We acquire so much stuff. Items that are precious to us. Things that are necessary to support day-to-day living and to aid in our comfort. Nik naks and trinkets. Things that need polishing, dusting, caring for. Photographs, family albums, memories. Yet you can take none of it with you. We leave this world with what we brought into it.
This thought comes to mind as I visit the weekend auctions. Rooms full of other peoples stuff. Remnants of their estate, their ‘worldly possessions’. The stuff that their relations and friends didn’t want, but was still precious to the deceased.
When my Grandma’s estate was being sorted I was away. I was asked what I wanted beyond what was left to me in her will. I didn’t need for anything so mentioned a face-cast of a saracen mounted on the wall of the spare bedroom. It used to frighten me as a child during stay-overs. I always requested that it be taken down. It reminded me of my visits to Grandma’s house so for some reason I asked for it. Later I learned that others did something similar. They asked for something that meant something to them, or had monetary value. Everything else, clothing, furniture, kitchenware, nik naks, was left behind for the local council to dispose of.
It’s sad really. But the memory serves to remind me that it’s all just stuff.
You can’t take it with you.
Category: life
Car parking space dimensions
I drive a large car and find it hard to fit it into a UK parking space. As such I loath car parks with a passion, especially supermarket car parks. Having worked on insurance software I know that a lot of reported accidents occurred in car parks, especially door scratches and dents, or broken wing mirrors due to tight parking spaces.
The requirements for the size of a car parking space were drawn up in the 1970s and they haven’t really changed since. In fact recent studies have found that there are over a hundred vehicle models on the road, including mine, that will not fit within your average car parking space today. Cars are getting bigger. Even with camera assist, both the front and rear of my vehicle overhang. The sides are just inside but the doors will need to open into the adjacent spaces in order for the passengers to get out.
With the price of land being at a premium, car park owners are loath to redraw the spaces to give users more space as it means less vehicle capacity and therefore less earnings.
Isn’t it time that car parking space dimensions were updated to reflect today’s vehicles?
A mental base of operations
I’ve learned to create a “mental base of operations”.
Sounds weird but they a places where you can create a makeshift office or space to sort stuff out, get stuff done. A coffee shop, a desk in a corner somewhere, a cheap hotel room. Somewhere where you can relax and get into your own headspace for a period of time so you can focus on what needs sorting.
A place where you know you have half an hour, an hour, or maybe two, where you can just focus and get stuff done.
I worked a contract at a University once working on planning a strategy. When I arrived they had no desk or place for me to work. My office was mobile, all in my backpack. I just needed Wi-Fi and power. I found a quiet desk in the University library. I worked from there for the best part of a week. I was on-site and available for meetings and when I wasn’t in a face-to-face meeting I was in my mental base of operations: a quiet library.
I’ve written articles in coffee shops, an eBook in a hospital cafe, written reports in libraries and spare rooms. I’m writing this post in a gym waiting area. All you need is a little space for a short period of time to just focus and get stuff done.
Private car parks
Private car parks can be a nightmare. You pull into an area you don’t know, needing to park, and before you know it you have driven into a private car park.
The first indication is the signs on posts. Usually badly lit. In the UK there is an unwritten rule that if you find yourself in a private car park you have five minutes to pay or get out. This rule is currently being debated as the fines for not paying within five minutes can be as much as a second hand car!
Personally, I’ve had to go through the dispute process on several occasions. On one occasion there were no spaces and I offered to submit my dashcam recordings as evidence. On another they only accepted digital payments by app and I had no phone signal to download it. Again I had dashcam evidence to prove that as soon as I realised this I attempted to leave but was stuck in a queue for the exit.
If you don’t have a dashcam then it’s your word against theirs. If you know that you are in the right you can always ask them to prove a negative. Prove that you were not in a queue trying to get out of the car park minutes after entering. Prove that there was adequate phone signal at that time for your network.
These private car park companies have gotten the art of sending out legal-looking fines and threatening wording down to a fine art. Plus they will offer a discount if you pay faster, nevermind the fact that you shouldn’t be paying anything at all.
It’s gotten to the point where I hate parking. If I have to park somewhere I try to do my research beforehand to know where I can park safely, either for free or in a local authority run car park.
The world around and in you
There are many different ways of looking at the world. All come from within. Your perceptions and how you interpret and react to the world around you determines how you view it and your enjoyment of it.
There’s an example I like to use to illustrate this based on two people I met on my travels.
The first was a lady I met in New Zealand. She was on a package holiday whereas I was winging it going in whatever direction I felt next. We ran into each other on a Maori farm on the north island in an area known as the bay of plenty.
She told me that she had broken her (non dominant) wrist in a sporting accident and couldn’t wait to get home. She was going through the motions living each remaining day of her holiday but enjoying none of it. She hated this country, the people, the food, everything. She just wanted to get back home.
This wasn’t how she had felt before the accident, she was having the time of her life. That all changed however since the accident.
