Today I will be moving into an apartment in central Granada that insists on Spanish being spoken as the common language. None of the current residents are Spanish themselves, and as far as I’m aware most can speak English to a very good level.
During the viewing Will and I were perplexed by their hesitance to speak English with us. Will has thankfully come a long way since he first moved to Spain in September and was able to handle all the questions for me (seriously, all of them).
After viewing a couple of other places, including being shown around an apartment by Hagrid’s Brazilian doppelgänger (It came as no shock to either of us when he casually mentioned he sometimes lives up in the mountains), we arrived back at at my soon-to-be new home for a nice cup of tea and a sit down with my new housemates.
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Relax. Those five letters are possibly five of the most important, yet ignored, in an entrepreneurs life.
Relaxing isn’t hip. Relaxing doesn’t get things done. How are you supposed to Do The Work when you give yourself time off to relax?
I’m pretty guilty of this. I’ve barraged through hours and hours of work, week on week, and sure; I got the work done. But at what cost?
The health and lifestyle of entrepreneurs intrigues me. Mostly because, there is little consistency. Time and time again the most successful of entrepreneurs and business leaders will try to push home the importance of rest and relaxation as a small tidbit towards why they have been so successful, but each and every time we choose to ignore this advice in favour of ploughing through another twelve hours.
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Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. — Seth Godin
I’m going to be 100% honest with you. This is the fourth time I’ve tried to write this post. I’ve been sat in front of this screen for over four hours typing and backspacing for England.
All weekend I’ve been saying goodbye to friends, friends of friends, and the odd stranger here and there. Almost without exception every single one has asked if I’m nervous.
“No, not really”, I said, each and every time. And it’s true. I’m not nervous…
I’m anxious. I’m anxious as hell.
Tomorrow I move to Spain, and however irrational I know this anxiety is, however much I truly believe in the above quote, however much I know this experience will seem like second nature to me in a couple of months time, I can’t quit feeling this way.
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This post is 2,000 words long, about 8-9 times the length of anything else I’ve written in the past six months.
Inspired by Corbett Barr (and used with permission, the nice man that he is), in this post I intend to show you who I really am. If you know me in person, it’s likely you will already have a fair take on most of these, however if you’ve been reading my work for some time but we’ve never met, I’ve no doubt the majority of these will be new to you.
I’ve been honest to the extent that some of the below points don’t frame me in an entirely favourable light. I hope you can forgive me and move on.
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Thank you all for the overwhelming response to my last post. I like you all, a lot (and couldn’t possibly pick a favourite).
For those who have been following along for a while, you may be wondering what happened to my NYC plan. Fear not, ladies of New York. I’ll be fumbling my words and spilling drinks over you in no time.
Moving to Spain crept into my head a couple of months ago. I realised I needed to get moving. I had remained static for far too long. I knew financing myself fully online would be a lot easier if I lived in a cheaper part of the world. NYC is one of the most expensive cities on earth, and what with the cost of transatlantic flights to take into consideration I knew it would be months before I could even consider leaving the UK.
After announcing my loose Spanish plan to friends, Caroline Leon whom I’d met six months earlier, introduced me to Will Peach.
Will had moved to Cáceres, Spain in September after tiring of the relentless London back and forth. Having read up on each other we met in December when he arrived back in London for the Christmas holiday.
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Six years ago I was sat up one night terrified out of my mind about going to University.
It was the night before (or rather, the morning of) my departure, a one hundred mile journey east to a small sleepy business campus just north-west of London.
The night before I’d been out for one final farewell with friends in a nearby city (a rare occurrence, due to the lengthy distances between anything in the countryside, and our learned love of drinking at home).
I can picture myself laying in bed looking up at my moon and stars curtains wondering why things had to change.
It’s silly really. Everybody was in the same situation, not just my friends, but a large portion of eighteen year olds’ (and above) across the country would have been embarking on the exact same journey the following day, albeit in slightly different directions, criss-crossing each other on the motorway in cars filled to the brim with guitars, posters of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and pretension.
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Does it every occur to you how remarkable the moon is?
As I sit here typing this, I am sat in the lounge of my London house at 5am, looking up at the huge white glowing sphere above me. I have the light on in the room, but no doubt I could function perfectly well without it.
The moon is reflecting light, from the sun (which I can’t even see right now) and it can currently be seen by approximately half the population of Earth?
And the other half of Earth can see the sun, which is somehow managing to influence the Earth as a whole despite not being seen by 50% of it.
I was obsessed with Space as a kid. I knew everything about everything. Saturn was my favourite planet, but I always held an area in my thoughts for Neptune, arguably the closest relating planet to our Moon.
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Following my last post some readers asked how I achieved self worth. It’s a fair question, but the answer is more complex than can be written down in a few sentences.
Instead I’ll tell you one of the core moments that helped define my work, my creativity, and my overall standing in the universe (stick with me, it’s a whole lot less wacky than it sounds).
The 4-Hour Work Week is a great book. Nowadays it’s fair to say some (but not all) of the practical points within the book are somewhat outdated due to the fast-paced nature of the Internet. The theory behind it all, however, is still there.
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A couple of months back I was walking through Leicester Square late on a Saturday night, dodging promoters and pickpockets at every turn, when a couple of girls (19-20 years old) came up to me.
“Excuse me”, one said, staring into my eyes, so inebriated I could have filled a shot glass with her vodka sweat.
“No, it’s okay”, she said, dismissing me and walking away with her friend, laughing.
A year or two ago this would have crushed me. I would have wondered what I’d done wrong for weeks. Regardless of her intentions (had she continued with her fascination I would not have gone along with it), I would have gone over the events in my head, trying to figure out what I could have possibly done wrong.
Luckily nowadays I have self worth on my side! It may not sound like much, but self-worth is ultra-powerful. It will not give you the ability to fly, and as far as I’ve seen their is no invisibility shield attached, but self-worth doesn’t go in for those gimmicks.
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “Obvious to you, amazing to others” concept Derek Sivers talks about in this video.
A friend of mine bought this up last week while he was discussing his current dalliances in Spain. To him (and to me), it seemed obvious that he would move over there, swapping the hectic London lifestyle for a more laid back, siesta driven pace that, despite his vegetarianism, takes in tapas and sunshine, rather than mushy peas and spitting rain.
But not everybody thinks this way. What we think is obvious, others find to be amazing.
This works both in a positive and negative regard.
Some, when you tell them your big ideas, are amazed that you could be planning something so exciting. They congratulate you on doing what you want to do, and they truly, and honestly, wish you well and ask for you to share every detail with them along the way.
Others, are not so excited for you. They immediately look at you like you’ve said the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard. They start to reel off some out of date material about how you should be realistic and why what you’re doing will never work (even if it already is).
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