So here I am in Ho Chi Minh City, AKA Saigon, AKA my home for probably the rest of 2013. I’ve been here a week now, found a place to live, and feel more or less settled in.

The number question I got asked before moving out here (except maybe “are you fucking serious?”) was “are you nervous?”, and, to be honest, I really wasn’t. I’ve travelled enough by now that settling in to an unfamiliar city is nothing out of the ordinary.

Still, though, I didn’t really know what to expect of Saigon. Would it be a gleaming metropolis? A grey and dismal urban sprawl? Just like Bangkok, except without all the transexual prostitutes? As it turns out, it’s a very cool city and I think I’m going to like living here a lot.

A few musings:

- I definitely prefer Saigon to Bangkok, which is the only other major city I’ve been to in this part of the world. To be fair, I’m living in the town centre here and very much experiencing the “real” Saigon, whereas in Bangkok I did nothing but stay in the hyper-touristic part of town and get drunk with fellow backpackers, so it’s probably not a fair comparison. Still, it’s nice to be able to walk down the street without being pestered every three steps by touts and ladyboys.

- Here’s an interesting fact about the people of Vietnam: they all have the same goddamn surname. Well, not quite, but according to Wikipedia, a mere 14 family names are shared between around 90% of the population. I’ve already lost track of the amount of people I’ve met called Nguyễn – it’s like Smith, Williams, Johnson and Brown all rolled into one. Apparently the Vietnamese took naming hints from the Marklars.

- You know how everyone’s house smells different, but you can’t smell your own? My first few days here, every inhalation tasted of pollution and exhaust fumes. Now the air feels squeaky clean. This probably isn’t a good sign.

- I’m apparently now a person who spends a lot of time in coffee shops. Back in England I’d visit coffee shops maybe once a month; but since arriving here I’ve been spending all day in them every day. Next thing you know I might even start drinking coffee.

- Like every other third-world country I’ve been to, the roads here are fucking nuts. Traffic laws appear to be optional, and I feel like writing my will every time I cross the road. (Pro tip: always look both ways, even on a one-way street.) And the motorbikes. Holy shit, the motorbikes. They’re everywhere. There’s no way I can do justice in writing to the sheer quantity of xe may on the road here. I’d estimate less than 1% of the vehicles on HCMC roads have more than two wheels. My landlord has a motorbike for rent, but I’m sure if I tried to keep pace with the HCMC traffic I’d be dead within two days.

- Did you know the Vietnam war ended nearly 40 years ago? I mean, I did know that, but it never really clicked that 1975 is starting to become a fairly long time ago. I’ve always thought of the conflict as “recent history”; in fact the Fall of Saigon occurred closer to the Great Depression than to the present day. Mindblowing.

- Vietnamese is both the easiest and most difficult language I’ve ever looked into. Some aspects, like the grammar, are ridiculously easy, and I can already read and write the language reasonably well. (This isn’t because I’m such a linguistic genius that I picked it up within a week of arrival – I’ve been studying on-and-off since December.)

My attempts to speak, on the other hand, usually get met with blank stares. The pronunciation is horrific and contains all sorts of bizarre vowels that in England would be considered signs of a stroke. I do definitely want to make an effort with the language though, if only because I’ve dabbled in far too many languages recently without becoming fluent in any of them and it’s well past time I picked one and knuckled down on it. A big priority of mine over the next few years is to finally get some languages under my belt, so Vietnamese seems like a good place to start. Tôi phải làm việc siêng năng!

- That being said, I know if I wanted I could live here all year without learning a single word of anything. I’ve spent most of my time so far in the English-speaking expat bubble here and it would be far too easy to never look beyond it.

But why would I want to stick with English? I’ve already found the tiny bit of Vietnamese I have learned to be enlightening. I absolutely believe that the worldwide dominance of English is little more than an illusion and by limiting yourself to English you’re blocking yourself off from 99% of what a country has to offer. I can’t imagine spending all year here without at least picking up the basics.

(Benny from FluentIn3Months.com has a lot to say about this. I love his blog and I HIGHLY recommend it, not just to language learners but to anyone interested in travel in general.)

