Are you happy?

Imagine, one day you have it all together and the next you don't. It's scary right? Well, that is what happened

You wake up, you suffer through traffic, you get to work and you let the day pass you by, you watch in agony the minutes tick way on the clock. This is your life ticking away, counting down to the end, your end. You die a little bit everyday. We're all heading to the same place. Is it what you want? Sitting in your office, wishing time away, is this what you wanted when you were a kid. Is this the life you envisioned for yourself? The world is becoming a bigger place everyday. It's becoming easier to get lost. It's becoming easier to be forgotten. Everything is becoming manufactured, mass produced, products and people. Young people are dressing the same. Teenagers all wearing the same clothes and same hair styles as if they've just fallen out of a River Island catalogue. And it's getting worse. You don't want to just blend in like these mindless victims of advertising and P.R managers. You don't want an expensive tie and shirt because you saw Leonardo DiCaprio wear it, you just think you do because you are unhappy in your own life and you think if you wear the clothes and own the watch that you will be just like Leonardo DiCaprio, a happy and successful man but you won't. Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. I hope you are beginning to learn that fact. Following a leader is dangerous. Fuck that, be your own leader. You need to throw away everything you know about the importance of material possessions, forget your assumptions of civilisation and let go. Just let go. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
Ask yourself right now are you happy? You don't know? Ask again. If you still don't know then I'll tell you. No you are not happy. You now need to make changes. This will not be easy but you've done what comes easy and look where it has landed you. Today you've seen the light and you will start your transformation.
Start with little changes and move on to bigger more life altering changes. But the most important of all, first think of what you really want, think hard. Now start thinking of a plan. How you are going to get there?Make it a mission statement. Make one small step closer to your goal everyday.
Now I'm not saying go out quite your job, not right now anyway. Locate your target, set a game plan and put that plan in motion. If your plan is to quite your job and acquire your dream job then find what skills that job requires get them and then quite your job and don't look back. Fear is a great motivation tool.
People on their death beds always have a list, they always have fear in their eyes. You don't want to be like that. You are going to die. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. It is the only certain thing in your life right now. You need to know this, not fear it, know it. I'm not going to vomit some fucking crap about live each day to the fullest or live each day as if it were your last but I will say don't die with a to do list and don't fear death. Easier said then done but it is possible. You can and will be happy but only you have the power to make it happen.
Do you want to wear the same clothes as everybody else? Do you want to be a leader or a follower? Weak or strong? Loser or winner?  I don't and I rather be a leader, a winner. Do you want to wake up tomorrow and relive that sickening feeling, that "Oh fuck this is my life" feeling? Do you want to go back to your shitty job, your dull apartment or empty house and watch T.V just because the noise drowns out the loneliness. No! Fuck that. I won't do it and neither will you.
Maybe being a minimalist is the way to go. It would certainly cause us less stress. I mean there is near war over next generation games systems. It makes me sick. It's not essential to our lives, to our happiness, to our worth or survival but we crave it. We have become weak as a race. Humans have become dependant on each other to the point where we are constantly on Twitter, Facebook and every other site (sometimes simultaneously) looking for attention and companionship.
Can you really have friends if you don't even know who you are? I don't think so. Not true friends anyway. Be a fucking human being not a by-product of some lifestyle template. Be an individual not another member of some conformity. BE HAPPY. Be truly happy. Never wish time away again. Never do anything without thinking "Is this really what I want". Don't fear death, be ready. Then maybe, just maybe, you'll be remember

My Plan(s)

My master plans

Hey there I’m Chris Duff and this is my life plan. Well actually I have two plans. Plan A is to make my living as a professional cyclist and Plan B is to be a journalist. (If I can’t be the story I might as well write it.) I guess, before I tell you how I intend to fulfil my goal(s) I should give you an origins story.

The life ahead of me didn’t always look bright and at times the future looked dark and even terrifying. I was, and guess I still am, a shy and socially inept person. I didn’t really fit in at school and wasn’t very popular as while other kids played football and PlayStation I played drums and read. I did like sport it just wasn’t the modish kind. I preferred long distance running swimming and above all cycling but just at a pastime level. I’ve been left perplexed recently, as I’ve been characterised as “intelligent, charming and not without humour.” That’s always nice, right?

