I hope you can see the map above. On this new work trip I get to visit quite a few new places. Faroe Islands, Greenland and Newfoundland. I hope I have chance to see and do some interesting things. In Iceland I hope to re-visit that very ashy volcano. Other things I want to achieve:
- Good photos.
- Get some videos of me juggling in amazing places.
- Write a song for June.
- Continue writing my novel.
- Get round to writing blog posts that include the photos I took in Istanbul, Croatia, Montenegro, Venice, St. Tropez, Pisa, Olympia and… um… I think that’s it.
- Record a review of a book I finished TWO WEEKS ago.

I think that’s it.

Breakfast.

Daniel’s Geek Juggling Table.

Neta and Noam preparing for the fashion show.

Frix and Katrin, two of three fashion show organisers.

DJ.

Katrin.

Preparing the bubbly.

DJ and JJ.

Paparazzi.

Ana sorting the music.

Karo and Gonzalo.

Jacob looks Sharpe.

V.I.P.

Press.

JJ and DJ.

Milan.

Anja and Joerg.

DJ.

Neta and Noam.

Jacob.

Guillaume.

Milan and Alan.

Karo and Gonzalo..

Karo and Gonzalo.

Umbrellas.

JJ.

Hannah and the press.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Karo and Neta.

Karo and Neta.

Stefan and Guillaume.

View from the sound desk.

Frix and Ana.

Frix, Katrin, Ana.

Davidone.

Flo and Jochen pose for a combat photo.

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Water melon.

Sven tries cigar boxes.

Sport Hocker.

Sport Hocker.
]]> http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/853/feed 0 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/824 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/824#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 11:11:09 +0000 admin http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/?p=824

Many people are talking about privacy issues on Facebook, and I agree with most of their points. I’m not unhappy with Facebook or any privacy issues, because I’ve always considered everything I do or say or put online to be 100% public immediately. I’ve always used my own name when signing up to any internet service, so whatever I do can alway be tied back to me.

But then again, I don’t have a real job, so have no work colleges or employers to find out about my strange hobbies. Nor do I have children, so I don’t have any worries in that direction.

Anyway, there’s been a lot talk about controlling the privacy of each update, photo or comment someone posts on Facebook. Controlling who can or may or will see that post is impossible, and Facebook switched the default from “Only friends can see this” to “Everyone can see this.” No wonder it is confusing.

There have been various discussions about alternatives to Facebook, including the crowd-funded Diaspora. On TWiT, a pundit talked about controlling who sees what in a hypothetical social website by using ever widening circles of trust. On one extreme there is “everyone” and at the other extreme is “Just my closest friends.” In between would be “other friends”, “work people,” and maybe “stranger I met in a bar, made my friend, but can’t work out how to unfired them.”

While this is a simple idea, I think it is slightly too simple to be useful. What I’d like to see is “Social Venn.”

The idea is that each time you click a “Submit” or “Post” button, a window opens with a colorful Venn Diagram. Who can see the post depends on where you click the diagram.

The above image is what my Social Venn would look like based on the groups I put my contacts into on Facebook. To be clear, those not in the Friends segment aren’t people who I don’t consider friends, but if I wanted to send out a message about something personal, I’m not sure if the listeners to my podcast are the right target.

So, you see this diagram, and click the parts of the graph who you want to see what post. Not just one part, but two or three or four parts.

Alternatively, you can “Select All” and then (maybe) right click to pick which sections of your Social Venn will not, nor ever, see what you post. A post might go to all of your closest friends, but even if one of your work colleges is your closest friend, if you say “Not for work people” they’ll never see that post, even if it goes to all your other friends and they are discussing it among themselves like mad.

That’s my idea.

Making and displaying the Social Venn would be a fun and simple coding project, though not one I’m particularly interested in doing myself. The idea is actually one Facebook could implement, as it uses tagging and not folders to organize friends. If Facebook or Diaspora want to pay me to consult on their platforms, I’d be happy to take your money.

Or maybe this could be tied into a third party program or service, and aggregate your posts out to Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. I’d love to have this kind of control over my social internetting. If you are working on something like this, I’d be happy to take your money too.

I added an ePub version of Combat, my latest novel, to the download page. I created the ePub file using a new website service called ePubBud. It works on my computer and iPhone, but if you have any problems, please email me.

