Day 1

I think other people percieve me as:

confident, a bit wierd but not in a bad way, sometimes a bit too wacky, smart

I'd like to be percieved as:

Confident, smart, calm, collected - cool!

3 behaviours/characteristics to change:

Over-excitable, bad habits, inapropriateness

3 new behaviours I want:

never get embarrased, stay calm, be cool.

Well that wasn't too hard. I still need to make smalltalk with 5 strangers, but as I'm unlikely to leave the house I don't know if I'll do that! The reading part will be easy though!

See you tomorrow!

Stylelife Challenges

So, after reading the game a couple times I thought I'd buy the second book - The Rules of The Game. And now, as I'm single again I'm going to do the Stylelife Challenges

I know you're all thinking that it's a 'how to pick-up girls' book, and to a certain extent you're correct. But what guy doesn't want to know how to pick up girls better? So as an experiment I'm going to be doing these challenges, hopefully with a couple of friends of mine, to see what it does to us, will we become new people, sex machines, man hos' of the worst kind? Or will it simply help us to overcome shyness, and more confident?

Either way, I'm doing it. Fuck you if you think it's lame or un-cool.

I'll be posting my thoughts on each days challenge here, so keep up to date!

Marketing

Everything is marketing

Marketing is everything

Every person you meet is judging you, so make a good impression. You need to behave and appear to be exactly how you you want them to think you behave and appear. I get a fair few digs for my emo fringe - but I play with a band, my fringe ties me to my music as does my sense of dress. I'm polite and well mannered, reasonable and fair and this sells the product of Ben Duff well to everyone. People who meet me may then listen to my band based on my recommendation, or perhaps listen to other bands I suggest. This is simply one example of how everything we say effects other peoples opinions of us, and how they make further judgements of what you say based on those opinions. 

I suppose this is very obvious to a lot of you, but it's something that has a huge importance to our lives. While I'd love to say I don't care what others think, what other people think is what my living depends on. I need people to like me, like my band, think I can do the right job, trust me etc.

Apologies for the last post, I know no-one else was confused, but I had set out to write about one thing, then forgot what it was and wrote about something else entirely! Meaning Tim had no relation to the post really. I'm sure the original content will come back to me and then I'll blog about it!

love n peas ;)

more people read this than I thought!

Right, it's been an eventful week, one with lots of emotion and things and some realization, much of which I wanted to blog about at the time, most of which I've forgotten.

It's mostly down to Tim, who worked as a catalyst between me and Claire, in many ways this was a good thing, it brought me to my senses somewhat and made me think about things. This was also quite bad in other ways but much of the negative was caused and fueled by alcohol (evil stuff) and moods. Certainly I don't think (hope) there are no bad feelings and that it's water under the bridge. 

I think the biggest realization was that of self-worth. For a while I have believed that in order to make effective use of your time and to create a balanced sense of self-value you should work out that your time is worth what your personal minimum wage is. This is not the minimum you want to get paid for a job you want to have, but how much you have to get paid to do a job you hate.

For me this is around £12 an hour. Now, use this figure, and balance it with activities you are doing, your job for instance may be quite good, I certainly enjoy mine, I have fun with my colleagues and get to chat to lots of people all the time, so I'm happy with my £6 an hour. 

However it is in your free time that this has to be balanced, obviously sleep is necessary and therefore worthy of the £12 loss of profit, eating is also a needed cost. Doing fun things that are free are obviously great for the self-worth. 

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that you should make the most of your time, you have a high self-worth and should use that to some extent at all times, whether for your own pleasure or for income. Take from this what you will, but maybe it'll help someone.

Don't forget investments though - sometimes it is worth destroying this self-worth in order to help another who is in need. A sleepless night or an awkward conversation may prove far greater 'value' in the long run, it is important that while you do your best for yourself, you also do the same for others lest we all turn into the bastards punk-rock songs sing about.

Maybe I'm talking shit, maybe I'm not.

