Category Archives: Thoughts

General thoughts about life and what it all might mean.

Focus

I have been thinking about focus – something that keeps coming up across the main things I am interested in – Business, Writing and of course photography.

In business anyone can be a busy fool – and much of the challenge is to focus. Doing this consistently, for a long enough time to get results, is far from easy.

In writing it can be so easy to drift off and just write almost because I can, rather than to contribute anything to the plot or action. This is particularly tempting in novels – but less likely in screenplays – as I am finding out in an exercise on my current creative writing course. The constraint in screenplays of not being able to get into a characters head – as frustrating as this feels sometimes – helps us to stay on subject.

We are all surrounded by so much potential for distraction. In business we can work with the wrong kind of customers, or pursue products and services that are outside of our brand and our strategy. In photography we can just snap away with little plan or thought for the story we are portraying. In writing it is all too easy to let one’s thoughts move away, and fail to finish the piece we are working on.

Focus seems to be something I need to work on, it’s challenging and interesting in many areas of my life.

Having a Me Day

One of the best Sundays for a long while – really enjoyed a morning walk with Charlie – and taking photos of some Sussex Puddles…. and then all about a log fire, family friend popping by to take Mum on a well deserved vacation – Mark Shepherd, Karen and Abbie dropping by for coffee – then a log fire, learning LIghtroom 4 – starting work on this website and generally doing the things I love.. fantastic and energising!

Letting go..

After this year – which has been the worst time in my life – I feel so strongly that I am now coming out the other side.

I was sitting today in Sadlers Wells watching the Ballet Rambert and I just thought “it’s working” –  this is what I want to do. This kind of life, the life that I am constructing now. 

I  do now want to let the barriers that I have had to put up over the last 15 years of crap completely go. It seemed that in the darkness of the theater I could feel them finally fall away, and I could sense the rush of excitement that was pushing against them just come flooding in. 

I so want to find myself again. And I am.

I know its not going to be easy, but I am rebuilding something – an attitude and a world view that I always wanted to be, that  I did once have – but has been lost to me for well over a decade. Multiple, thought provoking experiences. Pushing myself in areas that are uncomfortable – new experiences, travel, writing, the arts. 

I am even thinking that I can actually improve on my old self from 15 years ago, build on it and leap over it – not just get back to some baseline but become something quite different. I have been through a nightmare but out of that experience comes lessons, wisdom and new opportunities.

I feel I can be softer,  able to let things in because my own world is finally strong and not built on sand. It is a new place for me but I no longer need to be defensive – I can be comfortable both with where I am and where I want to be.

Politicians running a business

Personally I have really enjoyed the challenge of running and growing a business for the last 10 years.

There are numerous challenges, and anyone who survives it all and prospers needs personal skill, a great team and a fair amount of luck. To succeed in growing a company from nothing is indeed tough.

With this in mind I have been thinking of the business model that the politicians have who are notionally in charge of this country. Here is their complex model as I see it :

Revenue side

  • Everyone must buy my stuff
  • I can charge whatever I like
  • No-one can buy any competitor’s stuff

Product

  • I can provide whatever level of service I want to

Indeed this must be a challenge. Its not surprising that you have to behave like spoiled children all the time in order to let off the pressure.

It would take a great level of incompetence to so mess this up that we are paying £3.5 billion a month in debt interest alone. And to deliver such poor long term standards of living that we have an underclass that will threaten our stability. But that is exactly what you have managed to do.

Congratulations to the public sector in general and to the political system in particular. You have managed to completely fail in delivering the most simple business model the world has ever devised. I cannot begin to describe the difference to our society if we could get rid of all politicians, and spend £3.5 billion a month directly on the well being of our citizens.

Not just failed, but so spectacularly failed in your duty that you are in danger of permanently destroying something that has taken centuries to build – a civilized culture.

If you had any decency you would fall on your swords.

You would inevitably miss.