On top of confusion and the magnificent help it led to, I have begun doing something.

Of course, it’s about writing – and the first article has been put there already, just now!

So, maybe you would like to follow the link, read the article, and look around a bit, sniffing in the smells of saw dust and welding wire? – While I’m still building something that will become useful, I hope.

Longing For Childhood – at All of Life XL.

Please remember to put on a hard hat when entering! Most of the interior is fixed with scotch and could fall down, and it will most likely be changed later, but for now, it helps indicate what will become of it all.

Currently, you’ll find comment fields there, but I’m still not sure if they should be there in the future, so, if you comment (and you are welcome to do that), it may be hidden or removed later – or maybe not, depending on what I decide is best for that place.

I am filling in some older articles, and that’s one of the main elements –I’m following ‘s suggestion of making a kind of library, and in such one, it matters that there are things to read – that the shelves are full of things to discover. It takes some time, and it will happen in parallel with all the other things going on, and with new articles being added as well.

My aim is then to try to make it all come alive, by making collections, overviews, summaries, and similar. But the XL site is for that deep dive. It will not be for the busy people. For those, I’ll maintain this site on Substack, renaming it to Moments of Life, so that it is clear that it is no longer an attempt to cover all of life.

The moments will be more emotional (thanks for that suggestions, !), and shorter – aiming at about half of my typical writing length of around 1200 words, so, 5-600 words as a goal (like this article). The XL articles, on the other hand, can become as long as you can imagine them – but they may not always end up like that: short is also allowed there.

And I will speak more directly into the community fragments that still exist on Substack, even if they, by large, are not for me – but that small bubble with people I have come to know, plus whoever else might enter along the way, will be the people in this, the reception of my “library” – thanks for reminding me that the world actually does exist, :)

And, as a third element, I am looking at what a regular or irregular newsletter could look like – what should be in it for it to be interesting, and how much work and regularity can I commit myself to.

The last bit is about art. I love art, and even though I have been painting and photographing during times, I’m not doing it right now. But I want to pick up at least the camera and go out to make some photos, so that they can become part of my big, virtual painting of life.

So, that’s it for an invitation to take a look at a building lot ;)

I know, it should be simple. But nothing ever is simple with me.

I bought the mandolin, check!

I bought a book about how to play it, check!

I started doing it, not check…

Because, I began looking around in the world of music, getting inspired by listening to people playing the mandolin, finding out that there was such a thing like an octave mandolin as well, and an Irish bouzouki, and a tenor mandolin or mandola, and…

So, for a while, instead of just focusing on getting to learn how to play the mandolin, I spent my time on expanding the focus. Getting some more types of instruments from the mandolin family, and books on how to play them, and studying a lot of different things around history, string types, instrument building and repairs, and so on.

Now I know it all! Almost. At least all that I know there is to know about mandolins, so I’ll no doubt find out that there is more and then add that along the way.

I knew from the start, when buying the mandolin, that it would probably re-ignite the old interest for the guitar, which was collecting dust in the corner under the staircase in my apartment. I used to be enthusiastic about the guitar, but some trouble with my business and, hence, with my economy, made me stop taking lessons, and somehow I had tied up the use of the guitar on the lessons, so I stopped using it.

But, recently, during all the mandolin research and studying, I found a big brush for dusting off the old guitar case, opened the case, and found that there was still a beautiful guitar inside. Now with a need for new strings, but otherwise as new.

I decided to start playing it again, but not right away. However, it was placed in a more prominent place where I couldn’t avoid bumping into it regularly, to make me remember my decision.

Another old guitar, which I had originally bought cheaply second-hand, to have as a spare guitar (I think that was what I had on my mind) was also picked out from under the stairs, and it was in an even better condition – the strings still playable, after all those years. Something like 17-18 years since I last touched any of these instruments, as far as I remember.

But before getting to start playing any of them, I needed to go a few steps to the side, turn around, chassé, and then back. Or something. Pirouettes were plenty, that’s for sure, as I kept finding spots and places in the world of music knowledge that I wanted to examine further.

I had been there before, actually, 20–25 years ago, and before that, even more years ago, when I, by then somehow managed to get into a music study, carry it through and get an exam. Each time being enthusiastic and studying everything I could get hold of regarding music.

That’s how things are not simple with me. I do it all, if first I get started. Not just a selected, narrow path of study.

Discovering how there had been a significant production of musical instruments in Sweden during the times, and that many of these instruments still existed and were for sale, second-hand, also made me interested in seeing such ones, holding them, and playing them. So, I bought an old mandolin, and another, and a third.

Along the way, also a Russian mandolin appeared for sale, together with a balalaika, both produced in a factory in Saint Petersburg, Russia, next to a place where I have been many times for various reasons. It felt natural to pay interest in these instruments as well. But, it should be noted that I already had a balalajka, bought several years ago, as my interest in music never stopped completely, and I even have a study book from then, now impossible to find, though.

An instrument type often seen for sale in Sweden is the “Swedish lute”, which is a lute-shaped guitar with six extra bass strings. It was popular, or attempted to be made popular, in the beginning of the 1900s, simultaneously with a 6-stringed similar instrument, a lute guitar. This somehow connected with a wave of national-romantic activities also in Germany at the time, with walking in nature and playing “traditional” instrument being part of it all. I put “traditional” in citation marks as there really was no tradition for such instruments, it was a, by then, modern construction.

Such Swedish lutes and guitar lutes are often in a quite miserable condition, and if, occasionally, a good one appears for sale, it brings in a moderate price only – not being very popular, it seems. But, my favorite factory/workshop in Portugal, APC, has during recent years produced a similar instrument, even in versions with steel strings as well as the traditional cat gut/nylon strings (the modern version only with nylon, I think). One of these, with steel strings, were for sale on an online auction one day, and I gave a bid – and won! It was cheap, and it is a great instrument, just not popular. It helped me regain the full interest in guitars, now feeling and hearing how they can take different shapes and make different sounds. It happened shortly after I had convinced myself that I needed a Western guitar, a dreadnought model with steel strings, which I then also bought cheaply on an online auction.

And why now these steel stringed guitars? An old complex! My guitar teacher from back in the days didn’t have much respect for such guitars, being a convinced classical/Spanish guitar player, and when I asked about strumming or talked about electrical guitar music, he wasn’t very excited and wanted me to focus on the classical guitar. So, now that I am free, I of course wanted a steel stringed guitar! And an electric guitar, which I also found on an auction.

But when looking around the world for music playing information, you’ll inevitably run into many suggestions for “starting with a ukulele”. It is considered a great beginners instrument, maybe because it comes naturally in several sizes and in any case looks like a children’s guitar.

You’ll need to understand a thing about me, as the world develops: I am growing more and more skeptical toward the American dominance in everything: a guitar is, if nothing else is mentioned, considered an American invention (Western, 12-stringed, electric, etc.), and the same counts for mandolins, ukuleles, and many other instruments.

While it’s true that there has been a strong development in the USA of new types/varieties of instruments, connected to the strong commercialization of the musical world, making it a music industry, it is also true that not everything comes from there. But Americans don’t always know that, as they tend to have a very selective view on history (the little history they know).

Also, I am skeptical toward the current Chinese dominance in the industrial sector, where nothing seems to be made in neither the USA nor Europe anymore, everything is from China.

But I am ambivalent with both, as I do recognize the drive forces behind it all and the historical developments that lead to the world going this way.

So, finding out that a ukulele is a good instrument for getting into the habit of playing music, and that the learnings from it can be useful when moving to playing the guitar afterward, the next finding wasn’t too surprising: American brands dominate the market, but almost none of these instruments are made in the USA, they are almost all from China.

And I just had to recognize that this was how it was, when I noticed a (to me) new development: the carbon fiber ukulele. It was from a Chinese brand called Enya, which, with some research, turned out to have nothing to do with the famous singer Enya, just named the same. Also, their products are often available with other brand names as well, so they may not have invented anything themselves, being just a name, or they may indeed be the inventors, just allowing OEM sales of their products – or more likely both, since Chinese manufacturing is all about the money, so they do what they can earn money on, just like the Americans.

A carbon fiber ukulele, in two different sizes, appeared when searching for something else on Amazon, and I got interested, somewhat, and made a note of it. Later I decided to go for it, bought the cheapest of the models, and found out that this was another one of Amazon’s zillions of wrong product descriptions, as the instrument was even smaller than it had been described as.

It was a small soprano size, and me, with my medium-sized hands and thick fingers, found it complicated to fret the strings on the tiny fretboard, so I looked for a better option. A lot of research later, and I knew all about ukuleles, including that they had their origin in Portugal, and my favorite manufacturer there actually had several models to buy – and I aimed for a tenor-sized one this time.

What is the situation now, is then that I am studying how to play this, using a “How to Play Ukulele In 14 Days” book, which I find absolutely amazing! I also just started a similar process with the guitar, using another book from the same series, even more amazing.

As the titles indicate, it won’t take long to get through each of them, so I have some more studies planned for afterward, but squeezing similar studies of the violin and bass guitar in along the way – two more instruments that have appeared along the road of my mandolin journey.

