The vent of a hyperactive mind.

If you think the Star Wars franchise is a story of good vs evil set in space with cool coloured laser swords, aliens and space ships, while technically you might be correct you are missing about 90% of the franchises charm. The film has much more to do with mental health and self actualisation than most people, besides fans, understand. When I first saw Star Wars I was 5 or 6, it was in London which, for a Chester lad, was special in itself, I didn't get to see it again until the advent of VHS, and it was every bit as special the second time as it was the first. However it wasn't until my late teens and early twenties that I started to understand and unravel the subtlety of the initial trilogy which has had the same message through the later prequels at the turn of the millennium, to the final three more recent films. Whilst at it's core, the premise of the movies hinges around the light side and the dark side or good vs evil, the juxtaposition of these two extremes is...

Over the last few months I've really tamed my social media usage by managing my technology better. In fact I really wasn't sure where to post this, I have a blog that I find therapeutic for my mental health musings and one for technology related stuff, for the work that I do, and this is an overlap where tech is causing unnecessary anxiety because of my social media links. But ultimately the following actions have had the most positive impact on my well being so it's here it belongs (I think - let me know if you disagree). My days of being glued to to my phone or 'owned' and 'obedient to it's notifications and feeds are behind me and I won't ever look back. So what were the issues and how did I overcome them? A year or so back, my life had turned into a series of potential status updates. I was very active on Facebook and Twitter and on one of these platforms, I still am, but I am definitely not it's slave. I'd also started using Trello with ...

The first time I visited a beach, so I'm told, I was a baby and I hated it. The feeling of the sand on my hands caused huge discomfort. I cried. It wasn't the way 'land' was supposed to feel. In my 30's my good boss told me to stop catastrophising. I would use this technique to keep my team in check. I'd take things they'd do out of context and ask them to image the question in a disciplinary, technically making mountains out of molehills, without the mountain. A subtle reminder to behave, and it was effective. The same boss also told me that I have a tendency to make things, black and white; good or bad and that the world is actually 95% grey; uncertain. I don't do brilliantly with sarcasm. Which is ironic, although I am trying my hardest to be less. In High School, my (shit*) Chemistry teacher joked that I only needed to turn up for one of the GCSE exams. So I did. I still managed to get a D, but I should have been at both. (*he probably wasn...