I enjoy driving. Especially out on country roads away from the major roads, towns and people. Lately though I’ve been encountering aggressive drivers. People driving angry, not realising that they are taking their anger out on other road users, using their vehicles to intimidate and cause accidents.
On one occasion a young lad tried overtaking me illegally but didn’t make the overtake and got real angry as if I had somehow slighted his manhood. He followed me home aggressively driving, mimicking trying to swerve into me or rear-end me to try to make me crash. I slowed but he refused to overtake. I had a forward-facing dash cam but not rear and I think he knew that.
He became really dangerous and the police became involved but it was my word against his as the police will do nothing without dash cam footage as proof. How have we got to the point where people can use their car as a weapon and unless you have video footage nothing will happen to them?
On another occasion an oncoming driver in my lane took out my wing mirror but it was night time and my dash cam only caught their headlights. I learned the hard way that in such circumstances insurance companies will claim against you. Even though it was not your fault, insurance companies need someone to claim against so they penalise you for making a claim. They will repair the damage but they will class it as a fault on your insurance history and will increase your future premiums.
It seems that the only way to combat these scenarios is to fit 360 degree dash cams with night-vision and anti-glare technology. Either that or take public transport.
Category: life
Journaling
I was introduced to journaling many years ago and just kept doing it out of habit. You can write anything, it doesn’t have to have structure or purpose. Just write down random thoughts and musings (like I do here). It can have a therapeutic effect. I find it relaxing and a way of decluttering my mind. As I empty my thoughts onto the page I find that I feel much better afterwards. My brain generally works non-stop thinking about things and coming up with ideas and if I don’t do something with them it becomes cluttered and I find it hard to think about anything else. By emptying these thoughts out onto the page it frees up my brain to think about new things.
Although journaling does not need to be productive, sometimes it can be as a side-effect. For instance some of the things that have come out of my journaling are:
1. Jobs / tasks I need to add to my to-do list.
2. Article ideas.
3. Ideas for talks or events.
4. Subjects I’d like to learn more about.
5. People I haven’t thought about in a while that I should really reach out to.
6. Books I want to read, TV shows I want to catch up on, movies I’d like to watch.
7. Places I’d like to visit.
And the list goes on. Journaling can be both cathartic and a way of being productive at the same time. Why not give it a try?
Lamenting on customer service today
Depending on how old you are you may remember a time when you knew each member of the team that worked at your bank and they wanted to keep you as a customer and would rectify any problem no matter how small. Or when you received bad service at a large store even online you would receive great customer service to rectify the issue?
I can recall the early days of Twitter when there weren’t that many of us on there. I posted a tweet about a particular issue I had with a product one time and within the hour the company was in touch asking how they could resolve the issue to my satisfaction. Today you’d be hard pressed to be able to reach a human. You are more likely to encounter chatbots running on a pre-configured algorithmic loop, or AI of some sort. If you do manage to reach a human they probably don’t work for the company and are following a script delivered in broken english from a country far far away.
In the search for cheaper products and services, and larger profits, quality has suffered and when you want to complain there is no person to complain to.
You could use OSINT to reach the CEO and try complaining that way. I tried that once and he said he’d resolve the issue asap then behind the scenes got his PA to tell me to go away. One face for the publicity another for the actual service. We care, we care a lot.. about our profits and shareholders.
Some thoughts on procrastination
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to avoid doing something that you keep telling yourself you really need to do? Yet for some reason you find yourself doing unimportant chores or mindlessly surfing YouTube. Each day you beat yourself up for not doing the thing that you tell yourself is really important to you but you just keep finding reasons not to do it. Why do we procrastinate so much? Is it because we are afraid of the task in question? Maybe it’s just too hard or scary? Rather than avoid it why not think about it, not do it, but think about it. Do you really want to do it? Why not?
For me I wanted to be the best lead guitar player in the world. I even own several guitars and associated equipment but I never play them. I had music lessons as a teenager, and I still know a few chords and riffs. But I never play. Occasionally I’ll pick one up but I’ll soon put it down again. You see, I like the idea of being an amazing axe man, but I have no passion for it when I really think about it. If I did I would be picking up a guitar every chance I got. It’s like I don’t want to let go of this dream I had as a kid, but part of me knows I have no real passion for it and the adult me doesn’t want to upset the child me.
Unlike wanting to be a Speedway rider (another childhood dream, which I am now too old to be) I still have time to master the guitar as age is not a restriction. Yet I continue to procrastinate. I think it’s time to let that dream go and focus on what is important to me, what I am passionate about, and how I really want to spend my time. It may even reduce the procrastination.
Maybe.
Infinity lists
Have you ever noticed that you never really complete a to-do list? At the end of the day I’ve usually crossed off a handful of entries only to have thought up a few more to replace them. These lists never end as we very rarely have nothing to do. These infinity lists are never complete and can become frustrating if you believe that the goal is to complete them.
The truth is that to-do lists are never meant to be completed. They’re just a way for you to track your chores and tasks. You could delete the list altogether and improve your memory by remembering what you need to do yourself. You may forget a few items, but that just means they weren’t really that important or urgent. You’ll still have a list, just in your head.
Maybe you’ll feel better about yourself if you don’t have a physical list to look at. Or you could try creating a new list and transfer incomplete tasks to that just so you can get rid of the original thus attaining some feeling of achievement, however brief.
To-do lists are just a list of reminders, not a record of achievements. They do not need to be completed.
Life moves pretty fast
Alone time. Taking time to just be on your own can do wonders for your mental health. You don’t have to go far. It could be a quiet room in a busy household, or the garage or shed. Maybe go for a short or even a long walk. Maybe sit in your favourite coffee house and read (or write) or just think. You could meditate or clear your head and just enjoy the sights and smells of being outside or somewhere different.
Too often we feel the need to fill all of our time with doing something. Whether reading a book, watching TV, surfing the web, or doing jobs, crossing things off from our to-do lists. We forget that there is joy and comfort in just doing nothing, just being, embracing the moment.
In the immortal words of Ferriss: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”.
The price of beer
Have you noticed how a trip into your nearest town will expose you to a wide range of prices when it comes to beer?
And by this I mean exactly the same beer.
You could pop into your local Wetherspoons and pay 1.99 a pint, and then nip into an independent and pay anywhere from 2.55 to 4.50 for the same pint, or an upmarket themed pub and pay 7.99 for the same exact pint?
So what’s going on here? What are you actually paying for? Is it the beer, the staff plus bricks and mortar overheads, tax, the ambience, or something else? How can the same product vary in price by so much?
Thoughts?