Senses working overtime #509

1 Activity: Get out now

Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash

2 Reading: Mojo Magazine #372

3 Watching: The Night Agent Season 2

4 Listening: WTWMC - Kiwi Pik n Mix

Now up to 60 songs, 30 to go.

5 Listening: Moby - Play: The B Sides

Overtime: Valentine's Day is coming up

Seth Godin has a warning about buying cheap chocolate.

Senses working overtime #486

1 The feeling this week:

Photo by Emma Harper on Unsplash

2 Reading: Seth Godin on what language reveals

If the argument you’re hearing isn’t based on what we know to be true, and doesn’t lead to a logical conclusion, it could be because it’s not actually seeking to be a productive discussion.

It’s awkward to say “yadda, yadda” but that might be what’s on offer.

(This came to mind during the week as I listened to a guy in a suit without a tie talking to me and a group of other teachers).

3 Reading: The BBC's Football Extra - on Everton after 2 losses

Everton's current plight has not come out of nowhere. It's merely the latest hoof in the genitals for a fanbase whose will to endure such pain would impress the Shaolin.

4 Listening: WTWMC - Motorvatin'

5 Listening: Haken - Aquarius

Overtime: 

"When you're on the field, play as if nothing else matters.
When you're off the field, remember that the game doesn't matter at all."

James Clear

Senses working overtime #479

1 New listing: Maple Grove

Yes, we have decided to sell Maple Grove, so we have listed it with Property Brokers (Waipukarau). Tough decision but we are looking for a fresh start in another location.

2 Listening: WTWMC - True Colours

The amigos have just completed White, Blue is happening next week.

3 Listening: Strawbs - Hero And Heroine (1974)

I found a secondhand copy of this at My Music Taupo. It's brilliant! More info about it here.

4 Watching: UEFA Euros 2024

Two semi-finals and two amazing, cracking, breathtaking goals. One by Lamine Yamal and one by Ollie Watkins.

Final is Monday morning NZ time. Come on England!

5 Reading: The best movie soundtracks of all time!

Overtime: Projects and the long haul - Seth Godin

Rome was built in a day.

It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished.

But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there.

Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without incident.

Sometimes we get hung up on the finishing, starting things all the time but blinking in the face of Resistance and wandering away. The long haul is simply your list of completed projects. A career is not a series of tasks. It’s the chance to build things.

Senses working overtime 473

1 Autumn at Maple Grove

Jerry and Gracie, Maple Grove, June first, 2024.

2 Reading: Patti Smith - Devotion

3 Reading: Paulo Coelho - Maktub

Loving this book. 

This resonated this week: Everything always turns out well in the end. If things aren't going well, that's because you haven't yet reached the end.

4 Listening: Donovan - The Hurdy Gurdy Man

From 1968 and tinged with Rishikesh and Fabs dust. Jennifer Juniper sums up that heady mix well.

5 Watching: Bodkin

Overtime: Seth Godin

The third impossibility

The first was radio and television. Humans around the world spending a significant portion of their waking hours consuming audio and video recordings of other people.

The second was the internet. Five to ten hours a day interacting, in real time, with other people, many of them strangers.

And the third is AI. We’re about to spend almost all of our time interacting with software that appears to have an understanding of us and the world around us. All the time, in real time.

Senses working overtime #469

1 Back to the frenetic fast-paced work environment

Apologies if that's headache inducing - but...

2 Watching: Monk

I love whodunnits and this is the perfect show to watch after it was back to the five day rinse and repeat work cycle. We're on to season 2.

3 Listening: Bill Evans - How My Heart Sings!

Nothing better to calm the nerves before Monk

4 Reading: Scattershot - Bernie Taupin

After a promising start, I'm finding this hard going. He tries too hard to impress and the name-dropping is just sad after a while. Working week has meant little time to read it but I'll persevere.

5 Reading: Books Don't Sell - Seth Godin

Overtime: Morning habits

I love reading Thomas Oppong's Postanly Weekly articles. This one on early morning habits is terrific.

Senses working overtime #466

1 Weather this week

Looks like a colour printing gone wrong right. Maple Grove today.

2 Watching: Pain Hustlers

Emily Blunt and Chris Evans on form!

3 Reading: Bleak House

Up to page 380. Over half-way!

4 Listening: Explosions In The Sky - Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever

And if you want just one track from this instrumental post-rock album by American foursome Explosions In The Sky, try final song With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept. But the whole album is great.

5 Reading: Seth Godin - The color-coded wires

Have you ever wondered what the wiring layout behind the control panels at Abbey Road studios was like?

Neither have I.

The Beatles recorded some of their best work there, and I have no idea if it was a rat’s nest of tangled wires, or if each wire was labeled, coded and perfectly aligned.

Just as I have no idea if Eliot Peper writes his novels in Scrivener or Word.

Yes, of course, for sure, it helps if your tools are properly arranged and maintained. Yes, it saves time and effort to embrace mise en place and get your workspace right.

But making it even more right, alphabetizing the pencils and making sure your servers all have the right names–that’s simply stalling.

Overtime: Marcus Aurelius

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust or lose your sense of shame or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill-will or hypocrisy or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.

