11 Jul

The 30s Big Screw Up

Written by UrbanVox 7 Comments

I don’t really remember how we hit the subject of mid-life crisis, but we were chatting about it the other day. Apparently, according to Kay, the time-line for the event that comes to every man alive is completely wrong.

“Every man screws up big time in one way or another when they reach the age of 30 not when he buys a sports car or finds a girlfriend half his age at 50! Mid life crisis actually hits at 30″

She then went on to tell me how every men in her life did something really stupid when he became 30 and how many of her Mummy Friends partners did just the same… She even decided on a criteria for new possible partners after her divorce: they would need to be over 30 (PS: Her ex screwed up big time at 30 too).

The concept actually made me think… and I am not affirming it as an absolute here, but loads of over-thirty guys I know did take VERY silly approaches to one thing or another in life that resulted in massive change in lifestyle… Sometimes the things are good… Others were just a massive screw-up…

Her theory does make a whole lot of sense to me in special because it hit home quite hard. I took some VERY bad decisions when I upgraded the MAN software to version 3.0.

At the time the choices made a lot of sense… I thought I needed to think about me for a change… I thought I needed change to make life worth living… It didn’t cross my mind that the changes I needed doing were minor and and not as radical as they were. Didn’t cross my mind that would probably be best to fix little things than Starting Over at 30.

I have made mistakes just like my dad before me… at the age of 30…

Do I regret some of them? Yeah… I do… big time… but if there is one thing I have learned with all of that is that we need to live with the choices we make, and we need to make the best out of every situation we live.

The biggest example is a little miracle arriving in 11 days as consequence from one of the decisions I took. A little miracle that I have loved from day one and that I am VERY anxious to meet on the 25th of July.

Through this same mistake I now have some very awesome people in my life I would probably have bever had the chance to get to know any better or meet in person if I had gone any other way. I would have never discovered some VERY fundamental things about myself either…

If I could write a letter to 20 year old me it would not be to warn me of all the things that would be coming my way on the next 10 years or so (mainly because I know I’d probably ignore the letter and do it my way… with very few changes that is)… It would be to tell myself to follow my heart… but at the same way to never abandon reason. It would be to say enjoy life as much as you can, specially the little things… little things ROCK!!

OK… maybe there is one thing I would warn myself about…. with capital letters and all: LISTEN TO LIVI YOU MORRON… Apparently she is always right…(like the plug hun??? )

I know I am being repetitive here, but I will say it once again, just in case it got passed undetected by you in earlier posts. The only thing we can be certain of in life is change. sometimes it comes in small bouts, easy to deal with. Other times they overwhelm us and force us to make changes in our very core to be able to survive more or less intact.

I am sure I can call what happened to me last year a crisis… one that I am only emerging from very recently… A midlife one? That I don’t know… there are a few things missing… for example: Why on earth am I not driving a fast/expensive sports car?????

Now that I have presented my case I have a quick question for you: Do you think middle age should be officially moved to 30 instead of 50s?

08 Jun

A Clean Slate…

Written by UrbanVox 6 Comments

Do you ever imagine how it would be to drop from the face of the earth and move somewhere you don’t know anyone and start again from zero? Leave behind everyone and everything you know and find yourself with what appears to be a blanch page… ready for you to write your own story, however you want to do it.

I dropped that question on twitter a couple of times… I was actually surprised about home many people think that more often than not…

I’ve actually done it…

I left a successful career, a stable life, a relationship that had prospects to be great, my friends and family behind, hopped into a plane and did it…

That was 8 years ago.

And you know what… sometimes I wish I had enjoyed the opportunity more… Had fun, travelled, worked only to keep me going and to my next stop… I wanted to put a rucksack in my back and disappear in the world… I was planning to send post cards from here and there to important people in my life… And that is all…

Only problem is life got on the way… I met a girl, fell in love and the rest you know… and if you don’t you can find it in this blog.

That was my plan out of the window…

Breathe… Laugh… Now Keep Going!!!

Written by UrbanVox 2 Comments

I had a laugh at myself this morning… It was damn good to be honest!!!! I hadn’t done that in FAR TOO LONG!

I’ve been going through a lot for the past few months and have have had WAY too many ups and downs… And one doesn’t have to be a genius to know what’s going on in my life at this precise moment so I won’t comment on it… The fact is that I haven’t had a chance to stop and look at myself and laugh…

If you know me for some time the you know that I’m not the sort of guy that keeps mopping for too long about things that come and go. I tend to be logic about them… analise positive and negative aspects, compartmentalize make decisions and get on with life. That is me… The guy that always thought that feeling depressed and down was a waste of time… the one that always squeezed as much as possible from life because, well… we only live once…

Yeah… I haven’t done that much lately…

But today I looked at myself on the mirror and had a good laugh… And that felt GREAT!

And if it takes me one day at the dime to learn to do that again… well so be it!!

If you allow me to give you ONE tip about life is this one: Don’t take yourself too seriously… And for goodness sake… don’t take LIFE to seriously…

How about you?? when was the last time you took a good laugh at yourself?

Light up the darkness!

29 May

Inspiration

Written by UrbanVox 0 Comments

We find inspiration in the most unexpected places… But if you are reading tis blog you probably already know that.

Today I found mine waking the kentish tracks and fields and hills and talking about building databases and corporate politics with my step-dad.

We went out for an afternoon stroll (in his terms… in my terms aI call a 5mi walk up and down the hills through little paths that you can’t always see a bloody hike… am I right??? )

One way or another it was a great walk. It gave me time and the inspiration to clear up some ideas I had for Action Stations… And get an outsider’s view about some plans I’ve head turning in my head for quite a while… Things that might veer the direction of the company to a whole new way…

It cleared up some stuff I had in my mind on a personal level too…

Incredible what a walk in the fresh air can do to you… I need to remember to do that more often… Breathe…

Life Mobile

Written by UrbanVox 0 Comments

Funny things mobile phones are nowadays…

Me and Lush were talking on Monday about little comforts that we thing we need to be able to live and how it only takes moving houses to notice how we don’t REALLY need everything we owe.

In her case it took having her whole house packed away in storage… and then have it back in the lounge inside boxes to realise that actually… she didn;t need all of that stuff, and didn’t feel attached to any of it…

To me it took only a car full of things… The rest was left behind in various places…

Now you see… I am crazy about gadgets… Maplin is my idea of paradise… but I kinda came to realise that REALLY…. there are only 2 items in my inventory that I simply couldn’t live without it nowadays.

One of them is my MacBook… It is my office wherever I am… But even then it’s only because I there are a few things that I can’t just do on my iPhone.