Preamble:

Last year I went to TAMLondon, a conference on science and skepticism, with a distinct bend towards their portrayal and communication in the media. The scientists who spoke were awesome, so were the doctors, and the skeptics, and the journalists too. Along with all that was a whole load of great entertainment by some really good performers.

All of the above are experts in their field. Brian Cox is a CERN physicist and a fellow of the Royal Society, plus a TV and radio presenter for the BBC. As the opening speaker, it doesn’t get much better for a science geek like me. Adam Savage of Myth Busters? Great! The Bad Astronomer? Cool! Tim Minchin doing a short set? Again, no complaints. Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Jon Ronson… it’s a great lineup. All top experts in their fields.

However, the thing I found quite strange was how many of the speakers talked about atheism and religious matters. And all of them, without exception, presented their views on the matter in a sneering way. Some, like Tim Minchin, did it for comedy effect, but in others that sneering and condescending tone was quite harsh.

At one point during a TAMLondon presentation the speaker said something like “And people who believe this are like stupid sheep… like they have a mental illness.” The audience laughed and applauded.

I just sat there, feeling quite uncomfortable.

And what’s worse is that all of them, without exception, seemed to have a very, very shallow view on Christianity, belief, faith, and spirituality. Shallow view? Maybe not the right way to put it.

What I mean is that the way they spoke about such matters betrays a complete lack of understanding on what it means to be Christian, and why people believe what they believe, and why they adhere to the notion of a real God.

To these New Atheists (I guess I can use that as a kind of collective noun), the only question that matters is “Is this claim true?”

If yes, then good. But if not, and such is the case with most religious claims, then that claim is WORTHLESS and anyone who believes said claim is STUPID, or at least NOT AS CLEVER AS US, and need to be told THEY ARE WRONG.

I’m using caps here to demonstrate the vibe I get from these people. It isn’t pleasant.

And worse than that, many had ideas on how to deconvert people from religion which relied almost exclusively on saying “You are wrong to believe in God, and here’s why.”

The spiritual experience.

The individual claims of Christians and other theists, and if they are true or not, simply don’t matter. They are very important to those who hold them, but which particular belief they might hold isn’t important. It isn’t particularly important to the Christian, and it shouldn’t be important to the atheist who wants people to become more rational.

Don’t get me wrong; I am an atheist. But before I became an atheist I was a Christian. One of the reasons I was a Christian is the most obvious; I was brought up in a Christian home.

The second reason, the reason I stayed a Christian, is because to me, just like to many other Christians I know, I had spiritual experiences. These were real experiences, and even to this day they are some of the most profound experiences in my 30 year existence.

So let me share some, and later I’ll get back to why particular beliefs, and if they are true or not, isn’t what’s important to many religious people.

Example number 1:

I remember, aged about 8, deciding to really become a Christian myself, rather than just assuming I was one. I said the sinner’s prayer. Even at such a young age, this was a big deal to me. Afterward I felt different, as though I’d taken a step closer to God, and that God was closer to me.

The reality: It was the first time I’d ever made a big decision about anything. Really. That young, nothing you do or think really matters. Not really. This decision was about my eternal soul. That’s a BIG thing. It wasn’t that God had actually accepted me, and Jesus hadn’t come into my heart. I’d just grown up a bit, and saw the world in a slightly different way.

If I lived in a developing country, and realized I had to go out to work aged 8 to make sure my little sister didn’t starve, I’d go through a similar transformation. Thankfully I lived in England, and I never really had to grow up in that way.

Example number 2:

Aged 12, I had a near death experience. I got stuck underwater, and couldn’t reach the surface. To cut a short story even shorter, I gave up trying to save myself. At that point I had a huge realization: I was going to die, but I had no problem with that, because I knew I was going to heaven.

There were no shining lights or voices from the sky. Just a complete peace, a strange sense of happiness, and complete faith in myself and what I believed.

Needless to say, it was that sense of calm that made me stop panicking, take stock of how I was actually stuck underwater, and work my way to the surface. I’d probably only been underwater a few seconds, but my life was different after that it was before.

The reality: I was, of course, completely wrong. If I died, I’d have just spoiled everything for all the Boy Scouts on their trip to Wales.

However, and this is the key, I was convinced that what I believed was right. I didn’t even think of it as something that I believed, it was more powerful than that. It just was. I was a Christian, I was going to die: I’m going to heaven. Case closed.

