Category Archives: Happiness

Simply Solitude

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Like many a seeker I found, lost, found and ultimately lost myself in Dharmasala.

I remember thinking that if I was to get a tattoo at that time, as a 19 year-old is want to, it would have been of a traveller with a cane over his shoulder, with all his worldy possessions tied into a handkerchief.

Fortunately I didn’t. It would have been a shit tattoo.

No, I wouldn’t have actually got this one, but you get the picture.

The reason – I was musing on self-sufficiency. I had been reading a load of the requisite ‘eastern’ literature. I’d realised, as so many had before me, that to be in control of one’s own emotions enabled freedom. To have that type of control enables one to deal with any situation, anywhere, with anyone.

For years during my youf, I never liked to be alone and chased company. Today, I love solitude – albeit it in moderation. Or at least I prefer no company to bad company.

Yet a while back I posted about not starting a business with partners.

My opinion has changed. I was wrong. Again.

I’ve spent the last 9 months working alone and achieved many things. Yet in the last few months as my business pivots, I’ve realized I need a partner, partners even. And as I begin to work with people, I remember the benefit they bring.

It’s possible to be effective alone, but as a social being, I believe that partnerships actually bring out the best. They help you to monitor your own mad thoughts, they create expectations and they keep one from disappearing into another rabbit hole of thinking.

The same could be said of my love life. Fiercely independent, I’ve preferred to remain alone rather than compromise. Yet I wonder if a relationships is, in fact, a more powerful place from which to grow. Scrap that, it almost certainly is. It’s easy to be alone – it prevents contradiction and challenges to one’s ‘way’. Yet, I’ve watched my friends become better people through the rounding that a relationship brings.

That’s the easy bit – realisation – now to find the balance, day-to-day.

A great friend enjoying a moment alone...

B-Town, Simplicity and Authenticity

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I’ve been in Berlin now for all of three weeks, so this may well be premature, but this city seems to embody simplicity so much more than London.

I’m moderately hard on London in my posts. I wonder whether this is because it was the city I grew up in and, therefore, an expression of some internal discontent that is more about me than my birthplace? Or perhaps London truly is difficult and anti-simple? Most probably a mixture of the two.

Instead of being a bore and continuing the anti-London rant, here’s why Berlin seems so great, so far:

There is a latent authenticity, captured in the melting pots of the city, the attitude, in people’s clothing – a general sense that people are following their passions, without any regard for financial or status-driven motivations. The city seems filled with artists, musicians, poets and writers.

Living with housemates well into your 30s is not considered poor form. Being broke isn’t frowned upon. For some, it is a badge of honour overtly displayed to celebrate the focus on one’s integrity.

Whereas money is overtly displayed in London, Berlin has a healthy disregard for bling. Clearly Berlin is poor and that life can be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to go work for a bank.

In many parts of the city, Berlin is ugly, but that doesn’t mean that an individual cannot make their corner beautiful and different.

It may well be that it’s August and I’m a foreigner, but at cafés, bars and out on the streets, people seem remarkably friendly and much more willing to engage with one another. It is highly unlikely that in London a German would be welcomed into people’s social lives on first meeting, yet here people offer you friendship with genuine grace.

More important, wherever I go, people seem to be walking slowly, and enjoying themselves.

I’m told that the winter months are extremely difficult here. Perhaps I’m just witnessing the blooms of summer?

Nonetheless, with increasing love for the city, I wonder whether I’ll be here for a month or a year. Then I remember to try not to plan and let this next month pass before I step into the next.

Either way, Berlin seems like a never-never land, with a similar spirit to my beloved San Francisco, where people seem freer and happier, friendlier and ready to ‘carpe diem’. A place where life is lived.

Thank you B-town.

Simply Getting Used

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I’ve been working reasonably hard recently. My body, not used to such unfair punishment, has been complaining.

After a day in front of the computer and on the phone, my neck, my back, my throat and my free-spiritedness hurts. Yet after a couple of weeks, I’ve noticed the pain, or perhaps the realisation of the pain, slowly diminishing.

A gentle reminder that we get accustomed to things.

Our ability to adapt is powerful. With attention in mind as this month’s theme (which when I attend to it again, I realise I have not been doing very well) – it’s worth pointing out that we stop noticing things the more we get accustomed to them.

That’s both good and bad – advantageous and disadvantageous.

Patterns help us develop good habits, and bad. Familiarity helps us see new things and ignore old.

It’s useful to bring this into focus.