-  I’ve yet to hear a single Vietnamese person speak French; as far as I can tell that colonial remnant has been completely usurped by English. I still hope I can brush up on my French though while I’m here. I’ve been speaking to some expatriés on CouchSurfing and hopefully I’ll be able to arrange a meetup. I can really feel my French starting to slip away from and I don’t want to see it go!

- I’ve been saying for years that Britain should scrap our copper coins and measure all prices in multiples of 5p. Well, Vietnam has the same problem, but to the extreme. Not only could they knock four zeroes off the end of their currency with no meaningful loss in granularity, but they have notes which are literally worth less than one UK penny. It’s an interesting feeling having so much cash it won’t even fit in your wallet, but still not enough to buy lunch.

- Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still mindblowingly cheap here. I’m making a pitiful amount of money by Western standards but still living nice and comfortably. My rent is half the price of the cheapest place I lived at university (and the room is nicer than any of them). My gym membership is US$9 a month and I’ve been eating out for almost every single meal. I could definitely get used to this.

- And finally, I signed up to the Dynamite Circle before coming out here. It seemed like the logical choice seeing as everyone I’m working for and with is already a member. Joining has been a great choice (even though I feel preposterously underqualified to be there). It’s not often I get to hang out with people who eat paleo, are into evolutionary psychology, think university is a waste of time, reject all the traditional notions of “success” and generally hold anything remotely resembling my worldview, but since coming to Vietnam I’ve been doing it every day. I am definitely in the right place, and the only thing I’m unsure about is why I didn’t come here years ago.

Right, now I’m off to a coffee shop to get some work done.

On the surface, it’s a pretty scary time to be young. The world is changing in drastic, unpredictable ways, you don’t know what to do with yourself or how you can get a grip, and none of the advice anyone’s giving you seems remotely helpful. You’ve spent a decade and a half in education, under the guise of preparing you for adulthood, but now adulthood is looming (or is it already here?) and you’re just as lost and confused as you were five years ago. Have you learned nothing? Why can’t you figure it out?

Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, you’re fucked. What, you were expecting me to sugarcoat it? Let’s be realistic. The world’s problems run deeper than you can possibly imagine, and they’re going to get much worse before they ever get better. And chances are pretty good that you, yes, you who studied so hard and thought you were special, don’t stand a chance.

Luckily, there’s a silver lining in this cloud, and there’s a very, very important message that young people desperately need to hear: It’s not your fault.

Here’s my favourite article I’ve read in the last six months, from one of my favourite writers, Tucker Max: What You Need To Know About Life, But Haven’t Been Taught. Its the text of a speech he gave to students at Pittsburgh University, and if you’re under 25,  the first few paragraphs should be compulsory reading:

Do you feel ready for your life? Do you feel prepared to face whats coming when you leave here?

I doubt it. …

Seriously, do you know any of the basic skills that you will need in life–how to negotiate a rent? How to get a job? How to even develop the skills you’ll need at a job? Do you know how to manage your finances? I know you don’t – how many of you have under $100 in your checking account?

You’re all totally fucked!

But I bet you hear this all the time don’t you? 

You hear it from your parents, you hear from your professors, from administrators, from the press…from everyone. They all tell you how fucked up you are, they all tell you what you need to change about yourself.

Here’s the difference: I’m not going to tell you its your fault. Thats what you’re always told, that its your fault, right?

It’s not. Your parents and your educational institutions have completely and utterly failed you. They really have only one job, and that’s to educate you. For what? Fun? No, for life. They need to teach you the things that matter in an honest, truthful way. But they haven’t. They have failed you, and THAT is why you are so fucking unprepared for whats coming.

I don’t know where to even begin in describing all the evidence I’ve seen for this in my own life.

I could talk about how when I moved out of my parents’ house at 19, I was so utterly unable to function as an adult that I might as well have been 12 years old. My first year of university was the most disastrous, worthless waste of time I can possibly imagine experiencing. My parents had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds sending me to ten years of private school, and I didn’t even know how to shop for groceries.

I could talk about how it’s only three years later that I feel like I’ve started to get any grip whatsoever, only through repeated trial and error (mostly error) and with no help from university itself. While I’ve learned a lot about life during university, the valuable lessons I’ve been taught by university I could fit on the back of a postage stamp.

