Category: Uncategorized

How I got happy

Here’s a thing I haven’t really discussed. How I got happy.

For a long long time my emotional range was extremely limited. I was sort of lost in between not feeling great or feeling fine, with no real ability to go beyond either boundary. I was half aware of this but decided it was “fine” and that there was nothing I could do.

Looking back at that time, there’s a few moments that demonstrated some of the feeling or lack thereof, one of which was on a trip to Budapest. I was walking along the Széchenyi Chain Bridge one evening with a good friend and he stopped to admire the view, taking in the air, the architecture, and remarking on how wonderful the trip is. I felt nothing. Not a hint of anything.

I was with my friend, we were on holiday, going to a music festival, the vibes should’ve been up. But right then it was just a bridge. An evening. I didn’t care and wanted to keep walking. He couldn’t quite understand that. It was weird, but I couldn’t convince myself of the value of the moment. I did find respite on the trip a few times though, as the festival we went to that week provided ample booze to kill the melancholy. Mejor que nada.

I didn’t think too much about that moment until I started to get happier, but it was quite a key reminder of what I was trying to defeat in myself. I wanted to enjoy the little things (Rule 32 in Zombieland parlance), and to do that you need to enjoy the moment.

But how do you get to the point you can enjoy the moment when you feel so emotionally empty?

In COVID times, I lived with a girlfriend who did a very good job espousing the benefits of therapy and, through continued effort and cajoling, managed to get me to go. I did 6 or so sessions. I walked into the guy’s office and explained the issue, and internally I was pretty keen on getting a quick turnaround. A solution that meant I could just walk back out all fixed.

Because I had that belief, I basically tried to press him each time to offer solutions (spoilers: not how CBT works, as I later found out with the next therapist), but he did half cave and pointed out that when I described stressful situations I referenced my outfits feeling more constrictive – shirts and shoes type shit – and he prescribed dressing more comfortably. I went to a mall, reupped, and whether it was placebo or not, I did feel a bit better. Probably because I wasn’t wearing a suit all the time to go and do my remote sales work, which was flat out absurd anyway.

With my new, half chavvy but particularly comfortable outfits on, I went for the next session, thanked the guy, told him “I feel better” and ended things. He was particularly taken aback by this. Always good to surprise people though, right?

Well, this feeling of serenity derived from tracksuits obviously didn’t last long, and with COVID at it’s end, and the relationship on the ropes, I started considering what I would do next. I threw myself more into work, which turned out to be a very fucking good move (and is the reason I am where I am now), and wondered if it was possible to travel while working.

I thought that if I got back into travelling I’d almost certainly find some satisfaction, it had worked before when I was a teenager so it’d work now surely… However, around this era, I had my teeth quite firmly stuck in the stoic philosopher Seneca’s letters and in one of them he writes (paraphrasing Socrates) “why do you wonder that your travelling does not cure your problems, when you always bring yourself with you?”.

A good point well made, but while I had read the words, I clearly hadn’t totally internalised them and began planning to head elsewhere with the fallacious idea that a change of scenery would resolve this emotional grey zone I was in.

My original plan was to head to Thailand for a little while, then to Mexico and then see where life took me. Here’s what happened:

I got a place in Bangkok and completely fell in love with the city. The previous few years weren’t very social for me, so when I arrived here, I went hard at socialising (positive) and rampant partying (less positive).

The partying brought about some initial satisfaction as it always does. Khao San Road most nights, dive bars, clubs, new fun strangers, and constant motorbikes. It was great. For a while.

As everyone knows, and sometimes purposefully forgets, cheap dopamine doesn’t work for long. Once some of the partying became routine and the interactions and conversations became tedious, the slide into melancholy began again.

In this case it wasn’t gradual, and I slipped mentally pretty hard, pretty fast. For some bizarre reason I couldn’t reconcile, this was about the lowest I’d ever been. Externally, the business was going well, I was travelling while working, I was in a cool as hell city, meeting loads of new people, and living it large. But whatever balance I’d long since cultivated which had created that grey emotional zone where I lived, just snapped.

I was fucked and needed out.

Once that depression hit, I knew it was time to fix this emotional bullshit or it would do some serious damage to me and compromise my future. Nearly everything else was on the right track, just my feelings were all haywire.

I flew back to England.

I got an apartment in the countryside. It was gorgeous and perfectly picked because it was quiet as hell around, I could easily get into the hills to go running alone, and it even overlooked this little brook that often had baby ducks and geese in it just to add to the picturesque vibe of the surroundings. And a friend lived near enough that we could hang out sometimes.

Going back didn’t feel particularly like a moment of triumph lol, but I was aware that I couldn’t fix this particular issue without devoting a lot of my time to it and I was too stimulated and unregulated while travelling to do that.

With a shit tonne of deliberation, I found a new therapist. A lady this time and a decent 40 minute walk down the river from mine, plenty of time to consider what I wanted to talk about and an uncomfortable amount of time to walk back home analysing what she had told me.

The first session was a little slow. It’s not easy trying to explain something that you don’t understand, but with CBT, the idea is that you process events that happened to you through conversation and questions, and then you eventually notice patterns, loops, and other connections that had otherwise eluded you. Noticing the pattern then allows you to break it, and talking about things genuinely does help.

Some people are particularly averse to therapy and are pretty certain that they just “are how they are are” or that there’s no reason to fix things and that it’s “all just fine”, but “fine” is a shitty life sentence. I wouldn’t want to live as “fine”, I spent years as “fine”, and felt very fucking little as “fine”.

I wanted to feel things. I wanted real emotions.

Shit that would make me stop at the bridge and admire how fucking lovely it is to be alive and be here and be with friends, and “fine”, I knew, would not get me there and it won’t get you there either.

With that declaration in mind, I went to the next session.

Some of the early ones were particularly tough. I hated opening up and having to actual discuss things that only existed in fragments in my mind. It was tough. It was so tough that after one session I went straight to the airport with my laptop and decided I would fuck it all off and stay in Amsterdam.

While at lunch with a friend there, I was asked “how are you?” and nearly broke down. Not my best look.

I came back for the next session.

A few weeks later I had a similar reaction and this time found myself (and my problems) in Lyon, where I was also apparently going to escape to, but once the dopamine rush of the escape wore off and the sadness kicked in again I chanced upon a Paolo Nutini song where he sang “I hope I’m happy before I’m old”. The lyrics hit and I flew back.

From then I spent over 6 months specifically grounded in England and focused hard at therapy and exercise and time outdoors walking or running. I’d run for hours in a pretty directionless manner, just noticing what’s around me and trying to see the beauty in it. I specifically didn’t date anyone, rarely partied, and instead spent all of my energy on me.

It was worth it.

There was a lot of emotional turbulence in this period, naturally, but you can’t go around it – if you want to solve deep seated emotional issues then you must go through them.

It’s awful. But it’s worth it.

Towards the end of that time, I noticed that sometimes while on a run I’d be quite lost in how nice everything felt. I’d stop and the sun would hit, the light would feel just right, I’d see a lamb or something and be smiling.

It was working.

I was focusing on my emotions, processing things through talking and writing, and it was working.

Therapy is weird. You’re not really talking about how to get happy. Instead, you’re processing experiences that you haven’t analysed that had an impact on you, and with probing questions you’re able to understand more about what happened and then your feelings change or they don’t but your understanding does. Equally helpful.

Anyway, as these happy days started to become more consistent, I realised that I’d mostly broken through the previous emotional barrier. Result!