Twelve years later a friend of mine said “These Christians all know it is bullshit. If you put a gun to their head and said ‘I’ll kill you if you say you really believe it’ all of them would deny God.”

I told him the above story, to explain how wrong he was. To many Christians, belief doesn’t come into it. I was only 12 years old, there was nothing rational about my position on Jesus and heaven. It just was. To the point I was happy to die, knowing how right I was.

Example number 3:

The first time I strongly experienced the Holy Spirit. I can’t remember how old I was, maybe 13 or so. I went forward during Jesus-Camp-like meeting, and preachers and other people prayed for me. It was really great! Fantastic! Loads of people, standing in a circle, all laying hands your head and shoulders, praying for God to bless you. Who wouldn’t feel something?

I fell over, and was lowered to the floor gently, and people stayed to pray for me until I got up maybe half an hour later.

I had many similar experiences over many years. It’s called being slain in the spirit, among other things.

Once I fell backwards, and nobody caught me. I slammed into the ground, as you would expect. I just bounced a bit, but didn’t hurt myself. I hardly even noticed I had fallen over.

If it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit looking out for me, how could I have fallen over like that and not hurt myself?

The reality: I had never been to a big rock concert. I had never been part of a tribal ritual. I had never been to a hypnotist. There is all kind of psychology going on at a revival meeting, with loads of suggestion of what to do in the situation, what is expected, what is safe, what isn’t, how long it should take before you fall over, how long to stay on the floor afterwards.

The connectedness you feel at a big concert, of being part of something bigger than yourself, is familiar to many people, but just wasn’t something I knew. Not back then.

Back then, the church had a monopoly on all group-based emotional experience. It did in my life, anyway.

Any time I felt something profound, it was in the realms of a Christian church service of some type. So, of course, I presumed such feelings came from God.

Now I have had all kinds of “Peak Experiences”.

Getting a standing ovation at the end of a show. Performing a difficult juggling routine dropless. Breaking a world record. Telling a joke and having 3,000 people laugh. Various sexual encounters. Getting into a fight. Catching a big wave while surfing. Finishing the last page of a novel.

My list can go on and on. I’m a “Peak Experience” kinda guy.

And since 2001, I’ve found that I don’t associate any with God. Before then, especially before about 1996 or 1997, every big emotional experience was dominated by my Christian surroundings.

Example number 4:

I used to help lead worship in church. I played keyboard and guitar and sang in the band, and helped other people have spiritual experiences. I felt God and the Holy Spirit guiding me and the music I played. And when I followed what God was wanting me to do, it got results. People would start speaking in tongues and falling over.

Especially when I played the keyboard.

The reality: I slowly became a good musician. At least passable. I mean, my university degree is in music production…

What I thought was God using me and my musicianship was really just the power of music itself. But again, the church and my Christian upbringing dominated my musical knowledge and experiences. I thought that people only felt a certain way when certain music is played because of God moving through the music, when, in fact, human response to music is near universal. Music is just what us humans respond to best.

Do you see a pattern emerging with these examples?

In every case I experienced something profound, but didn’t know these experiences were something that EVERYONE can feel, regardless of faith in God.

And, importantly, these experiences fulfilled a need. Many needs. Going back to Maslow; the whole top half of the pyramid, even the ones way down from the peak.

The Rational Approach

Next question: how many discussions or conversations or arguments did I have with atheists that helped me shed my childhood faith?

If you think the answer is higher than zero… buzz! Wrong.

The answer is zero. None at all.

I had a very complex view on christian theology, and remember (with fondness) taking part in and leading bible studies about salvation (Romans 6 and 7 was a favorite topic of discussion).

However, the basis of my faith wasn’t the minutia of theology, nor of the nature of God, nor of the actual truth of the claims of God. What I had were the real experiences.

One early step to my deconversion from Christianity was the erosion of the lower levels on that Hierarchy of Need. There was a not entirely peaceful breakup of my Christian fellowship, which sort of spasmed through quasi-cult like stages before falling apart. A fellowship that is no longer a fellowship doesn’t really fulfill that fellowship need. I’m not going to get into this point more here, but for completeness I had to state it.

The more important step is having those peak experiences elsewhere, other than in church. I mentioned some examples above, but here are some specifics particular to my deconversion.

