Just pleasantly floundering around.....

A present I gave to one of my loveliest friends: Caroline when she got married. I basically painted six tea towels with six different artists' impression of Caroline and Joe - had they painted them. I did this one: Klimt and Miro, Munch, Van Gough, Kandinsky and another I cannot remember.

I am still making top trump cards and scattering them here and there. I also hand them to people so that they can use them as a form of identifucation (sp). There are now well over three hundred to collect. My sister says it's just attention seeking behaviour. I agree.

I breezed through a book shop the other day and glanced at a book called, ‘This book does not exist’ which described itself as taking you on adventures in the paradoxical. It entertained my nerdy department briefly and had I had more than a bike pump, a bottle of water and a daft look with me I might have bought it. Anyway the paradoxes I remember enough to regurgitate are as follows. ( Is it really a) Paradox? 1 A hang man says to his ‘client’ I am going to give you a surprise hanging some time during the next working week. I will hang you on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday but I won’t tell you the day because it needs to be a surprise. The hangee replied, 'well if you have not done it by Thursday midnight, I will know it’s going to be on the Friday so that won’t be a surprise. So you can’t do it on Friday. By the same reckoning, if you haven’t done it by Wednesday Midnight then I will know it is going to be on Thursday so that would not be a surprise,' and so o...

So we are in chaos generally - as a type of lifestyle. Full stop. We are happily resigned to that - especially as we are not sure if we created it or it found us - so embroiled as we are. We couldn't shake it off even if we wanted to. But of course we have just moved house and consequently the randomly constructed 'to do' list is even bigger than usual. So being the ever helpful person I am, I lightened the weighted list burden with my prevalent practical and supportive approach and chose, 'make alien flowers' as the most pressing priority in the in tray. My family are just so lucky to have me. (Irony)

A few months ago my sister declared flippantly that she was 'one of those maximisers, maximosers or something' and couldn't remember the name of the 'other type.' Well being a fan of any tool that helps you gain some insight about yourself, off I went to investigate. It appears to have originated in marketing and a book called, 'The Paradox of Choice' that argues that no choice is rarely good, some choice is OK but too much choice can cripple us - especially 'maximisers'. You see maximisers are those that have to research, ponder and research some more before they can make a purchase. Give them lots of choice and a lot more pondering is necessary. What's more, a maximiser can buy something and then be agitated if a new, and possibly better, product comes out. Sufficers on the other hand are happy with 'good enough' and the 'what might have been' doesn't trouble them. That's me. Looking at a holiday I once took with my sist...

I read another (better) book about neuro-linguistic-programming (NLP) recently and learned enough about it to conclude it's a pretty powerful thing. What’s more, it appears to have the potential to impact beneficially pretty instantly. Now obviously you could go and read a book about it yourselves if it interested you so there's no point in me regurgitating it all so I will do my usual and outline the main messages I took with me. I will also add, I have yet to complete the book...... NLP has several main foundation philosophies that it's based on - one of which is, if one person can do something then it is possible for anyone to do it (with the right effort dedicated to whatever it is). I like that. It reduces the self-limiting beliefs we all hold that can stop us from trying things. It also has a premise that if you look far enough into every action a person takes; there is always an underlying good intention – even if it’s a little misguided. I like that too as I have a...