Something good would happen and I would feel great about it, not fine, fucking great.

It’s worth noting however that once you get past “fine”, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and you can actually now also feel particularly bad sometimes when bad things happen, but christ it is worth it.

I’d much rather have this emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs than a tragic train ride of fine fine fine.

This is the way.

Feel the good, feel the bad, but feel something!

The therapy ended once we realised I’d all but ran out of things to talk about for a few sessions in a row. I thanked her (and myself for going) and then decided it was time to get the fuck out of dodge and head back to Bangkok🙂

That was a few years ago now and I’ll be honest reader, life is fucking good.

Every now and then people will notice this positive outlook that I’ve adopted and wonder how it came about. The therapy was a big part for sure, but a lot of the work was the time I spent in nature trying to notice things around me.

The little walks and runs I’d do without a phone, just me and the outside, were incredibly cathartic and in that time I learnt to actually value the moment. I learnt to stop and look around and think “damn, this really is nice”.

So if you’re in this position where everything is just “fine” or “meh” or whatever, my prescription is to spend a lot of time in nature, to write about the things that happen to you (good or bad, though bad will likely take priority if you’re just starting), and to talk to someone – a friend or a therapist or partner, whoever, but someone you trust who will listen and ask questions without judgement.

To conclude, I didn’t write this as some sob story or some big ad for therapy, but to highlight that this limited emotional range or feeling “fine” or empty isn’t something you’re stuck with.

You are both allowed and able to leave it behind and tell yourself a different story about your emotions, and I think with some of the stuff I wrote above, you can get through it.

Only if you want to, and that is on you.

But holy shit, it is worth it.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

Did I play my part well? Then applaud me as I exit   – Augustus

In vino veritas [in wine, there’s truth] – Latin proverb

So, you’ve taken a few blows? Good! That’s the price of being in the arena – Roosevelt

Favourite song for now:

The Problem With Chasing Weight

Alright, I’m quite slim and occasionally too slim, but every now and then I put a heavy focus on gaining weight. This has been an on-and-off goal for a long time. However, I don’t enjoy it, and I’ve been considering why I have it as a goal and whether or not I should actually keep it.

I think the main thing is that the correlation between weight and strength led me to believe that, for me to have sufficient strength and confidence, I would need to be a certain size. Obviously, it’s a fact that having more muscle mass makes you stronger, but what I have learnt is that just hitting a weight doesn’t bring about much satisfaction…

I’ve often wanted to hit some arbitrary weight goal that’s always a little out of reach of wherever I am, with the logic being that I’ll hit some new level of strength or perceived confidence. But each time I closed in on whatever number I set, two things happened: firstly, I realised I felt near exactly the same (not better, just heavier); and secondly, I then moved the number further away, and so the cycle continued.

I am quite certain that people have the same feeling if they’re trying to lose weight, but that’s not my story. Though, if it is yours, feel free to invert what I’m saying.

So why am I still chasing it?

Well, a little backstory is in order. I’ve never had that much of an appetite because I never ate that much (a fun biological loop), and for a long time my hobbies primarily consisted of seeing how many substances I could take in one night without injury (a lot) and video games. Neither demanded much physical strength or caused much calorie exertion, skanking included.

A lot of people tend to gain weight in their late teens, the so-called “filling out”, but this didn’t really happen much on my side because my appetite didn’t increase and I continued doing limited exercise. Silly boy.

Breaking free from that a few years later, at around 22, I started going to the gym and noticed it felt good being stronger. Who knew? I figured that, to do that effectively, I ought to gain some weight. However, I did mostly fail to increase my calorie intake, despite monitoring it diligently after a long talk with a longevity doctor that same year.

A little to unpack there, but you probably shouldn’t see a longevity doctor when you are in your very early 20s because, well, you’re young already, and because a lot of the advice, while likely true, might not be helpful for your use case.

If your goal is “gain weight”, but then you’re given some pretty hardcore parameters on what you can and can’t eat and told to heavily reduce your blood sugar levels and triglycerides due to blood test results, you get stuck between a rock and a skinny place. I found it was easy to cut the blood sugar levels by switching my diet up and basically eliminating actual sugar-ific foods, but that, in doing so, my calorie intake dropped further. Not good.

Combine a little food knowledge with a lot of hypochondria, and you’re in for a difficult time.

Nevertheless, I wanted to gain weight to feel stronger but felt that eating for the gain was compromising my healthy diet. When I re-tested blood sugar levels and triglycerides and saw a marked improvement, I thought I was on the right track, and yet I was still practically underweight. Aggravating.

I did stick with the gym at least, and I noticed my strength was actually improving regardless.

A series of weight gain attempts where I’d go hard at shakes and peanut butter and milk and eggs and oils and blah blah blah ensued, but then failed when, to sate the hypochondria, I’d get some blood test that would show high cholesterol or high creatinine levels, and then it’d be back to minimal cals with the knowledge that they were at least safer or healthier.

More recently, a few years back, I lived right next to a KFC, and the Thailand-only Zabb Wings there formed the basis of one of these attempts. This one I knew was obviously damning for my health, but sure as shit it did bring my weight up to the heaviest I’ve been, and I had reached a scale goal. But it didn’t come with some big positive swell of confidence or additional strength that I thought it would. In fact, I didn’t feel anything.

At that point, I started to clock that arbitrary weight gain, as opposed to strength gain, was not helpful at all and I was chasing the wrong metric.

It’s very easy to chase a number because it feels measurable, even when achieving it doesn’t change how you feel.

Plus, with this particular bulk attempt, the side effects were dire. I was red-faced, out of breath more often than usual, and cholesterol levels got to the point where a doctor from the blood test place sent me an email with “you must take statins” in red text, bold, and underlined.

I am often apt to listen to words a doctor tells me and ignore them specifically.

Saying no to the statins felt like a good move, provided I also dropped the KFC and switched to a hardcore high-fibre, nearly exclusively salad-based diet. Big up Jones Salad for literally fixing me. I ate near nothing but salad like a fucking rabbit for three months or so and lost a lot of weight, which curiously didn’t knock my confidence or really reduce my strength from usual levels.

I would say it changed nothing, except I also got re-tested and, hey ho, the cholesterol levels dropped. This time, the email only said “if you want to, you could take statins”, and no more red writing. I always knew I was a medical expert.

Side note: I twice nearly gave myself sepsis trying to get a stuck nail out of my toe.

Anyway, these little misadventures in weight gain and loss were revealing. I had realised that I wasn’t really chasing a weight. Instead, I was chasing what I thought weight would give me. Physical strength. More confidence. Or a full-on personality shift to some bigger version of me.

But the number on the scale never delivered any of that.

I never particularly felt better when I hit a scale goal or worse when I lost it. Instead, I only really felt good when I got stronger, and that just came from consistent effort in the gym rather than force-feeding.

The strength and fitness, not the weight, is what brought the positive feelings and additional confidence.

With that in mind, my focus this time has been to gain strength through muscle gain, but without setting an unrealistic weight target that requires me to chug ice cream or devour KFC every day to hit the cals, and not to focus on a scale at all.

My new hobby of boxing has been quite a useful demonstration of this fact: being heavier isn’t necessarily better. I’m now acutely aware that even at lighter weights, you can be absolutely strong as fuck, as my 58kg and jacked coach would attest, and I know I’m gaining way more than just muscle from improving at fighting than I would gain from chasing a weight.