Example number 1:

1998 to 1999, I played in a band. Jamming and performing with a group of like-minded musicians is a great experience. And it was a non-christian band! And the feeling I had were comparable to those I had when leading worship.

As in, when I played a song I wrote on my keyboard, and the singer sang the love-ballad-like lyrics, it made girls cry.

Examples numbers 2, 3 and 4:

During one trip to Cornwall in 1999 I got really, really, really stoned. I thought I was going to die. This is sort of an anti-peak experience, but it was stronger than anything I’d felt in church. It was also the total opposite of getting badly drunk.

Same trip, I watched the complete solar eclipse. Awesome.

Same trip, I caught a perfect wave while surfing. At least it felt perfect, and went on forever.

Example number 5 and 6:

In 2001 I had a near-death experience. The brakes on my camper van failed while driving down the steepest road in England. It freaked me out.

A few minutes later, while pumped up on adrenaline, I juggled 11 balls for 11 catches for the first time ever. At the time only about four people in the world had done this.

Over these years, from about 1997 to 2001, I had many great experiences, many quite profound, some utterly profound. Each time I reflected that the spiritual peak experiences I craved had been fulfilled outside of a church environment. Some of them had been completely under my own physical control (eg: not at the suggestion of a Christian minister or worship leader), and these drove home the point in an even stronger way: what I once thought spiritual was, in fact, merely human.

It didn’t lessen the memory of my Christian spiritual experiences, nor negate their impact, it just showed them to be one variety of many human experiences possible.

The final turning point, when I realized I was no longer a “real” Christian, was the brake failure of my van in 2001.

Unlike the near-drowning in 1992, I didn’t even think of God or Heaven. Instead of happiness that I was about to meet Jesus, I had a simple regret that if I died, I wouldn’t be able to go traveling in my new van (I’d only bought it three weeks before), and I wouldn’t be able to spend my summer busking and surfing and juggling before returning to university that autumn.

My “final” thoughts when my van flipped onto its roof had nothing to do with my past life as Christian, but regret that my future life of new, non-spiritual experiences might not come to pass.

And that was it. Christian spirituality no longer meant anything to me. I didn’t need it to live a full life. I was no longer getting any kind of fellowship from Christianity, that function was coming more and more from the juggling sub-culture. With university came exposure to much more music, and Christian rock no longer cut it. I also realized that I no longer cared for the morality as taught in church, seeing as I was just as moral, if not more so, than many Christians I knew. I also didn’t believe gays were going to hell.

A few months later, when I went to work for GOD TV, I saw the Christianity=Morality connection dissolve even further, but that’s another story.

For a few years I didn’t really think of Christianity much, or what my world view might be. I just got on with living my life, establishing a new identity as an adult, trying to have as many new experiences as possible.

I got to the point where I was nothing more than a wishy-washy agnostic on the matter of god, or maybe some kind of pantheist. Then I had a conversation with a friend (same conversation as I mentioned above) and he pretty much said “It’s all bullshit. Christianity, astrology, lay lines, crystals. One day someone made something up, told someone, and they believed it. Then the next person believed it too. But at the core, it started with someone making something up.”

While I don’t think the truth is that simple, my reaction to this was the thought “Yeah, I’m pretty much an atheist.”

But the key step was in 2001; the step from Christian to no-need-for-Christianity.

The lesson from all this?

Forget trying to argue with people. It’s not going to work. Nobody rationally decides to be a Christian, so trying to use rational arguments to turn them away from Christianity, or any religion, just isn’t going to work.

And it doesn’t need to work. When it comes to personal beliefs, the rationality or intelligence of the vast majority Christians isn’t the deciding factor in their personal faith or belief.

I agree that less religious adherence is probably a good thing. Being tied to millennia-old moral teachings isn’t a good idea, as it used to justify all kinds of bigoted words and actions. Also I think concentrating on helpful actions on behalf of others is better than praying for their non-existent souls.

However, if these New Atheists actually want to deconvert the masses, they MUST provide two things:

1. fellowship comparable to a church group,
2. an equal number of opportunities for spiritual-alternative peak experiences.

The first is already underway, to a limited degree, with the Skeptics in the Pub movement. The second? I’m just not seeing it.

Seriously, if anyone has any suggestions, send me an email. But really, what does “no spirituality” have to compete with “real spiritual experiences”?

