Category: life

ADT

I learned that I was no good at sales around age 18. I was looking for work and was offered a sales job on commission with ADT, the alarm company, or at least an organisation performing door-to-door sales for them.

They started off by teaching me how to break into houses. It sounds strange but they actually did. For about 30-40 minutes in a cold hall with stale coffee we were informed about various techniques on how to break into houses. The thinking was that if we came up against stubborn home owners that said they didn’t need a home security system for whatever reason that we would be able to counter it with why they did because we knew how burglars think.

I was paired up with an older lady as my mentor. She was only a couple of years older than me and had been doing this for only a few weeks. Plus she had a car so she could drive us around to and from our sales area.

I wasn’t good at selling house alarms. My heart wasn’t in it. I figured this out fairly quickly. It all came to a head at the end of a long evening with no sign-ups when we arrived at a house with evidence of a recent break-in, namely a boarded up front door. My mentor said if we can’t sell to this home owner we should give up.

The home owner turned out to be a little old lady who had indeed been burgled recently. She had no money for an alarm. In fact she couldn’t even afford a contractor to fix her door. Her nephew had boarded up the door where a glass panel had been and had dropped off a new lock but had yet to return to fit it. Each night she would prop a dinning room chair up against the inside of the door for extra security as the door could not be locked. She would barely get any sleep each night from worrying.

Being a nice guy, she set about fixing us both a cup of tea while I got to work fitting the lock using a screwdriver set retrieved from under a sink. I left feeling good about helping someone, but with no money nor aptitude for sales, but with knowledge of how to break into houses.

Thanks ADT.

Gig economy

I’ve started watching this YouTube channel called London Eats. Not sure why. Maybe because I find it relaxing?

This guy zooming around the capital in the dark making food and parcel deliveries on his electric bikes and scooters. It got me thinking about the gig economy. How these workers don’t have a traditional employment contract, but are paid a fee per job.

After four hours of work this guy earned less than minimum wage and called it a good night. How? Less than minimum wage? Is the gig economy a way for employers to hire cheap labour? The apps these workers use must take a cut of the profits although they do offer meagre bonus payments if you work harder, faster, completing more deliveries within certain time periods.

The London Eats guy augments his meagre earnings by filming his shifts and turning them into quality viewing. He also confesses to having a day job so his shifts only need to be a few hours. He also sells swag from his channel and has sponsorship from various companies. So he’s making ‘his gig’ work. But I’m curious how others are faring from this industry, being paid per delivery.

I guess it’s nothing new. In my youth I worked for a company that paid me 1p for every flyer I delivered. If I could deliver one a minute that’s 60p an hour! Sounded great as a kid needing to augment his pocket money, but even with inflation an adult wouldn’t do it. Explains why so many of us were school age delivering those flyers. Child labour.

The gig economy is here to stay. It makes sense for the employers as it’s cheap labour. And as there appears to be no shortage of willing workers it must be profitable enough for some. Or maybe they just like working when they want to, being by themselves travelling around the city listening to their tunes going door to door, having no in-person boss.

Waiting..

Have you ever considered how much of our lives we waste just waiting? Waiting for public transport, parcel deliveries, holidays, the weekend.

Waiting, waiting.

I needed a change of scenery so I decided to take the bus into town to hang out in my favourite coffee shops reading and writing. I’m at the bus stop actually willing the bus to arrive, constantly looking down the lane for it. Why? I don’t have an urgent appointment to get to. I’m not in a rush to be anywhere in particular. Yet here I am in waiting mode. Waiting for a bus, which isn’t late.

We spend so much of our lives in queues waiting. Wasting time willing actual time to pass, not being in the moment. This is probably part of why we are stressed so much. Everything is scheduled and automated these days and yet it’s still not fast enough. Microwaves get hotter and faster yet they seem slower. How? Are we so impatient?

It’s later now and I’m in my coffee shop with fresh brew in front of me staring out the window people watching. Watching people in a rush to get somewhere, queuing waiting for a shop to open, waiting by a bus stop looking impatient. Such busy impatient lives we lead.