So perhaps it’s time to kill that goal (he says, while eyeing up overpriced mass gainer on the kitchen counter), stop chasing numbers, focus on the training, and stop eating bloody zabbs.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

It is you who must accept yourself, the rest of the world already knows   – Jim Carrey

Don’t tangle your self worth in your goals. The work gets easier when it’s not about proving who you are – Attributed to a video I can no longer find on TikTok

In laughter, truth – James Joyce (kind of)

Favourite song for now:

How (not) to date…

I’ve almost always been in a relationship. Quite a habit for me to maintain, but roughly since being 16, I’ve only had 3 extended single periods, and even then, these periods usually contain mini engagements that mimic one.

The ending of each relationship and situationship brought me what my logical-ish brain craves: a shit tonne of data that I could then use (or try to use) to develop a profile of roughly who I’m looking for to make future filtering more accurate. For example, I was once adamant about a specific type of girl being optimal for me based on one of these engagements, and I wrote a profile of exactly what my future partner would be like. When I later met a girl who matched word for word the characteristics I’d written down, I was firstly shocked that I’d manifested someone into existence, and secondly I was absolutely infatuated, until I realised that we were so dramatically incompatible that I had to question if I even knew who I was and what the hell I actually wanted. A slow walk back to the drawing board ensued.

I since realised, annoyingly, that I can’t compare someone against a list of characteristics I one-day-decided to see if I should pursue them. Instead, I ought to do the following: observe them more openly (not my best skill), to see how I feel about them, if I find them interesting and attractive, and then notice how aligned we are in values in real life, not the bullshit “what are your values?” thought exercises. And if, only IF, all lights are green, can I start to consider any pursuit.

I’m pretty sure the above is the right way for me moving forward, BUT I’ve been thinking about how people I know view relationships to see if there’s any lessons to be learned:

One friend of mine was certain she’d never been in love despite multiple year-long relationships. Those seem to be entered primarily based on physical attraction and dating people because they match certain characteristics, which may be the flaw I had. Notably, her only exception to the “not being in love” thing came with a partner who was dramatically different to the previous ones and was not aligned with the usual list of attributes. Another point against filtering by characteristics.

A different friend blows with the wind and, gratefully on his part, the wind generally takes him towards fleeting but delightfully intense situationships. As I understand it, these connections are based far more on excitement than anything else. These ones seem delightful, but I’ve had a few and personally consider them to require too much of my energy. I guess that’s what keeps them short term, as I can only offer my attention intensely for a little while until I want to get back to focusing on me, but it works for him, ish.

One more sticks to a tried and tested method of “friends first, relationship second” which, in all honesty, may be optimal. If you’ve ever watched happily married people being asked why the relationship worked, they’ll generally say that it’s because they’re friends. I would say I’ve had this, but I think it’d be more accurate to say I’ve had it backwards at least twice: relationship first and friends second.

I do love the idea of it, not least because it literally means I can spend my time doing exactly what I want and being me, and making a friend during that process. Then, if the interactions with that friend spiral into a relationship, it wasn’t through feigning interest in someone hot or through filtering all of Bangkok by bullshit lists of attributes, no, it was through me being me totally and completely, and us having a mutual interest in each other as people.

It’s fun to understand how other people view relationships. Gives me some ideas of how I ought to be doing it. And as far as I can see, the best bet is to be open and to be me – no over-filtering from the offset, no lists, and no relationships without valuing the other person as a friend. A pretty boring answer, but as it usually is with these things, it’s probably for the best.

Anyway, as usual, I’m still figuring myself out and discovering what I want and what I like, the perpetual plight of being human, and so, with zero pressure on myself, I’m gonna keep doing me, and if one day I bump into the right girl… I’ll compare her with an arbitrary list! Kidding(?) 🙂

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

The journey is the destination   – Matthew McConaughey (paraphrasing Emerson)

I’ve been dating for 20 years, that’s a lot of pretending to be fascinated – Jerry Seinfeld

Like any journey, if you stay the course long enough the road might just show you what you need. All you gotta do is keep your eyes on the road and your foot on the fucking gas – Kenny Powers

Favourite song for now:

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The Zone of Proximal Development

I first heard this term in a psychology class when I was 17. It refers to the area which is just beyond your comfort zone but not so far beyond it that it’s unbearable.

I’ve been talking about it a lot recently while trying to explain the concept to people in an attempt to also explain to them why I’ve been doing so many random hobbies and side quests recently. Justifying it to myself I guess, using an obscure term from A-level psychology to make it sound deeper than it actually may be.

Anyway, when I explain it, it’s almost always over a drink of something – typically coffee or a smoothie, not beer – as, of late, I’ve been a good boy.

I find it works well in picture form, so the condensation from my drink serves as good paint for my table canvas. I draw a circle – the comfort zone – and another just circling that one – the zone of proximal development. See below:

I point and say that in this comfort zone circle there’s no growth, no progression, this is just as far as you’ve pushed yourself up to this point in life. The next circle, I say, is where the growth happens. This is the level just slightly beyond comfortable: going to a social event you’ve never been to before, trying a new activity, talking to someone you haven’t met. Whatever it is for you that is doable but slightly uncomfortable: that’s your zone of proximal development (ZPD).

These actions won’t be beyond your capability, but they’ll make you feel a little anxious. The game is to keep expanding your comfort zone by becoming comfortable with more things in the ZPD. With repeated exposure to something and with sufficient encouragement (either literal or social validation, pick your poison), you gradually become more comfortable with it and eventually it’s no longer uncomfortable and your comfort zone has expanded. Congrats.

At this point, you’ll have a new zone of proximal development which you can grow into – or not, your life is your own – but I read a line once that said, “Life is too short to be small.” Since then I often hear the relentless voices in my brain parroting the words back at me to force me to do the uncomfortable things.

Tragically, I’m good at shutting the voices up. However, I’ve been working on relinquishing control, accepting their sound logic, and another quote – “Will this decision make you shrink or help you grow?” – has made it rather difficult, because the answer is almost always that this bloody activity or interaction could offer some path to growth. And at 5ft8″ on my best days, I could do with a little growth.

So motherfuckers, what have I and my relentless brain been up to in this quest to expand my comfort zone? Well… in this city of 14 million people and infinite things to do, a lot. I’ve tried a lot. Or at least it feels like a lot considering my previous years were exclusively business + exercise – but that period is a story for another day.

For starters, I did acting classes for a few months. I’m told I did it as a kid for a while, but most memories pre-2017 have withered, so I’ll trust the recollections of my parents on that one. This was something that I knew would be uncomfortable because, as I was taught, when you’re playing a role you have to actually feel the emotion, not simulate it – but feel it.

I was never that emotive until the past 2ish years and even then, being emotional in front of a room full of strangers is intense. Especially when they are all actively watching and silently judging your work – in a nice way, but still.

The first few classes were about learning to be comfortable with this feeling of expressing emotion in front of people you don’t really know. This was more useful than just for acting. In fact, the first few classes have done more for me than I could describe, and the later classes showed me the fun in exploring emotion to elicit feelings from an audience. Comfort zone expanded and confidence increased. Thanks Robin.

Next I went for something that I do alone every day but rarely in front of others… No, not that. Singing, in fact. Anyone who has either stayed at my place or dated me can likely attest to this – but I sing a lot.

With my neighbours as the audience, I am a one-man concert and an eclectic mix of genres can be heard in the apartment corridors, echoing from my home. I often wondered why I’d never particularly befriended my neighbours – perhaps this sheds some light on it.

Anyway, I’ve always been alright at singing but never pushed myself with it, so I considered that at the edge of my comfort zone, just in the ZPD, were singing lessons. This is one of the activities that, for some people, may be totally in their comfort zone, but while I’m still learning how to grow, I find that initial session, that moment of being a total beginner, grossly uncomfortable.

The awful songs of “what if I do it wrong?” or “what if it doesn’t work out?” or whatever the fuck, play in my mind, quite loudly. Silencing them, I headed to my class and began to awkwardly sing in front of the teacher.

It is awkward, you’re in a room with some stranger and you’re doing something that you enjoy doing casually, and you’re about to receive professional feedback on it. Scary. But pretty soon, you realise the teacher is a nice guy in full KPOP drip and only wants to help.

He notices the areas for improvement and over the next few months, you develop your voice and learn to do things you could never do before. The fear subsides and the growth commences.

That’s the thing with expanding your comfort zone – it is scary, it is objectively uncomfortable to go into your ZPD. There’s no blankets and hot chocolate there, but gradually you overcome the fear and start getting accustomed to it, growing into it, and it becomes your new comfort zone – and now the blankets are there too.

The reason some people are comfortable with things and others aren’t is pretty much just repeated exposure, so if you want to grow into your ZPD, whatever it is that you’re wanting to accomplish, just keep at it.

As boring as that sounds, it does work. You start getting used to acting in front of an audience or singing to a crowd or meeting strangers frequently or doing jiu-jitsu and then these once scary things form part of your comfort zone – and you’ve grown.

Another one for me was meeting strangers. In my years of partially chosen, partially forced isolation, I had mostly stopped meeting new people. I adore my own company and I am predominantly an introvert, but can play the role of an extrovert effectively when the situation demands it – and in the meeting of new people, extroversion is the only way to go.

Thankfully, Bangkok is full of events specifically designed for this and, with a lot of convincing, I dragged myself to event after event over the past 8 or so months.

For a while, before each event, I’d have a period where I’d stare at my clothes laid out on the bed and argue with my mind over whether I should go or not, struggling to justify why I ought to go and have random conversation with strangers.

It was internally stressful so it was clearly outside of my comfort zone – but doable – which meant it was in the ZPD.

I’m grateful that I went to the events because in doing so I’ve met some very lovely people and demonstrated to my over-active mind that it’s achievable and not that scary. So once again – ZPD conquered and the comfort zone has expanded.

Listen, these things may not be out of your comfort zone, dear reader, and to you they may seem small – but growth isn’t linear, and I’ve neglected pushing myself with anything but work for a long time, so for me these were big fucking steps and have set me on a far richer path.

So while I start my next uncomfortable opportunity for growth – Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – I want you to consider: what’s in your zone of proximal development, what are you putting off out of fear, and to fucking go for it.

Til next time.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

So you’ve taken a few blows? Good! That’s the price of being in the arena  – Theodore Roosevelt

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex – Oscar Wilde

It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner – Julia Cameron

Favourite song for now:

Bangkok, After the Honeymoon

A friend and I have a long-running line that every non-teacher expat in Bangkok lives essentially the same life here. Aside from the Soi Cowboy-haunting old lechers—but they’re usually on their way to Pattaya and only stopping here for a day or two—Bangkok lady drinks stretch the pension fund a little too far for their liking.

So what does this “same life” look like?

You wake up around 9am, 8:30 at a push, but 10 if you’re not a morning person. Maybe you’re of the motivated type and get up for a little journalling—a good habit I’ve adopted. Then it’s off to the condo gym. Sure, the very large among us may head to Muscle Factory a few days a week and the influencer types may go to The Racquet Club, though the condo gym sees most of the action.

7/11 time. Grab a protein shake, the bottled water that you forgot to buy yesterday, and perhaps a little treat—fruit if you’re a good boy, and toasties or a chocolate and banana muffin if not.

You order your breakfast—yes, you have a kitchen, and yes, you do have eggs remaining—but FoodPanda (RIP) or Grab will bring you anything you ask for in about 20 minutes. Enough time to shower.

After the healthy-ish meal you ordered, it’s time for some emails. Head to a café nearby—somewhere in Thonglor probably, or maybe Ekkamai. You arrive, take an iced Americano—at 120 baht you reckon this secures you a few hours of work time—it shouldn’t, but it does.

You put the small Apple screen down, pick up the slightly bigger Apple screen and stare into the void while waiting for the coffee to work its magic. Fire a few messages out, knock up a mini to-do list, and get to it. Once the Americano turns to exclusively murky-coloured ice water, you’ll know it’s time to leave.

Now you’ve got some options: dinner somewhere local and a pint with a friend, or do you stick to your actual day-to-day life and head home, ordering another meal, then chilling + scrolling for the remainder of the evening.

That’s the routine.

But it wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t always as consistent or stable.

It was nuts.

When you first arrive here, everything is new. There are motorbikes literally everywhere, cars driving with their own interpretation of road safety, people paying for things with a QR code payment system you’ve never seen before despite your “travels around the world” (to Europe and Australia, throw Japan in there for spice), full-spec tuk-tuks flying past you, proper street food vendors with scents that are sometimes divine and sometimes purely caustic.

There’s monks and temples, and hookers and strip clubs, and students who seem to be perpetually graduating with a new photoshoot every 10 minutes. New buildings springing up every day and new events to fill every night. And it’s all just here, existing around you.

When you first arrive here, you can feel that wave of intensity, but you don’t understand how to move with it yet. At the start, it’s a little too much, and your early steps will involve a lot of trial-by-alcohol at Khao San Road, while you learn to navigate taking a Bolt vs Grab, or figuring out what is a decent price for rent to avoid being ripped off, or deciding where to eat so you can give up on just spamming McDonalds and KFC (Zabbs are still a delicacy in this house, however).

Every street corner is a new photo-op, and every rooftop bar is some magical new experience. Each local restaurant seems like it was in Bourdain’s dreams, and you get to visit them!

And the cost! When you compare it to the West, you think it’s all practically free!

It’s hard not to be in awe of how you can walk the countless luxury malls eating cheaply and bounce around the city on £1 or £2 bike taxis that’ll weave in and out of traffic at high speeds to near-teleport you to a whole new area—and then head to meet a bunch of new people at an event.

And then bounce from bar to club, to banana and Nutella roti on the street, back to your luxury-ish condo with a view of the city—for a drunken balcony yap session and hopefully enough sleep for tomorrow’s shenanigans… and a little work, of course.

This honeymoon period is immersion, and it is chaos. It’s fun as hell, and you love it, but you still have no idea how to make sense of it.

So give it a year…

Hell, give it 6 months, and you’ll start to see how the city flows—and learn how to flow with it.

You know that scene in The Matrix where Neo can finally see the world as code and understand it? Or when Bradley Cooper takes the NZT in Limitless and suddenly he sees things for how they are?

That’s you, once you figure this place out.

It’ll start small. You’ll know where to stand on the BTS to optimally avoid all the masses of people that’ll pile on. You’ll know which restaurants are actually consistently good to order from, and how to time your order in the app while you’re out so that the food arrives at your condo at the same time as you—a true Bangkok convenience, all to save a 2-minute ride in an elevator.

I should say “lift” in British English, but I’ve lived here a little too long, and British-isms are slightly harder for everyone to understand, so American English becomes an easier default setting.

