Aboard the 1601 Broadstairs to St Pancras (& 17something train to Victoria) Well I've missed this writing slot for 4 weeks. I used to feel guilty about breaking newly forming habits but really who has the time? Now, I just assume that I'll pick it up again eventually. Which, I feel, is the better mindset. Like many "entrepreneurs" in their 20s, I was heavily into hustle culture. Gary Vee, always working, constantly reading positive affirmations and brainwashing myself into believing that if I just worked that little bit harder I would become "successful". Of course this proved to be both unsustainable and miserable. It was unsustainable because instead of burning the candle at both ends, I'd doused the whole thing in petrol. Networking, invoicing, managing contractors, networking, selling, 5 days a week. My weekends were mostly spent at "business conferences" in which I would "work on my business" predominantly by being sold increasingly ludicrously priced "coaching packages" and flirting with other lonely entrepreneurs. I'm assuming I don't explain why I was miserable. Then COVID hit and I pretty much lost everything I'd spent 3 and a half years working on. In the space of a week, I broke up with my then-girlfriend, my housemates fled to their home countries, and all my clients decided to not pay me. That was hard to come back from. (After several weeks of casual day drinking and sobbing) I had to leave my pity party. "Hate to be rude, but I really have to go. No, no, the self-loathing was *excellent,* the crippling need for any human contact was spectacularly awful but the ongoing global existential crisis really added to the mise en scene. *Mwah mwah*, anyway till the next inevitable tragedy". So how does one find happiness trapped in a 2-bed apartment in a fancy part of London with nothing but an empty heart, home, and bank account? Man, I feel like I've written about this so much. Maybe in journals, maybe it's posted somewhere, maybe I've just mentally narrated this so much that I don't know the difference. Anyway. The one thing I did have a *lot* of was **redacted** and **redacted** as well as **redacted** that I'd acquired through cunning, guile, and bitcoin. My plan was to do the **redacted** first, then as that peaked slam the **redacted** and then chase with **redacted** for the rest of the evening. Everything was relatively easy after that. I realised that the things you actually want to do are the things you want to do. Despite my intense lack of willpower for anything other than Squid Ink Shiraz and crying, I still found myself doing press-ups, writing, reading, and making music. I figured that if I was still doing those things. HOLD THE PRESSES! In the past, wow, *hour* there has been 2 rail delays and I am no longer going to be on time to see Worakls (a DJ, I dunno, Fergus suggested it, sounded fun). First a man disappears into the *only* tunnel that the hi-speed service utilises (led to the termination of all trains that use that tunnel) then a fucking door breaks on the slow train to London. Christ, emotions at are an all time high, the mood is tense on the now packed train. The dampness in the air, the odd temperature, it's like a storm is about to break. And here I am 3 beers down and 75ml of tincture down me. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't secretly hoping for a longer train ride (if only to get this word count up). But now we have a very real and immediate issue. I have to go to a gig. With my foot in a splint. After I drank too much. At least writing it down puts it into perspective. "Oh no, have to go see a DJ *and* you're a little buzzed, sounds awful" I agree, but I will be late. Thankfully Spotify allows me to enjoy, what I assume will be the final songs of the DJs set and thus best thanks to algorithmic tampering (ironically isn't that exactly what I want? To be able to join in when the crowd cheers? At this point, I genuinely consider a song "good" if I can remember it. There's so much media that's entirely forgettable, a somewhat coherent memory of what it sounded/looked/felt like is, I suppose, a mark of emotive quality) but really is anyone *truly* against the algorithms that seemed to control modern culture. I love Spotify. Every week it's like "Hey I reckon there's a chance, that there's a potential of you maybe liking these songs" and you know what? I *do*...like about 1/3 of what's offered. The special stuff gets added to a playlist as apparently that is the strongest indicator of enjoying a particular cloud of tags. Having started this practice around well, fuck, I have no idea. 2021 definitely. This playlist has amassed 214 songs. It's the bad algos that make people hate the idea. Nah, that's way too much of a reduction. There are all sorts of reasons why people hate algos. Don't want to give it "power" of them, "uncomfortable" with a non-sentient thing peering into their psyche, maybe a fear of irrelevance. But we're not going to talk about them today. Instead I want to explore this idea we have that finding the algo for addiction or popularity or whatever is somehow bad. Here's a cliché caveat though "with great power there must come great responsibility" (original quote for you fan boiiiiiiiis), nicotine total algo for addiction anyone that sells it has sold, at least, a part of their soul to a demon. (Train update: It is now being cancelled at "Tonbridge" the previous stop was "Headcorn") #music #sadness #algorithms