I am from Skerries [where the Captain of the 2012 Dublin Football Team, Bryan Cullen, also calls home]. I, along with other inhabitants of this once intimate town, still like to believe it is the quaint fishing village it once was but Skerries has flourished quiet impressively over the years. I played Hurling, Gaelic and Soccer but was terrible at soccer however exceptional at the former two. For a few years I gave up on sport for various reasons, primarily illness. Before you ask I’ll tell you. I was diagnosed with anorexia and depression in 2008. I was fourteen. In 2009 I was very ill as a result of my anorexia and spent over a month in hospital. It wasn’t the first time or the last but it was the longest. One day while flicking through the channels on the small television in the corner of my hospital room I happened upon the Tour de France. It was stage 4, the team time trial round Montpellier. I was immediately transfixed by the fluid style of the sport. The instantly evident brutality of the sport, the high speeds, the precision of each move, it was poetry in motion and I was captivated immediately. After that I continued to follow the race day my day, stage by stage. I was amazed by the drama of the race, the super human displays of power, the team work, the sacrifices each member made for their team leader and the glory. I previously didn’t know cycling was a team sport but was left in awe of the team spirit and loyalty I think is unequalled in any other sport. Watching the winner of each stage cross the line, throwing his hands up in the air and scream with joy and seeing the pride on his face and the happiness of everyone around him, I wanted that. I was given Lance Armstrong’s book “It’s not about the bike” as a gift. I read it cover to cover and although I had anorexia and not cancer I was so inspired by Lance’s come back that it left me feeling compelled to do the same. This was my “moment of clarity”. Although I was still sick and wouldn’t be allowed exercise for a few months, even after I was let leave the hospital to recover at home, I started to work out how I could kick start my cycling career. I had received a tone of get well cards with money inside so I saved every cent toward purchasing my very first race bike.

After a few months of saving and convalescing I was ready to buy my first race bike. I had joined the Swords Cycling Club on the advice of my neighbor who was a member and whose son, Stephen Halpin, is a professional cyclist and spent a brief year on the An Post Sean Kelly Team. I started going on club spins every Sunday morning and I fell in love after just meters of pedaling with the group. The comradery of the group was inspiring; everybody looked after one and other. I finally felt like I had a place where I belonged. A few weeks later I entered my first race. It was a cold May evening. It was a club organised race on pothole riddled country roads and I was pumped, overly eager to impress and unaware of the pain about to be trust upon me. I was the youngest by at least six years from what I could gather. I was about half the size of the next biggest guy, at 6”2 and 58kg I bet some of the guys there could have crushed me with their calf muscles. I finished roughly fiftieth out of eighty. Thankfully it was a hilly course; otherwise I’d have been dropped after lap three of the 12km course which we completed six times. I was light therefore got up the hills with ease. My small frame also meant I could shelter from the wind behind almost anybody. I was exhausted, sore, cold, saturated in sweat but I had the biggest smile on my face. I loved every pedal stroke of that race. I had this overwhelming sense of exhilaration. I was sore and so depleted that I could barely walk but I felt wonderful and I decided I was going to do everything in my power to chase that high for as long as possible. I know fiftieth place isn’t anything to write home about, I wasn’t exactly please with that result myself, but I am a fighter I am a perfectionist I hate losing. I hate losing almost more then I love winning. I would improve on that every week, I was indomitable from that point. I set out on this journey of transformation; I was determined to be a pro-cyclist.

After a summer of racing and a visibly vast improvement I had people coming up and congratulating me at the end of races, people who saw me at the beginning and people who saw me at the end of the season. Some said to me if I kept going the way I was going, put on a bit more muscle weight and stayed smart, I could one day make the National Team. It was so humbling to see people I’d only met three months ago put that kind of faith in me. They gave me a sense of worth a sense of belonging and, something I hadn’t really had before, confidence. They also gave me a new goal, the Irish National Team.

A few years have passed and I have learnt a lot about cycling and racing. I’ve not won a race yet but I’ve come close. I’ve put it down to lack of experience and misfortune but at times I just didn’t have the legs on the day. I didn’t race in 2013, unfortunately. I had a rough summer. Although I am able to keep my anorexia relatively at bay my depression was effecting me terribly throughout sixth year and following a (thankfully) failed suicide attempt I spent the beginning of June in the hospital not doing my leaving certificate and reevaluating my life(for the second time). I’ve joined a new club, Dunboyne Cycling Club, who put a team into the RAS every year (Which is an eight day long race spanning across Ireland). I’ve bought a new bike that is crazy fast, aerodynamic and ultra-stiff for the upcoming season. I’ve been training harder than ever before and looking after my diet. I will race more than I have in the past few years. I plan on going to races all over the country. My aim for this cycling season is to impress my new club and get a few top five placing’s in races, even a win if I can make that happen and be considered for the RAS team within the next two years. That’s A

I never do anything without a Plan B I often have a Plan C and D too, so not having a Plan B for life is ludicrous by my standard. I’ve always had a passion for writing, I revel in it. I always enjoyed English in school and I excelled at it. Whether it was using my imagination to create a story or researching and gathering information to construct an essay I relished it. I was always reading and checking books out from the school library. Before I discovered cycling writing was the only thing I was good at or truly enjoyed so I wanted to pursue it. My uncle, Mark Comerford, works in the media and I really look up to him. I very seldom see, or get to chat with him because he lives in Sweden and is constantly busy but we get along very well. I always thought he was one of the coolest people ever so naturally as a ten year old looking for a role model and something to aspire to Uncle Mark was my man. This enthusiasm has stuck with me and is as strong today as it was nine years ago. I love telling stories. I grave that light in people’s eyes when I drag them into a story. I am a very curious person. “Why” is probably the word I say most of all. I’ve an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I want to be able to convey a story in a way that is entertaining, informative and, probably most of all, inspiring. I got publish for the first time this year, it was only the local paper but it counts (so I’m told) and the reaction I got from people around town, in school, from family and friends was encouraging to say the least. People literally used the words inspiring to describe my story and that was one of the aims of my piece. Knowing I achieved my goal at the time was an amazing feeling. Knowing I informed and helped people was brilliant and I want to do it again and again for as long as I can.

After being ill for so long and then relapsing in sixth year I missed a lot of school and ended up spending time in hospital again instead of a large room sitting my leaving Cert. I am currently studying journalism and photography in Marino College of Further Education and I hope to get into DCU next year and continue in my pursuit of becoming a journalist.

My aspiration to become a journalist out dates my desire to become a professional cyclist but the passion I have for cycling outweighs that of a journalistic career. 

Y My Generation.

I am a student studying journalism and within the course we cover a wide range of subjects. Marketing is one of them. In class we have discussed adds, the then and now, along with that we discussed the term "Flapper" which is what you can describe as the working woman and then the house wife. We also conversed about the male equivalents. But what really caught my attention and made me sit bolt up right was when the teacher started to use words like "Conformity" and "consumerism". She explained how advertisements work and how they depict certain life styles, how companies try to make us want these life styles and tell us that their product can provide these lifestyles to us. Fight Club quotes just whizzed about my head like missiles and I wanted to start a Tyler Durden-esk  monologue right there, but I knew I couldn't. It'd be too weird, well cool to me but I doubt it would impress my class mates. My teacher asked "What does advertising do?". Instantly I had an answer, well it wasn't my answer but Tyler's "Advertising has us chasing sports cars, working jobs we hate, buying shit we don't need to impress people be don't like."
My teacher, Alison, went on to talk about IKEA as a brand and my mind almost ruptured. "Like so many I became a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct"- Narrator(from Fight Club). I mean this stuff is so relevant and true to me now. I'm more aware of it all. I mean IKEA is a mega brand, a monster of a retailer. It has 332 stores in 38 countries, as of October 2011. It employs roughly 139,000 people and has a net worth of over 32 Billion. But IKEA alone consumes 1% of the worlds wood making it Earth's largest consumer of wood. We all have IKEA products in our homes now. It is spreading. Yes the furniture is cheap and the style is relatively in fashion but you can not put a price on individualism.
People love to express themselves as individuals but isn't it counter-productive if you go out and buy the same pillows and chairs as all the other "Individuals" in your life? You can't be a group of individuals. "Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions". You can't afford to get hung up on meaningless objects "the things you own end up owning you". Just because your friend has one or because you saw your favourite celebrity holding it in their hand does not mean you need it. Celebrity is nothing. Anybody can be famous if they just let go of their self respect. Create your own life style. Don't become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct or everything will just become a copy of a copy of a copy. We don't want the mega corporations to own everything. We don't! The things you own end up owning you if you let them. If you let your guard down and get sucked into the operation MK Ultra experiment style of advertising.
Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve and let the chips falls were they may.
You want to be famous but respected? Work at it don't buy it. Don't buy a tone of shit because you saw Angelina Jolie wear it. "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
"We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are the celebrity magazines, televisions with five hundred channels, some guys name on my underwear." You and I are not beautiful and unique snowflakes we are the same decaying matter as everyone else we are all part of the same compost heap." So before we die from exposure to the poisonous fumes excreted by the money hungry suits lets try break free and run from the herd. Once in a while make the choice, don't buy from IKEA, Starbucks, Nike or the others help the little guy break the chain. Buy what you need and what you really want not what celebrities on the T.V tell you you want.

