It’s nearly the end of the day and I haven’t yet managed to write a blog post.
I’m on about 22 posts in my bid for 30 straight. I nearly laughed it off today, but I will be damned if I am going to let this very difficult day get in the way of a good writing streak!
That’s the thing about streaks, once they start you are less likely to quit.
This still counts, and the streak goes on!
Happy Friday night chimps.
Holiday was cut short by a military lockdown. Not your usual reason.
It’s nice to be home. I’m trying to be optimistic. This is a chance to live differently. Thank the Gods we are allowed to walk the dogs. This is good for both my dogs and my marriage!
21 days can sometimes fly by. My children are confused about the interruption but I think they’ll cope fine.
We have food, we have plenty of work to do on the house, and actual job work which is still coming in over this period though to a lesser extent.
We have entertainment, a garden with a pool. We have space in the house and we have shops down the road. We have every chance of side stepping this damned virus.
Here’s to healthy kids, dogs, marriages and national lockdowns.
If we wanted to do something worthwhile – and it almost doesn’t matter what it is – we would likely find it easier to do with someone else as a guide, a teacher, or just as company.
There’s always an opportunity for creating a welcoming venue for birds of a feather to come together and practice, discuss, create, define what they want to get good at.
The best websites do this. Podcasts too.
The best restaurants, clubs, churches, offices, parks, homes and companies do this too.
This wasn’t always a dining room. In fact, like a pimply-faced teenager this room is not quite sure of what it is yet. The dinner table gives some structure and purpose, but there are also bedside tables in the corners, a bean bag at one end, and what was designed to be an office cabinet along the wall. My fish in his tank greets me each morning for food. I assume he is a he, and not a she. More confusion in an adolescent room.
The light in here is lovely in the mornings. While the air is still cool, the sun pours in to light up the dining table for breakfast time. Strangely we never take advantage of this as we are generally in too much of a rush to sit down and eat in the morning.
There is also a door in one of the walls, next to the bean bag. This leads straight onto a flight of stairs and is remarkable for not having a landing. Instead one has to step up into the open door at a different level to the room. Perhaps not the best design, and apparently illegal for health and safety reasons. Oh well. The teenager stumbles through life until it figures out what it wants to be.
When we first moved in, this was my music room. My favorite room at the time, I filled it with jazz, rock, blues. There were movies and computer games. Speakers and amplifiers. A turntable and cds littered the floor. These days my beautiful children turn it into something different every day. Sometimes it is a race track for scooters, sometimes a camp site, a beach, a mountain top for epic adventures. Sometimes we even eat at the table. I’m just glad my amps and speakers are not in here.
When I was 11 years old, I changed my handwriting in an effort to be cool. I wanted to be more like my friend. He wrote with far more flair than I did. His pages had words that stood out at you. They were all in in neat rows, but they looked artistic and full of purpose. His paragraphs were all in joined up writing and each word was at an angle. His pages looked like they came from someone interesting. Mine just looked like they came from a bog standard 11 year old kid.
I remember clearly deciding to write an assignment in this new style – with my new found flair. The words were all at a painful angle across the page. It took me ages to finish because I was more interested in how it looked than what was written. I put my name on it and handed it in. I felt satisfied and liberated. My new, cooler, more angular identity was emerging.
When the teacher handed our marked papers back, he stopped when he reached me. I got a poor mark. He was disappointed with me, he said. And what on earth was wrong my handwriting? He could barely read it.
I couldn’t hide my blushes as I mumbled some sort of response. I reverted back to myself the very next class.
Happy Sunday chimps. To thine own self be true!
Is there any point in keeping your social media accounts open?
The cost of interacting is high in terms of attention and time spent. Intense interaction can add to your brand and your followers’ loyalty, but it can also be pure distraction from doing any work that is meaningful.
So we need to be strategic about where we decide to spend our time.
I dislike the combative nature of Twitter. I broadcast for the chimpwithcans account, but don’t take part.
I have a love hate relationship with Instagram. It is the best designed product, but it can be a massive distraction.
I’m too old to know anything about Tiktok, or Snapchat.
I prefer to write than to take pictures or make videos. An English major at university, I enjoy longer forms of expression. Hence the blog. And hence the use of the word “hence”. Ha.
Where do you spend your time and why?
If you follow me on Instagram (@chimpwithcans) then you will have seen I am finalizing the man cave (man-chimp-cave, maybe?) and it is giving me great joy.
A space that is yours alone in a busy family is a wonderful thing. It allows for expression of your interests and your designs without impacting the rest of the family. We are lucky to have the home space for it, and I have big plans to build my chimp empire from this room.
I have no doubt that incorporating your own spaces into your living arrangements is good for your health.
I feel better already.
Today we had sun and swimming and family. A good day.
Happy Saturday chimps.
Designers will tell you over and over – if you are creating something, the question that should come up most often is “what is this for?”
This applies to all creative pursuits whether it is writing a paragraph, cooking a meal, or fitting a bathroom sink. Any choice you make needs to have an answer if it is to work and avoid a clumsy creation.
So what’s this blog post for? It’s for expressing myself, for practicing my writing and for spreading ideas that I think will matter. And for community – for finding people like us who do things like this.
Happy Wednesday chimps.
Here’s a thought experiment – if you could do three things for an hour every day to achieve your goals, what would they be?
Personally, if I could exercise, read and write each day for an hour, it might make a huge difference.
However, today was not so productive. If you took today as a representation of my long term goals, you might think that my life goals are to get fat, to buy as much new tech and apple products as possible and to write emails.
I’m getting good at those three activities.
Tomorrow is another day. I plan to carry on reading my book about interior design and well being, to write the blog and to do some sort of exercise.
Happy (late) Tuesday, chimps.
After years of blogging – I have finally realised why my website exists at all: It is to help husbands.
Initially, I thought this blog was about music, or maybe psychology, or maybe self-improvement – but now I realise that it is actually about the situation I found myself in.
6 years ago, I moved in with my wife after our wedding and I felt frankly lost. There had been so much celebration and planning for our married life, but once it actually happened, there were several problems; I had nowhere to call my own space (interior design and marriage negotiations). I had no creative outlet (personality type). I had no sense of self (again, psychology and personality type). I was getting unfit and unhappy fast.
The themes of Design, Negotiation, Psychology and Creativity have all been catalysts for change in my married life. I have decided to take responsibility for my own marriage and my own health. I write and create podcasts centred on these themes.
There will be lots more people who can relate to this. To date this site has only helped myself, but from now on Chimpwithcans has a purpose – to enable a husband’s health in the home.
Not a lot will change, but I will treat this writing and podcasting as more of a job and you can expect things to become a bit more professional. There will also be Patreon content created and available to Patrons only.
Happy Wednesday Chimps.
Chimpwithcans 