I could talk about the number of people I’ve spoken to recently who have told me they’re sick of uni, that they’ve thought about dropping out but the decision is so scary, that they have no idea what they want to do with their lives, that they look at people a few years further down the same path they’re on and they don’t like what they see, that they feel like they’re wasting their time but don’t know how else to spend it and their parents just. don’t. understand. What should they do?

I could talk about how, barring one friend who’s gone travelling, EVERY SINGLE PERSON I’ve spoken to who graduated last summer is now living at home making £6 an hour if they have a job at all, and in most cases they’re just as directionless as they were at 18. We’re at the point now where being totally unprepared and clueless for life in the real world is so widespread it’s barely even questioned. That degree you spent £10k and 3 years on didn’t deliver any of the things it promised, but that’s okay because neither did anybody else’s! Whatever purpose you think schooling should serve, it’s hard to think of one at which it isn’t failing.

Of course, it’s still a great time to be in your twenties. Seriously. You think all the above means I’m not happy to have been born in 1990? Are you kidding? There’s more opportunity right now for young people than there’s ever been at any point in history. Our lifetimes have seen a breakdown of barriers in ways our parents could never have even dreamed of. It’s never been easier to discover something you love, carve your own path in the world and live the life of your dreams. I haven’t worked out how exactly, but I’ve learned enough to convince me that it’s possible.

And if you don’t believe that the previous paragraph is true, then, well, like Tucker Max said, it’s not your fault.

 

[PS: Despite all of this, I don't think we can get too angry at our parents. All they did was give us the same advice that worked for them. Shortsighted, maybe, but they cared, and they tried.

Universities, on the other hand, have got a lot more to answer for.]

Mastery by Robert Greene

There’s a lot of hype around this book at the moment, and it’s justified. It really is phenomenal.

I don’t think I can overstate just how much Robert Greene’s books have shaped my thinking and impacted my life as I was growing up. The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction and The 33 Strategies of War I would all rank within my top 10 favourite and most influential books of all time; I constantly refer back to them and I’m still finding new ways to apply their lessons even years after I first read them.

So it’s no small statement to say that I think Mastery is the best thing he’s ever written.

What makes some people throughout history rise above the rest and make such huge, lasting contributions to humanity? When we look at such masters, we tend to explain away their genius as something that they are, as if it’s just “talent” or luck in the genetic lottery, but the real answer is it’s something that they do, and Greene set out to answer the question “What exactly?” Through analysis of dozens of the greatest masters of all time – people like Einstein, Da Vinci, Mozart, Darwin, many more – Greene lays out the path to mastery as a clear and repeatable – albeit extremely long and arduous – process that anyone can learn to follow.

I’m currently in phase 1 - The Apprenticeship Phase – of that process, and this book is going to be an incredible resource as I progress onto the next. If you have any kind of ambition to do anything with your life whatsoever, you need to read Mastery.

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The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller

I am absolutely fascinated by evolutionary biology. It is by far the subject on which I have read the most, and every new book I read gives me fascinating new insights about the human mind and what makes people tick. The Mating Mind gave me a lot of those insights.

TMM starts off with an intriguing question – if our brains evolved to help us survive, why do they possess such untold capacity for art, music, humour, language and all the other intricacies of human culture? Clearly these things go far beyond what’s required for mere survival, and evolution usually trims away all but the absolutely necessary. So why bother?

Miller’s argument is that the human brain, and human culture, were shaped not by natural selection but by Darwin’s lesser-known theory of sexual selection. The mind, and everything we create with it, are the human equivalent of the peacock’s tail; they exist not to keep us alive but to keep us reproducing. We actually expend so much energy growing and using our brains that it hinders our survival, but survival is worthless if we don’t impress the opposite sex enough to pass on our genes. All of human culture is nothing but a complex, intricate mating ritual.

A lot of people don’t realise that studying evolutionary theory actually has a lot of practical application. It is the purest form of social science, and my prediction is that over the next few centuries as evpsych gains more traction it will come to replace sociology, anthropology, criminology and all related fields as the one correct way of explaining human behaviour. If you want to understand people, you need to understand evolution.

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Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman.

