Unless you’re an Olympics historian or a high jump aficionado, you’ve probably never heard of Dick Fosbury. I certainly hadn’t, until a few days ago when I chanced upon the interesting story of a teenage, American high jumper who struggled to scale the required height needed to qualify for his high school track meets. A common technique at the time, known as the straddle method, required athletes to adopt a position where they had their…
Last week I wrote about how receiving the author copies of my new book in the mail filled me with mixed emotions. There was joy and excitement as I held the book in my hands for the first time, but also fear and uncertainty as I cast my mind forward to what would happen after the release date. I’ve had more of the same feelings this week, except, it’s all starting to feel even more…
The first set of author copies for my new book arrived in the post a few days ago, and my wife captured the moment I opened the package on video. I watched the playback sometime after, and I saw myself trembling as I removed the fastening tape. I saw the moment I held the book in my hands, how I ran my fingers over the smooth, glossy cover, how I sniffed the spine, inhaling that…
Let’s assume that, for whatever reason, you sign up to run a marathon. Race day arrives, you find yourself at the starting point, and as the cue goes off, it dawns on you that there are 26.2 miles ahead. As you run, 26 miles turn to 25, and then 24, and so on, so that at some point, if all goes well, you’ll have just 13.1 miles ahead of you. Now you’re officially halfway there.…
Last week I announced that my first book, A Hollade Christmas, will be published next month. In light of this forthcoming release, I’ve spent the last few days reminiscing about the book’s origins and the chance events that set me on the path to having a soon-to-be-published book. The book is about a life-changing adventure undertaken by a little girl called Hollade. It is classed as middle-grade fiction, a subgenre of children’s books, but the…
For the past few months, a lot of construction activity has been going on right next to our building. Every few days, my wife goes to look out the window, and remarks on how much progress the construction workers have made. “My goodness they’ve done loads,” she usually says, followed by the inevitable, “haven’t they?” This happened again a few days ago. After nodding in agreement, I decided to join her by the window. As…
This week I was reminded of an old radio interview with Passenger, one of my favourite musicians. If the name rings a bell, it might be because you’re likely familiar with his 2012 hit, Let Her Go. It is a lovely song, and the one most associated with him, but he talks about how he had no idea it was going to be a hit. That song was on an album he released called All…
Last week I wrote about how an unconventional approach by a film photography professor resulted in a counter-intuitive discovery on the idea of perfection. This week, I’d like to revisit the story with an emphasis on quality and quantity in art and creative exploits. In case you missed last week’s post, I recommend you read it (here) before continuing, but to summarise the moral of the story, a film professor found that when he divided…
A few days ago I listened to a podcast conversation with Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap. In his book, Curran cautions against striving for more at all costs and argues for the “power of good enough”, as the subtitle puts it. As I listened, it reminded me of a story I came across a few years ago. As the story goes, a university professor of film photography announced on the first day of…
If you ask me what my favourite song is that I’ve written, I’ll almost always say it’s the most recent one. Deep down, I know this isn’t necessarily true, but it’s simply a manifestation of the recency bias. Put another way, I tend to think more fondly of my most recent songs compared to older ones. This isn’t unique to me from what I gather, I’ve heard a few explanations and rationalisation for this phenomenon…