Life requires much more than just “not-religious” or “not-spiritual”. It requires something to replace the human urge to experience euphoria and a sublime connection to the world. I experience these through a variety of measures, none of which have any connection to my “identity” as an atheist, skeptic, science geek or rationalist.

I am all those things, but they are not what make me human.

It’s the followup novel to Minding Tomorrow. You can download it and read it for free, because I’m nice like that. Here’s the link to the Combat page on my website.

For those wondering why this post is also in the juggling category, the novel features a juggler as one of the main characters.

More information:
A near-future military science fiction novel by Luke Burrage.
Length: 52,000 words (equivalent to about 200 pages)
Release date: April 16th, 2010
Cover art by Stefan Kernjak.

Combat is the followup novel set in the same world as Minding Tomorrow. It follows the story of a secret military strike force as it comes to terms with new enemies and new technologies. It also tells the story, set eight years earlier, of a single soldier trying to make a difference in a new West African nation.

The events of this novel take place concurrently with those in Minding Tomorrow, and shares some characters and technologies. However, it is not a sequel, and can be read either before or after Minding Tomorrow. There are some mysteries in Combat that are answered in Minding Tomorrow, and some mysteries in Minding Tomorrow that are answered in Combat.

Of course, there are mysteries in both which will be answered in the third and last novel set in the same world.

Enjoy!

A bit of background:

I was going to start editing a novella I wrote last February, called “Monster Story (working title)”. It got good feedback from my first readers, but they knew and I knew that it could be much better. It sat on my hard-drive for months while I worked on other projects. Meanwhile I thought long and hard about it, and realized that to get it to the point where I’d be happy with it as a novella, I’d have to re-write huge chunks of it, rather than just do edits.
To make sure I had everything worked out in my head, I thought I’d write my notes down as a dialogue between three characters. Imagine a director, a producer and a script writer, sitting in a room, trying to work out the details of a new movie project, almost from scratch.

The format is no accident, as I’ve recently read and reread the Raiders of the Lost Ark Story Conference, which is the transcript of the first story meeting between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan (the script writer) for that film. It’s a great read, especially if you already know and love the Indiana Jones movies. And who doesn’t? They come up with loads of great ideas, and quite a few bad ones too, but you see why the good ones made it into the final movies.

I was wondering if I could be just as creative as Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan combined. How’s that for setting a lofty goal?

So I thought, “If this works, it could be a fun creative writing exercise, and if not, at least I’ll have a good set of notes for the Monster Story rewrite.” And to make it more interesting, I gave the different characters different motivations, and story to play out between them over the course of the conference.

And so I began. It’s now less than four days later, and I finished a 35,000 word manuscript, which is just as long as the original “Monster Story” novella! Yet I think it’s a much better story. And it’s a much more interesting way to tell the story too.

I decided to edit it and release it online right away. Why not? It’s an experimental piece of fiction, but one I think works. The style of writing, which is nothing but dialogue, but not a script as such, is something I’ve done many, many times in the past. It came very naturally. No wonder I knocked out 10,000 words a day for three days. It has an energy I really enjoy.

And now that I’ve got the story locked down tight, even if it’s from the point of view of a movie script, I’ll probably write a longer and more traditional novel, the definitive version of “The Monster Story”, before the end of the year.

Clicking on the map will take you to the sosauce.com trip page where you can zoom in and out stuff. Also, the trip starts and ends in Punta Arenas, number 1 and 8 on the map. This means a loooong journey just to get there.

Yes, I’m returning to Antarctica! It is, by far, the most amazing place I’ve been to while working on cruise ships. Last time I managed to get off the ship and get up close to penguins on the islands and mainland of Antarctica. I even have a stamp in my passport! This time the ship will be doing what’s call “Scenic Cruising” which means it doesn’t stop, and nobody gets off. I will, however, try my best to wangle my way onto the zodiac, which they let off the ship so the photographer can take photos in spectacular places.

Either way, I bough myself a new zoom lens, so I’ll try to do as much wildlife photographs as possible. I hope to photograph:
whales
penguins
orcas
seals
various birds

And, as you can see by the map, I’ll be back in the Falklands again, for the forth time in the past year, so I’ll once again do my traditional walk and see if the bird families have grown up.