Anyway, over time this city starts to make a little sense.

You become aware of the best nights to visit certain events based on the type of people you reckon will be there on a Tuesday vs a Friday evening. Motorbikes on the sidewalk [pavement, my dear chums] no longer faze you—they’re just a mild convenience to you and everyone else here. You roughly know how to dodge them now anyway.

The Thai attitude of “sabai sabai” or “relax relax” has become ingrained in your system, and your newfound calm mostly prevents any major stress building up about these things.

“The ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide.”

This “sabai sabai” way of living has also infiltrated your formerly rigorous insistence on being early or on time for things. Bangkok seems to operate on a sort of “island time”, whereby people arrive when they’re ready as opposed to when you all agreed.

For the British, this is comically difficult to comprehend at first, and will result in stress—especially when you arranged a maintenance person to fix your aircon and they don’t come at the agreed 2pm, and instead meander over at around 3:30.

Once the aircon starts working again and the stress abates, you realise it may be easier just to move with this system rather than against it—you can’t fight waves but you can surf them.

Gradually, you’ll start to do the same as these people.

You’ll start being—dare I say it—late for things! Not one and a half hours late, but late nonetheless—10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. The first few times it happens, you may blame Grab for not teleporting a bike taxi to you immediately, or the elevators in your condo for stopping on every one of the 40 floors.

But eventually, you’ll become accustomed to being late—just a little late—and you’ll start to kinda like it. Or at least not feel horrific pangs of anxiety when it does inevitably happen.

Sabai sabai, baby.

The more you understand this place, the less wild it feels, of course.

And without that high level of stimulation and the dopamine hit that goes with it, you can start to drift into a mindset that all of this is totally normal: your low-cost luxury condo, super-fast but cheap internet, incredible food on every street, instant motorbike taxis, open and accepting communities, extreme levels of personal safety, the view from your bedroom over this mega-city, and communities that are open, accepting, and non-judgemental.

But it’s not normal.
This stuff does not exist everywhere.
This city is unique.

So you mustn’t forget to be grateful to live in a place that doesn’t ask you to be anyone else. Maybe you don’t look out your windows so much anymore to admire the view—but when you do, it’s a nice reminder that this place is still fucking gorgeous.

Well, that’s the post pretty much over, so here’s my final word on the place for now:

Your whirlwind romance with Bangkok has now changed into a more consistent love. It may not be wild and there may be routine and consistency, but it is still meaningful, and there’s always new places to discover and new things happening.

You’ve picked the one place where you feel you can explore who you are and grow in any direction you choose.

Gratitude was never my strong point however, so I’ll remind myself:

Max, if you aren’t careful, you’ll forget how good you’ve got it here.
Don’t.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

The wound is where the light enters  – Rumi

I go down with the water, and come up with the water, I do not struggle against it – Zhuang Zhou

“You’ve changed”, “We’re supposed to :)” – Some lovely artist, hard to attribute

Favourite song for now:

Vanity and Notes on Self Experimentation

Anyone that knows me is aware that despite me being a tad self-obsessed, I am not overly vain, at least about myself…

Yes I take the usual precautions and moderate my eating (excessively) and workout (inefficiently and too often) but barring these, I have taken very little care in what I have worn, skincare, hair in general, how I actually look, how I feel about how I look, and how my presentation impacts my interactions.

As a person who frequently describes himself as having “too much time”, a silly and misguided phrase yet accurate in its own right, I took it upon myself to experiment with vanity for the past few months. Here’s what happened.

Neck wars

I burnt myself pretty badly on my neck as a teenager through extreme aversion to sun cream, silly boy, and a strong desire to lay on a beach reading for hours a day. This resulted in a scar that I hardly noticed until earlier this year when I started to consider my actual appearance.

Now, scars are not a bad thing at all and Hunter S Thompson’s line about “life not being a journey to the grave in a well-preserved body” is something I mostly agree with, but as a budding biohacker and someone who can obsess about anything, given the chance, I wanted to see if I could get rid of it.

It turns out, you can. Kind of.

Bangkok, my glorious home, is rammed full of skin care clinics and beauty clinics and… hmm… Perhaps that’s the reason I decided on this project?

Anyway, I researched a few and found one that fit my usual parameters of any place I visit – pretty looking, convenient, and vaguely overpriced.

I went, did a consultation with a doctor, and after the uncomfortable expense of a cool grand for something I was only middlingly interested in, I received a fuck ton of lasers to my scar.

Did it work?

Ish. After around a month, per the doctor’s words, it did become way less visible though checking through old pics showed that it was scarcely visible before. Funny how we can lock in on one part of our anatomy so diligently.

Well, that was round one of the vanity project and I consider it a success-ish. It successfully showed me that lasering scars probably isn’t worth it unless they’re really impacting you… Lesson learned?

Supplements

Alright yes I love supplements. No I don’t think this relates to my later teenage years enjoyment of similar shaped pills but who knows.

I have been taking a mix of supplements for years and honestly I can say… Most have a pretty minimal effect. I’ve fucked around with heroic doses of them to see if there are any changes and most seem to be so minute in their efficacy that the cost probably isn’t worth it.

But there are a few which do work for sure and I wanted to see if maybe I could do some hardcore experimentation to fix certain things in me. (Yes, I know, “self love, nothing needs fixing” blah blah blah but experimenting is fun and everyone should do more of it.)

Now supplements are all very goal dependent and I highly recommend getting blood tests done to see if you have deficiencies first, then doing diet changes rather than supplements to account for it HOWEVER if you want a simple solution to a low level deficiency, then a supplement is a pretty good way to solve it.

So, onto the recent experiments!

  • Post blood test, it seems I have high cholesterol and statins are a big risk so Red Yeast Rice was on the cards and appears to have worked pretty well reducing my cholesterol to the point where the doctor now only loosely suggests statins rather than underlining it in red as on the original test…
  • I had terrible sleep and 5-HTP totally levelled me out and brought me back to a normal routine (though I cycle it on/off a lot)
  • NMN – seems like it may be good eventually when you’re old but probably no point taking it at this age
  • COQ10 to counteract the Red Yeast Rice’s side effects (no other notable benefit)
  • Then there’s your standards:
    • Vitamin C – works great if you’re ill, take a shit ton and it does help
    • Fish oil – just eat fish instead
    • Collagen powder – tastes gross but probably works

Now these aren’t too crazy but I also wanted to push the boat out a little.

I’ve had a quite muted emotional range for a long time. Sometimes I break out of this but usually I think my emotions are 60% where they should be, that’s a C grade and I have always been an upper B level student (though I did get an A* in English Language) so I wanted to see if I could chemically push this up.

By spamming ChatGPT, I eventually got a list of a few things that may be the root cause.

One suggestion was low dopamine production. Possibly true given my proclivities at formative ages of development.

Anyway, it turns out there’s a supplement called L-Tyrosine that you can take which kinda sorta (mixed evidence) makes your body produce more neurotransmitters including dopamine, but you have to take P5P (another chemical nobody has heard of) with it so that it actually works.

But does it actually work?

I tried this for over 2 months and I would say that it did… drumroll please… Fuck all.

The bottles of pills have 120 in them though so there’s that… But my mood did not improve. Granted, I did have a heavy breakup in that time too but I would prefer to attribute the blame to pills instead please and thank you.

