You know this situation where you exactly know what you have to do to achieve a certain goal you have in mind. Finish a task that has to be done to be prepared for the next step.

You know all this things that let you procrastinate the things that have to be done to get it all done. You also know these pep talks that are supposed let you take action. Most of the time you forget about it right after that and start procrastinating again.

Less is more. This week I read this one sentence that says more than most pep talks do. That starts your ignition with three simple words:

BETTER GET BUSY!

Before you read any further first take a look at this brief scene with Morgan Freeman from The Shawshank Redemption.

This scene was the first thing that came up into my mind when I thought about the fact that the person you once was…

…isn’t here anymore.

Wasn’t there.

Did not exist.

It wasn’t YOU!

Though it doesn’t really matter how old you are it’s more imaginable for those of you who can look back at a time range of at least 10 years.

You don’t have to believe in any religion to describe what makes you tick as a ghost, soul, mind or whatever. I prefer to call it soul in this case.

Think about an event that took place years ago. Something from your childhood, your college days or labor days that are long gone. A fact is that the physical person you are today did not experience this event. Your whole body is regenerating over and over again. The saying goes that a total regenerating takes something about 7 years. You see, not even one of your hairs did exist the time when the even took place you just decided to remember. The persons who where involved in that event don’t exist in the same physical way anymore either.

That’s not all. Also your soul had undergo some changes. Depending on your personal development you now recognize that today you have a total different mind set. In the ideal case you  grown out of patterns that you, while thinking back on your wild times, today find totally ridiculous.

Personally I think that it’s worth thinking about and it can make things easier today. And I think it’s a kind of proof of the existence of what we call a soul or however we feel comfortable to call it. The ex-lover you remember doesn’t exist anymore, although you met her again on facebook. The boss YOU didn’t like back then doesn’t exist anymore. The earlier YOU doesn’t exist anymore.

It wasn’t your TODAY’S YOU! Continue the universe is in motion and so are you.

It’s 20 years ago already. Time flies. I was studying economics in Cologne when the wall was falling. This is the first thing that comes up in my mind when I think back on the events. Me and my study buddies where wondering about how bad a country had to be if people flew from it like they did in those days.

Though most of us didn’t really care about it the pictures we saw on the news journals where quite moving. This is all I can say about the fall of the wall. Maybe I would have been more emotional involved if I’ve had family or friends behind the iron curtain.

It works in Europe since decades, though it is reformed over and over again. I don’t really understand the fear of some people. This really has nothing to do with socialism.

This one comes right out of my bathroom. My beard is growing fast and strong and I know that I’m not the only one who suffers from this. Right, I know, when we were boys we wished to have this kind of beard grew because it would made us more mature, but when if finally came we suddenly noticed that shaving can be annoying and it does not always fit in our scheduler either.

I didn’t find a proper solution on this time issue, but I found a way to save on the blades and still have the advantage of the (in my opinion) cutting edge (literally) razorblades.

There are two things that let me postpone shaving regularly:

1. It often feels like a waste of time.
2. If I shave me every day my skin gets irritated.

As said I don’t have a solution for the time issue. The way I shave me is a little more time consuming as I shave my face twice. The first time with the direction of the hair grew and then in the opposite direction, to make sure that every hair gets its proper cut. I don’t know if you say this that way in English (you don’t say it in Dutch) but I thought this sounds fancy.

I use Gilette Fusin Power though I think the whole battery thing is unnecessary. Anyway, I like the smooth result. My face feels like (as we say in Holland. Or was it in Germany?) the ass of a baby and my skin doesn’t gets irritated.

But let’s face it, this brand razors are not cheap. Still we want the result that they bring us.

I think we agree that shaving with razor blades gives a much better result than shaving with an electrical shaving system. It always was and it’ll ever be. No question about that. No matter what the commercials on TV tell us. We have the proof in the field, or better in our bathrooms.

A couple of years ago I got a electrical shaving system as a Christmas gift. I was very pleased because I thought it would irritate my skin less than the razors. It also had the benefit that I wouldn’t have to buy the blades anymore. If you compare the prices you will see that the pricing of a electrical shaving system is the same as 2 to 3 boxes of shaving blades. So you would save a lot on the long run.

It didn’t took long to go back to the blades because of two reasons:

1. It was more time consuming to get a result that was acceptable.
2. The skin irritation was the same by daily use.

Last week I found that the best way to cut the cost of the blades in half without irritating my skin too much was to get the electrical shaving system out of its hiding place somewhere behind the towels in my closet, doing the first run with it and then shaving opposite the grew direction of my facial hair with the razors. Isn’t this easy?

Still I am too lazy to shave me every day.

If you read my article When I grow up you know that one of my passions is drawing. In my opinion one of the most intriguing styles of drawing is to draw Manga.

The problem with Manga as I learned is the first thought. Just drawing some big eyes, a small nose and a pointy chin isn’t enough.

I have a stack of these How To Draw Manga Books on my bookshelf. They are good but in a certain way they miss something. Half of the content is on drawing materials like different pencils, pens and inks. This is not what I was looking for.

There are also a lot of tutorials out there on the net. Often they end with a result that only proofs that the artist himself didn’t had that much practice himself. I don’t write this to offend anybody but I think some of you will agree that the end results of some of the videos lack something. The WOW-effect. the Cutting Edge. Sometimes they are out of balance, though it’s hard to describe what went wrong.

Until now one of the best free tutorials on-line are these from artist Mark Crilley, the creative guy behind the Miki Falls series. On his Youtube channel he demonstrates (often) line by line how he is drawing and most important he explains why he is drawing it the way he does.

Mark has published a lot of comics/graphic novels and I think he would be the right person to publish a book on How To Draw or publishing DVD’s or something. I guess he don’t has the time to do something like that at the moment as he works hard on a new project that will be published next year. But I keep my fingers crossed for those who want to learn from a pro.

I’ve embedded this short video as an example. If you want to see and learn more I recommend to subscribe on his Youtube channel. Mark already has more than 100.000 subscribers what takes away the time limit in video length.

Enjoy and support Mark by buying and reading his Miki Falls series.

Somebody once said to me: “If you want to be happy for a couple of years get married. If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, love your work.”

I want to replace the word work in this statement with “love what you are doing.”

Today I learned that if I want to meet one of the happiest people in the world I have to go to

Galco’s Soda Pop Stop
5702 York Boulevard,
Los Angeles, California 90042

and meet John Nese.

Take the 12 minutes to watch the video and you know why:

I am the kind of guy who pulls on a door when the sign says “push” and vice versa. I’m not sure why I’m doing this. Don’t I trust the person that placed the sign on the door? I don’t think so but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does this.

Another thing is my urge to be on time when I have an appointment. This leads to another contradiction. When I have to be at a place and it’s the first time I’m going there I will be far too early. One of the main reasons is that you can make your first impression just once. Being late will never make a good impression.

Although this urge for being on time I develop a certain nonchalance once I’m used to go to the same place over and over again. I still stand up early enough to have a huge amount of time to make me on my way. But in some weird way I then manage to surf the Internet and enjoy all other kind of distractions. The result is regularly that I lose my time buffer and I have to hurry in order to be on time. It’s always then that the car in front of me is driving much too slow a.s.o.

Sounds familiar?

Finally Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi performance at the VMA’s is on the tube: