Mentalechoes

I’m feeling particularly creative today! I’ve got all these ideas running around my head for a new movie review addition to my website, new concepts for this big blog of mine, and a feeling to resurrect my other writers blog which I put in the freezer many months (try 20) ago. Also I’ve got this [...]

i noticed tonight for the first time that the nights are getting longer, as the sun sets earlier in the evening. It didn’t seem that long ago that we Europeans were getting sunlight until 11pm, with a few brief hours of darkness before first light at 4.30am. Now though, slowly you can feel the change [...]

It never ceases to amaze me how our own self image, and the external image the world sees, can be so at odds. Friday last week I was out at a tree hugging day for work when during one of the group sessions someone called me an “alpha male”, and said I should go first [...]

I was a hardcore smoker for about 5 years, from 31 to 36. Generally in the order of about a pack a day of Marlboro lights, and two packs a day on weekends when the socialising would hit high gear. It was sometime during 37 when I thought I’d better give it up while my [...]

After another 48 hours of having to watch a shopping channel at work, of which 24 hours was a marathon promotion of Technibond jewelery, I’ve come to realise something; you can call junk any name you like, but at the end of the day, it’s still bloody junk! No matter how much you try to [...]

My boss said to me yesterday, don’t get involved with that work activity, I need you to stay on these other things, and you are way too easily distracted.
At the time I took some offense at that. But now I’m starting to think she might be right. My head is much like a whirlpool; things [...]

I realised today that my life is one big living irony.
* I want to lose weight and see my abs; I exercise, and yet eat chocolate and packet chips every day in eyebrow raising quantities.
* I love my job, but every morning when the alarm goes off I try to find excuses not to go.
* [...]

9.15am, friday. I work from home on friday. I’ve had been working for 45 minutes, in a pair of tracksuit pants and a sleeveless shirt, with some lilting psytrance tunes on winamp playing to get me in the mood to do something productive. Then there’s a knock at the front door. Hmmm… who the fuck [...]

Today after I came home from swimming, instead of being able to sit down to my weekly back to back two hour episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit - my one shamelessly American drama series that I watch slavishly as often as I can - I realised I don’t have television. Oh, I [...]

I think perhaps after nine years living here in The Netherlands that I might actually have been passively integrated into Dutch life. I was watching the UEFA Cup football match between The Netherlands and Romania with genuine excitement and hopeful anticipation that my team would be the winner at the end. This from someone that [...]