The Orchard of Ideas

I'd completely forgot about this today. I've had a nice peaceful day of reading and watching football, intersected only by a brief walk in the summer sunshine to the supermarket. I only remembered I needed to do this about an hour ago, so I'm now sat here after midnight typing. I'm feeling tired, so I'm a little worried I'm going to miss the window of sleep and end up awake with heavy eyes 'til the early hours. I'm determined to post something though as I really feel sticking to the habit is worthwhile.

I started posting daily [on my days off work that is - I'm not that determined] about a month ago and I now have fifteen blog entries to show for it. I really believe that if you show a little self-discipline and just keep doing something things soon build up, even if oftentimes you don't really do that much, or don't have a clear notion of what you want to do. Just making the effort gets the wheels moving.

Sometimes you have nothing to write and nothing comes. You just end up with a paragraph, but still it's something - a little entry in the journal that can be used for reference. Other times you have nothing, but it quickly spouts into a waterfall of other things. A good example being now as I reach the third paragraph from a position of no idea whatsoever.

Some blog posts end up being better than others, most will be average or largely unimportant on their own, but if you don't make the effort you don't get anything. So now, thanks to doing something, I have a little journal that I can refer back to, plus one or two posts that are essentially articles that I would never have written had I not started this endeavour.

It occurs to me that I started in reference to the Tory leadership race, but it's quickly wandered from that. Though that and the wider politics is always in the background. In fact, this summer in the UK has actually been fairly normal all things considered. Old normal normal. It hasn't been too bad at all as far as everyday life has went. So I should pause and show a bit of thanksgiving.

Before I started this post I briefly visited Twitter and a tweet from a US media outlet popped up stating that England was experiencing a drought and apple farmers were fearing for their harvests. It couldn't seem further from my reality. Though I'm sure there are no doubt some problems caused by the warm weather. It was likewise similar yesterday evening as I caught the news and saw hysteria about water levels and lack of rain. It just seemed mad and out of touch with reality. There was also a part where the chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was being interviewed about the 'cost of living' crisis and the interviewer was basically screaming at him asking him what he was going to do about it. Literally yelling animatedly. Again, it just looked like something from a parallel universe where everyone has lost their mind.

(It must just be down south)

The media are now incapable of calm and poise it seems, and are branching off from basic everyday life.

(I think that should do for tonight - again, it's amazing how easy things are once you start.

N.B.

Oh, and finally, there's a little note I wanted to make. When I visited the supermarket I bought a copy of Fortean Times. I haven't read this magazine in a long while, so it was enjoyable reading it again after a long hiatus. Anyway, in the Classical Corner section it's noted that:

"In Plato's Apology, Socrates mentioned you could buy a copy of Anaxagoras's only published book for one drachma [..]"

The idea that people were buying books in ancient Greece caught my attention, so I need to look into this. (This is another benefit of posting regularly, it's a good way of making notes and keeping track of things).