For example, there are things that I find hard at first, such as work, running, meditation, not planning, being disconnected or simplifying – that become easier the deeper I delve and the harder I try. If these things remained as difficult as when starting, I would fail to persevere (even more than I do).

Yet there are also things that I become accustomed to quickly, like the tiredness London initiates, advertising’s prevalence, routine, the amount that people (myself included) drink when socialising, processed food, the weather, envy, not saying hello to people in the street.

It’s a shame when you begin to accept things that are wrong, just because they’re normal.

Reading back over my previous post about returning from Africa, I realise how quickly I’ve lost some of the wide-eyed-ed-ness.

It’s time to develop good habits, however hard they are to start, in the knowledge that they’ll become easier (while, of course, remembering not to try to pull too many of them off at the same time – Franklin-style)

Meanwhile, I’m trying to be attentive to the pieces of life that are unacceptable yet become normal because of a lack of awareness. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like for a Kenyan to see what I see and experience what I experience – to prevent the negative influences and habits breeding.

Underdeveloped Development – Simple Mistakes

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For over a century the ‘mazungu’ (or white person) in Africa has been losing his temper with the inefficiency of the African. Even today, I’ve witnessed continual annoyance as things go wrong, or directions aren’t followed, or patience is tested.

All too regularly, frustrations are voiced aggressively. On a micro level, this constitutes management – from the ‘right’ manners when waiting tables, how ‘they’ (the trainees) should deal with money, to the way they communicate. On a macro level, international aid organizations, politicians and commentator regularly throw their hands up in exasperation or attempt wide educational reforms.

What strikes me as strange is our presumption. It is believed that the waiters need to be trained. People have to learn to be more efficient.

What part of our system is so right that we never doubt that what we’re trying to achieve is wrong?

I witnessed a normally gentle lady shout at a waiter who works for her due to a minor mistake just the other day. I know the lady and I know the waiter moderately well. He was graceful enough to apologize and take the insult squarely on the chin. She spent the next half-hour fuming and cursing the inability to get the right service.

Yet if we delve deeper, things become more interesting. The lady doesn’t strike me as a happy person and suffers some severe long-term emotional problems. The waiter has a happy family, smiles regularly and when quizzed suggests he is reasonably content with his lot.

Which would you rather be?

Why do we still presume that the goal is to ‘train’, ‘educate’ and ‘improve’ people who, frankly, seem to be doing better than those doing the training if we remove GDP and start to look at indicators like happiness and contentment? Although a minor example, the scenario above is reminiscent of many, many more I’ve seen.

A recent WHO study reported, for example:

“…the rates of emotional distress in fifteen different nations, revealed that over one-quarter of Americans had suffered from some form of distress in the previous twelve months, whereas only one-sixth as many indigenous Nigerians had. Despite being the second wealthiest nation in the world, more than forty times richer than Nigeria, America is by some margin the most emotionally distressed of all Nations.”

If wealth and development had manifested great swaths of happiness, perhaps we’d have a reason to invade these unique cultures and turn them into besuited, bank account holding consumers. Certainly development has lifted many out of poverty and that should be lauded – yet the absence of direction with this development must be understood and development itself must develop to ensure that our primary goal – happiness – is integral, even if that means that we must change our take and, sometimes, our hierarchies.

Simple Happiness Signs

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When life is good, there are signs. No, I’m not referring to limping parking wardens or free canapés. Instead, I mean the signals that indicate that you are happy.

What are these signs in your case? Can you make a list of them?

  • Perhaps you sleep better, with fewer anxious dreams?
  • Do you laugh until you begin to snort?
  • Does your boss become amusing, rather than tyrannical?
  • Maybe you eat more recklessly, or dance more furiously?
  • As with my friend Tim, sitting a few meters away from me, perhaps you whistle and hum unconsciously as you draw? In my case, when in a good mood, this is an endearing trait, rather than an irritating one.

Perhaps your friends, family or lovers can help you notice these a little more. Here are a smattering of mine:

  • The Moleskine test – I write my ‘to-do’ lists in the front of my moleskine and draw, write and take notes in the back. I’ve noticed that when my molskine is full, sometimes the ‘to-do’ lists are longer than the notes and sometimes it’s the other way round, but there is always an amazing correlation between happy times and periods when the notes section is much longer than the ‘to-do’ section.
  • When I lose track of time, it’s usually a good sign. Things that do that to me: A good book, playing the guitar or piano, a fascinating conversation.
  • When I’m unhappy, I tend to feel tired – therefore, not feeling tired is normally a good sign.
  • I write more often.
  • I don’t start most of my emails with ‘sorry I’ve been a little frantic’, or ‘it’s been crazy these last few weeks’.