My mum tells me I’m related to Stephen Kelman. I can’t remember how exactly; I’ve never met him and wouldn’t even know his name if this book hadn’t been published. Pigeon English is a novel told through the eyes of an 11 year-old Ghanaian immigrant called Harrison Opoku, freshly arrived in the UK and living on a poor estate in central London. 5 minutes before the opening scene, a boy from Harrison’s school is stabbed to death, and he takes it on himself to solve the murder mystery.

Pigeon English starts off promisingly, and paints a gritty and emotive picture of young life in a rough part of London, but ultimately I think it’s a missed opportunity. Most of the characters – apart from Harrison himself, who is brilliant – are woefully underdeveloped, and the “whodunnit” plot jumps around aimlessly and ends in a total cop-out. It’s not a bad book, but I can’t help but think that the only reason it got nominated for the Man Booker prize is because it’s about teenage knife crime.

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Minimalism by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus

I love the blog The Minimalists, but this is just an uninspired “me too” book that adds very little to the discussion.

Despite the title, there’s very little in here about the philosophy of minimalism. Instead it’s just a collection of generic self-help chapters – one on health, one on relationships, one on finding your passion, etc etc – full of recycled advice that’s been said better a million times before. If you’re new to self-help, maybe you’ll find some insight in here, but I I can’t say I learned much, and a lot of the content (especially the chapter on health) is so obvious it’s almost patronising.

That being said, it’s an easy read that you can get through in one sitting, and I did like the concept of “anchors”. If you’re a big fan of the Minimalists, it’s maybe worth the (cheap) price tag just to learn a bit more about their back story; if not just stick with the blog.

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It’s been far too long since the last time I wrote a post like this, so I have a big backlog of books I could write about, but frankly I can’t be bothered. Here’s, to the best of my memory, what else I’ve read since September: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, The Siege by Helen Dunmore, Capitalism & Freedom by Milton Friedman, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, Convert! by Ben Hunt, Speak From Day One by Benny Lewis, The Power of Eye Contact by Michael Ellsberg, Sex on the Brain by Deborah Blum, Unprotected – A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness In Her Profession Endangers Every Student by Miriam Grossman MD, and So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport, which I already wrote about. The ones in bold I particularly recommend. I also reread two of my favourite books: The Game by Neil Strauss and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

(I can’t be bothered to put in Amazon links for all of those. Google is your friend.)

I meant to get this post finished in time for my 22nd birthday, on the 26th. That didn’t happen, so I told myself I’d have it ready by the new year. Well, that didn’t happen either, but better late than never. The following is, in what I hope will become an annual tradition, my thoughts on the year that’s just gone by: what went well, what went wrong and what I think I’ve learned.

To summarise, my 22nd trip around the sun has had some incredible highs and miserable lows, but overall it’s probably been the best year of my life. Here’s to year 23.

It’s also without a doubt been the most eventful year of life. A hell of a lot has happened to me in the last 12 months. January 2012 feels like a lifetime ago. I’ve moved house twice, started a new job, learned new skills, tried new things, read over 60 books, and met all kinds of cool and interesting new people. I’ve spent over 2 months outside the UK, in 9 foreign countries on 3 separate trips. I’ve had major breakthroughs and I’ve made unbelievable fuck-ups, and I’ve learned huge amounts from both. Here comes the highlight reel:

Warning: this post is both long, at over 4000 words, and extremely self-indulgent. If the idea of me talking at great length about myself sounds like something you’d be interested in (hi Mum), feel free to read it all the way through. If not, you may still enjoy certain parts, so clicky click these linky links and skip around:

1. The Hitch
2. Health
3. Southeast Asia
4. Music
5. Books
6. Facebook
7. In summary…

The Hitch

I spent my Easter break hitch-hiking across Europe, from Manchester to Croatia. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the two weeks I spent riding in strangers’ cars through the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia were probably the best thing I’ve ever done. The only reason I say “probably” is because it’s the second time I did it (I hitch-hiked to Morocco in 2011), and I can’t choose between the two.

I already wrote about this at length, so rather than repeat myself I’ll just link to my original post: Life Lessons From Hitch-Hiking Across Europe Twice.

