By definition punk subculture is all about individual freedom and anti-establishment views. As you might have noticed, these are the sort of qualities I believe in too. While I don't consider myself belonging to the punks group, I consider myself being a punk. If that makes sense. And I have always been one, but getting the mohawk done allowed to have a visible token so others could see that too.
Two weeks ago I was giving an outdoors keynote just outside of the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh while a police officer silently observed what looked like an illegal protest. It might just been the best way to open Whisky Web II, the conference six of us spent half a year organizing, because it was the worst keynote ever.
Recently there has been quite some discussion about working remotely or more specifically from home. There seems to be a view floating around that working remotely just involves taking ones laptop and instead of going to work every morning you just sit on your couch and start hacking on things whenever you wake up. That's what a lot of people do and eventually fail. Because work is way more than just doing your tasks. Work is also building relationships with your team, seeing what others are up to and occasionally getting drunk in a bar after work.
Prettiness is a relative thing. One is as pretty as ugly his friends are. Is he not? I think he is. That's how it works. It is a nice feeling to be pretty, no denying that, but relative things eventually find a new anchor point. And he becomes the ugliest face in the room. So maybe he shouldn't have stayed in the same room for so long?
I do a substantial amount of public speaking, roughly once every month for the past couple of years. I hate doing so. However when I started doing it I knew it's going to be very important in a long run, so I just pulled myself together and went to explore the unknown. One of the few things I forced myself to do, even though we both, the sane and insane me, knew it won't be an easy ride.
This is not really about flights. I don't fly first class. I do enough flying that I can be considered living in airports, but I always fly in economy class unless I get upgraded or they have a good deal. Why? I see it as a waste of money. This is about (pretentious) wealth and spending money.
I was reading this article called Don’t Waste Your Twenties, specifically the first part called Taking Advantage of the Unique Powers of the Twentysomething Brain, and thought - hey, that's a very good explanation of why I'm such an idiot. And I'm very happy to be an idiot now, I hope I can stay like this for longer. The most clever idiot out there.
I like opinionated people. I find people without opinions to be absolutely dull to talk to. Heck, even all of the above is an opinion. And so are all my previous blog posts and other public ramblings. There are a few people who like them, probably way more who don't, so this is me trying to discuss why do having an opinion matter. Or more exactly why is it better than not having one and assuming that everyone agrees with you on... that. Confusing.
9 months ago we were running Whisky Web for the first time. 3 months from now, on April 12 and 13th, Whisky Web II is going to happen. Whisky Web last year was by far the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, and the one I'm the most proud of. This year should beat it. It wasn’t an easy start though.
Why you didn't check the invoice before sending it out and the client has now paid us half of the expected amount? Because I wasn't careful enough. Or maybe I was fighting zombies in the streets of Chicago while doing it on my Blackberry. Let's fix the problem first and then we can look back and see how it can be avoided the next time. If you still want to talk about it, we are going to play the blame game. Which is a really terrible way to spend our time.
This seems to be the time of the year when everyone is looking back at the things they've done in 2012 and writing down promises for the upcoming year. There are a lot of things I could reflect back on, but I wanted to talk about relationships, friends and traveling. Write down some thoughts which might inspire one of you, and me, to do better next year. It's not like you are going to continue going to the gym after the first week (if you do, read this).
When I started living homeless, almost 4 months ago, I had a few ideas how to make the whole stunt more exciting. One of them was to get a group of friends and ship them to some remote place in say Italy just to live for a while. So in November I created an event on Facebook called "Italian retreat", invited some people who I thought would go for this, and started planning. Most of the Europe would be pretty cold then, so why not just go somewhere warm and do something different for a change?
Some people assume I shit gold. Probably. Since every day I get people asking me if I work at all or I just do nothing, drive fast cars and travel all the time. That would be totally boring - I actually do have a job and on a normal week I work 80+ hours, plus all the other things (like Whisky Web or conference speaking). I'm not a workaholic, but the things I do make me happy and I work very hard on them. However, I don't like talking about them, thus making it look like they don't exist.
What puzzles me the most about a lot of people, is the lack of appreciation for work others do. And complaining about everyone and everything nonstop on social networks. This article is a complaint by itself, so this is some kind of a recursive problem, but that's not the point. I think seeing greatness in others is what makes one able to achieve greatness himself and if you can only see bad, you are meant to become a snob one day. Pretty sure that's not a carrier path you want to take.
I used to live in Edinburgh. Actually I lived there for 4 years. Throughout the time spent there I kept getting questions why did I move there and not say London, the obvious (predictable?) choice then moving to UK. It all started with a text message...
By far the most irritating question I get is 'Why?'. Or 'Why did you ...?' to be exact. There is something wrong with our society, or me finding this wrong, that everything one does have to have some sort of background for it and that he should explain that to others. The last bit is the important one - there is always a reason, but why does it even matter, you are not my mom.
Privacy online is a never-ending discussions' topic, especially with services like Facebook becoming a huge part of one's life. However, the issue is not the privacy itself, but what people want to do with it.
Just before I flew to Funconf in Dublin, I handed in the keys to my flat in Edinburgh and became virtually homeless; for the first time since moving out of my parents' house 4 years ago I don't own a place of my own. Nor will I be looking for one.
Do you trust us was the only question you had to answer to buy a ticket to attend Funconf, a conference organized in Dublin, Ireland. There was no list of speakers, a schedule or venue information - if you trusted the organizers, you didn't need to know that. This is what happened next.
A great way to start this blog is to tell a story of how I decided to move to New York and what I'm going to be doing there. Exciting times await.