The second was a young man I met in a youth hostel in Sydney Australia. He was on the phone to his mum when we met. She was crying. Afterwards he explained how he and his mates came out here, bought a cheap van, surfboards, and the gear they needed and just travelled the coast surfing and partying. Then that very morning someone had stolen the van and all his possessions including his passport. He told me that everyone couldn’t have been more helpful and he has papers to get back home. He was as happy as can be. “I loved every minute dude” he told me. “It’s been a blast, an amazing holiday”. “Ok so all my stuff is gone and all my photos but they can’t take what’s up here” he said pointing to his head. His mum was upset for him but this guy was so chilled.
Both fellow travellers had suffered a major setback, a traumatic event. Yet while the first had chosen to view everything negatively, the second had chosen the opposite, to remember the fun times. After all it’s just stuff and that can be replaced. He did not let life get him down and he was a better person because of it.
Only you can control how the world around you affects you.
Why Wild Rain
Thoughts and ideas swirl around in my head constantly. I can’t seem to turn it off. I’ve tried meditation, going for long walks, and just listening to music. Yet the noise in my head is ever present, like a wild rain.
I discovered that journaling was a great way to clear my mind. The very act of writing down my thoughts and ideas would instantly bring relief. It felt like an overflowing water butt leaking from the lid and then someone opened up the tap to fill a watering can. The purpose of the butt being realised: to collect and dispense rain water. The pressure relieved.
Wild Rain is my digital journal of thoughts and ideas that swirl around in my head before being poured into this digital repository for me to play with, edit, refine and then.. forget. Returning only when the pressure builds up again.
I’ve learned that if you leave too many thoughts and ideas in your head for too long then new ones don’t happen. It’s like your brain is waiting for you to action them. Saying “Hey I thought of these great ideas, now it’s over to you to do something with them”. Writing them down feels like they’ve been addressed, now the brain is free to think about something new. Content in the knowledge that whatever it thinks about will be processed later.
Retirement is wasted on the old
What would you do if you didn’t need money?
Think about that for a moment. Most of what we do each day is dictated by money. Going to work, shopping, holidays, going for a drive, eating out, etc etc.
If money was no longer an issue, what would you do?
Travel the world, visit family and friends more, write a book just for fun, learn to paint, get fit, sleep more, spend more time in the garden.
I’ve been hanging out with a few retired friends recently and they had faced this very question. They no longer needed to work. They either reached retirement age and had enough saved, or they inherited money or sold a business and decided they were done working for money.
So what did they end up doing?
One learned to paint and spent more time in his garden, joining a few clubs such as a book club, mahjong and scrabble, and a dining club. Another tinkers with old cars in his garage and buys stuff that he couldn’t afford when they were younger just to tinker with or display for no one but themselves to see. Another travels and writes about their adventures.
Thinking about it, there is nothing stopping us non retirees from doing any of this. We can travel, paint, garden, tinker. Why put something off til the tail-end of your life? I mean, there’s no guarantee that you will get there so why put the fun stuff off? Why not have mini retirements? Save up and take breaks throughout your career. Six months here, a year there, and so on.
Retirement is wasted on the old.
Make a list of what you would do if you could and start doing them now.
Head in the clouds
Not everyone wants to constantly work in the cloud. Some of us like to be offline on occasion. Yet the extra hurdles you have to go through just to create something offline can be taxing.
Take Microsoft Windows for example. Let’s say you want to create an account on your laptop for your spouse or child and they don’t have a Microsoft account and don’t need one. Yet when you try to create an account for them it takes three times as long and it’s not immediately apparent how to do it.
Using Google drive and you enter an area with no internet or phone reception? You are done. The app stops working even though you should be able to work offline. You can’t edit your files anymore. They become greyed-out. Same with a myriad of other apps. It’s as if app makers these days don’t understand how someone cannot be online. The amount of errors my phone apps generate when I go offline without selecting the aeroplane icon. Did the QA guys not test the possibility of someone wanting to work offline?
Nowadays I have backups. Really basic free apps that allow me to work without constant internet access. I just copy my files into them and work on them when I’m in a dead zone. Plus there’s the added bliss that no one can reach you to disturb you.
Rant over..
Big faceless organisations
I miss the days before the internet sometimes. Especially when dealing with companies. They think they are being efficient dealing with customers only through the web or an app, using AI agents to deal with enquiries and having complex digital complaints procedures.
Once they have your money and you experience problems with their product or service, good luck reaching an actual human to talk to. Or getting your money back.
If you are an IT geek though you might have a chance. I’ve managed to talk to humans and get my money back on several occasions, but it took a bunch of skills that the average person just doesn’t have such as:
– Understanding how web pages work and reading the page source
– OSINT
– How to hack AI
– Side-channels
– Exploiting software bugs
It shouldn’t require a degree in IT in order to get decent customer service but that’s been my experience.
Lists 2.0
I’m a big fan of lists. To do lists, checklists, packing lists, you name it I’ve turned it into a list. I recently learned that ChatGPT is great at lists.
Very detailed lists.
Need to plan a vacation? It will generate a list of things you need to take into consideration, in addition to what to pack. Shopping for a new laptop, car, or even a house? It can quickly knock you up a list with indented bullet-points on everything you need. Need to make a plan should a disaster occur, maybe a nuclear war or zombie outbreak? Yep it will create a detailed survival plan complete with supplies list in seconds.
Lists 2.0: create your unique custom lists with AI!