These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.
1
At an owl cafe and loving it. Until I decide to Facebook live the experience and someone comments that the birds shouldn’t be tied up for our amusement. Bubble burst. Now it all seems so wrong. The bindings, the bright lights, and where did these owls come from anyway? What bothers me most though, is that none of these concerns occurred to me earlier.
2
Not sure how all these travel bloggers find the time and energy to post all their photos and videos from the road. I’ve taken a bunch of shots here in Japan but struggling to find time to edit and share. Got up early this morning to squeeze in a three-hour work session before heading back to Tokyo, but that barely put a dent in my to-do list.
3
At Shibuya, Tokyo’s Times Square, watching the bright lights and funky people, the ultimate intersection of fashion and technology. It’s our last day in Japan, and it’s become one of my favorite countries, a place I’m sure I’ll return to many times. But before heading out we’ll take a wander through the alleys of Dogenzaka and see what we find.
4
I’ve gone all snobby with the lounge access. They have landside lounges at Narita but no food on offer. Limited refreshments in the airside lounge, too. Then on my layover in Delhi they dole out wifi 200MB at a time, and you have to scratch a new card and enter a string of digits every time it expires. On the bright side, I didn’t have to pay for these 5000-mile flights I’m taking today, and I got to watch two just-released movies while sitting in a comfortable chair in the sky.
5
Finished reading Homo Deus as we touched down in Amsterdam. Mind-blowing stuff. Dataism is the new religion, humans are becoming obsolete, the machines will know us better than we know ourselves. It’s scary in one sense, but mostly I’m left feeling excited. It’s such a privilege to be alive right now. Whether we’re on the brink of extermination or immortality, we get to bear witness.
6
Seriously jet lagged and all snuffled up, but I’m at a nice cafe on a sunny day in my favorite city, and a dozen of my favorite people came out to say hey. Hadn’t been back here since last year, and I do miss it sometimes, but no regrets about leaving. Like Dr. Seuss once wrote, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I look out the window at the people and the bicycles and the canals, and all I can do is smile.
7
This man has no filter. Dutch to the extreme. Telling tales of a gun to the head, a knife to the throat, a fist to the face. His by-the-ways are more interesting than most people’s life stories. Northern lights, that time he spent in jail, the ladyboy in Japan. I ask him what he’d like to do that he still hasn’t done, sexually. And he tells me without a blink or a hint of hesitation, “I’d like to fuck an underage girl.”
8
Feeling social at the airport, bantering with the lady on desk duty. I ask her how her day is going, and by her response it’s apparent she’s rarely asked that on the job. We chat for a while and she says it’s more common for someone to insult her or even throw something at her than ask, “How are you?” I leave two minutes later feeling we brightened each other’s day. And it cost us nothing.
9
In the park. Cathedral above, flowers below. Beautiful woman with perfect teeth asks me to take her photo. We chat for several minutes. She’s visiting from Brazil, likes to travel, runs her own business, speaks perfect English. Seems she wants to talk forever. Until I mention my girlfriend. Then she winds it down pretty quick. Hmm. That’s a role I’ve often played in the past. Rare that I see it from the other side.
10
Caught up with a lot of family today. I’m so fucking lucky in that regard (among many others). Highlight may have been hugging three tiny nephews simultaneously, then horsing around the front lawn with them and the Cuz. Actually had a dream last night where I lost a particular family member. I’d never really considered a world without them before. It hit hard.
11
Words like feminist and vegan tend to repel people, don’t they? Noticed it myself the other day when a friend recommended a podcast called The Guilty Feminist. My immediate reaction was, “Uh, no thanks. I’d rather not listen to some lady rant and make me feel bad for having a penis.” Thankfully I got past that and listened anyway. And it’s brilliant. This is a good episode to start with.
12
Feels like I got more work done the past two days than I did the previous two weeks. Nothing like putting aside a long stretch and taking a good run at it. Buzzing now too because the ideas are flowing hard and fast and pieces are falling into place. Meanwhile, there are terrorists in the US, athletics in the UK, and protests in Kenya.
13
Cup of tea, sitting around watching the All-Ireland semi-final. It’s a fascinating game, hurling. These lads with their big sticks and hard knocks and no paychecks… they make other athletes look spoiled and fragile. Hard for people outside the country to appreciate how popular the sport is here. 72,000 people in attendance today at the third biggest stadium in Europe.
14
Years ago I wrote about slowing down to solve problems. It’s such a simple thing but it makes a huge difference. I gave examples in that article about iPhones and shopping carts, but a lot of people get caught up in the faster-faster-faster pull of day-to-day living as well, never really taking the time to step back and question what they’re doing, where they’re heading.
15
I know Walt Disney died in 1966, so when I’m reading about him being all successful and energetic in the 1930’s, I can’t help but think that fuck, he’s only got three more decades, then it’s lights out. Every time a year is mentioned in the book, I’m calculating how long he has left to live, and from there it’s easy to start wondering how long’s left for me. Three decades? Much more? Much less?