Ferris comes to mind and his quote about stopping and looking around once in a while. If we don’t life will pass us by while we are waiting.

The Net

Do you remember the Sandra Bullock movie The Net? I loved that movie when it first came out. Not for the storyline or because Ms Bullock was in it. I loved it because it showed me a possible career path that I didn’t know existed. One that I thought looked perfect to me.

You see Sandra’s character tested computer software for a living, all from the comfort of her own home. She didn’t have to deal with long commutes or co-workers. She worked freelance when she wanted for whomever she wanted. Free from office politics and office parties. Bliss!

I vaguely remember the rest of the movie. It was probably so-so. Not as good as Speed or Demolition Man (remember the seashells?). But I do remember it igniting the idea of becoming a freelance tester, a troubleshooter of software, and an ethical hacker.

It’s interesting where ideas can come from. A book, an overheard conversation, or a conspiracy movie from the 1990s.

Thanks for the career inspiration Ms Bullock!

Aimlessly surfing

There’s a kind of procrastination art to aimlessly surfing; surfing with no goal in mind, just following links and recommendations, seeing what interests you.

You may come across useful nuggets of wisdom, products you never knew existed, entertaining websites, or cats doing something unremarkable. I’m not sold on the cats thing.

Nostalgia trips await, as does losing hours watching fail videos or people are amazing videos. I personally prefer the latter as I like to look for the good in humanity rather than consuming entertainment at the expense of others, but that’s just me.

Maybe you are into ASMR or ambience videos? Study with Merve or walk through the streets of New York or Tokyo at night in the rain or even a thunderstorm. Maybe even walk through the slums of the Philippines with Larry PH, or drift BMWs through Berlin.

The internet is a vast place.You can get lost just aimlessly surfing. Lost in content and time.

What will you find today?

Musings on working in London

I’ve worked in IT for the best part of three decades and somehow during all that time I’ve managed to avoid working for a company based in London. I’ve been there for several interviews and many meetings but I’ve never had to work there.

It wasn’t on purpose, it just didn’t happen. And I’m ok with that, now.

Don’t get me wrong I do like to visit London. Piccadilly Circus, the Trocadero, the underground. Over time I’ve come to appreciate living and working in the countryside. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to enjoy the gentle ebb and flow of life outside the cities and major towns of England. It’s nice on occasion to go into London for a meeting or event but that’s it. I find it too.. peoply.

I like people and the intenseness and craziness of cities, but in moderation. I don’t think I could live and breathe that amount of people and activity every day.

It helps that I live so far from the nearest city and that the trains are so expensive as both combine to supply me with the perfect excuse as to why I can’t work there. The maths just don’t add up. The cost of train tickets and travel time make such a commute too expensive. You end up giving a huge part of your income and time to just getting to your desk each day.

During the pandemic I got used to life in my village. After the pandemic I joked that I had become village agoraphobic, in that I rarely left the confines of the village. It is a pleasant existence. It also saves on fuel costs and car insurance!

So despite the younger me anticipating a busy life in the city, the older me has come to appreciate the calmness and slowness of life in the countryside.

When things don’t go to plan

When things don’t go to plan.
When a spanner is thrown into the works.
When people let you down.
When it’s one of those days.
When the brown stuff hits the fan.

It’s easy to become depressed, trigger anxiety, and become stressed out. It’s a natural reaction. Yet the more you feed that particular reaction the stronger it will get. The trick is to grow thicker skin. What doesn’t kill you and all that.

Life is complicated. Plus the more technically advanced we become as a species the more complex the problems will get. The more big things you own like cars, houses, and businesses, the more problems you are likely to face. Renting properties? You have to deal with lettings agents, tenants, and contractors. Own a business? There are customers, suppliers, employees, lawyers, accountants, and so on. You get the picture. The more you take on in life the more opportunities there are for problems to occur.

