Yesterday:
Morning journal: identified four key fears that drive my life, their likely origins and the barely-conscious strategies I’ve used over the years to cope with them. So that’s me sorted, then! 🙂 A sudden and strange flash of insight that probably only came because I force myself to write pages of ‘stuff’ every day in the hope that one day there will be something useful.
Work: colossal waste of time trying to get my work laptop to do what it’s supposed to, hanging on the telephone for the help centre etc etc, you know the story.
Evening: jam at Fraser Drummond’s house, with his friend John Farrell and Karen ‘Indigo Rose’ Austin. Very productive and enjoyable. Because we were recording it, there was just enough order and discipline to stop it become a free-for-all and give us the focus on doing what was best for the song, while not making it a (adopts serious tone) Rehearsal.
Here’s a good story from Scott Adams (‘Dilbert’) on his blog:
The
other day I was doing some grocery shopping and picked up a case of
bottled water. A woman who evidently works for a competing bottled
water company noticed my choice and insisted on knowing why I wasn’t
picking her lower priced water instead. The clear inference was that
I’m not too bright. Water is water, she noted.
The
first defense that came to mind went unsaid, but it would have gone
something like this “If I’m dumb enough to buy water, I’m certainly
dumb enough to pay too much for it!”
But
that didn’t feel right. My second impulse was to say something along
the lines of “Do you know who I am??? I’m the creator of the world
famous Dilbert comic strip that runs in 2,000 newspapers in 65
countries. I buy overpriced water because I CAN. And by the way, this
is just the water for my cat.”
That didn’t feel right either.
My
third option was just as wrong, and it would have gone like this “Well,
since you asked, I assign an economic value to the use of my mind for
price shopping versus the alternative use of imagining you naked right
now.”
Too risky.
After
I left, I thought I should have said something like “As any bottled
water professional should know, research has shown that the color of a
container influences the perceived taste. Your company’s bottles send
the subliminal suggestion of day old puddle water with a hint of
excrement.”
But I didn’t say any of those clever things. Instead, I mumbled something about being in a hurry and shuffled away.
I still drink overpriced water, but I no longer enjoy it.
i know john farrell, an excellent bass player.