Now given that the L-Tyrosine and P5P combo didn’t fix my mood I was left wondering what would so I started to consider that maybe it’s hormone related. Too little testosterone perhaps?

A little more research and then I began Korean Panax Ginseng which was meant to support my testosterone or balance it out or some other loose marketing term. Now, at the time it was hard to tell exactly if this one worked but I will say my chest gains in the gym were substantial in a short period of time though I was hammering chest exercises + eating way more protein so it’s a little hard to judge if it worked exactly but I think it sort of did?

My overall thought on supplements is that they make you feel like you’re getting something out them when in reality you’re probably just being more generally health conscious. If you’re a person who researches this stuff heavily, you probably also eat a very balanced diet with good macros especially high protein, you likely sleep well, and probably have very few areas of deficiency where random supplements will make you feel better.

They are worth a punt but get the blood tests first and target specifically.

Testosterone

Now we’re getting somewhere a little juicer and probably more contentious. This one is still part of the project but the vanity part comes later.

I, at 26, had never really considered that my testosterone was low until the supplement experimentation and the positive effects of the ginseng. I always assumed that given certain reasons which are unmentionable that mine was actually very high. After a little encouragement from a friend who takes testosterone, I elected to get it tested, just to double check.

It appeared my results were low. Like clinically low. What the fuck.

I already mentioned my muted emotional range above and what do you know? Testosterone has a big fucking effect on this and mine was clinically low. Whoops.

Who’d’ve thunk it.

So with results in hand, I then went to an endocrinologist (a speciality hormone doctor, it turns out) and repeated the words “what the fuck?”. More tests ensued and it appeared that I had a low FSH and LH production causing low test. Results were confirmed so I said “now what?” and treatment ensued.

To anyone parental or concerned reading this, yes it’s safe, yes I listened to the doctors, and yes I did multiple tests to confirm.

Not pleasant getting 4ml of testosterone shot into your arse but hey this is all an experiment and as Bill Hicks says “None of this is real anyway, it’s just a ride“.

So, 4ml of testosterone is a lot. Or quite a lot when you have someone with low amounts already. I’m around 2 weeks into it and I will say, slightly smirkingly, I am feeling pretty fucking great. More confident, a little stronger, bolder, idk man maybe it’s a placebo or this stuff may have actually been the Holy grail I’ve been seeking. Fun!

Perhaps I’ll report back at some point when some emotional event derails this feeling and I try to find some new cure-all but for now, this experiment has WORKED and I feel GOOD.

Fashion

I’ve never particularly had fashion sense or cared about fashion. From my late teens to early 20s, I bought more or less all my clothes from an online store which sells branded clothes at discounted rates. The clothes however are usually from brands you don’t particularly love or in colours that you won’t particularly like, that’s why they’re cheap I guess.

They did usually have some Adidas stuff though so my wardrobe became laden with 3 stripes on every item. I thought it looked cool. It sometimes did. But often, especially during my shaved head phase, it did look a little uhhhh rough? To say the least.

This enjoyment of streetwear persisted for quite a while and I still have periods of constantly wearing it for a few months every year but around April last year I wanted to switch this up. This one has been a LONG and ongoing experiment, it’s a lifetime thing I guess.

So, from around April to October ish, I decided I wanted to be more formal and adult looking. Looking like a real person. Not a droid but like a well put together man. Fuck knows why. I think I decided I was old or getting old and needed to. Stupid thoughts like that about being old persist in your mid 20s and they must be ignored.

This phase had me in cotton shirts, consistently formal trousers, thinning the mass of rings I was previously wearing, and wearing a watch all the time. It was nice to play that role for a while and visit restaurants acting like I’m all that. It felt a bit inauthentic though and I decided a long time ago that I ought to be more authentic so…

After October(ish) I reverted back to a sportswear dominated style and started buying up a lot of branded items but without much thought about how they looked. I judged these on how I felt and generally I felt more confident in them than in the heavily formal attire, it felt closer to home and anyone who’s from the same part of the world as me will probably know what I mean. Grey Nike jumpers litter my childhood memories.

One downside of only wearing sportswear is that you do limit the options of where you can go. Even in particularly lax Bangkok environments, you will struggle to feel in any way comfortable against the army of dripped out Thais.

Noticing this, I decided more recently to ditch the trackies and risk wearing jeans in the consistently 33 degree heat.

Now, that may seem bizarre but climate acclimatisation is so real and the jeans are fine. I couldn’t quite let go of all the sportswear though and have to pair the jeans with a Nike or Adidas or New Balance T shirt, gotta be true to yourself.

This one was a fun experiment and actually is still ongoing 🙂 It’s nice to totally change how you see yourself and how others see you by altering what you wear. I’m still the same me in a suit or in shorts but I do feeeeeel different in each and I do act different in each so it’s nice to play with, especially when you have the time.

The Cerave Cult

One thing that I never particularly put any stock in was skin care. I’m quite pretty right and assumed that because of this I was fine to not do anything. A little arrogant but a lot misguided.

Again, more ChatGPT spamming and a visit to a skin care clinic and I realised that skin care is way easier if you start from a good place with healthy skin, rather than trying to repair things later down the line – which is only questionably possible, unless you do surgeries.

Now rather than opting for surgeries, although perhaps I am the type who would, I was looking for sustainable long term care. The type of shit that most girls seem to know exactly how to do and that most guys have zero idea that they even need to.

Enter Cerave. I doubt I’d even really heard of the brand until this year but it seemed they were the one. Very high quality and no awful chemicals, apparently.

Anyway with a pocket full of Thai Baht I went to one of the luxury malls here and stood out quite significantly amongst the heavily made up Thai girls (I was in essentially a full tracksuit – my sportswear phase), and showed one of the people in the store a list of items I supposedly MUST use.

I walked away with a lot less Baht and a lot of things I had no idea existed let alone things I needed to use.

For starters, there was this DHC oil – some kind of Korean beauty brand that helps remove oil from your skin which is especially useful in this climate, a hydrating Cerave cleanser (at least I kind of knew what that was), Cerave facial moisturising lotion, Cerave resurfacing 1% retinol cream (more expensive per ml than good tequila), some 0.5% salicylic acid, then luxury sun cream which apparently is better but it’s bloody hard to tell the difference – La Roche-Posay Anthelios 50+ – about £30 for an unreasonably small amount.

I had often wondered why a lot of women talk about it being expensive to be a woman and this experiment showed me why – This beauty stuff is expensive. If you use these things and more every day, you start to rack up a pretty significant monthly bill.

Is it worth it? Actually yes… I think. I’ve been using these products in a quite regimented way with a daily routine and the variation days where I’ll fold in retinol one day and use salicylic acid another day.

Initially it was a hassle convincing my brain to do this as a routine but now it’s basically automatic and so slick that I don’t even notice I’m doing it. And my skin, mostly, looks fucking great. Good job, Max. Thanks.

Gym Missions

Alright I’ve been going to the gym a long time but my progress has always been pretty lacklustre. Full accountability, this is entirely on me.

I’ve never really stuck to an effective routine, never particularly researched what I was doing or why, and never tracked or set goals other than loosely get a six pack or something.

Well, we’re in experimental mode so I thought I’d change that. I put a proper routine together, again AI aided (Side note: not using this stuff is gonna put you behind, luddites never prosper), and set to work.

Now it seemed my main issue actually was that I never ate enough protein or calories at all. I was pretty muscular despite my small frame but had no mass because I never ate enough.