Senses working overtime #462

1 Feeling this week on the daily grind

2 Watching: Brené Brown TED talk on vulnerability.

3 Listening: Bob Dylan/ The Band - Before The Flood

A great double live album. If I had to choose one track from each, I'd go for Ballad Of A Thin Man and Up On Cripple Creek.

4 Watching: Damsel

We enjoyed this 2024 release on Netflix. Some genuinely exciting sequences and a good script/acting combo (Robin Wright is great as the wicked Queen in a reverse of her Princess Bride role from all those years ago). 

Worthy of your time!

5 Listening: WTWMC True Colours

Greg, Kev and I have covered songs with pink in the title, and last week it was orange. This week - green.

Overtime: Seth Godin

Holding on for dear life

That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip can save the hero.

In our modern world, we often end up holding on to ideas, to grievances or to our view of the world.

Ironically, the harder we hold on to the things we’re hiding from, the less dear our life becomes.

Perhaps we could let go for dear life instead.

Senses working overtime #461

1 The feeling this week

Photo by Vlad Patana on Unsplash

2 Reading: Mick Jagger - Philip Norman

3 Listening: WTWMC - True Colours

The three amigos latest playlist on Spotify is in its early stages, but is destined for greatness. We've done pink, now watch it unfold with orange this coming week.

4 Watching: Boy Swallows Universe

I really enjoyed the book, but the jury is out on the Netflix show after one episode.

We'll hang in there for another one.

Kylie Northover reviewing the series for The Sydney Morning Herald rated the series as five stars out of five, "As in the book, the mood is a tightrope walk between despair and childish optimism; the brothers’ lives are shaped by trauma, but this sprawling story is infused with humour and great warmth, even for the adults who have let them down." 

5 Reading: How risky are repeat covid infections?

Overtime: Seth Godin

Where are you?

When you’re reading a good historical novel, you might be there and then.

When you’re checking your email, you are in a conversation between and among, over there, not here.

When you’re imagining what went wrong in that conversation yesterday, you are living in yesterday.

And when you’re scripting the next conversation you’re going to have, you’re in tomorrow.

Time travel and teleportation have never been easier or more common.

What happens when we are here and now?

Senses working overtime #458

1 My feeling this week

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

2 Viewing: Yellowstone

3 Listening: Sonny Rollins' Work Time

Link to my blogpost is here.

4 Reading: Roderick Random and The Little Guide to Taylor Swift

Three quarters through the Tobias Smollett book now, and a colleague loaned a copy of the Taylor Swift guide - some great Tay Tay quotes that will appear on the Purdzilla Show in due course. 

I also read this article in Rolling Stone about how Trump and his allies are going after Taylor Swift. She'll win. No doubt.

And, The Guardian had an interesting article on why coffee shops all look the same.

5 Thinking: About time management on my Wednesdays

Overtime: Trading trust

Great post from Seth Godin. As he says:

Once you burn some trust, it’s almost impossible to earn it back. It took Harvard 400 years to become Harvard, Google about twenty to earn its position. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for–to become the one that earns the benefit of the doubt.

Being the low-trust option is hardly a spot worth fighting for.

Senses working overtime #450

1 Feeling this week

Photo by Jorge Vasconez on Unsplash

2 Listening: David Crosby - Too Young To Die (from Thousand Roads)

3 Reading: Writer C. Raymond Beran on friendship

"What is a friend? I will tell you.

It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with him. He seems to ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. He does not want you to be better, or worse. When you are with him, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, so long as it is genuinely you. He understands those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you.

With him you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities and, in opening them up to him, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of his loyalty. He understands. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse him, neglect him, tolerate him. Best of all, you can keep still with him. It makes no matter. He likes you. He is like fire that purges to the bone. He understands. He understands. You can weep with him, sin with him, laugh with him, pray with him. Through it all—and underneath—he sees, knows and loves you.

A friend? What is a friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself."

4 Reading: This is the way

Some practical life lessons from Taoism

5 Reading: Times 1000 - Seth Godin

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Overtime: Watching: Christmas movies

Senses working overtime #446

1 Feeling this week

Photo by Fred Moon on Unsplash

2 Reading: James Clear

"If you're stuck on a problem, try solving it at a different level.

If you ask, "What can we do to create a more unified country?" then you end up with vague answers that are difficult to implement. The problem is mostly unmanageable at that level.

But if you ask, "What can I do to create a more unified neighborhood?" then you can likely think of many small things you can do to connect your friends and neighbors.

Zoom in or zoom out. Problems that seem impossible at one level are often quite accessible from a different one."

3 Poetry corner

Leviathan There's a creature that usually lives in the sea. We brought it to land, fed it half of our own food. measured its wingspan, weighed its brain, stole its nightmares, sent it back to sea. This is why we can drown, why our dreams never match our lives. Victoria Chang (2022)

4 Viewing: Looking at Trees

5 Watching: The office on wheels!

Overtime: Seth Godin

In a competition between someone who knows the most and someone who is willing to learn the most, the edge usually goes to the curious and empathic professional, not the one who is simply protecting what’s already known.