Posts in Diary
A fresh perspective
A fresh perspective

One of the items on my bucket list this Christmas was to play Nintendo Wii with my boys. However, when you do not own a TV, it becomes a proper challenge. I did have a quick and dirty solution in my sleeve, though. In my drum rehearsal room, I have an old 37” TV mounted on a speaker stand with a VESA mount, to use as a practice teleprompter. This was a simple “drag and drop” operation and the couch gaming was on. But when the holidays ended, we realized that it is quite nice to have a big screen in the living room. We haven’t seen this many movies in ages, so there is a lot of catching up to do. The primary reason we do not own a TV is that our living room floor plan cannot provide a proper setup or placement of the TV/Sofa combination if you aren’t prepared to accept some feng shui from Hell. But we finally figured it out, by thinking outside the box.

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Acoustics, DiaryRikard Öqvistgenelec, home cinema, TV, nintendo, homeComment
A miracle
A miracle

A couple of days ago, my car thermometer showed -34 C when I was on my way to pick up some fresh groceries. This is very cold even for someone like me and should be treated with respect. A car breakdown in the middle of nowhere can be dangerous. I was driving in my snowmobile clothes, with an extra jacket in the back, just in case. Nothing dramatic happened. While driving in my air-conditioned home cinema on four wheels in weather conditions that start to resemble another planet, I couldn’t stop thinking about how unbelievably grateful I am for pretty much everything. The planet does its best to kill me every single day, especially so during the insane cold, and still, I can go about my day without issues, in comfort that kings of the past could not even dream about. Honestly, it is a miracle that anything works at all. And not only that, but it also works really well too, for the most part. This is clearly something to be grateful for.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistwinter, cold, grateful, countrylifeComment
Sleep
Sleep

Today I felt about 10-20 IQ points smarter. I suspect there is a strong correlation to me getting a full ten hours of sleep with my boys. They had been on a vacation over at the grandparents, and on Friday I went to pick them up and stayed over the weekend. It is quite rare to get that amount of sleep as a parent and dog owner, so I made sure not to miss the occasion. Now, a funny thought has stuck on repeat: I probably did not get smarter by sleeping. I have simply got a glimpse of my normal self in contrast to the regular sleep deprived guy.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistsleep, winterComment
Physical meetings will never be replaced, pt II.
Physical meetings will never be replaced, pt II.

Last Saturday we threw a surprise 40-year anniversary party for an old friend. At the event, I met a whole bunch of my old friends. The wise saying that “you will never gain any new old friends” comes to mind. Anyway, let’s elaborate further on last week’s topic of physical vs online meetings. An event like this is the definite proof of how irreplaceable real social interaction is.

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Diary, ParentingRikard Öqvistfriends, friendship, time, kids, parenting
An analogy between drum practice and a career
An analogy between drum practice and a career

Five weeks ago, on day 1539 of learning Bleed, I doubled my efforts in drum playing from 15 minutes per day to 30 minutes per day. Up until the 9th of October, it felt as if I had almost stagnated for about 6-9 months. It is very nice to see the results now and wow, what a difference it made to increase the efforts. For the past 36 days I have finally felt steady progress again. I suspect that after 4-5 years of daily practice I had reached a skill level on the drums where 15 minutes just isn’t enough to advance anymore. It’s an interesting observation because I have seen similar patterns in my professional life.

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Diary, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistfocus, skill, practice, habits, career, drums, acousticsComment
Supply and demand
Supply and demand

One of the best things about kids is that you get an excuse to dust off your old Nintendo games and play together. Especially around Christmas when I have the time to do so. My boys have a couple of old Nintendo DS’s, and yesterday I was attending some online auctions to complete our game library with some mandatory classics for couch competition. My wife also wanted to complete her library but couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that her desired game went for 1500-2500 SEK today. Consequently, she brought her Nintendo box and started to check online auctions to see if she had some desired and valuable game. Several of them were indeed quite valuable at around 700-1500 SEK. But the most inconspicuous game of all we found in the back of a drawer in an old cabinet. A mint condition Game and Watch, Mario the Juggler. Her reaction after searching for the title in some auctions was priceless.