It’s good to catch yourself in these moments, or see these indicators. By noticing what makes you happy, you can initiate it, or savour the moment.

Can you correlate these indicators with your actions? Perhaps on holiday you do all of these things far more than usual, or if you’re fortunate, when you are at work. Perhaps some people ignite these traits in you?

It might seem that the signs follow the mood – but could it also be said that if we try to actively cultivate more of these signs, or signals then these influence the moods. That if we force the results, the associated mood improves. If I play the guitar for an hour, and fight the desire to jump up and do something else, I end up happier. If I write more notes in my moleskine, I usually end up more content. If Tim were to start humming when irritated, perhaps he would cheer up more quickly? When I write more often, I end up calmer and feel more at peace.

If we feel more rested and sleep well, life is often more enjoyable – so we should sometimes head to bed early, rather than always waiting for the later hours.

If we consciously laugh more regularly, we might begin to feel happier. If we force ourselves to be more forgiving and more patient, we can feel healthier. If we eat more recklessly or dance more furiously, perhaps the other pieces start to fall into place.

Perhaps sometimes you have to force these things when they don’t quite feel natural – yet even when you start fake-laughing, often real laughter is close behind.

Clean Up Your Relationships – Inter-Personal Hygiene

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No, I’m afraid this post is not about armpit whiffs and sheets-to-sniff – instead I’ve recently been introduced, by my good friend Tara of Wildfitness fame (and a Watamu neighbour), to a process that helps with some therapeutic friend-realignment.

You see, we often roam around with people we love. But how often do we tell them what we think.

In my case, if you’re trying to avoid conflict, many of the niggles and wiggles of a relationship can get swept unceremoniously under the carpet. Or, in true British form, all irritation and anger comes out instead in the most passive-aggressive form of all – sarcasm, ‘wit’ and general teasing of the subject. Which, unhelpfully, irritates the person you’re trying to inform that you’re irritated.

Tara is one of those wonderful people unafraid to challenge the norm and embrace ways of delving deeper.

I have no idea where the poorly named ‘inter-personal hygiene’ session came from, but it goes like this. Two people who have a business or platonic or romantic relationship sit down separately and write all the things that they think are positive about the other person then all the things that are negative. Then, you have to write all the positive and negative things you can think of about yourself.

Hopefully people willing to participate in an inter-personal hygiene session are open-minded enough to accept constructive complements or criticism and can do it with a degree of dignity, as the next step is more difficult.

You then sit down together and begin by having the first person selected talk about their thoughts on themselves – going over the positives and negatives of their own character. Then, you switch and the other person comments on the positives and negatives of that first person who has started. It probably works best if you let each person speak then leave comments to the end.

Next, you move to the other person. They talk about themselves then the other person comments on that person’s positives and negatives. It’s worth taking notes as you go.

I won’t discuss what was said in our private sessions, instead encourage you to set aside a few hours to do this with people you feel could benefit from this work.

It was supremely valuable for me with both people that I’ve done it with, so to speak. They were better able to tell me when I’d been a prat and in return I could vent some of the inevitable frustrations that build up in the months and years together. In addition, it enables you to find a sensible, constructive space in which to grow closer and, as well as venting frustration, it also enables you to tell someone about their good side and what you love about them. For a compliment-shy Brit like me that will deflect the best praise with some witty quip, it’s a good way to understand more about yourself and come to terms with what you are.

It may take a few hours and dig up some things you don’t want to hear, but in the name of hugely improved relationships, it’s worth making the time.

Happy Cleaning!

Going To Bed Early – The New Rock and Roll

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If my 18-year-old self heard my current self’s internal monologue, he’d probably begin lobotimising in earnest.

I’m cocooned within a mosquito net, having read another chapter of my book and am ready to sleep. That in itself is not the problem. Books have always been and will always be cool.

The problem is it is 8.47pm.

‘Surely’, my teenage self would scream, ‘not a single person in the history of cool has ever even so much as considered heading to bed at this ungodly hour’. The author of the book, Russell Brand (who’s writing is, perhaps surprisingly, rather brilliant) has just gone to bed, very late in the evening, with Kate Moss. Surely I should be doing things like that, my past self would have demanded.

The juxtaposition between my past self and my present is made rather more stark by the thumping trance music being generously provided by the gap year kids next door. Oh, the gap year. So called because it’s what occurs in your schedule and responsibility just when adolescence has ensured there is an equally vacant space between the ears.

(A quick aside for those who’ve been following the blog closely – I’m staying in a friend’s house for the night on the beachfront here in Watamu to catch up on some of the things that electricity enjoys, such as this post. But new house living is still blissful.)

And yet it feels luxurious being here, in bed, at this time. I want to commend the young souls next door on their love of life whilst I, middle-aged man personified, enjoy the gentle caresses of an early evening’s sleep. Perhaps I will dream of those trance-filled nights of my past. Perhaps of even earlier nights in my future.

This early bedding has become a worrying trend, if only for its frequency and enjoyment. It is especially necessary without electricity. I’m sure I promised myself that I’d never stoop so low as to start enjoying early nights this much. Before long, it seems, I’ll be positively bristling with excitement as the first drop of camomile tea hits my laughing gear and waving goodbye to the night for some beauty sleep before it’s even begun.

It would be a shame to relinquish late nights completely. Some of the very best things ever happen at night.

But today, I am happy. Here, in bed, so bloody early.

I’m happy without feeling that iridescent pull which sat with me for so long in London, cajoling me out into the night even when I was exhausted, fearful that I might miss some unrepeatable fun.

I’m contented. That’s what simplicity is about – refusing to presume that you should be somewhere else and accepting your internal compass. Doing what you can with what you have and enjoying the ebbs and flows of circumstance and situation.

There will be late nights in the future. Oh boy, will there be late nights. For now, I’m enjoying this peace and tranquillity.

Take that adolescent Simpletom, Pete Dogherty and Brandon Block, right in the janglers.

Lala Salama (The wonderful Swahili saying that means sleep well).

You Don’t Matter

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Since the dawn of human consciousness and rational thought (something that has seemingly yet to occur for some ‘Tea Party-goers’ in the US), we have hunted for meaning or significance (or maybe just the significance of meaning).

The questions are not new:

What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Is there a God? If God created everything, then who created God? What should I do with my life? What is our purpose? If a bird shits on my head, is that really lucky, or just a way of dealing more placidly with the cleaning? Have I the time to read this blog post or should I be getting on with something more important? What dictates importance? Am I important? Who to? Is it important to be important? What if I am really important but really miserable? What if I am really, really unimportant but happy?

I help people find jobs – hopefully jobs that are meaningful to them and more meaningful to society in general.

One of the most common complaints among these job-seekers, as well as others I meet, is that most have not yet figured out ‘what they’re doing with their lives’.

Very few people I know feel they are wholly embracing their calling. Many of those who have found their passion seem to need that passion to give them meaning – namely, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What if you never figure out what you’re doing with your life?

What if, despite how hard you work, or what you do, nothing you do matters?

If you never figure ‘it’ out and nothing you could ever do matters, is that a horrible thought or an enriching one?

In their hunt for meaning, most find the idea that they are not important terrifying.

I find it deeply exciting and powerful.

If nothing I do, or could do, is of any importance, it gives me huge freedom. It removes the shackles of expectation. It enables me to live in the present, rather than looking to the future, or the past, to determine where I’m heading, or what I’ve done.

I spent many years hunting for meaning. Now, I find more significance in the absence of meaning than I do in its pursuit.

Insignificance can be frightening. It can suggest sliding into the nihilism of Crime and Punishment or The Dice Man. Without meaning, we have free licence, it would seem, to do what we want and that could be bad, even evil.

But that kind of meaningless seems to suggest that without some set of rules or ideas to which to pin ourselves, we are lost.

I disagree.

I believe that human nature is essentially good. Mother Nature, for example, has rules that were existing long before we decided to pin our rationalisations to them.

I don’t believe that, left to our devices, the world inevitably becomes a Lord of the Flies type scenario. It can. But it is not inevitable.

And certainly, the rules imposed by religions and governments can often create more issues than are solved. From the crusades, to holy war… from cultural revolutions to genocide, the rules and systems are regularly used for destruction. Even capitalism, our ‘modus operandi’ manages, in its purest form, seemingly to cause as much, if not more, damage than it solves.

I find that when I let go of the pursuit for that meaning – in the acceptance beyond the hunt for, or someone else’s definition of, meaning – that is where I truly thrive. It is there, when I’m just living and not pursuing, paradoxically, the most meaning is found.

Looking To The Future (Then Trying To Ignore It)

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All good things must end. So with a month left on the clock here in Kenya, I am reminded that the ‘next stage’ of life looms.

