hold your head high

I've made a lot of choices
Most have not been wise
But I have some really good friends
I've been fortunate to find
They get me through the lonely days
When I want to stay inside myself
They get me out of my shell
Out into the world

I am coming back, I'm coming back again
I had lost everything and then I got it back again
I dug myself so deep, deep into a hole
Then getting out was so far beyond my control

In the past I've always had trouble on my mind
I'm gonna take that feeling and leave it far behind
As I go down this path traveling through my fate
Lately I have begun to awake

It all started out in Jackson and we moved across the land
And all the dehydration turned the soil into sand
And then one day they hauled me away
And I was out there, out on my own

The thieves, they came and went
They took everything in sight
And then we got it back again
Oh, I had to fight

And I, then I woke up from the middle of the strangest dream
And everyone was there that I ever knew and they all began to sing
Hold you head high, just as high as you can
Things will work out soon, things will come round again
You see I've got this fascination with all the wrong ways to go
I get lost even in the places that I know

Hold your head high, just as high as you can
Things will work out soon, things will come round again
Hold your head high, just as high as you can
Things will work out soon, things will come round again

soul

i love this clip. rob machado carves while band of horses do their thing and amplify the view.

Quiet

This Will Destroy You are a binaural trip; it's easy to get lost with them in the night sky.

no words...

just happiness...

From lone nut to leader, how movements start

Short and sweet.

One of the briefest TED Talks I've seen and also one of the best.

Online entrepreneur Derek Siver on how movements start, and a fantastic representation of how the first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader.

Roll the tape...

up here in my tree

this is without doubt one of the coolest pictures i've seen in a while. sure, it's over exposed and blurry around the edges but that doesn't matter. in fact, it just adds to the surreal nature of the photo.

it's taken in sequoia national park, california. i love it. if i die without walking among the majesty of the giant sequoias then i will have missed out.

it's funny how things happen in life. these seemingly random events light up around you and you need to take action and connect them.

over summer i did quite a bit of tramping around new zealand with an american friend of mine from seattle. (hey, alan, how you going, bro?) i'm planning to go visit him at some point soon. i've got a real yearning for an american road trip, and the national parks on the west coast, like sequoia, look staggeringly beautiful.

i was watching one of my favourite movies, into the wild, just two nights ago, and there is a moving sequence when christopher mccandless is walking along the pacific crest trail in northern california. it touched me.

then, yesterday, i just felt compelled to start searching on google for the town of auckland in california. from the satellite view, it appears to be a tiny little outpost on the edges of sequoia national park. intrigued, i push sequoia national park into google image search and 'bam', this beautiful image is right there. i know i need to make that adventure happen.

i've always loved trees. i used to climb trees a lot when i was a kid. our backyard was blessed with what, at the time, seemed like giant sequoias that i would clamber up and summit; hugging tightly at the top, feeling an intoxicating mix of fear, joy and peace. there was also a big walnut tree in the middle of our yard, with a tree hut of mine tucked away up in the foliage.

my connection to nature and mother earth is really channeled through trees, and also landscapes - more so than the animal kingdom.

i can hear the giant sequoias and redwoods calling me, tapping into that innocent boyish spirit within me...

pearl jam: in my tree (no code)

what i did last summer

great news today! i'm officially on the copywriting books for blacksheepdesign.

blacksheepdesign needed to expand their stable of copywriters and posted an ad that asked me to share what i did over summer.

over the past six months, one of my main goals has been to unplug from the 9-5 matrix and create as much mobility and flexibility in my life as possible. gigs like this chip away at self-doubt and keep nudging me along in the right direction. gotta keep walkin...

ps: if you're not from new zealand, my summer won't mean a thing to you. it's just one of those things...

two exercises to improve concentration and attention

i've been doing a fair bit of reading around meditation, lately.

there's a lot of really interesting stuff to be discovered, and it's a world littered with beautiful sounding words, phrases and definitions: alpha rhythm, pineal gland, transcendental etc etc

here's a couple of exercises that will:

- increase the intensity of your concentration
- increase the duration of your attention span

* for best results, cut and paste these images on to a blank word document.

exercise one:
stare at the black dot, resisting the temptation to look anywhere else. Stare at this for about five minutes to begin, then gradually increase the duration as you become more skilled.


exercise two:
Stare past the circles until you notice they each double for a total of four circles. Your goal is to overlap the middle two circles to form one circle with a white cross. Seeing the cross is the evidence that the left hemisphere of the brain (connected to the right eye) is communicating with the right hemisphere (connected to the left eye).