Last Saturday morning I awoke after a long sleep (this new routine is taking it out of me) to a few messages from my new Dutch friend Seph (pronounced Sepp, like Sciphol Airport is pronounced Scippol), who needed a place to stay for a couple of days. No problem, I thought – with Carnaval in Las Palmas for the next three weekends, accommodation is incredibly hard to come by for anything less than a couple of hundred euros a night.
My recent writing-related post was a flood of barely organised, highly personal navel-gazing in many ways, but it sparked a lot of conversation and follow-up questions among people who’ve read it. I thought I’d chase it with a couple of more focused, actionable posts to help people who are putting their own goals in place this year, be they for exercise or any other reason. I’d like to say that I’m intentionally a month late with this because I’m protesting the futility of New Years Resolutions like some kind of rebel, but honestly it’s only this week that I realise I have some good, fresh examples to talk about. On top of that, I turn 27 this very day and birthdays are always a good opportunity to take stock and consider what you want.
With thanks to Mariusz Kucharczyk for the image.
One of the striking differences between life in Ireland and life in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is the amount of noise. While I’m definitely not talking India levels of blaring car horns or a SE Asia-style infestation of mopeds, the general ambience on the streets is a good deal louder than back home. Never is this more noticeable than at night.
I’m writing this at 0715 on Monday the 25th of January, 2016 (pre-posting edit: and still going strong on the plan two days later, woo!). That’s right, I default to writing time in a military fashion now – it made things clearer when organising stuff in texts after getting to Las Palmas and now it’s the explanation for yet another ridiculous affectation of mine.
Thanks to SeniorLiving.org for the image.
Hello beautiful/handsome readers!
Some of you may or may not know that one of my many interests lies in personal finance. Of course, we’re all interested in our own personal finances, and rightly so, but what I mean is that I try to keep up on the latest trends (big influences being luminaries like Mr. Money Mustache and Ramit Sethi) and experiment with my own for ill or for, hopefully, profit, in an attempt to maximise the efficiency of my money management and hopefully come up with some things to help others do the same.
In this post I intend to explain something I’ve hinted at plenty of times in the last few weeks but somehow not properly gotten around to writing about yet. In short, I have left my rented apartment in Dublin and headed for greener (debatably), warmer (definitely) pastures and embarked upon a new lifestyle as a “digital nomad”. What? Exactly.
In today’s post, we’re going to develop super powers. Well, one power at least: the power to slow down time.
Most people feel, as they get older, that time passes more quickly. Blink and three months is gone. Scratch your nose and two years have flipped by. It’s an awful feeling when some annual event–like your birthday or Christmas (hello, timely post!)–comes around and you think “Bloody hell, already? Where did the time go?” Today I’m going to share my experience with trying to beat that feeling.
And I’ll try to be brief, because hey, time is short!
I have a confession to make: I used to be a mouth-breather.
Oh, I wasn’t the worst of all time–I don’t think anyone really noticed besides me–but I was definitely guilty of it. I’m not sure exactly when this began, but I realised about six months ago that, aside from when I was sitting there doing absolutely nothing, I would default to breathing through my mouth and into my upper chest. I partially blame childhood asthma that went undiagnosed for a long time and even resulted in me developing a hunch (which thankfully I did catch and correct at the time), but truth be told, I think it was habit combined with laziness.
Thanks to The Rock for ably illustrating the effects of compound interest on your body, as well as decades of entertainment. I could watch that man read the phone book.
People who’ve known me for a while will know that I’m a big fan of personal finance-type stuff, and a big believer that if people managed their money better they’d be much happier. I love the concept of compound interest – money building on money in a way that means all your euros and dollars and pounds are making lots of little euros, dollars and pounds together, that then grow up and have little monetary babies themselves, continuing the cycle. (Wikipedia has a better explanation of what compound interest actually is, but mine is more fun.)
I harp on a lot here about everyone being able to — and owing it to themselves to — find at least one physically demanding activity that they can enjoy. In line with that, I thought I might start periodically highlighting a few good physical pursuits people can try.
Today’s activity, and the inaugural activity of the series, will be… Ultimate (Frisbee)!