I think this is enough, I have other ideas along these lines which I may well share with you at some point in future. In the meantime listen to Reggie and the Full Effect.

Anyone reading this on the blog site comment this post please, I want to know how many there are!

some more of summer

Things are going quite nicely at the moment, which is nice!

Things I'm thinking about:

I Have Clones live shows

Allucinere live shows

Boardmasters 'Unleashed' festival

Who the fuck is Rodney P

Starting proper punk-rock band - not another blink-182 wannabe but a proper Rancid wannabe

Long words I didn't know yesterday

Poker

Car boot sales - I love buying car boots

Thats really all there is atm, just plodding along with work and hoping september will come round soon!

Birmingham Music

So yesterday I was a little miserable, I'm definitely happier today, Claire is nearly here!

Also, been thinking about the brum music scene again - I think I finally worked out one of the key problems. Promoters that put on crap bands! I blame them. Obviously there's more to it than that but hopefully, by emphasizing high quality music and pushing the brand name the promotions company I'll be starting next year with Steve-O (of L!EX fame) we should be able to re-build a scene for birmingham. Thats the plan anyway! Fingers crossed.

I also joined drowned in sound today, terrorvision101 is my username as usual so please come find me!

stupor

Let me explain my situation a little;

I am in Cornwall staying with my dad over summer (like every summer)
I'm working the bar in the least popular venue in Rock - the resort is desirable but the sailing club has a poor reputation and few people go there.
I'm doing a lot of reading.
I'm mostly very bored.

Now I thought I'd got to a stage in my life where I was able to keep myself happily occupied, writing music, practicing my guitar, reading, training my brain and all sorts. But lately I've realized that it is not me that is stopping myself from being bored, but the people around me. I am fortunate to have some very good friends (especially Tim, a life saver at times, sad to not be living with him this year) and a great girlfriend up in brum, but now I'm away from all them I feel rather lonely and of course very very bored!

I deliberately woke up very late today, to save me the anguish of morning TV.

This is not how I should be living my life, and is an obvious symptom of laziness on my part. I should have found somewhere more interesting to go for summer this year. Still america awaits me next year (fingers crossed)


Part 1 over
Part 2

I've been looking at my future, I think I want to do a placement scheme abroad after this year of uni. Having said this to Claire, she said she'd dump me if I got a place. She has good reason - to not stay in a relationship that is clearly going nowhere. But it puts me in a very bad situation, one of choosing between her and the placement. Obviously I need to get a placement before the decision really become an issue, but it's rather disheartening and will undoubtedly effect my efforts in finding a good place. Part of me wants to go, part of me doesn't want to lose my girlfriend. I've also been looking at Masters degrees, I definitely want to do one but I don't really know how to go about it. This is something I can talk to Roy about.

Part 3

I have come to admire certain people, partly for their seemingly wonderful lives, incredible time management skills, determination and ability to do things that I know I want to do, but just can't quite seem to do it. Andrew Dubber is first on the list, very up to date with technology and highly efficient this guy seems to know everything about the industry (and as far as I can tell he doesn't teach on my course :( ) The next is very good friend of mine, someone I'd like to think of as an equal, although his impressive attitude towards work and music would suggest that he is in fact far better than me at most of the things I want to be good at. Rob Moore has recorded and 'released' his own solo project I Have Clones and is currently preparing to release it both love and across the 'net in full force, his strategies, including strong influence from Dubber will be clever and probably serve him very well. If I know him well, he will also have related blogs and the music hosted on every possible music networking site available. I am honored to have been asked to play with him for the live shows, and hope that if it all takes off then Rob will take me along for the ride!

I worry for our band Allucinere, if I Have Clones does take off, then we may well be leaving our good friends Sina and Chris behind. I expect that Rob in his wisdom will find a smart way to get those guys along too. I hope so.


If life had a do-over button I'd be hammering mine now. I just know I could have done so much better!

Now time to find out my overal results from my first year at Uni!