The sky.
- Josh Feuer
Pushing, Pulling, and Freedom

This one change changes everything. As we gradually learn to leave off distractedness and rest in openness, we stop looking for fulfillment outside of the way things already are. Till now we've gone through life pushing and pulling - trying to push the undesirable away from us and pull the desirable toward us. It's such an entrenched habit that we persist even when there's no payoff, when it only creates frustration. Stuck in the traffic jam, we keep trying to push the cars out of the way with our mental bulldozer; spotting the luscious babe (or hunk), we keep trying to extend our mental tendrils and pull her (or him) within copulation range.

But resting in openness, free from the agitation of pushing and pulling, we can just witness the situation. This doesn't mean to suppress our anger at the traffic if it arises or our lust for the babe if it arises, for those arisings are also part of the situation we're witnessing. But it means we don't get lost in the arisings either, don't fixate on them.

Elevate the scope of 360-degree global awareness.
- Lama Surya Das

To be open is to be receptive to all 360 degrees of our experience, not stuck in the five or ten degrees where we're pushing or pulling.


At the end of the day I need to chill out.

Ideal job #9 Cryptozoologist

This would fit well with the Indiana Jones day dreams and Ideal Job number 5 Deep Sea explorer. You get the chance to travel the world, listen to stories of strange and unusual creatures then try and find one of them. I imagine that the actual joy of finding one of these creatures would be few and far between but you could have a lot of fun looking. The link (in the heading) is to an article about an actual Cryptozoologist from Wired.

I borrowed the picture from http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/ I hope you don't mind.

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advice from drunk creative people

I was at a party on the weekend. It was the same crowd that run the art gallery that I mentioned a few posts back. Strangely enough I was the sober one at the party (a rare feat indeed) so I could actually engage in meaningful conversation. I decided to pick the brains of the most active creative people I know.

I decided to find out how they do it. How they manage to create art that sells, run an art gallery, create an art festival that has been running for a few years and in some cases have community radio stations all while having kids and studying.

The essence of their responses;
· Be open to circumstances as they arise. Don’t fight it. Take the opportunities that come your way

· Work out the difference between things they enjoy thinking about doing and things that they actually enjoy doing. Focus on doing the things that you enjoy doing. If you only enjoy thinking about doing a particular thing then only think about it.

· Be light about your thoughts – don’t take yourself too seriously or get too wrapped up in your own thoughts.

It’s all pretty obvious stuff but it is easily forgotten.

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Ideal Job #5 - Deep Sea Explorer

There is no fixed job title for this one. Be it oceanographer, marine biologist, cartographer or treasure hunter I want a little sub that can go really deep. Apparently there is only one functional deep ocean submersable. These little babies are extremely expensive to build and operate. I want to go looking for live Giant Squid and get footage of a sperm whale eating giant squid. For me it is one of the last great frontiers on earth. Finding a way to stay at depth for a long period of time would be great. You get to explore and work with amazing bits of equipment and you wil see things that noone has seen before.....that would be cool. The Trieste went to 7 miles in the 1960's. I can see myself posing for a shot on my little sub.