When life knocks you down the trick is to get back up, brush yourself off, and get on with it. Grow thicker skin. You will have to deal with idiots, incompetence, plain stupidity, angry people, delays, wear and tear, the economy, inflation, greed, and many more variables that shape the world that we live in.

Each day that you wake up, think that today will be a good day, but I will probably have to deal with people who are lazy and incompetent, or mean, angry, or just generally having a bad day. I may suffer losses in terms of time and money but I will survive this thing called life.

This problem that is stressing you out right now; you won’t remember it in five years time. Maybe not even in a year. So why stress about it now? Resolve it as best as you can and move on. Learn from it, grow, then let it go.

Things don’t always go to plan, so plan for them not to, and then you won’t be so stressed when the inevitable happens.

Embrace the wild rain.

Hustling

Instagram is full of people pushing products and trying to show complete strangers how amazing their lives are, but there are some nuggets of wisdom on the platform. I don’t post myself, I just have a sock puppet account I use for OSINT purposes, which if I’m honest I may also use just to browse.. on occasion.

One thing I’ve learned from Insta is how much some people really hustle. By hustle I mean work hard at promoting their brand, their products, their whole reason for being.

For example just look at The Rock or Mark Wahlberg. They both post multiple times a day pushing their products and movies. If you didn’t have Insta you may only hear about their occasional movie and catch a snippet of news about them and probably think they have it easy, make a movie, collect the millions, repeat, right? With thanks to Insta you can actually see how much they are hustling. Up in the early hours each day hitting the gym, then promoting their clothing / alcohol / sports nutrition products, then doing interviews and photoshoots, followed by attending events for further networking opportunities. It looks exhausting!

These two are constantly hustling. And they are not the only ones. Check out Arnold and Stallone. Both in their 70s still hustling like crazy. Like a duck swimming we have this picture of these celebrities in our minds that everything is easy for them on the surface, but Insta pulls back the curtain and shows us how crazy active these people are underneath, working at maintaining their image and brand.

Take a look at sports personalities and fitness models. In the gym multiple times a day, promoting their classes or courses, doing photo shoots and training videos, attending events and working hard to promote both their image and what they are selling.

It may be full of cat videos but there are still nuggets of wisdom on Insta.

Losing your mojo

Losing your mojo: Losing your ambition, your purpose, your reason for being. A general feeling of being lost without aim or goals.

Losing your mojo is no joke. It induces a feeling of anxiety and stress with an overlay of depression. For those of us that thrive on ambition, losing your mojo is like a derailment of sorts. You no longer know in your mind what the future holds for you as you feel no sense of purpose or direction. It’s like your strings have been severed and each day feels.. samey.

Therapists will tell you that with CBT you can train yourself to be ok, to not need your mojo, just live your life and enjoy each day as it comes. It does work in that you feel less depressed, but your loss of mojo is merely stifled. You know the loss is still there under the surface. You yearn for the you that you once were. Thriving on ambition, knowing where you were heading and how you would get there. Now you are just driving a car with a broken GPS. You can go where you want and enjoy the journey but there’s no overall destination in mind.

Getting your mojo back is challenging and requires a lot of self analysis. What matters to you in life? What makes you happy? Given where you are now, your interests, your passions, where do you want to be? What really really drives you?

If you can figure all that out then you may just get your mojo back. In the meantime try new things and experiment. Maybe you’ll trigger something that will spark an idea, a passion, a driver.

Good luck.

Sorry for your loss

It’s something we say when we don’t know what to say. Someone close to you has passed on. Words can’t make it better. We want to express our sympathy but words fail us so we rely on the old faithful:

Sorry for your loss.

You’ve lost a friend, a good friend. Someone you’ve known for years. Someone you’ve had adventures with, been through stuff with, experienced life with, shared secrets, and dreams. You’ve celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries. Spent time with their loved ones. Had many beers with late into the night, discussing anything and everything.

And now they are gone. Just like that.

Sorry for your loss.

As you get older it happens more and more. You are going to more funerals than weddings and celebrations. You hear it more and more. Loss. Your loss, their loss.

Sorry for your loss.