Other goals for this cruise:

- Write. Or, more specifically, edit Combat (working title) and Monster Story (working title). Combat won’t take too much, but the ending needs to change. Monster Story needs more work, and I intend to break the story into two parts. From the feedback I found that people were interested in the back story, but I skip over these events in the novel. What I’m going to do is write the “getting to the planet” story as a stand alone novella, and explain the entire story there. Then Monster Story will become the second novella in a sequence. I always had one more story to tell in the same universe, so that could become part three in a trilogy.

- Shoot video. I just released my International Juggler 2009 video. It’s now 2010, and this year’s video will continue in a similar way, but with a twist. It’ll have more structure.

- Read and record SFBRP episodes. I’ve decided to try out audio books, mainly because I wanted to get a copy of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, and audible could deliver it in minutes. Planning ahead means I could have ordered it from Amazon.com, but I’m not that clever.

- More video. I want to record some shaky footage of me in Montevideo and cut it into the Panic attacks video.

- New podcast. I’m thinking about starting a new podcast, where I release one per trip, telling stories and generally giving my thoughts about things I see and do. It’ll be called something like “Luke Around the World”, which is a crap pun, but sort of catchy. However, I only intend to release the podcast if I think it’s any good. Look out for that in a few weeks.

I think that’s about it. I’ll try to upload photos as I go.

I was at a party back in 2001 (or maybe 2002), and I found a Shakespearean Fridge Magnet set. A play would have been too long, and I’d have run out of tiles. A sonnet, on the other hand, was just about the right length. It even conforms to the rules of sonnet writing. According to wikipedia:

A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unemphasized syllable followed by an emphasized syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

It even sort of makes sense.

1 – Work and travel:
1.1 – Keep working on cruise ships, though structuring the my time away better than last year to maximize time in Berlin/with friends/doing my own thing.
1.2 – I already know I’ll be visiting, on various cruises, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, India, and Dubai for the first time, along with a few other places. I may be going to Antarctica again too.
1.3 – On top of work travel, spend some frequent flier points and travel home from various gigs independently. In this way I hope to spend a week in New Zealand, and a week in Japan.
1.4 – Release my International Juggler 2009 video, the one I’ve been working on for the last year, which features me juggling in every country/place I visited.
1.5 – Shoot, edit, and release International Juggler 2010, a similar video as above, of all the places I visit in 2010. I have some ideas about how to make this different/better than the 2009 video, but I don’t need to think about that too much for the next few weeks.
1.6 – Go to Poland. I live really close, but have never been. What’s up with that?
1.7 – Go to the Berlin, British, and European juggling conventions. And a convention in September/October too. Maybe the Turkish again, maybe another.
1.8 – Spend four to six weeks in New York. I’ve visited the city for a few weeks, but I want to get to know the city better. I hear so many people from there talk about it, and I want to experience it all first hand.
1.9 – Maybe, if I can sort the dates right, I might go to DragonCon, to nerd out with the scifi and podcasting geeks.

2 – Juggling:
2.1 – Keep improving my solo shows and performing skills.
2.2 – Work on my Room show project, a juggling theater show. I plan to have all the set building work complete by March, and 20-30 minutes complete by May.
2.3 – Perform a short version of the Room Show at the Berlin Juggling Convention in June.
2.4 – Have an hour show finished by October, and put on a series of shows in my own home for invited audiences.
2.5 – Finish other juggling routines I’m working on at the moment.
2.6 – Run the British Young Juggler of the Year show for the sixth year. Also do a series of online workshops for those taking part, in attempt to raise the quality of the acts. Nobody has won a Gold Award yet!
2.7 – I’m in charge of the Open Stages at the EJC in Finland. That means seven or eight nights of zero stress and easy work as my superior organization skills result in everything running smoothly, and every night’s show rocking. Or so I hope.
2.8 – Generally rock out playing combat.
2.9 – Beat Jochen in the final of a Fight Night 3 Club Combat tournament. I’ve won a tournament we both entered before, but I wasn’t the one to knock him out.
2.10 – Release some more Juggling Podcasts.
2.11 – Release some interesting juggling videos on YouTube (I have a few good ideas).
2.12 – Juggle 9 clubs for 19 passes each with Pola.
2.13 – Also, depending other work commitments, I might enter Britain’s Got Talent. If I do have the time, the final decider will be the question “Will this cause me any stress at all?” At the moment I have very little stress in my life, by design, so I might as well keep it that way.