Health

I’ve never been overweight, smoked, or had any major health issues, so I always considered myself a reasonably healthy guy. Sort of like how everyone thinks they’re a reasonably good driver, that they read slightly faster than average and they’re not influenced by advertising.

This year, having made some significant changes to my diet and lifestyle, I now realise that I was wrong. What I thought was “reasonably healthy” was in fact pretty poor. The only reason I thought it was okay is because the average state of health in the UK is so depressingly bad that mediocre looks extraordinary.

I started 2012 as a vegetarian, briefly dabbling in veganism. While I’m definitely glad for this experience and learned a lot from it, I eventually just couldn’t avoid the conclusion any longer that humans are natural omnivores. The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain was the final nail in my veggie coffin and I added meat back into my diet around March. (Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body was an eye-opener too.)

I still have a lot of respect for vegetarians and vegans. (Merely by giving a second’s thought to the consequences of what you eat, you’ve done more than 99% of people will ever do. And, like I’ve said before, I think the books Eating Animals and The Vegetarian Myth should be compulsory reading for every human on the planet.) Ultimately, I want the same thing as you guys: widespread good health, a sustainable future and humane, conscious farming practices. I just disagree on the means.

The story doesn’t stop there though. Cordain’s book sent me down a rabbit hole from which I’m yet to emerge. The paleo diet isn’t just about eating meat; it’s about questioning every assumption of modern agricultural society and rejecting the neolithic non-foods that are destroying humanity. It’s one of those things where, on learning about it, you think “why don’t more people know about this?” Then you get sucked in further and further and you realise that the whole situation is far, far worse than you could ever have possible imagined.

I can’t possibly share everything I’ve learned in the space of one blog post, but there is one thing I now firmly believe: just about every commonly-held belief about health and diet is dangerously wrong. And if you think this is a radical claim, ask yourself: if the commonly-held beliefs about diet are right, then why is everybody so fat?

There’s this notion floating about that once you hit thirty your body should just start deteriorating, getting overweight and creaky, and that this is just a normal part of getting old that you can’t do anything about – in your thirties! This is just so unbelievably preposterous it’s staggering – name one other mammal that deteriorates like this immediately after reaching child-bearing age – yet the world has gone so insane that billions of people just accept it as fact. In the best article on health I’ve ever read, Michael Ellsberg calls this “collective cultural insanity” and I agree 100%.

I have a quote from the same article stuck on my wall:

Your cloudy, depressed, hung over, caffeine-jacked-up, sugar-high, sugar-crash, foggy, unclear consciousness just appears as ‘reality’ to you, and you have not the slightest idea that there is actually so much more available to you in your own consciousness, beyond what occurs to you as ‘just the way things are’ now, if you were to clean out your system of all the toxic junk you’re putting in it.

I can absolutely relate to what Ellsberg is saying here. The moment I stopped eating grains, it was like my brain had shifted up into sixth gear after trundling along in fourth for 21 years. Imagine putting on glasses for the first time after having blurry vision your entire life – except for your entire mind. I’m not exaggerating. When I eat a high-carb meal now I can feel the fogginess and fatigue settling in within the hour. “Christ,” I think every time. “Is this how I used to feel every day?”

(By the way, if your reaction to that quote is defensiveness… you’re proving Ellsberg’s point.)

I’m far from a paragon of perfect health now, and I still have a long way to go. I’ve always been skinny (especially when I was vegan), I can’t cook for shit, and I don’t enjoy exercise enough to do it for it’s own sake. But with the results I’ve seen so far on this path – not just in terms of how I feel but in the knock-on effect it’s had on every other area of my life – I know I’m onto something huge.

Being the big believer in continual self-improvement that I am, I do have couple of health experiments planned for this year. Right now I’m in the middle of going 30 days without eating gluten or refined sugar. I don’t eat much of these things anymore anyway, but I want to see what happens if I get a bit stricter in avoiding them. So far I’m enjoying the results.

Oh, and I quit drinking a few months ago too. I’ve already written enough about that. Suffice to say that it’s been a good decision and I haven’t looked back. (Actually, to tell the truth, I got hammered on New Year’s Eve, just as an experiment to double-check I wasn’t missing anything. I’m not.)