Somewhere along the line I became very calorie averse and lived on literally the minimum needed. Bad move in general and a very bad move for gym gains.

But now is as good a time as any to change, I thought, so I pushed my eating like crazy and gained about 10kg. Pretty good. And my lifts improved, strength went up massively, and I felt even more confident.

It’s funny how fixing some of these things; style, strength, appearance can really help your internal feelings.

I’ve since played around with different body weights with a 5-10 KG difference and realised getting a six pack is more about being in a pretty brutal calorie deficit + ab training, rather than just exclusively training abs.

It looks cool but after having one for a little while, I’ve realised I prefer not being perpetually hungry.

My current focus is on arms. My legs are weirdly quite jacked after hammering the leg curl machine for a while, and my back is too – probably from climbing and nonstop pull ups, so it’s time to balance the rest of me out. No interest in going bodybuilder mode but getting a more solid structure would do wonders for me.

This is another ongoing project, and it’s one that is continually making me look and feel better. I love it. Clean living!

Conclusion

I realise that a lot of this is a rant into the void and may have been better as a journal entry but fuck it, why have a blog unless you’re gonna post self-obsessed characterisations of yourself?

To whomever is reading this far, I encourage you to experiment like crazy.

You are likely young, play with it. Try different styles, different bodyweights, routines you wouldn’t normally do, and research this stuff – maybe you’ll find out something you never knew about yourself and get injected with hormones by random doctors in Asia (only joking👀).

Alright people, catch you on the flip.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

If it costs you your peace: it’s too expensive – Paulo Coelho

What if it all works out? – Mel Robbins

To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss

Favourite song for now:

Adventures in creativity

I don’t think I’ve ever given myself much credit for being creative.

In fact, I think I suppressed that side of myself so much that it practically disappeared and only occasionally did I notice a little glimmer of it here and there.

I accidentally built a mental comfort zone with logic as the walls because I was uncomfortable with exploring my own creativity, perhaps for the fear that I wouldn’t be good at being creative – creativity is tough to measure. But this year I’ve made a conscious effort to change that and break down those walls. See the video below for proof…

We are what we think, right? So I dropped this whole internal dialogue of “I’m so rational and analytical.. blah blah blah” and switched it to “I’m pretty creative… sometimes” [gotta add the “sometimes” just to satisfy the other side of the brain]. Anyway, I made this switch earlier in the year – maybe around February and then decided to lean in and give creativity a shot…

A girl told me if I played guitar it’d be pretty hot so I immediately picked up a cheap as fuck guitar and spent a few months getting to grips with it. Very fun to play but not totally my vibe, though I do love the feeling when you actually create a halfway decent lil riff. Will be picking this back up again soon 🙂

Much to the dismay of my high school art teacher [can’t remember her name but there is a special place in hell for unsupportive art teachers], I also started drawing things. Just little sketches of my environment and sometimes the odd animal or a little scene in my head. Most weren’t great but every now and then I’d hit on something that I loved! One of them I liked so much I got it tatted on my arm. How fucking cool. Never drawing anything to drawing my own tattoo. Nice. Go me! I even carry a notepad and pen in my bag at all times in case I wanna draw something.

And more recently, I spent the past few months trying to open up creatively with acting classes. Acting was something that, like many of you reading I guess, I’d been told I could probably do pretty well but like most people I declined to pursue it in any way and instead just kept that little idea in my mind that “yeah, I could do that“. Well, I realised recently that if you live with all these “yeah, i could do that” and then never actually do the things then you’re gonna spend your life unfulfilled and full of regret. You see, what happens if you go and try the thing and then realise “shit, this isn’t for me” – you might feel bad at first for wasting time thinking you were something you’re not, but then you’re liberated. You stop living this fantasy and then you can move on to the next thing, and keep looking for your ikigai [your purpose, the thing that gives you joy].

Well I decided that fuck it, I may as well see if this is for me or not. In 3hr+ long classes, I got to explore a LOT. The first few classes were borderline therapy where you expose yourself to a specific emotion and cultivate the stories in your mind that make you feel that way and it is particularly heavy. The next were on techniques and revolved around “playing the objective” which is where you consider what the character wants as opposed to playing what you think they feel and in doing this you’ll start to be able to really visualise your scenes and feel the emotion in reality.

This all culminated in a showcase last Sunday where I played a newbie lawyer desperately trying to prepare for work as he arrives at the dilapidated new apartment his just-married wife had chosen for them to live in… Video below.

The whole experience was something special. While coming back from the show, I was high on bliss thinking just how insanely cool it is to perform in front of people. I’m not saying I’m world class at this or that acting is my ikigai but…

I loved performing and I *think* I’ll keep doing it.

So, if you have an unexplored creative side like me, then as an experiment, embrace it! Venture outside your comfort zone. Sure, it’s uncomfortable and intimidating, but living a small life because you never took the leap would be a tragedy!

Now, wanna see me acting?

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

Nothing seems as pretty as the past though – Arctic Monkeys

You set the standards for how you want to live – Me

Good enough is almost perfect – George

Favourite song for now:

“What are the birds saying?”

I wrote in a previous post that I have these little phrases that help change my mind state and put me back to my usual curious, engaged, and generally happy self. My favourite of these is taken from a delightful book on Taoism.

I was gifted the Tao of Pooh years ago by my mum.

The book takes the concept of Taoism and explains it simply through Winnie The Pooh. This short book gradually altered how I viewed a lot of the world, so much so that I all but forced multiple friends to read it in the hopes that they’d also find the same value in it that I had.

So what’s the phrase?

Well, let me set the scene:

“Say, Pooh, why aren’t you busy?” I said. “Because it’s a nice day,” said Pooh. “Yes, but…”
“Why ruin it?” he said.
“But you could be doing something Important,” I said.
“I am,” said Pooh.
“Oh? Doing what?”
“Listening,” to the birds. And that squirrel over there.” “What are they saying?” I asked.
“That it’s a nice day,” said Pooh.
“Well, you could be spending your time getting Educated by listening to the Radio, instead,” I said.
“That thing?”
“Certainly. How else will you know what’s going on in the world?” I said.
“By going outside,” said Pooh,
“Er . . . well. . . .” (Click.) “Now just listen to this, Pooh.”
“Thirty thousand people were killed today when five jumbo airliners collided over downtown Los Angeles . . . ,” the Radio announced.
“What does that tell you about the world?” asked Pooh.
“Hmm. You’re right.” (Click.)
“What are the birds saying now?” I asked. “That it’s a nice day,” said Pooh.

– The Tao Of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff

A while after reading this, I developed a kind of “call and response” with a very dear friend, George.

When one of us starts to get stressed or annoyed by something, the other says “What are the birds saying?” And the reply “That it’s a nice day” brings an unmatched level of calm.

It reminds the replier to return to the present moment, look around, and recognise that it truly is a nice day, and that is especially true when you’re with a good friend.

The utility of this phrase in bringing me internal calm is hard to understate.

This short little back and forth has pulled me down from a lot of bridges. So much so, that over time I’ve even learnt to say it to myself when I see my mind drifting down a darker path, particularly necessary considering the frequency that George changes location.

I was reminded to use phrase a few days back when I found myself focused on something that was entirely irrelevant and not making me happy.

Because of how wonderful things have been recently [*touch wood, long may it continue], the phrase had very nearly slipped out of my mind and I wanted to ensure this would never even *nearly* happen again… So I now have it tattooed on my arm.