3 – Writing:
3.1 – Keep writing for this blog.
3.2 – Finish editing and release (and decide on final titles for) on my two works-in-progress novels: Combat Story and Monster Story. Completion dates: January and March.
3.3 – Have another run at Human Danger (working title), the novel I began but didn’t complete in 2009. I have a feeling this will be a longer-term project than just this year though.
3.4 – Research, outline, and write another novel I’m giving the working title “Arc of Life.” It’ll be a fantasy novel set in a world of strange creatures and magic. My fiction writing style at the moment is very much a “just get on with the plot” kind of thing, which means a lot is packed into a very small package. This works well for near-future science fiction thrillers. Writing fantasy set in a strange new world with a completely different history and landscape than our own will hopefully force me to concentrate more on descriptive scene-setting writing, rather than character, dialogue, and action.
3.5 – Start work on the final novel in the Minding Tomorrow world.
3.6 – Do an audio recording of one of my novels. As long as I keep my novels short, this could be a good way to get more readers/listeners. I’d need to buy a new microphone though.

4 – Podcasting:
4.1 – Keep reading science fiction novels and reviewing them for the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast. I also plan to review any fantasy novels I read.
4.2 – Be a guest on other podcasts. I know I’ll be back on the SFFaudio podcast at some point.
4.3 – Doing some more Juggling Podcasts. I really miss the interviews I did with other jugglers.
4.4 – I’m thinking of starting a new podcast about traveling. I enjoy posting photos here on the blog, but I see and do lots of things that I never write about here. For example, I have a lot to say about a place like Punta Arenas, but it’s not the kind of thing that would work as a blog post. I’m thinking of doing a trip-by-trip podcast, or just saving up enough observations and stories and experiences to fill 45 minutes, and releasing it whenever.
4.5 – If I’m going to do this, I’m going to buy a portable mp3 recorder with a mic attachment, so I can record easily while hiking across a city or up a hill.
4.6 – Thinking about that last point, what I should actually do is see if my iPhone would work just as well, as then I need to carry one less gadget.

5 – Photography:
5.1 – I have no plans for my photography. It’s the only hobby I have which has no performance aspect at all (I even podcast about my reading), so there is no pressure to do anything at all. I’ll just keep carrying my camera, and keep improving my skills and artistry.
5.2 – But I will try to keep posting photos to my blog.
5.3 – And I’m going to buy a new zoom lens, because the autofocus on my current (really shitty) zoom lens is broken.
5.4 – And I’ll probably buy another two or three camera bags.

6 – Music:
6.1 – Write an album’s-worth of new songs and record them by the end of the year.
6.2 – Write the music for Room.
6.3 – Buy a five string bass guitar and learn to rock.

7 – Other goals:
7.1 – Get better at speaking German. I plan to hire a personal tutor, as regular classes don’t work with my schedule.
7.2 – Try to spend a few hours a week in the gym whenever I’m on a cruise ship. I spend way more time than that in the bars, and in the jacuzzis, and eating, and other unhealthy things. A few hours in the gym will help me keep my fitness levels up.
7.3 – Spend more time with friends.
7.4 – Make new friends.
7.5 – Have sex.
7.6 – Maybe buy a new laptop. This macbook has served me well for almost two years, but I’m doing more and more music and video and photo editing, and it’s struggling a bit. I think I’ll buy a full spec 13″ MacBook Pro, and upgrade to a solid state hard drive for super quick load times.

8 – Consumption of entertainment:
8.1 – Catch up with Dexter.
8.2 – Watch more than the first episode of Battlestar Galactica. I’ve had the season 1 box set in my cabin(s) for the past eight weeks, and haven’t watched a single episode.
8.3 – Play more Natural Selection and, if it is ever released, Natural Selection 2. I might need more memory for my PC though.

I think that’s about it! The most important things to me out of all these are continued success with my job and the Room show. Unfortunately these two are at odds, as one requires me to travel, and the other requires me to be in Berlin.

Or maybe, looking at it glass full, the two goals create a balance, so when I’m not doing one, I should be working on the other.

Or maybe, if I work hard enough, the Room show can become my job by the end of the year, and then I don’t have to worry. So, if I have nothing to show for the Room project by April, you have permission to slap me hard.