A blog with a moral

Moralistic... me? Well I guess so. Perhaps it's age that causes me to now look at situations and what lessons could be learnt from them, perhaps its the new management role I have taken over the last few months, or perhaps its down to Frank. Who knows, but I do get the feeling that there may be more blogs of this type later on - we will have to wait and see.

Anyway, onto the story.

Several months back the local council here decided to reduce the size of our normal rubbish bins and replace them with a variant half the size and a more regimental recycling process. Bags for paper, green bin for glass and tins and a red builders-bag style thing for cardboard and plastics.

The normal bins get collected every week, and the recycling every 2 weeks which initially looked like it would be a problem, time though showed that this was not the case.

Things (like everything I guess) started off OK, and it was actually quite self rewarding knowing that we were doing our own little bit - as small as it may have been. But then some good for nothing thief decided to pinch our green box. Seriously what good will it have done them? You can get another for free by ringing the council so why bother pinching them?

Yes, you CAN get another for free by ringing the council - but I didn't do that did, instead I choose to put it off for months and months and eventually forgot all about it. That was until the weekend.

Saturday (as you all know) is now cake-day, the day that Emily and I make cakes. Its a new tradition but we like it so long may it continue. Whilst finishing the cakes off and Em was decorating I went to put something in the bin and decided to push it down.

This was not a good move! Naturally with the theft of the recycling box there were items in the household bin that perhaps shouldn't have been there, and quite soon I realised that the sharp pain in my little finger was due to a quite sizable chunk being almost sliced clean off by a tin can!

The moral of this all is quite obvious (to me at least) DON'T put things off!

Recommendations

Currently a short post - though this may increase in length over time, as the intention is to edit this post with future recommendations - and post a separate blog indicating an addition.

So on to the initial recommendations;

Blind Pilot were the support act that my sister Em and I saw when going to see the Counting Crows in the MEN earlier this year. And I hasten to add were almost better than the crows themselves. Their debut album "3 rounds and a sound" is definitely one of the best albums I have heard in a long time and I would struggle to currently rate many other albums higher than this one. The title track of the album was used at the end of one of my favorite series Chuck and the Spotify users of you lot out there can listen to it here

Cobus Potgieter is a young South African drummer who has posted some of the best drumming covers I have had the pleasure of listening to. I say drum "covers" but he doesn't accurately cover any of the songs, and instead he plays his own beat over the top. Whilst his timing may occasionally be out, his drum beat is consistently better than the original. Cobus's story is quite amazing, as due to his success on YouTube (no link needed) has caused him to receive sponsorship from a number of drum related companies. Now I am not a drummer nor do I remember how I stumbled across this guy - it certainly wasn't searching for drum covers that I do remember - and as such I hope you will not dismiss this recommendation and view one of my favourite tracks here and also listen to a few of his other tracks that are posted along side that video

Failing memory, anger management and a thank you

Continuing on from yesterdays great step forward I thought I would do some updates to the site, such as turning the rants page into a separate blog for ease of content addition. This of course led me on to wanting to make more changes to the site, more improvements and more content. Emily's section needs a HUGE amount doing to it, I have an immense amount of photo's that too should be published, and I DID have a wealth of rants to get out of my system... but when I tried to put them down on paper/screen I have completely forgotten all of them.

I was kinda hoping that writing a new blog entry would somehow refresh my memory of things I should rant about but perhaps it's due to my present lack of rage? This could be down to the fact I am sat quite happily listening to a relaxed playlist on spotify (listen here) its not the largest of playlists and I think you can add to it, please do. The other reason for the lack of rage could be down to something which may surprise a few of you out there...

I have recently been attending anger management classes! Well, I say classes, they were a one on one session and the real deal.

Some of you readers may be shocked completely and have never considered that I would ever have such a need for anger management therapy, others may quite rightly so think "well about time!"

There may be many questions flying around in your heads now such as "was he REALLY that angry?" or "why didn't he say anything about it before?" some of these questions I may answer in this blog, others I may not.

I was never one for being physically aggressive towards anyone else, more likely to be aggressive to myself doing stupid acts such as punching or kicking walls (the wall ALWAYS won). My anger came out in the form of sometimes uncontrollable shouting, other times making me just want to ignore the world. In short anger WAS ruining my life whenever it appeared.

I'd tend to bottle things up, not mention them for many reasons and then something as small as mouldy food in the fridge at work, or a piece of rubbish on the side next to the bin but not in the bin where it should be at home, would release all the pent up anger I'd stored for weeks or months.

We won't go into the event that caused me to finally decide to seek help before this anger became totally uncontrollable as that is not the point of discussion, but I am happy to admit that for many years (back to when I was at school) I have occasionally thought that I should speak to someone, and though the catalyst for this therapy was not a nice occasion I am glad it happened for without it I would not be where I am today.

After 6 rather fantastic sessions with my counsellor I have learnt a great deal about myself, obtained a better understanding of anger and a HUGE amount (I think anyway) about communication. Things like the fact that it is OK to be angry, it's natural and that if I don't get angry from time to time then things will just build up and explode in a manner that nobody likes. It is how you get that anger across that is important, be angry by all means - just don't let your anger make other people angry at you. It is possible to be angry without screaming and shouting, and when you deal with it properly anger can actually be constructive and not totally destructive as it seemed to be for me not so long ago.

I'm not professing to be an expert now, nor am I saying that I am able to manage my anger perfectly every time - because that in itself is just not normal. What I am declaring is that my life (not that it was in dire straits - great band!) is now so much better than it was. Many things are the reason for this but I do feel that controlling my anger is a massive contributing factor to them all.

For all this I am totally and eternally grateful to Frank - without whom none of this would have taken place. Thanks Frank!

The death of facebook and the return of website updates?

So... some of you may have noticed the complete lack of updates on my personal website - this one here. Some of you may have wondered why this was, others may not.

It was something that was beginning to really grind me, and I would come up with lame excuses as to why, and false promises that I would update it tomorrow or at the weekend. The reason for all this FACEBOOK!

I got completely absorbed by it all and looking back am now ashamed of my actions. I decided to post updates to a huge social networking site, pointless updates too as opposed to updating this site with meaningful content that will be read and appreciated by whoever does still pop by here.

So, the life eating distraction is gone, (well... not really because it wouldn't let me delete my account, just deactivate it!) and in its place should "hopefully" be the return of updates to this site instead.

There are a lot of rants unranted, a lot of pictures without galleries, an Emily with half a years updates to write about (that's about a 5th of her life so far!). Expect updates soon (or notice that I have returned to the dreaded Facebook and mock me for eternity!)

M