And when I get to a good understanding of these, along with freeing a little time, both the mandolin, the Portuguese guitar, Lisbon style, and the Brazilian viola Caipira, that I have added to the collection, will become important subjects of my interest.

There is also the origin of the ukulele, the cavaquinho, which can be used for such an insisting rhythm like on the famous song Recordai by Cesária Évora:

I think that the pitch on this recording is a bit too low for being a cavaquinho, though, so I guess there is a 10-stringed guitar involved, typical for the Cape Verde, and similar to my viola Caipira.

I have now a Portuguese cavaquinho, and soon also a Cape Verde version of it (slightly bigger), as these instruments fascinate me more than any ukulele could ever do, I think, perhaps because of their steel strings and vitalizing, insisting sound.

And what did I forget? Probably something. I have picket up my old tin whistles, wanting to get going with those as well, but so far without much effort put into it or result coming out of it. I have several times been close to buying an old accordion, since I like the sound of such instruments, but they cost a lot when new, so an old one could do. I have been scared away, though, by the fact that they are rather complicated instruments that require maintenance, which the old ones didn’t necessarily get, so they may not work.

One major discovery about the music industry is that it is, indeed, such one. An industry. A lot of what is going on, a lot of the fashions in musical instruments, what people buy and play, what they want to sell off second-hand, is directed by what the big companies find that they can earn money on.

Many waves of mandolin-fashion or guitar-fashion, or whatever, have been introduced during the last couple of centuries, during the industrial age, telling ordinary people who now had money because they had jobs, that they could also learn how to play an instrument, it wasn’t only for the wealthy who had nothing better to do.

And dreams have been created for you to adopt, about fame and glory, about being part of one or another trendy band – such as, currently, Fado in Portugal, “traditional” Irish music or Celtic music in Ireland and much of the Western world, and “folk” music, whatever that is considered to be locally, in many places.

All of these dreams require you to have a correct instrument, not just any old, odd, instrument, with a correct brand name on it, and a lot of extra equipment. And, of course, you cannot just play as you want, you must bid in on Country, Bluegrass, Jazz, Blues, Classical, or whatever, making sure that you consume books and courses on exactly the right way of doing it.

This music world is almost all about fitting in, being someone together with others in a way that is considered socially acceptable, just like doing sports or shopping clothes.

But deep down, below that commercial layer, is, for some of us, a profound interest in the music itself, the joy of making it an listening to it, maybe spiced up a bit, and as something positive, something inspirational, by trying to conform to some of the established styles, making sure that our violins have the correct color for being accepted into a symphony orchestra (even if all we want to do is play it at home), and making sure that our Chinese guitar doesn’t have a Chinese symbol on it but rather an American brand name, to show everybody that we are fashionable (and wealthy) musicians.

We, who play music, are in dual minds, all the time, about what exactly to play – which instrument, which style of music – and what we need for playing it, in terms of equipment, courses, books, etc.

We can never settle, it’s a journey toward something. I try to make it a journey toward something I want, not something the industry wants, but I am just a product of my time. Any thought of being different is simply part of that illusionary dream that has been created to make me buy such things that makes me feel special: that alternatively designed guitar strap, that plectrum/pick with Bugs Bunny on it, and that brand and type of strings that I, individually, have found is best for me.

Yet, it is my dream, my illusion. No matter who made it.

While I started out with one mandolin from China, camouflaged under a UK brand, the two months that have passed since I got that one have been quite hectic and added several additional instruments to what is beginning to look like a collection.

I have published elsewhere some of what was going on, but nobody read it, so I’ll try again here.

First, I must confess that my initial fear of this turning into something commercial has come true. I have not been able to resist buying more things, and it points at the nature of music playing, as it happens today (and probably also many days before that).

It is also exciting, and I am not unhappy with my additional purchases. It fills my life in a way that I feel that I needed. I guess, this is the same as when people get excited about buying home stereo systems, golf equipment, or anything else. It moves from being a hobby about doing something into a hobby of buying and having something – a collector’s hobby.

There are some details that bring us to that:

1. Every instrument you might get will be talked down by most other musicians as a “beginner’s instrument”. No matter the price of it, no matter how tough a planning of your money you needed to do, some others will have been able to gather more money and buy something more expensive, and they will want to brag about it by calling you and your instrument “introduction level”.

2. Musical instruments may, at times, be made by enthusiasts who enjoy that process and have a special talent for making an instrument sound good. These luthiers, as they are called if they build instruments with strings, are in it for the joy of it, mostly, but they also want to live. Spending many hours on building an instrument means that this will become expensive. But then there is an industry as well, producing for the masses. They use more rational production methods, are better at weighing cost of materials with the resulting price of the ready products, and they produce more affordable instruments – however, at different levels, so that the most affordable is less good than the less affordable. You’ll be led into a path of buying at one level and then immediately wanting to upgrade, and then again.

3. The industry of accessories is good at explaining to people that even such a thing as a “pick” – a tiny slice of plastic – needs to be special developed, branded, and expensive. And you need many of them, because of the mood you are in, the music you play that day, and the risk of forgetting it somewhere all meaning that you’ll have to keep buying expensive small pieces of plastic. Strings must be replaced very often, and the string manufacturers have managed to trick people into believing that good strings are more expensive and must be replaced even more often, so also here, you’ll need to keep buying. And the list goes on. You can’t just buy an instrument, one pick, one set of strings, and then simply start playing. You’ll have to be playing with one hand and grabbing more accessories with the other.

4. Some brands and models of instruments are considered iconic, meaning that your aim, according to the community of players of this kind of instrument, must be to get to own one of those. Playing just any mandolin, for instance, won’t do for anything but the first learning process – especially if you are a professional musician, or a wannabe, you must get an instrument that corresponds to your status. We all know about such famous violinists who play a famous Stradivarius violin, bought for several millions, and people may even go to a concert to hear that instrument more than the artist or the work. So, even if you already own a great instrument, that won’t do if you are going to become famous.

5. We are all on our way to become famous, professional musicians. Just about every book or course or discussion in musician’s forums have an underlying understanding that you play music to become part of a band, an orchestra, or become a known individual in the music business. While there are books that try to explain how you can have fun playing music and singing with your family, these aren’t the typical type. Playing at the camp fire is also such a thing that is done as a side activity by those who normally play at a more serious level. And even though 90% of people aren’t there, they are told all the time this is where they are meant to be, supposed to be aiming at, so they must buy equipment accordingly.

6. The good old “great tools are half of the work” idea makes you, yourself, believe that a better instrument and all the right accessories will help you learn, help you play better, and make you look like a real musician.

7. When you feel that you are getting into this new hobby, you’ll get enthusiastic and want to know all about it. You’ll find out that there are, in fact, many old, even antique, mandolins on the market for small money, and you would want to have one of those, easily becoming two, three, or more, to feel the historical winds blowing when looking at them, touching them, and playing them. And, talking to others about them, as this phenomenon is very much carried by a habit by musicians to talk about such things, making you feel that this is part of the package.

Maybe there are even more details in it, but the end effect is that I now, after my first, initial purchase of a mandolin, have supplemented with more mandolins and other instruments. The original dream of sitting in a hammock strung up between palm trees on a remote beach having fun playing happy songs has been wrapped into commercialism and greed, now being more of a dream of being and becoming, and having. Actually playing and enjoying life has moved to a lower rank on the list of things I need to do with music.

Some of the additional purchases are based on the fact that there in Sweden used to be a famous and very productive manufacturer of mandolins, called Levin, and even though this company closed some 45 years ago, there are still always many instruments for sale on various second hand markets. I have got a few of those: different models from 1947, 1949, and 1954, and despite their age, they still play nicely and have that special feeling of history over them. They are made from solid wood, not veneer, but I know, of course, that they were made commercially, for a company to earn money on them, so they were made for people to be able to buy them, back then.

Some others are not mandolins at all. As I had expected, by getting into a new instrument, my old interest for other instruments I’ve played would come back to life. Many years ago, I learned how to play the piano, later also the guitar, and if taking everything into account, from a long life, also such a tin whistle and drums are on the list. With everything from my musical graveyard again coming to live, all options are open, including those about looking into instruments that I once wanted to play but never did.

I have long wanted to try playing a steel-stringed guitar. My guitar experience from the old days was based on nylon-stringed classical guitars, focusing on finger play rather than strumming, on classical works rather than pop, rock, or jazz, and I wanted to move a bit into all that. So, I found an old, used, dreadnought guitar, and later a lute-shaped guitar with steel strings – an almost new instrument but, due to the limited interest amongst musicians for such instruments, at a very low second-hand price.

Almost no music is really great without an underlying bass line, and since I have now got a device that allows me to record the music on the computer, along with a microphone, I also got myself a bass guitar. Then I can play the low-pitched bass on one track, supplementary guitar chords on another, and then the melody line with decorations on the mandolin on a third, this way becoming a complete band, all on my own.