16
Next door watching the lads play GTA5. I remember the original GTA, top-down on the PC. Wasn’t that long ago. How much longer before these games become indistinguishable from reality? Simulation theory proposes that these hyper-realistic simulated realities already exist, and the odds are overwhelming that we’re in one.
17
Notice myself looking for distractions the past few days. Reaching for my phone, checking email more often. Part of that is being home. Tend to fall back into old habits here, old patterns. I was fairly lazy as a teenager, would happily sit in front of the TV for hours and devour a pack of biscuits. Trying to stave off the old urges and stay productive.
18
On the bus to Cork. A bunch of people get on with me and get off at the industrial estate ten minutes later. I watch them trudge to work and take a moment to appreciate how lucky I am. It’s a random Friday in August and I’m going to spend the day sipping coffee and meeting up with cool people in my favorite Irish city.
19
Standing at the top of Patrick’s Hill and Rob points out a building across the way. He has a story about that one, and another two doors down. That’s one of the nice things about staying in one place for decades. Memories everywhere, a sense of connection, belonging. I guess I have that too, but my memories and connections are spread across the globe, harder to revisit.
20
It’s a rainy grey morning and we’re out jogging the shore of Lough Mahon. We’ll do ten miles and be drenched through and I’ll have a bit of trouble walking the rest of the day – been a while since I ran distance – but there’s an afterglow from this kind of thing that compensates for all that. Food tends to taste better, rest feels well earned.
21
I have five pairs of footwear, and it takes me a minute to remember where they all came from. Runners bought in New Orleans. Brown shoes bought in Mexico. Black shoes bought in Amsterdam. Grey sneakers bought in Estonia. Flip-flops bought in Colombia. I think that’s right. Don’t ask about my underwear.
22
Ever been there with a group of people around a table, and something comes over you and you step back over your shoulder and take in the scene with a kind of timeless perspective. You pay less attention to how everyone looks and what they’re saying and see instead how they used to look in all the years past and you sense everything they’ve been through that’s made them who they are.
23
Picking up a new Russian visa at an office in Dublin, ready to fly to Moscow and see my lady tomorrow. But wait… says here the visa’s not valid until October 15th. “Yes, that’s the date you specified.” I check and yeah, somehow I did specify that date weeks ago on a whim and promptly forgot about it. Balls. Now what?
24
Night time and I’ve arrived at the Wolfhouse in Tenerife. Which is a really nice place and the weather is warm and the people are friendly… but I was supposed to be all cuddled up in Moscow right about now, and I cut my barse shaving and the lock on my suitcase has decided to be a dick and I’m forced to trudge through all 1000 possible combinations to open the fucking thing.
25
Ideas are the easy part. I have a million ideas. Most of them are probably crap, but there are surely a few gems in there. And the only way to figure out which is which is to wade through them. To execute, fail, execute again, fail, execute again, and on and on until you find a diamond. It’s the execution that’s the hard part. Finding the time. Taking action. Staying focused.
26
After doing that podcast about eating animals last month, in which we mentioned several times that animal agriculture in Ireland is surely better than in most other countries, a friend sent me this video that argues otherwise. Took me weeks to get through it. And I’m sure you can guess why. It’s disturbing. And if you eat meat and dairy yourself you probably won’t watch it, which is fine, but that in itself is very telling, no?
27
On the move again. Just an hour in a rental car this time, but it got me thinking about these past two months. Since the beginning of July, I’ve visited seven countries, taken ten flights and slept in at least fourteen different beds. No wonder I’m exhausted. I don’t have the same energy for it anymore. I’ll have 2.5 weeks now at this place in Puerto, some welcome relief.
28
Long work day, was at the coworking before nine and clocked out of there twelve hours later. Broke for a magnificent nap in the afternoon. Good stretches of deep work, bits and pieces caught up on, no food after breakfast, a few thousands steps before dark, balcony reading to wind it down. An unglorified kind of day, but one that has me perfectly content hitting the hay.
29
Saw an ad for McDonalds on Irish TV a few weeks ago. Our eggs come from free range chickens, they said, showing footage of a chicken frolicking free on a nice farm. So I went into a McDonalds in Cork and asked where they get their eggs, was told Greenfield Foods in Monaghan. I did some research. Five million eggs come out of there each week. 1 Google maps shows the big sheds they keep 150,000 hens in, each required to have just 750cm of space. 2
30
Finish another solid work day and take a stroll around Puerto as the sun sets, getting my seven thousand steps in. There’s a lot to like about this town. It’s tidy and scenic and quiet and you catch a nice whiff of flowers every few minutes just walking the streets, look up and there’s a paraglider drifting on the breeze, floating back and forth for kicks before landing on a black sand beach.
31
Almost 8am, heading to the coworking. I’ll be the first one there and grab a coffee and open the place up like it’s my own. Flatmates were out last night. They’ll be blurry today. One of them came home as I was having breakfast, arm all bloodied, a drunken misadventure. Now I’m walking up the hill with a clear head, sunshine hitting the peak of Teide, ready to make the most of the day.
