a new wake up routine!

i have finally cracked waking up my brain in the morning. sure, blue lights will work but that won't want to make me get out of bed. also, i'd have to buy one terrible overpriced LED. meditating didn't help me either. i can currently easily get out of bed, go the toilet, and get right back into bed. even when i had a job, i would wait till the last possible second. i tried reading twitter but no, didn't help. as for having a girlfriend - unpossible to make me get out of bed. so far the opposite, it's ridic.

my latest trick is to play a game on my iPhone. You might think this wouldn't help. i found that it hugely increases the sharpness of my thought. currently i am playing circle. it's a cross between that kids game where you have to move the circular hoop around a metal wire without touching the wire, and helicopter. helicopter, for any kids that don't know, is the original flappy bird, and was actually fantastic. playing this noticeably brings my mind to life, with a clear progression of reaction time and speed of thought. after a few minutes (10-15) i get bored/frustrated playing the game, and get up, too awake to go back to sleep.

you're welcome.

an alternative view to patience

i read a definition of patience i'd never heard before. Well, I'd heard the idea but never associated it with patience. In essence, it said "control the things you can control"
any one who's read about the mental side of poker will be familiar with the concept. As will any recovering alcoholic. Focus on what you can control, and accept what you cannot control.

I am beginning to think that many of the traits that i will work on in the coming weeks will often be closely tied together.

the most important thing i'm doing is tracking my progress, especially, in how often i fail. apparently this helps greatly too. we shall see.

patience

after equanimity, patience is the next thing for me to work on.
once again, the parallels between poker and life are uncanny. in poker, once must remain endlessly patient. you have to ensure that your decision making is not clouded by boredom.
you do not know when your next run of cards will happen, and you don't want to throw away money through mistakes, which will reduce the benefits of the future winnings.
patience is a long term habit to be built so that you can maintain your good play over long periods. long periods being months and weeks, rather than hours and days.

and then we come to life. where i can copy and paste the sentence above with a couple of tweaks and everything applies just as well as to how one should behave:

in life, once must remain endlessly patient. you have to ensure that your decision making is not clouded by boredom.
you do not know when your next opportunities will happen, and you don't want to miss them through mistakes, which will reduce your future happiness.
patience is a long term habit to be built so that you can maintain your balance and awareness over long periods. long periods being months and weeks, rather than hours and days.

fin

my wish is my command
yesterday, i go for a drive. my road is about 1km long, and the entire length of it i am forced to follow a learner driver at less than 10mph. They make it impossible to overtake by moving slightly too far to the centre of the road when no one is coming the other way.
and i was late to a comedy store event in town.
thankfully, i remembered to not let it bother me, so i didn't let it bother me.
i don't think i need a huge amount of practice in equanimity, other than in driving and online poker.

i'm not sure what i'll be focussing on next week, but i'm sure it will be arranged to test me as often as possible.

the last couple of days have been happily uneventful. other than having to remind my clients that i'm not a bank and do not wish to loan them money till they bother to pay. i don't know why they think it's acceptable. I assume they are just testing me to see my reaction as i can fathom no other reason for their unfair practice of not paying on time when they have the money in the bank.

testing

It's comforting to know that as soon as I try and practice something, the world aids my attempts to do so.
Not long after writing the post about staying calm in testing situations, I went outside to get in my car and drive off to a meeting. Except my rear tyre was flat. A short investigation revealed a 1.5cm screw had inserted itself into said tyre.
I enjoyed having to rearrange the meeting, change the tyre and go to a shop to get it repaired. It was a bit annoying with the meeting that I had to rearrange but they were quite understanding. I'm not sure these are the sorts of things that cause me to make bad decisions so I will kindly ask the universe to try a bit harder for the remaining days of this week.

tilt!

the parallels of the last post with tilt are incredible!

for example, you think you have made some improvements with regards to not tilting like a special needs monkey only to find yourself playing at 4am, trying to dig yourself out of a hole, as your accounts become emptier than your soul.

It's only when things get tough, do you see how far you've come and so you always need to be on guard even when you think you're getting somewhere. It's a lot easier to tilt in poker than irl for me. The only parallel I found was with driving. Other drivers used to make my blood boil! I noticed a strong correlation between peace with the stupidity and homicidal nature of drivers and an increase in poker winnings. I should probably start driving around town on Sundays to see how i am doing with my equanimity.

equanimity

I just learnt this word. It's a cool word. It means having calmness and composure, especially in a difficult situation. Every day this week I will try to put myself in a difficult situation with the express intention of remaining calm and composed and clear of thought. I will let you know how I get on.

Tomorrow, I am going for a meeting where i will be showing someone how to set up some analytic tools. I don't remember how to do it. I will not panic, or show and panic, and help them set it up.

I need to find things to fill the rest of the week! I will make some phone calls to companies (almost cold calls) which I don't like to do. That will be a good test. I also want to start doing a martial art a couple of times a week so I am not so weedy. I will find a class. I am not great at meeting people in unfamiliar situations so this will be more practice.
If anyone can suggest more awkward situations for me to put myself in, I will be very grateful.

I just thought of another. A company that owes me money, and who knew they owed me money before I started working, didn't tell me when I started, nor when i invoiced them, nor when I told them their invoices were late. They waited a long time to tell me. I was deciding how angry to pretend to be when I next speak to them. Instead, I will remain calm and composed when I next speak to them to explain to them how terrible they are at business and how they will have to change their ways if they wish me to do any work for them in future. That can be saved for later in the week.

forgetful sticks

i have lost many memory sticks in my time. I need to start password protecting them all since i know have data on them that could be called sensitive. my current losses are 2 identical looking ones. they're a bit shiny. i moved from my cave to an actual flat and now i can't find them. one is empty and one is full. i need the full one quite urgently. i will spend another few rounds of combing every inch of my flat including all the "obviously it can't be in there places because i haven't even opened that cupboard since i moved in and have no idea what is actually in there, i hope it's not spiders" places. i will simultaneously concentrate on not thinking that it is in the laptop case i threw away which was falling apart.

in other news, i moved out of my cave into a flat. i forget if i mentioned this. i am forgetting lots these days. i surely mentioned the bricks that masquerade as "heaters"?

as a brit, when people ask me how i am, i respond reflexively with, "great thanks!" if i had to answer truthfully i would say i feel both truly brilliant and utterly terrible at the same time. it's quite odd. i also find it difficult (impossible) to tell other people about this. i don't feel sorry for myself, and don't want anyone else too either.
one feeling often wins from the other but they're both always there. i appreciate immensely how incredibly lucky i am. i am well aware of this and it often permeates my many thoughts. it is a great source of relief and happiness and motivation to do well. at the same time, and sometimes winning are overwhelming feelings of depression and despair. i sometimes think about just moving away from everyone and living in an actual cave somewhere. i wouldn't even like to tell anyone. just go, for 6 months, and then come back to see how i feel. i often think no one would even notice. sometimes, i even like the thought that no one would notice. but like the occasional suicidal thoughts i know i don't have the gumption to go through with it. gumption. what a lovely word.

(i don't think i even have actual suicidal thoughts, just those where i don't really care if i accidentally or on purpose ceased to exist.)

five bellies

i hope five bellies isn't initiated by eating too many desserts. I have a worrying suspicion that that is exactly how it begins. And if that is indeed the case, then I must surely cut down. firstly, i am in love with twirl bites. horrifically, they are equivalent to 4 twirl two finger bars, yet i have no qualms about devouring the entire pack in one sitting. something i would never do to 4 twirls. jelly bellies are also a massive weakness. lemon tarts are another phenomenal dessert which I could just eat continuously. I am in some ways lucky that I don't know how to make them.
yesterday, i went out for food and had an awesome cake for dessert. mousse, with biscuit, a bit chewy, a bit soft and a whole lot of delicious. I was still hungry so we went to get a tea and belgian waffles covered in cream and ice cream from another shop. I felt like telling the waitress we were there for bang bang, louis ck style.



though of course i didn't. the waitress was so hot I think i might even go back.

logic

is all logic based on either circular or axiomatic logic?

for example, "stop" is defined as
(of an event, action, or process) come to an end; cease to happen.

"cease" is defined as
come or bring to an end.

"end" is defined as
a final part of something, especially a period of time, an activity, or a story.

"final is defined as"
coming at the end of a series.

so it seems that you can't use dictionaries to understand words without knowing some words to start with.

maths is axiomatic and just uses some axioms which seem obvious (e.g. a+b = b+a) to construct the maths. but really, they aren't defined anywhere.

i don't know where i'm going with this. I guess I don't really know anything or know how anyone knows anything.

bubbles

i think everyone likes the bubbles that float out of the washing up liquid bottle.

bubbles, which no one likes, are poker bubbles. luckily i avoid them by going out just before the bubble.

i played again last week and went out just as the final table was forming. it was quite uneventful and mostly standard. i made one mistake where i chickened out on my plan when it came to shoving the turn after i raised the flop against someone who just bets incessantly and folds to pressure without big hands.
what was most interesting was the guy who rocked up late to the table. wearing sunglasses. lol, it was night time outside. and not that bright inside. nor were the lights in his head too bright. he was big boned (not fat, just quite big framed) and was obviously accustomed to being all alpha male. at one point i needed some change so help up a chip to him and said "have you got any change?". he replies "yes" and clearly purposefully looks away and pauses before looking back and saying "What's your next question?"
i replied "thanks" and threw him the chip.
he repeats "what's the next question?" and i just stared at him till he gave me the change. i think he takes himself a little bit too seriously. anyone playing in this tournament is not good at poker. including me, it would seem, as i can't beat these mouth breathers.

i play the euromillions when the jackpot becomes large. however, it's still -ev.
the odds of winning are about 1 in 116,531,800. it must be noted that it costs £2 to play. So only when the jackpot is £233,063,600 should you start to play. this of course assumes you are the only winner.
i think what makes it all worthwhile is that i never remember to check the results, but i do get an email from them when i win. so you awake to find a teasing "you've won something check your account" message, to which your mind dreams for a few minutes. then you check your account to find £2.80 in there. after you spent £10.

that was really two blogs in one, so i need a break. back on the weekend.

a tale of murder

google tells me i haven't blogged about storage heaters. i find this hard to believe.

i used to live in a flat with them. during this time, they were the bane of my existence. they call themselves heaters. they are not. they masquerade as technology. they are not.

they are a caveman antiquity.
step 1: make fire
step 2: get brick
step 3: hold brick over fire
step 4: wrap brick in newspaper/bearskin
step 5: sleep with brick
step 6: die of hypothermia

storage heaters replace the fire in step 1 with an electric element. and they replace the bearskin in step 4 with a metal case.
they are stupid for innumerable reasons. mostly that they heat up overnight, give off their heat during the day and are back to being ambient bricks in the evening. most people sleep at night (under a duvet) and are out during the day. thus rendering the storage heater invisible. other than on your electricity bill.

after one winter where it was colder inside than outside and showering in the morning was such a tortuous experience i used to go to the gym and do some sweating solely in order to shower there instead, i left the flat.

i have recently found out that a few years before i moved in, a criminal who was owed hundreds of thousands of british pounds lived there. he was also murdered there. the man who owed him the money gone done did it. i wonder why the estate agency and landlords forgot to mention this? luckily it wasn't haunted. i think he had more important things to worry about than haunt me, such as his death.

multiple events

i start posting regularly, and now a myriad of occurrences occurs (as occurrences tend to do) so a story of murder will have to wait till tomorrow.

today, i want to discuss more mundane things of road users.
they're mostly dickheads. car drivers, cyclists, pedestrians. i would say about 65% of people are just not pleasant. this increase to about 145% when they get into vehicles.

today, i was riding a bike and turning right at a round about (traffic circle to americans. not sure about other languages, sorry) and a car decided that attempted homicide was a more preferential option than waiting. so i had to brake and renounce my right of way as i preferred to be alive. i had indicated for about 5 seconds before the turn and during the turn. while braking one handed and straightening the wheel so he didn't hit me, my right hand almost subconsciously, changed from the pointing to the open palm. i was, in sign language, asking why? why not wait about 3 seconds, before accelerating with ease to tailgate the slow moving car right in front of you whom you will catch up to in about 5 seconds with the effort it takes to move you foot through about 10 degrees. if that. i think this message made it through to this man driver who decided to respond by giving me the finger.

i laughed, but on the inside i feel sorry for someone so angry. it must be terrible to be him.

in other news, i wore a watch the other day for the first time in years. it was weird. i had to stop wearing watches when they all stopped working. it would have been ok if they stopped, but instead the went at a time of their choosing, choosing to be anything but the real time. of course they chose times that weren't completely unrealistic. i could not handle this. telling the wrong time is much worse than just stopping.

A collection of Scary

there was a recent study i read about regarding online dating. it described how the best way of matching people was using just a couple of simple questions, one of which was "do you like scary movies". apparently, matching answers here was the best correlation they found for successful matching. i find that odd. it's a binary choice.
also, i wouldn't know how to answer the question. i like good movies. the genre is less important to my liking of a movie than the goodness of the movie. i like good scary movies, i dislike bad scary movies.
i think that the point of the question is more about being scared. i don't really get scared by movies any more. some, like the butterfly effect, are truly harrowing, without being scary. also, the butterfly effect has complete nudity in it and yet is rated as a 15! that is scary.

yesterday i got very confused while driving. the man in front of me was driving frustratingly slowly down the road for about 500m before finally braking and pulling over into a bus stop without indicating. i fired one blast of a horn at him as he slowed without notice. as i drove away i heard a horn fired. i don't know whether the man was retaliating or someone else found his manner dangerous and required him to be blasted in the head with an warning sound.
i hope it was retaliatory. you can tell a lot about a person by the horning that they do. some people use it as a toy (e.g. eygpt, new york city), some people use it accidentally leading to awkward situations (me), some people never use it, some people blast it due to anger, and some people wait until you are far enough away before using it e.g. the man in my story.

i expect that this would be a much better way of finding out what people are like, instead of asking whether they like good movies.

it must be fate

one of my earliest jobs was the finance department of a small internet firm run by submentals. i'm sure i've written about them before in the past. it was like a terrible sitcom.
one of my roles as the finance department, was to chase people for money. it was horrible. calling people a year after they should have started paying was bad. calling people who had service problems no one told me about. i used to get a lot of bizarre abuse. the strangest was when i called a company in the same building asking them to pay. i got shouted at by this unbalanced women for about 10 minutes after which she hung up on me. a few minutes later, the ceo (a truly terrible human being) stormed into the office asking who had made them so angry, asking why they were being shouted at. reluctantly, i said it was me. i tried to then describe how in fact i had been shouted out, and not the other way round. before i could speak, he then starts to congratulate me for doing a sterling job.
how very odd.

these days, i have to chase people to pay me for work i have done for them. at least now, i don't have to be a dick about it, and due to this horrendous past, i don't feel at all bad about it since i do it in a timely fashion for work they know they need to pay for. I am just amazed how some companies have the gall to respond to your request for them to pay overdue bills, and then not do anything about it!