Of course, a mandolin is really high-pitched, and it isn’t suitable for all kinds of music. When looking around for examples of nice mandolin music, I ran into a bigger version of it, which I have actually shown already as the illustrational photo on the first article in this series: it is a longer necked instrument, inspired by the Greek bouzouki, with a bigger body, basically taken from a typical Portuguese instrument, such as the Portuguese guitar, this way producing a deeper and richer sound. It is known as an Irish bouzouki, but there are varieties of it with slightly shorter necks that then go under the name octave mandolin. Also, there is another kind of instrument, just a bit bigger than the mandolin, but smaller than the octave mandolin, often called a mandola, or in some countries an alto mandolin, or something else – there isn’t much agreement across the world on the names of instruments. Well, I have got one of each of octave mandolin and mandola. These are much nicer to listen to, to be honest, than a mandolin, but they lack the sharp kick that sometimes is just what is needed, so there is room for all kinds of instruments.

Diving deep into the world of mandolins quickly taught me that many people in this sphere are quite conservative and live in the past. Especially in the USA, it is possible to publish a book like “Mandolin for Dummies”, that state how there exist two kinds of mandolins, one with a curl, the other without. Oh, and then an old type with a bowl-shaped back, but it doesn’t sound well. Needless to say, this is utter nonsense, but many Americans seem to think this way. They consider every other type of mandolin to be wrong and useless, and they want basically only the one with a curl, which is a copy of a 100-year-old American made mandolin, used for bluegrass. If they don’t play bluegrass, they might want the one without a curl, which is otherwise identical. The denouncement of the bowl back mandolin is somewhat illogical, as this is the type of mandolin that historically came first and is used a lot, especially in the Mediterranean countries and in classical music. Also, the Portuguese have a tradition for a different type with a flat back and front, and with a larger body, coming in a couple of shapes, sounding much nicer than the American ones. In fact, when looking back during the last 100 years of production in the field, it looks like by far most mandolins are of these types, and they are even produced by some luthiers in the USA as well, which just isn’t noticed by all the people living there. I have got one of these Portuguese mandolins, made in Portugal, and another, made in Romania.

The deep dive also taught me something else: there is a very big world of musical instruments out there! Portugal is rich on different varieties of instruments in the guitar family, including such that later became re-invented as the ukulele, but there are many more. While the USA-based forums I looked at, and trusted, initially told me that there wasn’t any production of mandolins left in Europe, I’ve found out that this is wrong. Like most other things Americans believe in. There are many manufacturers of musical instruments in Europe, and even though there are just a few of them that produce instruments at an industrial scale, you can actually have very many different instruments on a by-order basis from many workshops and individual luthiers around the European area. At least one large shop, Thomann, based in Germany, does a great job of making all kinds of instruments available, and even at fair prices. To that, of course, the huge “back catalogue” of old instruments that seem to live forever and are for sale at all prices.

There is plenty of material to work with in Europe for anyone interested in music.

I learned along the way, when studying this, that there is a very nice sounding instrument in portugal that is called a Portuguese Guitar. It is not like a classical (Spanish) guitar, but actually more like a big mandolin with six courses of double strings and a scale length (the length of the vibrating part of the strings) somewhere in the middle between a mandolin and a classical guitar, and it has a big, onion-shaped body with flat back and front. This allows for a rich and varied playing repetoir, only missing the deeper tones. It is little known outside of Portugal, unfortunately, but there, it is an important instrument, especially in the Fado music, where it is most often part of a trio of instruments, the others being a guitar and a bass, to accompany a Fado singer, all together producing an inciting music experience for the audience.

I was so lucky to stumble over such an instrument for sale at an online auction, getting it at a fair price, and I am now waiting for it to appear in the mail.

In Spain, there is a similar instrument, called a Spanish Laúd, and there is a smaller variant of that, basically mandolin-sized and sounding, the Bandurria.

While a classical guitar, and it’s steel-stringed varieties, can provide a comprehensive tonal repetoire and allow for the musician to play almost anything, the more distinct sound of the smaller instruments with double-strings add something more direct and appealing to some music. I wonder why we don’t, by tradition, have such instruments in the Nordic countries? Apart from the many mandolins by Levin and a few other companies, of course, but these now seem to be historical instruments from an industrial period, a thing that was there as a result of industrialism and worker economy, making it possible to both produce a lot for a little, and for people to buy that. The folk music of the Nordics isn’t full of this kind of instruments, though.

So, as for now, my musical journey, starting out with a Chinese copy of an antique American mandolin, has led me to the discoveries of both a rich musical instrument tradition and production in Europe, and to several (to me) new instruments and ways of making music.

I am now very much interested in actually getting to play some of my new instruments, to feel the energy of creating, and to enjoy the sound of them, while I have more or less cut off the element of talking with like-minded in forums, as this seems to lead to only negative emotions – about having cheap instruments, being a beginner who is not as good as them, etc., and while all such claims and statements might be true, I need to hear something else from my surroundings, something confirming and uplifting, so it is all about finding the right surroundings, I suppose.

It’s a rich life, and there are very many details in it to discover and enjoy – and it is possible to pick and choose, to some extend, what should be in it.

What an amazing world of enthusiasts I have entered when buying the mandolin! It didn’t take long before I not only understood that very many beginners start out with a cheap mandolin, even though some experienced players advise against these, but also that a mandolin mostly doesn’t work as it should when you get it – it needs to be set up.

There is a forum for mandolin players on www.mandolincafe.com, and there, like typical for internet forums, you’ll find all kinds of comments and questions, including such as “which mandolin is good”, “how can I make my mandolin play better”, “which strings should I use”, etc. – and they almost all have at least one of the comments saying something like “you need to get the mandolin set up properly”.

Some music shops can do that before handing out the instrument to you. I have a feeling that this is mostly a thing in the USA, where customization and adaptation, personalization, and so forth, are positive words. In Sweden, where I live, people seem to accept what comes out of the can as a full meal, also symbolically for such as a mandolin. Or maybe I just didn’t meet the right people here, which is possible ;)

Nevertheless, I can’t ask the reseller to “set up” the mandolin for me, like it seems to be possible in the USA.

Luckily, a great guy called Rob Meldrum has written a book about how to do it, that he gives away for free at the Mandolin Café, described in this thread.

The book tells how he has improved several mandolins through a few steps that are then described in details, so that you can do it too if you have that book around.

Even though I found my mandolin to be good, I decided to run through the book and check/fix everything as described.

So far, I have quickly browsed through it, and I can see that there are things to adjust. I need some tools, and some better strings, so I have ordered these things and will proceed with the setup of my mandolin when they arrive. Looks like the buying hobby has begun showing its ugly face already! Well, I do expect that this is a one-time event, and even if not, the tools can be used again the next time, so no need to keep buying things.

One thing I decided to add, that I never had on my guitars, is a strap, to make it possible to hang the instrument over the neck/shoulder when playing. For the guitar, it is not needed, as I sit when playing it, using a special pillow to make the perfect support for the instrument – a pillow that my former guitar teacher had made for me by a friend.

A mandolin, however, is a smaller instrument, and even though it is also lighter and can be held by the hands when playing, I believe that the strap will give me some needed extra level of freedom to focus on placing my hands right for the music production, when not used for merely holding the instrument.

And thinking forward, I can see that the excellent beginners course I got at Udemy will end sooner rather than later, and I will need more training after that. So a couple of books are now also on the way – one that helps to define a practice plan, another that teach me some introductory songs, to get me started with actually playing something. There is also another, much recommend book, that I plan to get later, when I am reaching the end of what I have now.

So, the full book list looks like:

• How to Set Up a Mandolin, by Rob Meldrum

• How to Play Mandolin in 14 Days: Daily Lessons for Absolute Beginners, by Tristan Scroggins

• First 50 songs You Should Play on Mandolin, by Sokolow Fred

• The ultimate mandolin songbook: 26 Favorite Songs, by Davis Janet

I will also go hunting for some examples of mandolin music to get inspired from, all genres. The aim is to quickly get to a point where I can actually play something real, even though it may not be at a high level for a start – it takes time to become good at an instrument. Playing something real, i.e., not just scales and chords, makes the instrument feel useful and “friendly” – otherwise it is just a training tool, effectively being a burden that drags out time and energy.

I checked, btw., where my instrument had been made, and, of course, it is from China. As a matter of fact, there may be no production of mandolins at all left in Europe! Perhaps some individual instruments are made by luthiers, but there seems to be no production of shelf products.

The more expensive models of American brands are made in America, but all the cheaper ones, plus all the European brands, are in fact made in China, often as generic products that, like mine, just gets a brand name printed on it.

A quick search, and I found my mandolin at a wholesale site, where it can become quite inexpensive already from 10 pcs – less than $30, probably much less at higher quantities. So, that’s what my dealer did – probably buying a lot more than 10, as this is a large dealer with affiliates in several countries. And they had their name printed on the mandolin.

We may get fascinated by the fact that something can be bought at such prices as $90, which I think was what I paid for mine (a bit more, since it was a set with a bag and a digital tuner – the latter at $1,10 in China, $12 here). So, still, at this fascinating price, the shop can earn quite a lot.

I checked for some of the other models on the market, and some other kinds of instruments, and they are all from China, or there are copies made there, or both.

This is good and bad, in the sense that it makes it possible to buy instruments at low prices, but also that it takes away almost all initiative from local manufacturers, as their instruments, while perhaps better, would become too expensive and difficult to sell. For the perhaps limited size of the upper market, where rock stars buy fancy instruments, the few American manufacturers plus a large amount of small, often just individual instrument makers can cover the needs.

