Friday: Man, it’s annoying getting chocolate on the bed sheets the day after they’ve been through the wash. I’m not even sure how it happened, under the duvet, near the feet end. I do eat a lot of chocolate but that’s still a weird place for it to end up and sadly (even without a lockdown) the excitement that my bedrooms sees cannot obviously explain this.
Sunday: Currently in the process of consuming an extra glass of wine than needed and kinda debating whether to go to the shop for more because lockdown #fuckit (probably not a good idea definitely just did it anyway). This week has been a good week overall for consuming media. I finished watching Defending Jacob which was dark and interesting and increasingly gripping. I normally watch different programmes on different days but with this one decided to stick with just the one until it was finished and it was worth getting immersed in it. I was curious about this in particular because I was looking for more Chris Evans after having seen Before We Go for a second or third time over Christmas (it’s a really lovely film) and was not disappointed. Apparently he’s in the Marvel films as well and I might be one of the very few people who didn’t know that.
Off screen I finished reading The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh also dark and also increasingly gripping towards the end. I liked the slightly dystopian premise about being able to delete people’s memories and the powers who would have used that for good being screwed over by those who had other ideas.
Recently I’ve also been working my way through the audiobook version of Greenlights, the ‘memoir’ from Matthew McConaughey. Given the podcasts I tend to listen to on the regular (Rich Roll, Tim Ferris) it felt like I’d already heard half the book as MM appeared on all of those and more but I was still curious and I think Audiobook was definitely the right version, as opposed to print, to go for. An actor and storyteller acting out his own telling of his own story is worth listening to just for the energy that goes into it but it also turns out that he has had some very entertaining (laugh out loud while on your lockdown walk) adventures in his time (some nothing to do with Hollywood) but also has wisdom and insight to offer.
“When we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we create a fictitious ceiling. A restriction over the expectations that we have over our own performance in that moment. We get tense. We focus on the outcome instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t and it isn’t. And it’s not our right to believe it does or is.
Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss… Who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they’re in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?
If we stay and process within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we’re not thinking of the finish line. We’re not looking at the clock. We’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time where the approach is the destination.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights
Notice how well I’ve distracted from all the things I should be thinking about and working on like how I’m going to get a running coaching business going now that I have actually passed the exam. Shhhhh. Have another glass of wine and dance around the room with me.
BONUS CONTENT: was going back through some old emails as Google thinks I’ve run out of room (pfft) and found a few photos of when I was in Boston for a sales conference and then New York in 2011…