At the end of 2009 I took a break from the day-in day-out drive of running a business – partly because I was burnt out, and partly because the market had also burnt itself out. Running a recruitment business in the largest recession in living history is just not that simple, or fun.

The year 2010, however, was a revelation. Despite a slow market, I managed to win some first-rate executive searches that kept me financially alive.

However, the true discovery was that when free of the ‘timetable’ of working life, the pressure of managing people, and the expectation that comes with running a business, I could do a much better job for my clients and I started enjoying myself again.

I love running these searches and I am extremely good at it, if I might be so bold. Last year, I helped a large foundation find a key campaigner, who achieved one of the biggest environmental success stories of the last decade. That feels good. That makes all the naysayers fade into the background.

It is not about the fees, or beating the competition to win these searches, but about meeting fascinating people, finding the right person for the right job, and the results of that elusive combination. For me, there is a joy when a candidate I have placed in a role comes back two or three years later and tells me their life changed because of our interaction. In the case of the search above – if only Mother Nature could talk, I think she would’ve sent me a Christmas card.

But recruitment can be a disheartening and cruel business, hence my reticence to leap back in. Other recruiters have dragged the sector into a money-centric realm with a poor reputation. Tell someone on the board of a company that you are a recruiter and they often make their excuses and leave, desperate to avoid the hard sell. People look down their noses at you and lump you into category. ‘Why would you, Tom, want to do that?’. You’re bright, they state – surely you can find better things to do?

Don’t worry. My rebellious nature would have me running off to do something else if it didn’t feel right.

So the question now, about the return, is how to balance my discovered simplicity with my working world? How can I retain the joy of interacting with outstanding people and helping companies find exciting and rewarding people without it dragging me into complexity? Can I retain the lightness that a lack of concern with materialism brings, while working in a cut-throat industry, where the hungriest fight hard and dirty?

I think I can.

But I need to be mindful of all I have learned and how happy I feel.

I must set myself some guidelines – some mnemonics – to prevent materialism, competition and ego dominating my drive. Instead, I want drive that is propelled by flow, simplicity and a desire to do good.

This plays out to a bigger question. How does the desire for simplicity interplay with the competitive capitalist world? How do we find the ideal balance?

1)            One of the key points is remembering that when people are in ‘flow’ and happy, they often work more diligently and efficiently.

Therefore, there must be a trust. Trust that with passion will follow reward, rather than the other way around.

By retaining and focusing on the areas that feel right, things often come right.

2)            In my case, recruitment often involves networking and getting one’s name out there. This means hard work and a degree of pushiness. How to ensure that this remains healthy?

The key, I believe, is to remember the power of people. By helping the right organisation find the right people, I can help make a small difference. Driven by this force – the force of good – I can stomach a few rejections by people who do not have the time to realise that I am a different type of recruiter.

3)            In the pursuit of money, or success, people often abandon their integrity and their authenticity. When a salesperson sells something he would not buy, or an investment banker sells toxic assets, or a lawyer suggests a complicated solution to a simple problem (which in my eyes seems the norm) – each is compromising their values.

Instead, I must remain true to myself. This means choosing the right pieces of business, for the right type of client. It is hard when someone wafts a large cheque in front of you, but in fact, it is often less rewarding in the end when all the other factors are combined.

4)            Take breaks. Work in a way that is right.

One of the reasons that I burned out was that I worked in the way I was expected to. Anyone who has read about starting a business can feel that the only way to succeed is through working like a slave to get things started. Tales of people sleeping beneath their desks and years of struggle are all too common. As such, I found myself working sixty- or seventy-hour weeks believing that it was the only way to succeed.

Yet this just was not effective for me. Perhaps it works for some to have this discipline but I found myself enslaved. That meant I did not enjoy it so my work suffered, as well as my life.

Instead, I will try to work efficiently, rather than ‘putting in the hours’. I also need a change of scene now and again, out of the office. That makes employing people more difficult.

Instead, I will try to work alone, with support from Odesk or Elance to help lighten the burden, rather than rushing to employ people and scale up.

I will also set up alone, rather than with partners, as I mentioned in my previous post. It sounds lonely, but it enables freedom, simplicity and focus – it also prevents someone else compromising your direction.

Although the politicians of the world will lament my poor contribution to their employment figures – I want to build an organisation that is efficient and simple, rather than large and complex.

For me, a company that has a turnover of £250 thousand per year with one employee and the freedom that brings would be preferable to a £25 million business with a hundred people. Especially as the manager at the top might end up with a similar pay packet, if that is his / her motivation.

