This Isn't The Place

In the Introduction series so far there has been a discussion on what this site aims to be and who I am as a person. This post is to set out a plan for the near- and far-future. One trap so easy to fall into is the thought that the future's clear. Unfortunately it's rare that events unfurl in such a straightforward manner. As is often the case, life finds a way and before you know it you're wearing shoes on your hands and a hat on your anus. No plan survives contact with reality, but to avoid the planning process because of this is foolish: it is better you have 80% at completion than leave 100% to chance. Here, I lay out tentative plans for the future, which have been broken down into the immediate and long-term distances.


It is wise to make a distinction between the two. Doing so means a plan can exist that lays out the foundations to build from. On the other hand, having a goal to work toward creates the conditions for (hopefully) new and interesting thoughts to be gen…

Earnest Shackleton once said that "it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown". This I believe to be true. There is an innate desire in all of us to understand the incomprehensible and know the unfathomable. It exists in the infant reaching out toward a world of possibilities, a teenager toward the secrets of adults, and in the elderly toward that which is still to be done. At the age of 78 (nearly 79!), my Grandpa still tends to his garden. I'll be damned if a season goes by where he doesn't tell me about a new thing that he has learned, something different to normal happening, or of  new flower arrangements blooming. The problem, if there is one, is that the act of discovery in all of us is increasingly becoming a feat of mind removed from matter.



Picture this, it is an ungodly hour in the Black Mountains. The temperature has been clocked at minus 26 (centigrade, you heathens) when windchill is factored in. After one questionable turn you find you…