So, in other words, if I want to play music, I need to buy an instrument from China, until the day when I can justify buying an expensive American model, or a probably even more expensive special-made instrument by a local luthier.

The way people do it is possibly like what I have seen with 3D printers: they buy something that isn’t well functioning, and then they simply use it as a starting point for an improvement project. New and better strings for sure, but also modifications to the few accessories that such an instrument has, and perhaps a replacement of the “tail piece” or the “tuners” with a better type.

Even the more expensive mandolins seem to need such a treatment in order to play their best, and that probably helps make the musicians feel closer to their instrument, as they have had it fine-tuned and set up, just for them.

Now, I am still working on actually learning how to play the instrument, but so far the view to get a better sound and the knowledge that it will then be set up as good as it goes, which is assumed to be quite good indeed, has left me even more happy with my purchase.

The availability of all other kinds of instruments at low prices directly from China is rumbling in my mind, and sooner or later I may do it: buy one or more – now that I know it is possible to add and adjust, to make the cheap purchase end up being a great one.

That’s perhaps the down-side of China’s success in the area. Local music shops are not providing anything else than just being middlemen for the purchase from China: they deliver unopened boxes as they have received them, and even though they may have a selection of strings, straps, and other accessories, they in general don’t offer much else than Amazon or other non-dedicated webshops, or indeed the Chinese shops, can sell cheaply.

There is no extra quality, no extra value to get from the local shop. In a sense, you could say that they do not show you the same loyalty as you would like to show them. That would materialize in having local products, for instance, and a special quality and useful advice, a rich total experience. But they just move boxes, and as this can be done by anyone, I wonder what the reason should be for paying twice the price for a Chinese instrument at a local webshop compared to a Chinese one. Faster delivery, perhaps, even though quite many models have delivery times of several months when bought from the local shops, and this, the Chinese shops can easily match, even though they are often slow at delivering.

Now, a prediction could be that therefore there isn’t a great future for, at least, European music shops. No local production, no added service, no reason to buy from them.

I am sure that there are exceptions, and that many music shops have competent people who can help and give advice, but it needs to be extended to also work through their web sales, as much of what we do today is arranged along that channel.

Loyalty to the European brands is difficult to find, as they are not doing anything else than ordering ready products from a Chinese factory, like the shops. No product development or care for their customers. Just raw industrialism and box moving.

The users, on the other side, are real people with a real interest in music. They make the whole thing worthwhile.

So far there is an identified online community, many people who enjoy playing this instrument and talk about it, and there are excellent examples of people mastering it and using it in their professional music. So, what I need to do next, on the social scale, is to seek places where amateurs actually play together, so that I perhaps one day can take part in some of that.

And to me, there’s no stress, no hurry. I’m doing this because I want to, at my own speed, to make my life richer. We all need something like that, I guess. And we should all allow ourselves to arrange for it.

Recently, I bought a mandolin. Very recently, as, at the moment of writing, I got it by mail yesterday, having ordered it the day before. That recently.

I didn’t go for a long time wondering if I should, or saving up enough money to buy it. I just did it out of a momentary inspiration, an hour or so of consideration, and then simply a quick choice of model and place to buy it.

Very irrational. Chances are that I could have done better, bought a better model at a better price. Or I could have joined a mandolin class, having the teacher guide me to buy the perfect instrument for me, according to my way of being, my skills and physiology, my experience.

Actually, I don’t know if there are different constructions for people with small hands, big hands, long fingers, or any other such details that could possibly affect the value you can get out of a musical instrument. I could imagine that, but I don’t know. I haven’t seen any signs of it by browsing the Internet.

So, my no-name model will do. It has a name, actually, which is the name of the shop where I bought it. No mention of who really made the instrument.

If I would ever show up at a mandolin class or at a jam session with such an instrument, it would no doubt lead to lifted eyebrows and some negative comments. Because it isn’t a known brand, therefore cannot be good. At least half of the people who will ever see this instrument will consider it – and me, because I have bought it – to be inferior.

People think that way.

During my life, I have experienced how colleagues were talking about their hobbies, for instance photography or bicycling. They never talked about actually photographing, but about the equipment they had just bought, plus the equipment they were dreaming about buying. Prices were always mentioned, and it was all very expensive! If I tried to bid in with something, such as how nice it was to be out on a Saturday morning to try capturing some great shots during the rising sun, they just looked down on me, asking me what equipment I had – and when I told them, they were frowning and quickly turning the dialog into what it had been before my interruption.

They had a photography hobby, but it was not about photographing, it was about brands and models, and buying. And talking about what they had bought.

Same things for bicycling, which cannot be done, nowadays, on just any bicycle. It has to be a special brand that has special gears and special everything else, and costs at least $10,000, and that’s even for a cheap model bought on sale. And you must wear the same clothes as the professionals, with all the same commercials on it.

I studied guitar playing a long time ago, and luckily, the others in the class didn’t talk much about their instruments or the price of them, as these people were actually there to play music and learn how to get better. The teacher, though, did mention the $10,000 his guitar had costed him, and he explained how they could easily be much more expensive. Luckily, he had a friend who had a music shop, so he could get us a good guitar for less than normal price. Well, tough luck, I had already bought one before I began the class. A good one, bought in a shop, but with a brand I don’t even remember. And it wasn’t expensive.

Now I have this shop-branded mandolin, and I like it a lot. It is a beautiful instrument, well-made, with no holes or cracks or anything that could be expected from a cheaper-than-branded model. And I have started studying how to play it, because this was the purpose of getting it. To do something completely offline, off the grid, manually, something that might survive the complete breakdown of the world, in a dystopia without Internet. Where all that mattered would be what you could do without electricity, and where entertainment would be something people had to arrange for themselves, not by switching on Netflix or Spotify or social media.

But, still, I am a slave of my time, as I have found a course on Udemy, which is definitely on-grid, and I am looking for additional courses, communities, and other ways of being active with this new toy, all online.

I know nobody who plays the mandolin, who I could’ve visited for a chat and a jam session. I know nobody, to be frank, who actively plays anything. Nobody nearby, at least. People I know, who identify themselves as musicians, amateurs or otherwise, are far away, in other countries.

So, the dystopia is already here, through the internet, in that I must use the grid to get off it.

Hopefully, I can get far fast, so that I can go out in the world with my mandolin in the hand, singing serenades and being something that I can be happy about, without the Internet, without electricity, without brands and buying-hobbies. Just me and other people, joined by the joy of music.

You have no doubt heard of “plus-days and minus-days”? We also talk about things that lead to gaining energy or spending energy. For instance, to determine if we are introverted or extraverted people.

I have been thinking a bit about a variety of these concepts. Boiled them down to individual tasks, events, activities.

Make your day

Let me start with a disclaimer. I have not invented anything new or amazing in psychology or stress management. These represent my thoughts that I would like to share with you. I hope that they will ring a bell or inspire you to your own thoughts.

The idea is that all the things we do either add something to our well-being and energy level — or subtract from them.

So, you can do plus-things and minus-things.

The sum of what you do during a day, a week, or a longer period will define your energy level. How well you feel and how much energy you have to offer others or put into new work.

What does it sum up to?

If you think along this line, you can try reflecting after a tough day — or a good day. What exactly during the day was plus and what was minus?

Try to consider the exact situation.

Notice that you may have had a minus experience from something today. But that very same experience could on other days have been a plus experience. The next step is then to dive a bit deeper and try to understand what was different.

Make sure to also consider all the plus experiences you had during the day. Would each of these experiences on other days instead have been minus experiences? Again, consider why, what was different?

An experience can be something that happens to you. With or without your active participation. Or it can be something you do. Whatever causes you to think or feel, or both.

It affects your happiness at the moment. Makes you feel safe, loved, appreciated, trusted, etc. — or, indeed, the opposite. So, we speak about feelings, emotions, and worries.

You can try listing these next to each other on a piece of paper — two columns, one for plus and one for minus. Then, at the end, sum up each of the columns.

You will then understand why you ended up feeling like you do, on this particular day.

Consider the elements

Purpose: To understand how to bring plus and minus into a reasonable balance in your life.

If you often end up with a negative number at the end of the day, you are on your way to burn out. To help prevent this, you must start saying no to some of the minus-things and/or adding some more plus-things.

You will definitely also need to reconsider what a proper way of life looks like!

For instance, procrastination can be seen as something else than what people often do. Most people describe it as something negative, but it may actually be the opposite! A sign that you have a low level of well-being that you must rebuild. And you know and understand that, deep within! You act upon it. Gain energy. And only then, you can move on with a task that you expect to cost you energy.

Also, a common idea is that of hard work being the way to success, and success being the key to happiness. This may lead to ignoring that some of the elements of the hard work are in fact draining you of energy. Allow yourself to do other things along the way that can replace that lost energy. Otherwise, you may get under the floor at some point.

Take the next step

It may be difficult to know the exact number of added plusses or removed minuses that you need each day or each week. But if you pay attention to what is plus and what is minus, you can arrange for each day to get more plus than minus in total. And then you are most likely on the right path.

Most people do feel the higher energy level when they have it. You too.

You can then share your energy with people around you. People who need a hand (or a shoulder). And start doing some of the bigger and more demanding tasks that are somehow waiting for “the right time”.

If this description sounds reasonable, you are ready to take the next step in the evolution of this idea.

Seeing each individual tree in the forest

What if “energy level” is not one thing, but in fact many things? That you can have several kinds of energy so that each of them can be “plussed” or “minused” by each thing you do.

I mentioned feeling safe, feeling trusted, feeling appreciated, and feeling loved. Together, all of these individual “trees” will be your forest of well-being.

You can make a list of the most important feelings for a person to feel well in general. You can also assess each of the daily experiences with each of these feelings. Was the experience a plus or a minus for each of the important feelings?

The consequence is the most important

There are several possible wins to hope and strive for:

Say no to a task your boss wants you to do

Because you know that saying yes will lead to several minuses and no plusses during a number of days. Saying no will lead to fewer minuses.

Watch that movie in the evening instead of doing the dishes

Because you are low on energy and need to gain some plusses.

Go out with your friends even though you have work to do

Because you need to gain some plusses on the “feeling appreciated”-account.

Give up on something altogether

Because it has too many minuses connected to it. You don’t know how to outweigh them with other things that give plusses.

Decide to quit your job and become unemployed

Because that will calculate up to a less drain of energy. Despite the many negative sides of unemployment.

Whatever you win — you win!

Behind the theory

The background for these thoughts is the many stories about people who

• “Quit their job and never have been happier”

• “Started going for a walk each afternoon and now feel full of energy”

• Etc.

The success/survival dilemma

I trust that all people have an intuition in place for what is good for them and what is not. But we also have that idea given to us that we must sacrifice life in some areas to gain possibilities in others. Given with good intentions, no doubt, but very damaging.

This often leads to striving and struggling a whole life for reaching an impossible goal. And it may not even make us happy, even if we reach it.

My take is that sooner or later life is over. What good does it do for us to give up health and happiness during most of it? If only to conclude that “we tried, but we didn’t manage” to lift ourselves to a presumed higher level?

And most of the way, the minuses we accepted were not even capable of leading to any improvements in the long run. They were nothing but a result of us being enslaved by the prevailing way of life. Even to the extent that we stopped questioning why we were doing such things that drew the energy out of us.

Improving life

It is about time to decide on a way of life that adds energy and happiness. And this we can use to spread the same to everybody around us.

Does this sound like something you have heard before?

Hippies thought something like that, I guess. People engaged with mindfulness or yoga. And various other groups of people who try to find the delicate balance in life. Or even breaking out of the treadmill of working life or completely out of society.

I want, instead, to improve the general society, to allow for such a way of thinking. To make it generally acceptable for all of us to strive for making every day a plus-day.

And I want it to start inside each individual.

As if the Second World War wasn’t bad enough in itself, it left a tense situation in the former capital of the main aggressor of the war, which was Germany, and Berlin became split and was no longer one city but two — with a wall crossing through it, very visibly demonstrating that there were now two Germany.

The Free World, and the Less Free

DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or in English, the German People’s Republic) was the part of Germany that had been occupied by the Soviet Union during the final phase of the war — where the Western allies occupied the rest.

The allies in the West could agree on gathering all their pieces of the conquered country into a new Germany, considering that something had to be done with it. It couldn’t just remain occupied forever.

The Soviet Union had similar thoughts, but there was no agreement between the two sides on creating one new Germany, so it ended up with two.

After a period where lots of people were leaving the new Eastern Germany, the desperate leaders of the new country decided to stop it the hard way: by building the wall, completely equipped with watch towers and soldiers standing there, ready to shoot anyone who looked like they may want to climb it to get to the other side.

Berlin was a special case in many ways, as it was split between East and West, but by itself, it was placed in the middle of what had become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, as we preferred to call it in the West.

So, the western part of it, West Berlin, was surrounded by East Germany on all sides. Many problems appeared out of that situation, but the West managed to remain strong and in control of their part, and this came to feed the dreams of the East Berliners who felt more and more imprisoned and suppressed.

The West as a Saviour

There is a lot of symbolism connected with many things that occurred after that wall was built. Radio Free Europe, for instance, was a radio station sent from the West but meant for Eastern Europeans — and was pure propaganda, emphasizing how much better the West was.

Lots of musical concerts also occurred, and one of these is the focus of this article — a concert by the British progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest (BJH) in West Berlin, 1980.

It was called a concert for the people, and you may wonder what people… obviously a reference to the people in the People’s Republic, the DDR. Held in West Berlin but intended for East Berlin.

The concert was held in front of the Reichstag building, the former government building, near the wall. The concert could be heard in East Berlin and, as you can hear, the band wanted the East Berliners to hear it…!

Barclay James Harvest, HYMN (Live in Berlin) (1980) — on YouTube. 250,000 people listening and cheering.

Turn it up loud! It deserves it. I think the overall situation they were all in can make the little hairs on the neck rise…

The Lyrics and The Message

Now, this is peculiar — BJH was not known for being religious, and I think that there was a completely different purpose for phrasing their “Hymn” as they did (if you didn’t catch the lyrics out of the video, here is another video with the lyrics printed: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ytmd4).

Some of the key points are that

• you should not try to fly, because then you may not come down again

• You cannot see God from your side of the mountain, it is too high — you need to move to the other side

• God is your saviour (or so said Jesus)

The words were intended for people in East Germany, which was by definition an atheist country. The population was already mostly non-religious before the DDR was created (check out this article from The Guardian for more info on this: Eastern Germany: The Most Godless Place on Earth). That might make you wonder: was the reference to God and Jesus well-picked?

I think that the simple symbolism of needing to get over the mountain to be able to see (God) the saviour — was in other words (my words): “Cross that wall to be saved! We will save you if you do,” but perhaps with a built-in warning that attempting it may be fatal.

Strange Aftermath

In 1987, just a few years later — many open-air rock concerts in Berlin later, with various rock bands roaring a “YEAH!” over and over again across the wall in the split city — BJH somehow was allowed to perform, as the first ever Western rock band, a concert in East Berlin.

Obviously, the East German leaders, who were at that time under pressure, had not understood the message. Two years later, the wall was torn down by the masses. The big prison was opened, and the people officially became free.

Progression

Progressive rock music was “a thing” in the 1960s and 1970s, and I was too young by then to notice — or maybe it was mostly a thing in the UK, not really getting all the way to Denmark, where I grew up. When that “concert for the people” was held, I was just an eleven-year-old who knew about neither BJH nor the concert. I do think that I at the time was fully aware of what East Berlin was, but it was a very remote thing for me (not by distance but by mindset).

I knew nothing about progressive rock until a couple of years later when as a teenager I developed an interest in music, very much helped by the fact that I got an old record player at that time, making it possible for me to discover this new universe.

And this concert recording was one of the first records I heard. I didn’t own it, but my brother did. Later I got my own copy of it, which I still listen to now and then.

The music was called progressive and considered a new development, hence “a progression.” It was probably never meant to cause progression, but I believe that it did — it pushed along with many other things the development of the DDR into self-destruction.

And Where Did That Lead Us?

The people in Eastern Germany — now part of the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland), previously known as West Germany — are still godless.

Being saved was a different thing than the “seeing God” in the song could have indicated, but it was very much in line with what we all in the West wanted — a world based on individual freedom to plan life, work with whatever, think, write, and sing whatever, and to buy a lot of stuff from the mass producers.

It is not uncommon for the saved people to feel betrayed, because they were immediately considered a burden, lesser valuable people, when getting included in the BRD.

The enthusiasm and dream of getting to that other side of the mountain, which led them to break down the wall, were killed off by the fact that now that the West had reached its goal, the people were no longer an interesting topic to spend time on.

The East Germans had rock music on their minds for a while, and mountains to cross. They broke down the wall with that rock and flew high when crossing the mountains. And they fell hard on the rocky ground when landing.

They tried to fly and they came down again. But the music is still flying, hanging in the air to remind us.

You live your life — of course you do, what else is there? And I am not talking about not living or living someone else’s life, but what alternative you could have for your own life that you can live.

When we are young, we have no idea of what a good life is — how to make life rich. We listen to others, find our gurus, some to follow. Maybe our parents, but often their lives do not look like what we dream about.

We think for a while that being wealthy is the way forward, so we spend part of our lives ruining every chance for actually living, just because we have a goal for the future.

Or we can’t make it, can’t find the resources to aim for that big goal we have been led to believe is good. And we feel sorry for it. Sad. Feel that we owe an apology to the world for just living, which we then do not allow ourselves to do. We punish ourselves for only living — by not really doing it, just moving through the time that should have been life, in regret and shame.

When we do that, we miss the things that we would later be happy to not have missed. But there is no return, so if we do not grab it while it’s available, it’s lost.

The good side of that is that whenever you take a step in a wrong direction, that becomes the journey. You’ll find something along that journey that will fill your life. It will become your life. That hypothetical life that you wanted to live but didn’t, remains a dream.

Dreams of a parallel universe, a world that could have been, tend to sadden you. You may have such impossible dreams all your life, but the older you get, the further from reality they get.

You’ll have to reach out for what you would like to get, whenever you understand that you want it — or even if you are in doubt. In life or love. In every respect of everything that matters or could matter.

People and places, wildlife and the universe. That sudden understanding of where you want to live, what you want to do, what you can do for others, what you may be able to do for the world.

Everything counts. Only, life is not a race. There is no particular goal of it, nothing you need to do just because it must be done.

Life is rich when you try things that you want to try, make decisions you want to make, because they will improve something or send you in a possible better direction.

When you are 20, it’s easy to try and fail, because you can look ahead to many more years, many more things to try. So, do it! Later, it will be difficult, and you may end up in regret for not having tried.

A special thing about people: they are not there forever. Be with them while you have them.

Now, even though I’m a great spokesman of looking for the good in life, making everything you do a rich experience by simply looking for the rich elements in it, I also must say that life in retrospective does not consist of only the rich details, not only the good moments.

It’s okay to be sad, as my mother used to say. While not being the goal of life, you’ll get something out of that too. While not being enjoyable to go bankrupt or breaking a leg, such things may happen as a result – or just a side effect — of trying something that may lead to other results and other side effects as well; or perhaps just a memory.

Don’t be afraid of life. Use it. All of it.

You have done it millions of times.

The first time was the worst; you felt like a bad person, letting down not only others but also yourself, your moral standards, and your self-respect.

You broke a promise. Someone was now sad or in trouble because of you.

Since then, you got used to it. But you still don’t like it. Life is somehow forcing you to be a bad person, and, at times, you hate yourself for this, perhaps even more than those you let down are hating you.

But there are some simple tricks to do better than that.

A complex mind in a complex world

You are complex and simple at the same time.

Your simple mind

Human beings are equipped with a very capable brain — it can solve complicated calculations, see connections and consequences, it can even develop intuition; a sense of things that it doesn’t understand itself but somehow seems correct.

But it cannot multitask.

It cannot maintain several threads of thought for a lengthy duration. One thread will take over, and the others will be left waiting, or dismissed altogether.

Even if you feel that you can have problems focusing, this is indeed what you are doing all the time.

Do you know this feeling of forgetting time when you are engaged in something interesting? Suddenly you realize that an hour has passed — or several hours. You had a really enjoyable time, perhaps with others who also had that. Isolated there is nothing wrong, but you suddenly realize that you had promised to be somewhere else along the way, meeting someone — or making a phone call — or doing some shopping.

Your complex mind

Human beings are social beings. Even the most isolated and hostile eremite is part of a larger society. We cannot escape that, and therefore we make good use of our social skills.

We smile and nod when others are talking to us, to show that we are on the same page. We even do that, at times, if we do not understand a word of what they are saying — because we are polite.

Being polite means doing things that we honestly wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for trying to make another person feel good.

We, as social beings, want to make other people feel good.

So we say yes to a lot of things just to be kind. We promise to drop by and have a coffee someday, and we promise to read that article or book that a friend has written and wants our comments on. We promise a lot of things, non-stop.

Your mind is being trapped in the single-tasking mode again and again, where you see the problem at hand and focus on this. Therefore, you promise something new every other moment, since every other moment is exactly a new moment, a new task.

And it all accumulates into a big pile of promises that your brain cannot easily make a combined plan of.

Happy days for the vendors of planning calendars and other tools to help you organize this mess!

The complex world and how you fit in

You are part of something bigger, as you are a social being, we stated that already. It means that you have friends, family, a job with colleagues and bosses, customers, study activities, a home with bills to pay, a stomach to fill with food that you need to buy and cook — and then on top, all those many promises you make all the time.

You are a piece of a multidimensional puzzle called society — a lot of things happen all the time — and a lot of promises are made. And you cannot see through this, as your mind really is single-tasking in one dimension only.

Internet, social media, telephones, emails, TV, radio … it all adds to the complexity; nothing of what we are filling our lives with today is simplifying anything.

Especially social media is ruining your ability to fulfil your promises, and it is breaking down your sense of morality because it is so easy to spend 10 seconds on clicking like or even writing a comment that you agree. What you may be doing this way is to indicate to someone that you want to participate in an activity — a webinar, a meeting, reading something, whatever it could be. And you can indicate this hundreds of times in a week and forget about all of it the moment after you have done it.

Social media presents you with too many social politeness obligations to handle properly.

Even your yoga class is making things worse, by itself being another obligation, having a time schedule and some communication needs, payments, learning needs, etc., connected to it — causing you to promise things all the time.

There is no escape, or so it looks. The world is very complex and very demanding.

There is an escape — a simple trick

If you think carefully about it, you really should not promise things all the time if you have no idea how to fulfil the promise.

A simple deduction

Yes, at the moment you see no problems in fulfilling a promise to meet with someone “next week” or “sometime soon” because it should be easy to arrange. After all, you have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — over a few weeks it definitely should be possible to spend 2 of those many hours on this particular purpose.

But this deduction is wrong:

• Firstly, you do not have that many hours. Some of them are not available at all because you sleep etc. and spend some time on that.

• Secondly, those hours have already been taken by other promises that you just don’t remember in this new moment of being focused and polite.

• Thirdly, there will be other things coming up, more promises. You need to make room for that. Otherwise, you will certainly break some of the promises.

The logical deduction

Looking at why promises are being broken, it is not too difficult to understand what to do to avoid that — start with implementing these five principles in your way of dealing with promises and planning:

1. Instead of promising things all the time to do in the future, try to fix the situation on the spot — often you can help people with whatever they need, such as reading a text, within the next few minutes. And then make sure that you finish this without a half promise to continue later. Make sure to say something like — “So, that was it!” — for yourself and the other party to clearly be understood as a full stop to that thread of activity.

2. Say no to unreasonable demands. This often happens at work but can happen in your private life as well. You may say no in a diplomatic way but do say no if the demand is ruining your other plans or steals your sleeping time. Make sure that you do not promise to give what you do not have. At work, your boss may be a psychopath who will then fire you — if that happens, be happy about it, and move on in life to something better.

3. When you do need to promise anything for the future, make sure to take it seriously. Make sure that the other party understands that it is serious — you must check immediately when you can do it, how much time you can spend on it, and clarify what can be expected from you during that planned time. Don’t leave the situation with an open end like “I will see how I can plan this; I will get back to you” — it is the direct road to disaster.

4. Leave room in the plan for future promises. Never fill your plan completely. You may get ill, there may be something urgent coming up, or something in the plan may require extra time. Make sure that this can happen without too many needs for adjustment, and without too many needs to excuse that you cannot fulfil your promise.

5. Leave room in your planning for doing nothing. That room may be filled with short notice by something urgent that comes up, or you can simply enjoy having a corner of the time-space continuum for yourself — where you can develop new thoughts, get inspiration from a good book, or whatever you decide at that moment. Don’t get tempted to plan with this time, promise yourself to keep it open and make sure to keep that promise. It doesn’t have to be the same time each day or each week, you decide what will work for you, but you do need some time.

This way, you should become better at keeping your promises. You will make fewer of them, but magically keep more than you did before.

In a sense, you will be breaking your promises before they are made, and people do most often understand that — after a while. In the situation where you say no, it can be tough, but think about how much better it is for everybody when you only make promises that you can keep.

And people will start seeing you as someone they can rely on, someone with integrity. And there is a good chance that even those who used to be demanding too much will start behaving better because they now see you as a person who knows how to make life work — and they cannot compete with that.

Do you know that feeling?

You are doing something mundane, not thinking too much about life, and then, in the radio, something is catching your attention and makes you feel like dancing?

Well, here I am, cooking beetroots. They are healthy, I’ve heard, making the stomach behave and, hence, improving life. And vitamins, minerals, and you have it may also be there - in huge amounts, I’ve heard.

So, from the program I’ve set up in my music system, suddenly Señor Coconut starts playing “La Vida Es Llena de Cables” - a latin rhythm by a German party band that was probably meant to be kind of a joke at first but developed into a success with several records on the street.

And that rhythm caught me right there, when cooking beetroots.

I found myself dancing around in the kitchen and wanting to tell the world how great life can be. Just find your way to your roots, to your emotions, and let the world in and your wish to express yourself out.

Life can indeed be rich if you can do that - and enjoy the little things that life is so full of.

Copenhagen, on the bicycle — fresh air and exercise. If you have ever visited the Danish capital, you must have noticed how bicycles are everywhere — being ridden or parked, but everywhere.

The post also uses them. And for many years, the Danish Mail was even designing its own bicycles, specially made for carrying several heavy bags full of mail.

My life was going down the pan

Not fully, and I must admit when looking back, that it was tough even before that time, but it felt extra tough in the situation. Very.

I had been extremely busy for a number of years working in other companies as a consultant, project manager, and manager — and then starting my own company, and another, building up two companies in parallel—working day and night, every day of every week for several years.

Until one day, someone who was supposed to be a friend and partner in one of the companies, working as a sub-contractor but with direct contact with the main clients — decided to “grab the money and run”, so to speak: he agreed secretly with clients over some time that he would leave my company and take the clients with him; work with them through his own company instead.

And so it happened, I lost all income, and the greedy former friend even took me to court because he wanted even more money, on top of the very high percentage of the earnings that he had already been given throughout our collaboration.

I couldn’t manage to resolve the situation, had very little income but still all the expenses, and I had to close one company, and the other followed it down.

And I had nothing — apart from depts. The court agreed with that terrible guy that he should indeed have more, and what all ended up with was that he should get more commission than the customers had paid for his work. Which was, of course, money that didn’t exist, so I suddenly owed him a lot of money that I could not pay.

All the other creditors also wanted more, many of them smelling blood and inventing amounts that they hoped could somehow sneak through the quality control and just get paid in the chaos. Some of them added an endless stream of punishment fees of various kinds to the depts, whether mandated or not, and some took me to court to get more money.

But there wasn’t any money.

The mortgage could not be paid, so my apartment had to be sold, and the real estate office seems to have had a double agenda, selling it too cheaply to the owner, only for him to immediately sell it for more to a client. What I got was only enough to end the loans. Nothing was left.

I myself ended up in a terrible place with child gangs assaulting old people and my neighbor being a drug dealer regularly being visited by shouting customers (they were standing on the street and shouting to him that they wanted drugs) or the police — at one time a full squadron of officers dressed for war was breaking into his apartment. And all the other neighbors being vandals, threatening, or simply just very noisy.

I was getting quite depressed.

But I could see the sky

In the midst of all this misery, I was happy that I got into a new study — was accepted at the university and began studying.

With this, I could apply for study aid, and it was granted. That was good, but it was not enough to pay even for the rent, let alone all the other costs, such as needed study books — or food.

So I was looking for work.

And one option seemed extra interesting — being a postman; an extra help on Saturdays.

Back on the horse again

After applying for the postman job, an uncertain period followed, as typical for job applications. It seems to be important for employers of all kinds to not support the applicants in their life situation — where they often are worried, troubled, desperate. I guess that if calculating how many troubled hours are being lived on that account, it ranks at the top of things that trouble people around the world.

Just a naive thought, of course, but what would happen to the world if employers always answered quickly? If they considered it a duty to help the applicants out of their troubled situation or at least, if that was not possible, to clarify the situation quickly so that the applicant could move on in another direction?

I don’t remember how long I had to wait, but maybe it wasn’t very long. And then I was invited to take a test! Quite positive — and somehow they also communicated a bit of info about what I could expect from the test, which kinds of questions, and a suggestion to study their website carefully before the test.

It turned out that most of the test was about recognizing different parts of a bicycle and reading both machine and handwritten addresses on envelopes, deciding to whom a letter had to be delivered.

After another waiting time, I got a message that I had passed — and an invitation to meet a postmaster at a post office not too far away for an interview.

Happy days!

At the interview, some common interview questions were asked, but I liked that guy immediately, as he started out by saying that usually, the candidates were somewhat younger, and to me he didn’t need to direct all the same questions as he would to them. He showed me respect.

However, he also told me that it was the first time he had a candidate like me for an interview — and by that, he meant someone who had an education.

And then I started wondering. I still do :)

But I got the job.

The rise and fall of the postal services

There is a long and proud history hidden in the delivery of letters. Often these services developed into being the pride of a country — being able to send letters fast and reliably was considered a quality mark for hundreds of years.

But then Al Gore invented the internet (maybe with a little assistance from some scientists and a huge amount of other people). And it became widespread.

So wide and so fast, that all the world’s postal establishments were completely shocked and unable to deal with the situation:

What would become of them if everybody would send e-mails instead of paper-mails?

Some of them began offering services where you could send them an email, then they would print it, put it in an envelope and then they would deliver it for you in the good old way.

Others looked at offering various types and shapes of electronic mailboxes — where you would send an email to that one, now named an official mailbox, instead of sending it directly to people's own email accounts. And people would then need to log in through complicated mechanisms to be allowed to read it. This actually became rather popular and is still in effect in many places. Somehow it appears to be logical to some.

But the predicted drop in old-fashioned letters made of paper and transported by horse, plane, boat, truck — or bicycle — to the recipient who could be behind the seven mountains and the seven valleys, or next door; well, that happened.

Suddenly people on the other side of the Earth would often prefer to get their message in a split second rather than waiting for weeks. And the neighbor would, apparently, be happy to have only electronic contact with you.

Society changed, and, being in shock, the postal services at first decided to simply make everything they used to be good at, worse.

They reduced the service levels, increased the prices, expanded the delivery routes to the maximum possible, or more, they fired all their experienced staff, and hired students or whoever they could get for the lowest possible salaries, and they added the distribution of commercials to their repertoire, letting these poorly paid students work hard for their money.

A process that is still going on. Wherever anything can get worse, it is being made worse, just to make sure that if anyone still wants to send a traditional letter they will be scared away from doing so. Because the postal services can now calculate that they lose an amount of money for each letter they deliver. So, says their logic, better not deliver any.

Me in this mess

I started. The requirement was to spend a full week during weekdays (or was it even two?) for an initial round of training, which was difficult to arrange due to my studies and another part-time job I had been so fortunate to get. But I managed to do it, was happy about the money I earned, and definitely about the multitude of things I learned:

• Don’t run up and down the stairs without at least one hand on the banister — many postmen have fallen down the stairs, getting seriously injured

• Expect that the door now and then will be abruptly opened while you are in the middle of putting the mail through it, and an angry man will come out and complain about everything he finds wrong with society, the postal service, and you: He would want the mail earlier, there is a package on the way with something he has ordered on the internet and it still hasn’t arrived — “Where is it?!”, he finds that the government is weak and destroying the country, and he is for whatever reason angry that you do not have an official uniform yet (would be granted only after three months in the position).

• Don’t put your finger together with the letters a bit through the letter slot — there may be a dog there that will snap at your fingers.

• And speaking about dogs: there will be some in the gardens, and they will hate you and try to bite you — for whatever reason, postmen are valid prey for domestic dogs.

• No matter your physical shape: running up and down stairs for 8 hours after getting up in the middle of the night to sort the letters — is tough!

• And something I learned the hard way: If you live in a terrible place with noisy neighbors who insist on partying with loud music, screaming, and shouting every Friday evening until Saturday morning, you will not survive long in a job as a Saturday postman. Running up and down the stairs for 8 hours without having slept even just a little bit is indeed very tough.

But I learned about people as well (not those terrible neighbors):

• Low-paid, un-educated people with tough jobs and often tough life conditions in general, are hard-working, loyal people who behave well and help out colleagues who need it — completely in contrast with the high-paid, highly educated people with easy jobs I had been working with most of my professional career

• They all had a deep faith in the value of their work, knowing how important a letter could be for people — and feeling connected with their “customers”, ordinary people of all kinds who found the postal service to be a natural part of modern life and wouldn’t want to be without it.

The aftermath

I never got my official uniform, as I decided to stop before I had been there for three months.

I needed the money, I sort of liked the work even though it was tough — the routes were too long, and the number of commercials to bring ridiculously large (needing to arrange several deposits of mail/commercials along the route as the bicycle couldn’t carry all of it in one go — even with three big bags on it).

But I couldn’t deliver. After a number of very early Saturday mornings with no sleep, still a tremendous amount of noise from the neighbors at the time when I was to get out of bed and off to work — I found that I had no energy for it and was reporting myself ill a couple of times, and then feeling how big a problem that was for my boss and my colleagues who then had to work extra.

I didn’t want to be that bad colleague who could not be trusted.

More aftermath

Several years later, when I again needed an extra job, I applied for a job in the postal services. I had in the meantime jumped countries and was now living on the other side of the street, literally, between Denmark and Sweden, but I could easily go by train or car to the other side and work there with sorting and packaging mail all night, but I was rejected. I applied in the other country as well for similar jobs, but no.

My guess is that either my experience weighted in negatively, or I had become too old. Having the physics of a 25-year-old is one of the main conditions in that business, where, apparently, other competencies weigh in less.

The memory

The postal services are no longer what they once were. Whatever is still left of them is all the time being reduced and dismantled. There is no pride in having a fast and reliable postal service; it rather seems to be an embarrassment for today’s politicians, such one that they would want to see disappear completely.

I am no longer what I once was. I am wiser now :) I have learned from my brief contact with a world of honor, loyalty, helpfulness — and its dark vision and future of everything constantly getting worse.

This, together with the experience from various other types of jobs at different levels in different companies has helped shape my understanding of what real values are and how those idiotic goals and KPIs of modern companies are really just producing bad behavior from some of the employees, who are then breaking down the others.

So I am happy that I knew what the different parts of a bicycle were called and how to read an address on a letter. I wouldn’t want to be without this memory — without this piece of my brain puzzle.

It comes with getting older, I suppose - thinking about the fragility of life, the loss of old friends, idols, and even my enemies and those who were some kind of annoyance. All the people who used to make up the life as I knew it.

During the last few years, I have seen many of the musicians and composers I enjoyed listening to pass away. And I have been thinking about how both music listening and book reading often becomes some kind of escape into the past. It may be so, even though I have not counted, that most of the music I listen to and the books I read are connected with people no longer among us.

Culture becomes a world of ghosts. A kind of worshiping of the dead. Every writer hopes to leave a legacy of books and thoughts behind for the future to enjoy - hopes to be remembered. To become such a ghost. And fears not to reach that, to be completely forgotten.

Before this makes me sad, I take a firm grip in myself and consider what it really means.

All the shelves full of books, written by writers no longer alive - edited, proofread, translated, illustrated, printed, distributed, sold and shipped by people who passed away long ago - are continuing the lives of all these valuable people. While still physical alive, they had other people around them who may or may not have appreciated their existence and what they did, but now, in their afterlife, they continue bringing joy to me and many others through what they did.

Mozart, Beethoven and all the other long gone classical composers are still alive as sources of inspiration for new composers, and as goal-setters for conductors and musicians, as well as the audiences of all times, of all places.

Buildings and statues, large engineering efforts such as the Suez or Panama canals, everything visible now and perhaps forever - some of it directly, like those canals, but a lot of other things as future moments of surprise and then insight for archeologists and historians. Inventions, designs, handicraft of all kinds, even a pair of shoes or a spoon, to be re-discovered in thousands of years and making people wonder.

All made by people no longer physically around but still contributing to the world in their deeds, representing their spirits.

Maybe less famous, maybe less recognizable for future historians, are the many small and big contributions to your life by the people who made you, raised you, helped you, and supported you. All the good and bad moments with them took part in shaping you. These people live forever through you, your memories of them, and what you do for others as a result.

You’ll live forever too. For all the same reasons. Having left a book or a musical composition is a visible sign that you have been there, but your inspiration to the world is shaping it and will forever become part of the social structure. The physical and social space you take up while alive will be empty when you leave, but not for long - it will give room for a world that will adapt to the shape of the room you created, leaving an eternal trace of the one unique person that was you - that is you, as your spirit this way remains part of the universe, forever taken into account and adapted to.

Manuel Göttsching is playing his minimalist guitar hypnosis through my loudspeakers just now, almost two years after he died. He lives in my music collection, as a regular inspiration. Walter Scott is patiently waiting for me to finish reading his book about Ivanhoe, and hundreds of other musicians and writers like them are similarly adding a mental input, a historical account, a philosophical angle to the lives of millions.

Sure, life is fragile, and our bodies do not live long. But our spirits live forever.

Autumn will soon arrive in the North, spring in the South. And large parts of the world have a different rhythm altogether.

But there is a rhythm. Nature moves fast forward, and still, it returns to where it was, more or less, again and again.

Does it count for everything?

Well, in nature, it does, at least when seen on a short time scale. But millions of years ago, everything was different, and in millions of years into the future, they will again be different.

It’s a matter of time. With time, everything changes.

The concept of modern life, however, changes so fast that we can almost watch it happen. At least we can see that it did happen, if we think back just a few years and compare with now.

There are different rhythms on different locations, and some people need a bit longer to adopt new ideas — sometimes not even looking at them until other people are already on their way to the next new idea.

But there is a rhythm. The concept of modern life moves fast forward and doesn’t come back, it is ever changing.

— Worth considering if you were about to say something like “This is how it is!” or “This is how it has always been!” in a discussion — because, you would be wrong.

A better attitude when discussing is to ask questions and think about how to change, which new direction will be the most reasonable, given the circumstances, which are always:

• Some things have changed already — you must update your mental model to match them.

• Other things are messy, with several ideas in play, and you could help find a concensus.

• And yet other things are bubbling out there, in the world, and need your attention — because, suddenly, they will be all around you, and you can navigate better by knowing them in advance.

So, this is the case for paying attention to what happens, what people think and do, and to be conscious about what you do — and at the same time, ready to adjust your thinking and direction.

It is sad to see how people fight at work to do all the things needed to succeed in the job; for the company to succeed — and in the process forgetting about themselves, or perhaps, neglecting their own needs for the bigger cause.

And then one day, they break down. They have driven themselves to an end from where they cannot get back, they are over the edge, their way back is beyond their capacity — they are burned out.

The Yang in the Yin (the light in the dark)

When people burn out, it feels like a total defeat. It often comes on top of having burned the candle in both ends, so it is not strange that it happens, but it is still such an anti-climax for the one involved that it really feels like the end. Like there is nothing left to burn, no work capacity, no life.

And that is where the tiny bit of good comes in: because being where it is still possible to feel all this, means that there is still some life left.

They are still not at the real end, even though it feels like it.

Blame the society

Even though it is too easy to blame anything or anyone else for what happens to one self, it is not unreasonable in this case. It would be too much to claim that “society” as a phenomena can be blamed for anything, as there are many societies — different countries, different culture spheres in any specific country, and different circles with different traditions where the individual belong more or less to some of, but rarely to all of this.

It is, though, quite obvious that many people feel that they must show strength and success, and also that these features are connected with functioning well as a wheel in the machine, i.e., being a piece in the puzzle of people in a big company, taking commands and being judged by others, delivering an extra effort for the sake of the company.

In most cases, doing so is the very essence of being part of the society: it allows for talking about your job, mentioning how you managed to fix a problem that others couldn’t, how busy you are (understood: because your efforts are so important), and what perspectives this whole thing opens up to, including potential promotions or being discovered by important players in this business, maybe leading to a dream career.

And talking like this leads to appraisal from your surroundings, perhaps with an occasional “Congratulations!” for your success. But nobody ever asks you about how you, personally, feel. The success is a superficial thing, strictly tied to doing all the formalistic right things in a company; including obeying your boss, elbowing your competitors, ruling your subordinates, and being strategic while playing the political game right.

It is never about you, it is about your role. Like if life was a movie.

When your role leaves you behind

There is a strange logic in business: if you do a lot of work well, it means that you are capable of doing a lot of work, so you will get more — and more — until you are no longer capable of doing it all well.

At that time it is difficult to get rid of the extra work, even though you could really need that, having been overloaded for too long. You may ask directly if your boss could distribute some of it to some others, but you are not likely to succeed, as he or she has already seen that you can handle it, and the easiest is to not make any changes. And your colleague, who doesn’t have a lot to do, has other plans for the next few weeks — something about painting the house, or whatever, and we cannot interfere with those plans, can we?

Your role is to be the slave of the company, it is clear now, and you cannot escape it.

So you try to make a deed out of it, win on it. For a while you probably believe that it is possible, that you will even come out on the other side stronger and with all the work done, in a position where you are now a hero with all the hard work behind you…

But of course not. Nobody will thank you for the extra work, for leaving your own life behind in order to please the role and the company, and you are likely to just get more work, no thanks, and sooner or later be pushed aside when you are not needed anymore, since your sacrifices have lead to your boss getting a promotion to where he doesn’t need you.

The exact situation can be different, but it is most often something about feeling that you must do a lot but have no way of escaping it. And nobody cares.

It can happen that you don’t care yourself, that you have simple left your own needs and sound judgment of the situation behind, now consisting only of the role.

And that is when the hammer hits you.

When you have outrun your shadow

Congratulations! You did all the right things, according to society norms, and here is your reward: total failure. A personal breakdown, because the role is being hit and the self isn’t there anymore — has been left in oblivion for too long and has no strength to rescue you.

It now takes time for the two to find each other, or, indeed, for you to find yourself. Redefine yourself, making sure that you will move forward as one complete person in the future.

If you have a future. Even though it is an old (an evil) myth that a burnout is forever and destroys a person beyond repair, there are still society norms to consider — if your boss, colleagues, relatives, supermarket clerks, hairdressers, bank clerks, whoever, start treating you as a being beyond repair, it can become some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

But if you are being treated as someone who really did their best and just reached the end of their capacity, reached their limit, which is now known, you may be allowed back in. You will be seen as weaker now, meaning that your boss and other competitors will be less afraid of you and perhaps less tough on you.

Most people who come back to the same job leave it again after six months. It is like Columbus having found the West-way to India — now the search is over, there are no more goals to pursuit. Work becomes dull when all the dreams are dead and all the illusions revealed.

The headline

It was a message posted on LinkedIn, as a cartoon: One person says “I’m exhausted, I need a break!”, the other replies “Then take one!” — and then some further dialog, leading to a conclusion that we are all masters of our own lives.

As 99% of other posts on LinkedIn, this was probably meant to sell something, but I don’t remember what. I just caught this main part of the dialog, and I find it characteristic for a new style of how we see the work life — that we are not slaves, we can actually make decisions about our own efforts, based on our own needs. And there are people around us who may support us in such decisions.

The modern way to avoiding a burnout is to manage one self. In several ways: literally, by being allowed to decide on work hours, deadlines, the overall flow of a project or activity, the engagement level with colleagues, etc. — all based on what seems fit, not what someone else dictates. But also metaphorically, by making sure to have that inner dialog, to not leave yourself behind, bringing the full you forward and into every task, taking proper considerations to remaining healthy and not all the time spend every last drop of juice left on the role, but leaving a significant portion of it on yourself.

This is part of the modern leadership paradigm. People last longer this way, so it is probably also connected with good economy for the company — but that is not the reason for doing it! The reason is that people matter. They are not just parts of a big machine, they are individuals with their own needs that are more important than the traditional company needs.