I may miss the fellowship of ‘company’ (is that why they’re called companies?), but for now I can offset this with the freedom this brings.

5)            Maintaining routines and not getting swept away with work is critical.

My current routine and desire to write could easily be compromised with the cut and thrust of business.

Instead, I promise to continue to wake without an alarm clock, wherever and whenever possible (I am a few years away from having children, at best, so this isn’t just a cunning claim in the knowledge that I have exterior forces that will awaken me). I promise to spend the first thirty minutes reading in bed, before getting up. Not a book on management techniques, but a novel, or a book of personal interest. Then, I will start by writing in the morning, until I have written a few pages, before I start to think about work.

When I do get ‘back to business’ I will make sure that my first action is not checking my emails, but going over my list of things to do and working on the important first, preferably offline.

During the day, I will take several breaks to wander in the garden or even, as I did when I was working last summer, to spend an hour or two going to the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath in the mid-afternoon.

All this might sound too pleasurable and easy to achieve. Not waking with an alarm clock, I hear you say, ‘I’d bloody well do that if I could’. Well, believe you me – maintaining the kind of calm morning routine I have mentioned is surprisingly difficult when faced with an onslaught of ‘things to do’. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to maintain this kind of routine when you’re barraged by emails.

Within one’s working day, I believe (to paraphrase Antoine de Saint Exupéry) perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but nothing left to take away.

6)            Finally… although there are many more pieces to the puzzle that I am sure will rear themselves, I must remember not to attach too much importance to all that I do.

By reminding ourselves of our insignificance, and impermanence, the desperate desire to achieve, succeed and win fade away. When we remember these things, business fails to retain its lustre and the pleasures of simplicity, wonders of balance and desire to retain one’s life appear, as if they’d been there all along.

Here's me, last night, next to my new house, trying to prevent the days from ending so quickly...

Angling for Simplicity

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We’re programmed to do things:

Get up early. Read a book. Don’t slouch in front of the telly. Be productive. Get going. Time is money. Life’s too short.

Bollocks to that.

I read a delightful interview with Chris Yates the other day – which can be found here. Not only did I love the picture the interviewer paints of this man described in his wiki page as, among other things, a ‘tea connoisseur’ (he also reminded me of the fantastic Roger Deakin), but it stirred something in me from a distant past.

Yep, I’ll come clean – between the ages of 5-15, I used to be obsessed with fishing. Fishing by scrubby ponds in the depths of London’s wellington boots and condoms, rather than alongside the majestic lochs and streams of Scotland and beyond. I loved it. In fact, I’d like to do more fishing today. Just sitting relaxed by a body of water, enjoying nature.

Chris is famous for holding the Record for the largest carp caught in British waters. However, the interesting thing is not his record, but the fact that before he spent 7 or 8 weeks every summer for seven years, not because he wanted to catch the biggest fish, but because he loved it there. Here’s a passage from the article:

PARR: And that would be your priority? You wouldn’t let a work deadline encroach your fishing time?

(At the time Chris Yates was a photographer of some note – the majority of his work designing album and book covers)

YATES: (Slightly shocked) No. No. No. I would phone people up, a new client maybe, and they would come around and really love my work, and I would have to say to them – “Before we talk about jobs, there is something you should know – I am a photographer, but before that and above that, I am a fisherman, that comes first.” Some of them would look aghast, and say, “we can’t do business then – we’re wasting one another’s time,” and off they’d go. But the good one’s would say, “That’s great – you can come and tell me some fishing stories between jobs.”

But I’d always say that – first I’m a fisherman – then I’m a photographer.

And then I’d be offered a new job and clients would say, “Look, you’ve got a three week deadline on this.”

And I’d say, “Well I’m off to Redmire tomorrow.”
“Redmire? Ahhhh…”

There was no argument. They would just say, “Will you have time when you come back – to read the novel and do the cover?”

“Yes… there’s bound to be time…”

So, yes, Redmire did become my second home – actually my first home, the one with bricks was my second home. And I think I got to know it better than anyone else, I just loved being there.

For fear of repeating myself, this was before he was a record-breaker. In fact, the record only came as a result of his not conforming to normal ambitions and spending time off, rather than time on.

Follow your passions. If you love it somewhere, stay – regardless of whether it conforms to other peoples’ view of what you should be doing, or how it fits into your plan for global domination.

“In most work, success is measured by income, and whilst our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best work is concerned that this measure ceases to be the natural one to apply.” – Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness.

As ever, if you liked this post – please share…