My own crude handwriting, a couple of birds and little sunset drawn onto my forearm, reminding me that it’s a nice day.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss

If you wish to be loved, love– Seneca

If you can change it, why worry? If you can’t change it why worry?. – Dalai Llama XIV (majorly paraphrased)

Favourite song for now:

Something wrong in Heaven

Since I was very young, I’ve had this terrible habit.

Put me in a near-perfect situation and there’s a high chance, you’d find me focusing on one tiny negative aspect of it or, even worse, I’d imagine some potential way this idyllic situation could become negative, and lose any enjoyment of the present. As Marlon Croft sang, “I could find something wrong in Heaven”

Seeing the bad in things and disregarding the good, is obviously not a healthy habit.

Despite this, I know why I adopted it. Being pessimistic allowed me to internally account for any negative situation that would arise – an emotional “prepare for the worst” tool. It was effective as I often expected the worse to happen, so when it didn’t happen I was pleasantly surprised though much of the happiness was diminished through the obsession with the potential negative outcome. Years wasted ignoring the beauty of the present and thinking about the bad thing that might happen.

When I was a little older, maybe 18 I found some justification for it.

A favourite author of mine took a few lines of a letter written by Seneca and converted this bad habit into a useful practice – fear setting – where you write down all of your fears about a situation and combat each one at a time and consider that IF they did happen, how could you return to baseline. The practice is exceedingly useful in certain situations but it ought not to be used for every possible thing, lest you spend all day thinking about each horrible possibility. Even if you strategise how to deal with each negative possibility, it‘s a tragedy to squander so much of your precious time considering terrible things.

More recently, I’ve been able to fight this habit of only seeing the bad (or the possible bad) and now do my absolute best to focus on the good.

One thing I learned in the past few years is that not every thought that comes into your head is your own, oftentimes these thoughts come from someone else – a friend, a parent, TV, whatever – and they’re akin to visitors in your home. You don’t have to agree with all your thoughts or even respond to them, you can just watch them appear, consider where they came from, and watch them drift away again.

So now, when I’m in one of those lovely situations when all is objectively going well and I see an insidious thought start to appear; I watch it come, question where it came from, and most importantly, I let it drift away.

And what I’ve found is that the less I engage with those thoughts, the less they visit. But sometimes the little fuckers can be persistent…

To deal with those ones, I have another strategy.

Some people will know that an unusual thing I do is keep a handful of phrases permanently burnt into my head to put me in a different state of mind or take me out of a less-than-useful thought process. I find it extremely useful to present myself with certain words that can instantly shift me back to my normal level headed self.

However, with this particular problem I was lacking an effective phrase to stop me from thinking negatively and complaining arbitrarily, that is, until I listened to “Something wrong in Heaven”.

I added to the title and now when I catch myself complaining I say to myself, often out loud, “you’re trying to find something wrong in Heaven” and it reminds me of how great my situation really is and makes me more grateful for what I have. I reply with “Oh yeah! Things are great, what the hell am I complaining for?”.

Right now I’m in a cafe in a gorgeous mall in Bangkok overlooking a mini waterfall, feeling a little breeze and watching the sunlight against the trees built into the sides of the building. And yet, at a table next to me is a huddle of old ladies one of whom has a dangerously screechy voice which seems to penetrate past the Action Bronson blasting in my ears.

You see, I could choose to be annoyed and allow a little thing like that to detract from this otherwise perfect time OR I could say “Max, you’re trying to find something wrong in heaven”, chuckle to myself and sip my coffee with a little smile.

I like to think I have the strength of mind to not let small annoyances ruin my limited time here, but alas, I’m not perfect and sometimes get swept up in rage at some incessant noise or someone’s mindless actions or get lost in considering everything bad that could happen, and forget entirely how great everything really is right now.

But that’s alright!

This is a daily practice and each moment I get lost, I pull my little phrase out of the bag and remind myself “You’re trying to find something wrong in Heaven”. And truly, I am in Heaven.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss

All we can control is our choices and how we think– Ryan Holiday framing Stoic thinking

We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit. – Will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle

Favourite song for now:

Worth It

Opening up to people is hard.
Being honest with your emotions is hard.
Telling someone how you feel feels like one of the hardest things you can do, when in reality it’s a small discomfort and your life would probably be greatly improved if you were willing to overcome this hurdle and be more honest with people about your emotions. Would you really want to live life knowing you were afraid of being honest to yourself?

You need honesty and openness to develop real connection with people.
They have to see you for who you are and you have to see them for who they are. Otherwise it’s just acting.

And yet so many people are so deeply, deeply uncomfortable and afraid of this.

The fear stems from vulnerability; to be intimate and real with someone you need to expose your soft belly and hope they don’t tear into it. But sometimes, they do. And the real difficulty is that if you are vulnerable with someone — if you reveal yourself to them — and then they decide you’re not right for them, there’s an immense feeling of rejection because they’ve seen who you are and don’t want you because of it.

Rationally, you could say that people disliking who you are isn’t a bad thing — it means that those people are not for you, and any further interaction wouldn’t be beneficial in the long run. It allows you to save a little time — now you can move on and keep up the search for someone where interest is mutual.

But still, occasionally you like a person for who they are, and you spend time opening up and being vulnerable and intimate — and they decide that who you are is not right for them.

I guess this is why so many people have a hard time opening up and being expressive with how they feel — they might be rejected for being themselves. Then they think that being vulnerable in any way is risky, and so they adopt a hard shell. And while the hard shell protects you from threats, the real risk is that it stops you from being seen at all.

There’s this clip of Jim Rohn where he says:
“If you think trying is risky, wait until they hand you the bill for not trying.”
Being vulnerable is risky, but it’s worth the risk — because what’s the alternative?
An isolated life where you were never courageous enough to show yourself to someone else? A life where you were never really honest with how you feel about someone? What a tragedy!

Though there are times when being guarded can be helpful; you can often feel it in yourself when you know that you ought to be a little coy and not reveal your cards. But this useful instinct can go into overdrive, especially if ignoring it in the past has led to a negative situation. The ability to discern when to be vulnerable and when not to becomes ever more difficult.

You can end up viewing every situation from a guarded perspective, under the impression that you can’t be open or honest with how you feel at all — just in case it backfires and you get rejected for being you.

Sometimes when this fear takes hold, people feel the risk isn’t worth it at all, and that they can instead find contentment in solitude, which they assume puts them beyond the need to be open with other people.

This individualistic attitude, despite its affirmation that it isn’t lonely, is lonely.
Really fucking lonely.
You can be content alone for a short period, sure. But not for your whole life.

I was watching a movie about Chris McCandless recently (Into The Wild), where a young guy decides he wants to live alone in the wilderness. He takes his trip up to Alaska woefully underprepared and somehow manages to stick it out for a while… But in his solitary journey, he eventually starts to realise something — life is better when shared or, in his words, scrawled across his school bus tomb (spoiler, sorry):
“Happiness is only real when shared.”

And if you really want to be happy, if you really want to fully experience this life and connect with people, then you need to be willing to open up and be vulnerable. You need to take the risk.

And the truth, that I’m gradually learning, is this:
It’s worth it.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

“What are the birds saying now?” I asked. “That it’s a nice day.” – The Tao of Pooh

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as though you chose it, then act – Marcus Aurelius

Stop playing it cool, just be passionate and intense and whoever sticks around is meant for you – Random Tweet

Favourite song for now: