I don't like doing stuff I don't like!

I guess that's just my excuse for putting things off, for procrastinating.

Well can I tell you that I didn't like 'not procrastinating', not at all. It interfered with my days, interrupted my social life and was occasionally bloody annoying.

Anyway, with the help of a friend, I got the following done:

21. Put my "Storth Avenue" sign on my bedroom wall. (Yes, it might look silly to you -- should you ever get to see the inside of my bedroom!! -- but not to me!)

22. I made an appointment with the sports injury clinic. (My right knee hurts, my right calf gets sore, my left calf too. Anyone would think that I was gettin' on a bit!)

23. Put curtain blinds in bathroom. (You could easily see in from outside. It were embarrassing it was!)

24. Buy a new vacuum cleaner. (The old vac. really had sucked it's last bit of dust.)

25. Buy off-road running shoes

26. Buy running shorts. (Previously, I either ran in track-suit bottoms, Gunner Sugdens, or shorts so skimpy even the ex- blushed!)

27. Put two mirrors on the walls upstairs

28. Refitted the door to the store room, off the kitchen. (It now opens without scraping the floor!)

And, I don't care if you think if you think these are tenuous tasks, I started reading my gardening book (thanks, Alan Titchmarsh) and I have been exercising every other day.

29. and 30.

There. Done. Phew!

(We'll ignore the fact that I repeated one of the tasks! Spot it?)

I promise to try and not let things stack up, quite as much in the future. If only to avoid another month like June!

What Makes You Tick? Boring John

(With apologies to Psychologies Magazine and the What Makes You Tick? Monty Don interview featured in a recent edition of Psychologies.)

Name four words that describe you?

Silly, serious, sexy and S-obsessed

The biggest difference between men and women is?

Now *that* is a very good question. Erm, communication skills. (I have no idea, actually, what single thing differentiates the sexes. We're all different, after all.)

Are or were you closer to your father or your mother?

Mother, as my father left the nest (got booted) very early on. I am as open with my Mother as with my bestest friend (yes, this is probably unwise)

Bottle it up or let it all hang out?

Hmm, never bottle it up but be dignified enough not let it all hang out, either.

Is the glass half-empty or half-full?

I think the glass is probably fed up of having its identity continually questioned. It's a glass, with fluid in it. End of. But I agree with Monty Python that you should "Always look on the bright side of life!"

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Be less serious. (Aint never gonna happen, baby!)

What record do you listen to when you're feeling down?

Probably a CD by Lemon Jelly

What is your biggest regret?

Not being a happily married Dad.

When and where are you happiest?

"Right here, right now" baby!

If you could nominate an eight deadly sin, what would it be?

Well, I'm not sure what the seven deadly sins are but I would nominate intolerance.

What drives you - fear or desire?

Too much fear in my life, for sure.

When did you last get really angry?

The last time someone asked me that question! Why I oughta...

Conformist or rebel?

Eeek, conformist when it comes to authority but rebel, I guess, when it comes to not being one of the sheep in the Fashion Victim Army (I'm not interested if you're the leader of sheep or just one of the ranks, actually - wear what suits *you*!)

What's the record you'd never confess to owning?

Aha, a trick question. It would be...

Best piece of advice you've ever been given - and did you follow it?

Stop being so serious. No. (D'oh!)

"I dreamt of you last night"...

No poetic ending this time, though there were tears. We met, briefly, then You left me to spend the night with another.

It's a strange way to say 'Hello', but

'¡Hola!'

Time!

There is something quite profound, I think, in the just-announced fact that time is the most popular word in the English language.

My first thought was that we are indeed more ruled by time than by anything else (I include religion, materialism, and maybe even love here.)

Why is that?

(Remember, this is profound (at least to me!) so it requires that you spend some time thinking about why time is so important to us.)

Eckhart Tolles knows why!

Are you a dreamer?

"The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs
and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking
you with a sharp stick called 'truth'."
- Dan Rather

(Wisdom definitely has its place, for sure!)

17, 18, 19, 20

Don't you think it's funny looking at the types of things that people a) think they have to do and b) think they have to do but don't do.

For me, these things include:

17. Buying slippers for my house visitors (I'm somewhat precious about not getting mud on my carpet)
18. Buying a copy of Readers Digest (This was a recommend read, actually, from one of my writing courses.)
19. Buying a mobile phone (My old phone is costing my £15 per month, and the battery's dying, so I might as well buy a new one)
20. Installing a surround sound system for my TV (Has taken me several hours already, and still I don't know how to do everything I want)

Anyway, there are less than two weeks to go until I can return to putting things off again!

Wisdom: Another False Prophet?

I don't believe in false prophets!

Who does, they're false after all.

What I mean to say is that I don't believe in anything -- religion, self-help theory etc. -- that doesn't at least allow me to challenge it, in some way.

Ideally, and sufism and maybe Quakerism comes to mind here, the ideology or belief system should allow other ideologies or belief systems to also exist, should even encourage this.

Simplistically put, I can't do Christianity (though I admire the much mis-understood Jesus Christ) because Christianity can't do homosexuality.

I can't do Islam, because -- and this is shared with most religions -- Islam can't do other religions.

Etc.

(I have a theory about a person's religion that I've never heard anyone mention before. So I'm going to claim it for myself and call it the (working title only) BJ religion Theory.

The theory states: a person's religion closely matches that person's prejudices before they followed that religion, or it matches prejudices that person is happy to accept in their life so that they can follow that religion.

That means I, personally, could never follow a religion that thinks of women as second to men.

That means the religion I follow must acknowledge other religions.

That means the religion I follow must not judge non-believers.

That means the religion I follow should not be based on translations of words made thousands of years ago; it should, instead, be based on essence, on spirit, rather than exact words.

So what do I believe in?

The moment.

People.

Truth, aka wisdom.

The trouble with wisdom...

So I'm a big believer in wisdom or following the path of least resistance (think about it).

Wisdom has been around forever. It never changes. Even the wise Marcus Aurelius said, over a two thousand years ago, that there was nothing new about wisdom (I mis-quote).

To me, wisdom is truth.

It's the best way to achieve something.

It's the way it is, whether we like it or not.

It simply is.

However, today, I had my first ever moment of doubt regarding wisdom.

I was reading a magazine article about the somewhat flawed relationship between two lovers who are now friends. Each had been unfaithful to the other - she had slept with his twin-brother, whilst he had slept with her boyfriends. Still, despite it all, they remained friends.

I then started thinking about one of my own opposite sex relationships, un-wise in many ways, and -- to completely bastardise an American expression -- un-moved-on from. Family and friends all offer sound advice -- i.e. wisdom -- on what I should do, but I have mostly ignored their counsel, and the relationship continues.

Should one always be wise, or can growth come from being un-wise?

Should one be deliberately un-wise then, or am I kidding myself in thinking that it's that easy to actually be wise?

So many questions.

All prompted from reading this magazine piece, and from writing this email reply (sent a few moments ago; I include an excerpt below):

"As regards staying in touch with your ex- or doing other stuff that isn't 'wise', whilst I bow down to wisdom more or less every time -- it speaks the truth, after all -- that doesn't mean to say that it can't or shouldn't be done.

"I think I need to cultivate a more healthy disregard [to the teachings of wisdom], every now and then."

Emails.

So much more succinct.

16. The things is...

if the things we put off doing were interesting, and didn't take long, we wouldn't put them off would we!

16. Bought business cards. Well, actually one of those rubber stamps with my address on it

14, 15 etc.

I'm still doing more than one thing* per day, one day in advance, but that's fine by me!

So:

14. I unpackaged a free gift, sent to me by a company called Digital River. Why they sent me a remote control toy car, I don't know, but my nephew has already had a good giggle over it!

15. Bought a new mobile phone. I get a brand new phone for £15 per month, which is equivalent to what I'm spendin on my own, somewhat faulty, Motoral V500. (I got 2 of these, and they both ended up having faults! Grrr.)

* Things are those tasks that I have successfully put off for more than a month

9, 10, 11, 12, 13...

It's getting more and more difficult to un-procrastinate each and every day. So I played catch-up over the weekend and did all of the following on one day, or another:

09. Spent my HMV voucher on a Giles Peterson compilation of African music
10. Spent the final £10 of my M&S vouchers on a toaster
11. Put my £5 Argos voucher towards a £20 shower curtain
12. Pumped the tyres up on my bike
13. Mowed the lawn on my gardens using the right tools (i.e. a lawnmower that actually has a blade) - got help from a friend to do this one, though

(Oh, what will I do with my day off tomorrow!)

The Wisdom of One

Or...

The Wisdom of the Un-wise

I never like reading about how easy someone finds doing something, say slimming or speaking another language or even writing, when that someone never had a problem doing it in the first place.

They offer wisdom which is little more than "I can do it, it's easy, so you should be able to do it too."

This wisdom helps no-one. It isn't wisdom.

To my mind, the only words that are wise come from those that have had the problem, and solved it, or those that never had the problem but can empathise with those that do and their words offer guidance to them accordingly.

Huh?

Has Boring John got sun-stroke or something?

"What's with all the words that mean nothing, dude?"

Okay.

I just read a piece in a magazine called Psychologies, about one night stands written by a woman who enjoyed them (she calls them ONS), but is now 'past that sort of thing', i.e. she has something much better.

And whilst I was impressed with her honesty, her lack of insight masquerading as wisdom galled me A LOT.

And then I remembered one of my pet hates: bad wisdom. (Like bad sex, you think it's going to do you some good, but it isn't).

For bad wisdom, read un-wisdom, or non-wisdom.

Okay, I'll reproduce the notes from my scribblings in answer to the article. Unfortunately, I forget the title of the piece, and the name of author - you see what happens when the mouth-foam appears! Basically, it's an one page article detailing one woman's experiences of one night stands, all 25 of them, between the ages of 19 and 26.

Okay, so what you get from this article is a quite frank account of each of this woman's 25 ONS (I'll use her terminology).

She rates the sex and makes comments on the experience as a whole.

Only once did she feel used; and only a few times did she have fantastic sex; but - and this is when I started to get galled - her last ONS was, surprise surprise, her best experience, so much so that she is still with this man.

So, my first thoughts were:

1) What would you think if a MAN wrote a piece about his 25 ONS experiences with women, some of which involved not caring about what the other person felt afterwards?

Okay, that doesn't mean that she coldn't write the piece, but I think you'll agree that such an article would be viewed differently if written by a man.

2) In that vein of sexuality inequality, I then thought that the author was quite bold in admitting that she had had (at least) 25 sexual experiences. I have *never* met a woman who would admit to such a fact, it's always usually 8 or 9 partners.

This reluctance to be honest is understandable, I suppose, living as we do in this sexually judgemental world where men's opinions seem to be the only opinions.

That's why I admire the author's honesty (if not her wisdom).

3) But then the galling (to me) undertone of her piece hit me: her implied wisdom of "Have fun - sleep around - you're only young once"; followed by "But once you're older you should find something better".

It's like she's saying that the only time to have fun is when you're young.

Well what if someone, my friend say, wants to have fun when they're older? What if they weren't able to have fun when they were younger, as they were far too busy being serious?

This is the Wisdom of One I'm talking about.

This woman has solved her problem, maybe she never had a problem to solve, and she now feels quite comfortable crowing about how great her life is.

And?

Have you learnt anything, Ms Author, other than that you're a little miss clever clogs?

And, if so, have you shared it with us?

No, no, no! No you bloody well haven't!

Okay, I shall try to illuminate on her behalf on the pros and conds of having one night stands.

I've had several one night stand experiences, not 25 - I wish! (Actually, no, I don't!). And I can agree with the author in that they were a mixed bag of experiences, mostly good, and some very bad!

• Only once did I leave early-ish with absolutely no intention of ever meeting the woman again. (Slow learner that I am, I never twigged that one night standers don't necessarily expect anything the next day!)
  
• I certainly don't recommend them but they can serve a purpose

So what did I learn about my experiences?

Not much, to be honest, other than we all want to meet someone special.

And it takes some of us a longer time to achieve this than others.

We all learn at different rates.

Some of us are blessed with innate wisdom, in a particular area of our lives, whilst others struggle a lifetime to 'get it' and still others drink themselves into oblivion or busy themselves with chores, and TV, and chores whilst watching the TV, so that they never have to confront the challenges of their life.

We're all different.

But we all have challenges.

And wisdom, true wisdom, applies to us all.

So my wisdom is this: just because it works for you - "I eat what I like, don't exercise, and don't eat vegetables, but my Doc. says I'm fit and healthy" -- doesn't mean it's going to work for me, or for anyone else.

So, what I'd really liked to have known from our much- chastised and anonymous author is an answer to this question: WHAT DID YOU LEARN about yourself, and the men you slept with, during this time? Andy why was ONS #25 the One?

As for you, dear reader, I have question too: should I get out more?

I ask you this, because I think I've completely failed to articulate the un-wisdom of this woman's words and it's sunny outside so I will, indeed, get out. Now!

[Tch! Poor effort. Poor effort, indeed, Mr John!]

PS All of this reminds of this woman's quest to go around the world in 80 dates. Now she learnt something, in her own personal journey, that we can all learn from!

08. I don't care what you say...

I needed to run a credit check, courtesy of www.protectmyidentity.co.uk , and so I did (on the 8th of June, too!).

Well I've paid for identity theft insurance, I might as well use it!

(On a side note, doing something I've been putting off each day is proving more difficult than I first imagined, and I'm starting to regret setting myself the challenge. I mean, it's starting to interfere with my social life!)

Hallelujah Dennis Waitley

"Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable."
- Dennis Waitley

Really bad?

I recently remembered an amusing incident amore, and just had to mention it here.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent, etc. (i.e. me!)

...So, me and this beautiful woman are lying in bed. We're smoking the metaphorical post-coital just 'seconds' later, after a pretty sexy sesh!

And she says...

"that was GREAT, really, really great!"

Then I say automatically, because I was easily losing the battle between us up to this point...

"Yeah, that was GOOD, really, really good"

Then, as quick as you don't like, she says...

"Yeah! I'VE had better too!"

(Ouch!)

07. Feed The Birds

No, not feed the world, I'll leave that to others. I just want to feed the birds, and so I bought a hardy-looking (but plastic) peanut bird-feeder, today, and loaded it with nuts. Now if only the pigeons would shoo away, so that those darlin' lil Blue Tits would come out to play!

06. Tenuous Tools

It's a poor workman that blames his tools, or so they say!

I will now be able to blame my tools, as I've just bought lots of them for the very first time. (Hello Mr Screw Driver! How ya doin?)

I've been putting off buying from www.whdirect.co.uk for a while now.

It counts

George Bush's Birthday

As you know it's 06/06/06 today! and some say that it's George W Bush's birthday today.

But, if Google is to be believed (and I love Google like Homer J loves TV - look, who knew (until Google!) that you could buy pizza online in London!) then George W Bush's birthday is actually 06/07/06.

Ah, as the acrtress (probably) said to the bishop, that 1 (inch?) makes all the difference!

Not procrastinating is like washing up!

Just as soon as you've finished a task (finished not procrastinating), then another task (sometimes several) takes its place.

05. Tenuous, but...

I don't care!

Putting my insurance details in my wallet and the phone no. in my car means that if I break down someone gallant and shiny will come to my rescue. (Because not only do I not have green fingers, I don't have oily fingers either!) But if someone steals my car, they won't also steal my personal information!

So I don't care what you say, it counts. (Ner!)

Problem solving, big-time

I have never been satisfied with solving one problem. I have always looked to solve the particular problem that faces me - be it mathematical, emotional or other - and then try to solve that particular class of problem.

A trivial example would mean designing, building and optimising one web page with a view to designing, building and optimising many web pages or even many websites!

There is a word for this approach, and that word is meta.

And, as you can imagine, it takes longer to solve problems working this way.

So, a far, far less trivial example.

That would be my trying to solve my own personal problems, but not accepting the solutions unless they could be applied to the problems that face the world!

(Yes, a big problem to try and solve all on my lonesome! But, as Ian Dury once wrote, "when I reveal all, I may get a crinkly mouth". Funny. I always thought he sang "won't they get a crinkly mouth". Prefer my version, actually.)

So that means that when I look at the conflicts, the frustrations, and the anger that lies within (me), I try and understand why; and I try and work out how I can remove them. But any reasons why, and any 'solution' that cannot also be applied to others, as well as to the world as a whole are rejected, and I go back to square one.

You'd be right in thinking that I am not the life and soul of the party. (Maybe they have already solved the problem, or realised that there is no problem to solve. We just are.)

Perhaps I am just making excuses for being a miserable so-and-so

Or perhaps I really do take life too seriously?

I'll let you answer those, as I have much bigger fish to fry*!

* My early conclusions are not that promising, by the way

Are men necessary?

"Not for reproduction or financial benefit, but for diversion and, as my mother used to say, 'for heavy lifting'".

Now that's funny.

If you think so too, I suggest you read the book!

04. The Application

Despite doing loads and loads of 'stuff' today, very little of it was stuff I had been putting off for weeks and weeks. (What a surprise!) So that is why today's entry is the somewhat feeble application to rent the garden land at the rear of my house. Applied for, and posted, only six months after I moved in!

Now, whilst you're here, why don't I tell you about all the stuff I got done today...

03. Don't laugh but...

I bought a new toothbrush today (a two-pack).

No, I hadn't been using my last brush for decades, and so no it wasn't manky and festering. I'd just been using the last one for more than six months and I needed a new one.

Simple as that.

So, as the policeman often says, "Run along. There's nothing to see here!"

The World According To Cosmo Magazine...

(with comments, sage or otherwise, from Boring John)

The latest Cosmopolitan magazine (June 2006) -- ah, the burdens of writer's research! -- has a piece called Single Myths [busted]. And here, for your delectation, are the three myths:

1. "Smart single women despair of ever finding true love"
   
   Cosmo says: "Smart single women are too busy having fun to despair". We're not sitting at home crying into our wine or frantically hunting for The One
   
   Boring John says: No despair, but sometimes no fun either! The thing is, everyone wants to be with a special person. Similarly, everyone gets fed up of not meeting him or her (or is too impatient (or unwise) to recognise when they have met them!).
   
   
2. "Single women are getting too picky"
   
   Cosmo says: "Single women won't settle for faulty goods". So there's something wrong with turning your nose up at the obnoxious guy propping up the bar?
   
   Boring John replies: "No, but there's something wrong with being too picky"
   
   
3. "Single women are too worried about the size of their bums to flirt"
   
   Cosmo says: "Caring about how we look would never stop us flirting"
   
   Boring John says that he is such a terrible flirt that he couldn't possibly comment on flirtation or on bum size! (He's also crap at seduction. Just ask anyone fortunate(!) enough to have been:
   
   * Smooched with, in his living room or bedroom
   * Asked if they needed to be 'tucked in', whilst sleeping in the spare bed
   * Told that he probably won't love them in the morning and unless they sign the boyfriend-waiver disclaimer to say that they understand this then a snog etc. is deffo out of the question

Actually I agree that single women should not be picked on. The same insecurities could equally be directed to men. No one likes being single, really. Everyone is seeking a special friend that [insert your special friend needs here] and [insert the rest of your special friend needs here] without [insert pet hate about opposite sex here].

Oh, apart from 23 year old readers of Cosmo of course.

Talking of Cosmo readers. I find it interesting that most of the ads. at the back of the magazine are for cosmetic surgery. Which is not surprising with the amount of impossibly-shaped women (read thin anorexic types) that populate the pages. Still, at least the dove self-esteem fund knows there's a problem. They've got a full one-page ad in Cosmo with the headline: "She thinks she's fat... Let's help her change her mind"

But then I've always been fascinated by the contradictions inside Cosmo magazine, as my liking for this particular poem highlights:

I wish I was fantantric

I wish I was fantantric
in bed
Instead
I'm just
a five
minute
w o n d e r !

Wonder why
my girlfriend
smiles so
Guess she doesn't know
she's not being
satisfied

Her smiles
are ignorant denials;
her pleasure
is
false treasure.

The measure?
I often lose control
We never breathe in time
It's rarely hour after hour
Just a sour
five minutes (maybe ten)
again and again

... So, I wish I was fantantric
in bed
Guess I'll just keep reading
Cosmo,
instead.

02. Will signed

I've been putting off getting my will signed for over 18 months and now, tada!, I've signed it and had it witnessed.

Now all I need to do is a) win the lottery and b) pop my clogs and it will have all been worthwhile. (Won't it?)

01. Change Of Address

The first day of June and, as promised, by very first un-procrastination (for want of a better expression), namely:

01. Complete my change of address

After several months of changing my address, before during and after my move to my new sunny home, I had just 4 companies to contact.

• The obligatory junkmail; Italian wine from an Italian wine company I've never heard of (guess they must have 'purchased' my details from a wine company I have heard of!)
• The inevitable follow-up mail from a not-so dirty weekend in Bristol -- hello Missus! -- courtesy of Superbreak.com
• Save the Children? I only wanted to do my (modest) bit. But still the begging letters come... :-(
• Amnesty International needs no introduction. You know what! They run a very efficient change of address service, for sure!

Why bother changing my address you say?

Yes, it's true that the ex-owner of my home has a much simpler change-of-address strategy; i.e. none. Instead, she simply tells me (eventually) to 'just ignore it, it's rubbish'. Okay, you know best, I think to myself, I'm sure the tax-man will find your new address, sooner or later! Hee hee!

Anyway, it really doesn't matter if I should or shouldn't un-procrastinate: I've been meaning to do it for a while, and now it's done!

So, until tomorrow, when I may well climb Mount Everest, talk to the trees, or even buy myself a new toothbrush (I kid you not!)

Adios.