Southeast Asia

For years I’d been obsessed with the idea of visiting Southeast Asia. I don’t know exactly where this fixation came from, but in summer 2012 I finally caved in and spent more than I could reasonably afford on a 6-week stint in Thailand and Laos.

I’ve tried on several attempts to write up my thoughts on this trip, but kept on giving in. Not because I had nothing to say, but because getting my thoughts into writing kept on leading to realisations that weren’t easy to process.

Here’s a fact of human psychology: when someone invests a lot of money, time and energy into something, they rate it far higher than they would have if they’d had the exact same experience for free. And if someone spends a four-figure sum on what they thought would be the trip of a lifetime and it doesn’t live up to their expectations, they find that very hard to accept and they tell themselves – and anyone who asks – that they had a better time than they actually did.

So it’s only now, over 5 months after I got home (wow has that time flown) and after a lot of introspection, that I’ve come to accept that the whole trip wasn’t really as great as I’d convinced myself it had been.

Don’t get me wrong; for the most part I enjoyed myself and I don’t regret going. (It was far better than anything I’d have done if I’d stayed in England.) But if I could go back there’s a LOT I’d do differently. Thailand and Laos weren’t the problem; I was.

Thailand (which is where I spent most of my time) is a beautiful, diverse country with a rich history and culture and a huge variety of things to do and see. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I didn’t get much of that because I spent most of my time sleeping in hungover and drinking cocktails by the bucket. (That’s not hyperbole – alcohol in Thailand is literally served in buckets.) I was told before I went that Thailand is over-commercialised and overrun with tourists, and it definitely lived up to the hype. A friend I met out there summed it up perfectly: “Ko Phangan is the rich kid’s Malia.”

Not that I’m claiming to be any better than the average tourist. Everyone you meet out there (which, at the time of year I went, consists at least 80% of British university students on their summer break like myself) acknowledges that south Thailand is being destroyed by the tourist industry… but that doesn’t stop anybody, including me, from going right ahead and contributing to that decline anyway.

To be fair, not all of Thailand is like this, just the parts I went to. For me to complain that Thailand is nothing but pissed-up Westerners would be like like spending two weeks in the south of Florida and complaining that the USA has no ski resorts. You get what you go looking for, and I didn’t go looking for much that I couldn’t have got at home. On the surface, it was a lot of fun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

This was the fourth time in four years I’ve been backpacking (sixth if you count the two Hitches), but was unique in at least two ways. Firstly, I travelled with only hand luggage. Wow – what a game-changer. It really is so much better and easier. Why on Earth did I lug so much junk around with me on all my other trips? I’m never checking in hold luggage again. (Shout out to the excellent onebag.com for loads of handy advice on this subject – essential reading for any traveller.)

It was also the first time I’d gone travelling completely by myself (although I did meet up with a friend from uni for a a week or so in Ko Phangan). While this was a good decision too and I expect I’ll be doing it in future, it wasn’t always plain sailing and there were a few times when I struggled to meet people and felt more than a bit isolated and lonely. I know this wasn’t a problem with travelling solo per se – it was my own fault for not getting out of my comfort zone or making enough effort.

In fact, that pretty much sums up the entire problem with my trip: I didn’t make enough effort. My expectations were too high and I spent too much time waiting for the fun and adventure to come to me instead of actively seeking it out. A major lesson learned.

Okay, I’m pushing the limits of what I feel comfortable sharing now, and this all been a bit too negative. Fundamentally, I’m glad I went and despite some low points I did have a lot of good times, so I’m going to end by saying what I did enjoy:

• SCUBA diving in Ko Tao (probably my favourite place I visited) and getting my Open Water license – something that’s been on my bucket list for years.
• Going to a CouchSurfing meetup in Bangkok on my first night, and meeting up with Couchsurfers in a few other places. I’ve yet to meet a CSer who wasn’t a brilliant person.
• • Vang Vieng, Laos is the most ridiculous party town I have ever been to and was probably the most mental week of my life. Nothing could have prepared me for this place. If you think you have partied hard and you haven’t been to Vang Vieng, you are wrong.
• I spent a whole day one day in Ko Phangan zipping around the jungle aimlessly on a rented motorbike with the wind in my hair. I now understand why people love biking so much. It’s a strange combination of exhilarating speed and meditative solitude.* Very enjoyable.
• While the infamous Full Moon Party was pretty disappointing, the Half Moon Party a week before was great and probably the best night out I had all summer.
• Getting caught in a storm while taking the water taxi from Ko Phi Phi Lee to Ko Phi Phi Don. Visibility was near zero, the waves were taller than the boat was long and we were rocking from side to side like the earth was quaking… and (once I got over my fear of imminent death) it was one of the most breathtaking, adrenaline-soaked and memorable experiences I’ve ever had. I have never felt so alive.
• Jungle trekking in Khao Sok national forest. Stunning scenery and a nice way to relax after some heavy partying on the islands; the only downside was having to stop every ten metres to pull leeches off my feet.

When all’s said and done, Southeast Asia is a great part of the world really. I’ll definitely be visiting it again. Maybe even soon. Ahem.

Music

This is getting ridiculous.

I told myself last January that 2012 would be the year I finally made something of music; that I’d record some songs, get better at singing, play some gigs, put a band together and do all the other things I’ve been telling myself for years and years and years that I’m going to do but somehow never make any progress on. Now, a year later, I still have very little to show for all my talk.

What I did do:

• Play and practice guitar shitloads, just like in any other year. There’s barely been a day in the last ten years that I haven’t picked up a guitar; that’s not likely to change anytime soon. .
• Get a couple of guitar videos up. More to come.
• Round about April/May I tried to put a band together with one friend on guitar, another on drums and myself on bass. We jammed a fair few times and, if I may say so myself, were sounding pretty good, then it all fell apart due to the other member’s existing commitments and lack of time. I was pretty disappointed by this as I really liked the music we’d been making and felt like we were heading somewhere. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. What’s sad is that I’ve been playing guitar for nearly ten years and this is the closest I’ve ever come to actually being in a proper band.
• Fully finished one more song and got another three or four to the “almost done, just need a few details finalised” stage. This brings my total count to maybe six or seven songs I’ve written, most of which are unrecorded have never been heard by anyone other than me.
• Made a couple of hundred pounds giving guitar lessons. I can’t see myself doing this as a full-time job but the extra income is always nice and I do enjoy teaching.

So I didn’t do nothing with music, but it’s still less than I could have done. I don’t know why I never get around to doing all the things with music that I say I want to do. It’s not like I haven’t had enough time. I just haven’t been making it enough of a priority. Maybe I’m scared of failure, maybe I’m scared of success. Maybe I just don’t want it enough.

I don’t even know what my musical goals are for year 23. There are some major non-musical things I want to accomplish this year that are going to have to take higher priority. Whatever the case, I’ll still be playing guitar every day and slowly but surely writing some songs that I’m happy with and proud of. We’ll see how it goes.

Books

One new year’s resolution that I did manage to keep was to read loads of books. I told myself I’d read at least 50, which is probably pretty close to what I read in the average year anyway, but this time I wanted to keep count for curiosity’s sake. As it turned out, I’ve read over 60 books in all, plus 5 to 10 that I started but didn’t finish. Almost all of them were great reads that I gained a lot from, and a few were utterly mind-blowing. I look forward to the person I’ll be in a year’s time with another 50+ books’ worth of insights in my head.

Here are some of the best books I read this year, in very rough order of when I read them. Every one of these has changed my life for the better:

• The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg. (twice)
• You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier.
• The A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin. (twice)
• The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain.
• Virtually You by Elias Aboujaoude.
• The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley.
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca.
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers.
• Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.
• Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
• Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday.
• The Charge by Brendan Burchard.
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. (reread it)
• Linchpin by Seth Godin.
• The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith.
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• In Defence Of Food by Michael Pollan.
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. (read my review here)
• The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene.
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
• The Game by Neil Strauss. (reread it)
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (reread it)

On a related note, I got a Kindle for Christmas 2011, and god do I love this thing. I don’t know how I ever managed without one. The future truly is here.