Don't Be A Sheep

I've been reading a lot lately, a lot of poetry, anti-conformist literature, indie-articles and yes they're pretentious but I believe they make some good points on how materialistic and conformist our world has become, in terms of people following and buying what they are told is cool. Ever since I saw the movie Fight Club and subsequently read the book I have been on this self made, self righteous path of independence and non-conformity. I was sort of on that path before the Fight Club induced epiphany, due to the other influences i.e. Nirvana(not original I know)but that movie gave me the real kick I needed. I used to try desperately hard to fit in but now I'm the opposite. I'm happy on the outside. I like being on the other side of the fence looking in at the sheep. Don't get me wrong I like nice things and I buy from high street shops, which is hypocritical I'll admit, but I know I don't need it all. I'm not attached to any of it. I don't buy anything because it's what is fashionable, ever! I try not to fall into any category. I'd hate to be given a label and sorted into a box.
I believe that we need a bit more diversity in today's society. The vast majority of people I see in the city are all wearing the same cloths. I walked past Trinity College last week and three girls walked pass me at the same time in a line with the same coat, similar hair styles, light blue jeans and some hipster variation of brown boots. I saw a picture of something like it on the Internet but I did not truly grasp the severity of the issue until I saw it for myself that day outside Trinity College. I've been seeing it more now since my mind is aware of the phenomenon. I often feel like going all Tyler Durden (Protagonist in Fight Club) on the asses of the trend followers, the "wanna be's", the hipsters and the image obsessed Starbucks crowds.
The worst thing about all the sheep is that none of them have their own opinion on anything and just follow the words of the group leader or look on twitter for the majority vote and they then go with that. Even worse, they then try to pass that opinion as their own original thought. We all know it's the general consensus that a remake is  never as good as the original, right? Well as I was walking out of the cinema after watching James Wan's captivating Insidious Chapter 2 a while back I heard a group of young girls behind me already analysing the movie and one girl with the typical hipster get up on loudly proclaimed with a slight patronising and self righteous tone "Yeah it was good but you can never beat the original". I was ready to turn around and dish out a can of verbal wop ass on her for that unoriginal and wrong opinion. Everybody is entitled to their opinion but this was not her opinion. Firstly it was a squeal not a remake so her remark was invalid. Secondly I thought it was better then the first movie. Thirdly her tone was so patronising toward all the girls around her, whom I suspect were her friends, that it was just plain rude and belittled her supposed friends, which is actually common nature of the hipster(Imaging that in David Attenborough's voice). And lastly I, along with everybody else, knew she was just saying that to try and sound cool. (F.Y.I it didn't work.) That shit just makes my blood boil for some unexplained reason. I understand it's easier and less scary to follow then to break away from the herd but people need to be individuals otherwise the world becomes a very dull, boring and annoying place. By all means if you see something in a shop that you like buy it but don't buy it just because it's what is trending right now. Really think about it and ask yourself do you really like it. Then buy it. "The things you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden. You'll become something you're not. Sheep are ascetically nice, with all that fluffy wool, but nobody aspires to be a sheep when they are a kid. We all wanted to be big loud dinosaurs or lions. Go out and be a lion. Voice your opinions don't plagiarize. Do not do that!

A Higher Standard of Listening.

I don't want my first blog to be just me moaning about the state of today's popular music, so I am going to say what I think and then ask you all for your opinions. Opinions on today's music vs. the masters like The Cure, Nirvana, Radiohead, The Smiths, The Pixies and your opinions on what I've said. I know some of the greats are still making music and I don't mean to talk about them as if they're dead but the culture, the art form, is out of the spot light and it's been replaced by a simple, processed, uninspiring, money hungry business. I'm well aware that there are some very talented bands and musicians out there such as Muse, John Mayer, CHVRCHES, The 1975, The Weeknd and the list goes on. They are making brilliant music but my one big problem is that the Morrissey's, Cobain's, Sinatra's guys like Robert Smith have been replaced by the Miley Cyrus's,Justin Bieber's and something called a Nicki Minaj. Most of the top ten songs in the charts were not written by the people that perform them. They were drummed up by a group of trained song writers with just two aims. One make a song that is up beat and will catch the attention of teenage girls. Two it has to generate profits. Big, big profits. Money Money Money Money Money. Dollar signs appear in the eyes of these fat cat record labels when they hear a song they know will makes young women's hearts melt. I do believe there are people and musicians alike out there who still keep the art alive and there is a vibrant quality music scene but it is just an abomination against what music is to have the mind numbing repetitive passionless noise we hear on our radios today. Music is, like all art forms, an expression of the soul and that used to present itself loudly and proudly and it was heard and rightfully made a big deal of. But now what is held up to praise is the mindless spewing of a drama whore, the moronic lyrics of a simpleton and the musical dynamics of a rhythm-less spoilt child. I want to bring to the attention of the people that it seems to me the bar has been lowered for the standard of music my generation and the ones that follow have been handed. In general the bar it has been lowered but I think we deserve better. A better filter for what is broadcast on our radio's and music channels. We almost did it back in 2009 when the incredible "Killing in the Name" by the awe inspiring Rage Against The Machine stopped the X Factor winners song reaching the Christmas number one. We need to start another campaign like that but on a grander scale. Is anybody with me?

Please Comment on what I've said I really want to hear from you. What song should we try get to number one this Christmas? I'm on twitter @Chriscwduff so catch me there if you can.