Freelance Writer
Unable to yet switch off, I busy myself making notes on my phone on the ferry over from Roonagh, giving myself minor whiplash as I glance up and down from device to sea to mainland to the Island, jabbing away at the screen to make written records of shapes and colours and every adjective I…
Photo by Nathalie Désirée Mottet on Unsplash That’s not me in the photo obviously, but you get the idea. Running during lockdown – running away from home, if you will – has made me realise just all the things other than training that I love about the sport: the non-competitive, non-performance-enhancement side. To me they’re just as important…
Maybe he’s just a phone addict who likes to keep checking his cigarette? Photo by Charles Cheng on Unsplash Self-isolating at home, I should be in my element. All the time in the world to study and write, but work levels hit a bit of a slump over the week as I joined in with all the pandemic…
Me wearing a surgical mask I got in Japan. Not perfect, but it’ll help. Had to take off the shades as I looked too much like a thief and because breathing behind the mask makes them fog up. There’s a sign outside the café-cum-shop appealing to customers that they’re only letting in a “maximum of…
Photo by Henrique Craveiro on Unsplash “There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin They say that frogs in a pot of water being brought to the boil won’t notice the temperatures rising beyond a critical point until it’s too late. This logic is often applied to political situations…
Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash There’s more value in the books you haven’t read than in the ones you have, or so Nassim Taleb tells us about Umberto Eco’s anti-library: despite having over thirty thousand books in his personal library, he is prouder of the ones he hasn’t read than the ones he has. This attitude should…
Being willing to look foolish is a key part of being happy. Me, in Ha Giang, Vietnam, April 2018. I realised in the writing of this post that all of the lessons I’ve reflected on here refer to results that have come not just from WRITING articles, but POSTING them in the public domain as…
I’ve learned a lot from writing. I write about travel and self-improvement. I’m currently doing a Masters degree in Psychology and Wellbeing. There’s a lot of reading and writing involved in that too. It often involves gathering information, fact-checking and a lot of research. But the learning isn’t about the research you do, or the…
I came across the word ‘sonder’ recently in the wonderful Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. sonder n. “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness”. Apparently it’s noun, though I’d use it the same way…
Welcome to Gav Is Gone – I’ve been writing here for a while now so here’s a bit of a hello, and introduction and shpiel about what I’m doing here.