Facebook

Facebook is the new masturbation. Everyone does it far more than they’ll admit, and everyone judges other people for doing it too much. I’d thought about quitting Facebook for a long time, because, well, doesn’t everyone hate Facebook? It’s a moronic, soul-sucking time-sink, full of idiots, posers, 200-photo albums of the same few people standing around in the same few clubs, “I love my boyfriend so much” status updates and endless uninteresting posts about X-Factor and football. We all know this, yet we tell ourselves we “can’t do without it”, so we grin and bear it and pretend we spend less time on the site than we actually do. A few days before my 21st birthday, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and permanently deleted my account.

… Aaaaand rejoined again after 3 months when I realised that a bunch of groups and societies I was involved with use Facebook as their sole means of communicating with their members and I couldn’t go without. I signed up with a fake name and picture and didn’t add a single person, and used FB only to check on those groups.

Then, round about September, over 9 months after taking the plunge, I gave in completely, changed my name and profile picture to my real ones and added about thirty people I know.

Yeah, so I guess I can’t do without Facebook either. It does come in handy every now and then, such as for organising events, and sometimes it’s the only way I have of contacting someone I need to contact. Such is the cost of living these days.

Still, those 9 Facebook-free months were glorious. It was astonishing just how little impact my lack of a profile had on my life – not to mention how refreshing it was.

The most important thing I gained from my Facebook fast was perspective. When you spend every day on the site, it’s easy to lose sight of just how much it screws with your head. Having taken a step back I can now see very clearly just how unhealthy Facebook is.

I’ve actually tried writing a longer post about this because I feel like I could write a LOT on this topic, but the words just wouldn’t come to me. That can wait for another day. What I’ll say for now is this: social networking is not socialising. It just feels like socialising, and that’s the danger.

Our generation is spending less and less time going outside and talking face-to-face, and I don’t like the implications. Facebook emphasises quantity over quantity, appearance over introspection and shallow, trivial bullshit over honest, meaningful relationships. I can’t imagine the damage that’s been done to kids a few years younger who grow up with Facebook throughout their entire childhoods and think that status updates a normal way to communicate.

One thing’s for certain: Facebook the company will never do anything to fix this, as the design choices that lead to healthy behaviour are the exact opposite of the choices that will make them more money. Make no mistake: Facebook is an evil corporation, and their only concern is what will make you spend more time on the site, generate more pageviews and become more and more addicted.

Two books I read this year – You Are Not A Gadget and Virtually You – really shook the way I think about Internet culture and Web 2.0, and shine a much-needed light on the dark side of technology that no-one ever wants to talk about. I highly, highly recommend them both, especially You Are Not A Gadget. The Internet is a wonderful thing, and has enormous power to change the world for the better, but it also has the power to do a lot of harm.  So far in tech circles there’s been nothing but unquestioning praising for the former; it’s time we stopped pretending the latter doesn’t exist.

Before I finish, I should confess – as much as I don’t want to, but someone will call me out  if I don’t – that for a long time I was the worst kind of Facebook user, the one you probably hid from your News Feed long ago, posting incessant pointless status updates every single day about the minutiae of my life and spamming your inbox with invites to all kinds of stupid apps. It causes me physical pain to think about how much time and energy I used to waste on the site and what an idiot I was. To the 600+ “friends” (a word that has become severely devalued) I had on my old account, I’m so, so sorry.

And to all the people who I’ve only met once, barely know or haven’t spoken to since we left school 4 years ago, stop trying to add me. I am not your friend.

In summary…

If I had to describe the last year in one word, I’d choose mixed. There have been days when I’ve felt happier than I ever remember feeling, and days when I felt so downtrodden and shitty I could hardly get out of bed. Still though, the overall trajectory of my life keeps pointing upwards, and I’m pretty happy with the amount of progress I’ve made in the last 12 months. I’m not where I want to be yet, but another few years like 2012 and I should be close.

As for 2013, I have big plans. I have a very big announcement coming soon (although most people who know me personally already know it anyway), and some clearly-defined goals I want to achieve and habits I want to install. I would write about them here, but that would make me less likely to achieve them. All I need to do now is just put the work in.

*My mum will be horrified to hear that I rode a motorcycle. Wait until she finds out I crashed it drunk. Oh, and I got a tattoo. Happy new year!

I’m on the committee of a student society this year, and earlier this month I helped organise one of our events. I just put a write-up of the whole thing over on their blog – read it here.