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Diary, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistnintendo, retro, value, collector, rareComment
Lifesaving habits
Lifesaving habits

It’s been a couple of weeks now with late work-nights. A temporary reduction in sleep hours is usually no problem, but it is annoyingly easy to get stuck in a loop where you are active later in the evening or night, which both makes it harder to fall asleep and reduces the quality of the hours you get. Consequentially, it will be increasingly harder to get up in the morning and/or you will lose focus during the day, which will reduce productivity. And then you will need to work even longer hours to compensate, which only adds yet more gravel in the delicate machinery. It is a dark spiral. How do you break it?

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvisthealth, habits, stress, dogs, musicComment
Blog post #200
Blog post #200

Two hundred weeks of consecutive blog posts tonight. Solid proof of the power of incremental improvement. Of course, I do not expect anyone to read all my 200 brain dumps. That was never the purpose. The purpose was to improve my writing skills. And it is impossible to not improve if you do something for 200 weeks straight. And by the way, it is also impossible to not deteriorate if you commence in harmful activities for 200 weeks straight. The only difference is that it is a lot easier to be consistent with bad habits. Consistency with activities that improve your life and the life of everyone around you is very hard.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistimpulse control, age, wisdom, youth, values, principlesComment
Breakfast is BS
Breakfast is BS

Yesterday I had one of the most memorable meals in my life. A perfectly prepared medium/rare entrecote steak and a glass of water. There’s a Swedish saying that “hunger is the best seasoning”, and few truer words have ever been spoken. My spice of choice was a 26-hour gut-rest fast with only H2O to hydrate and nothing else. I don’t think I have ever been without food for so long before, and that made my meal a religious experience. The fasting put a whole new perspective on eating, and I was not aware that a piece of meat could ever taste that good. It opened up a whole new dimension.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistfasting, health, food, habitsComment
Practice until you never fail
Practice until you never fail

Mostly, it is very easy to do the weekly brain dump that is my blog. Tonight, I feel rather empty. Strange. But it is the same pattern with my daily musical exercise. Some days are just totally off. The solution is fortunately extremely easy. Just do the task anyway. I am just too critical of myself and even if this will be my worst post so far, it will still be 1000X better than no piece at all. The unconditional importance of carrying on cannot be overstated. Besides, these worst days are the best and most important. They will ruthlessly reveal how good of a writer, or drummer or whatever you are. No-one cares what you can do on a good day. It is the bad day that counts. Don’t practice to win, if you want to become very good at something. Practice until you never fail instead.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistincremental improvement, practice, habits, exerciseComment
I am a grumpy old man
I am a grumpy old man

Some 10-20 years ago, it was standard practice to download games, movies, and music. The reason was simple, it was a lot easier and better than any commercial offer. Personally, I haven’t done any piracy download or torrents the past ten years. And the reason is just as simple; the commercial offerings became so good that it was a no-brainer to go fully legit. That, and the fact that I now had a steady income instead of being a dirt-poor student. But this weekend I got sick and tired when I was trying to buy a movie legit, but it was just not possible. I took me around 30 minutes until I had managed to get the movie to start on my iPad. It would have been way easier to just fire up a Torrent client like back in the days. And that is a bit sad in the year of the Lord 2023. It felt as if I had moved backwards.

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DiaryRikard ÖqvistVHS, rental, movies, video game, DVD, progressComment
Retro LAN party
Retro LAN party

“Error: Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue or DEL to enter setup”. This is not a joke. It is a brilliant real-world error message that I got this Saturday during our retro-LAN while running four Windows 98-powered battle stations. What a magnificent weekend, to meet up with four very old friends for a trip down memory lane. Gaming together on period correct hardware in a single room. Easily one of the funniest things I have done in about two decades.

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Computer, DiaryRikard Öqvistgaming, pcmr, retro, friends, friendshipComment
Close but no cigar
Close but no cigar

Repainting a garage sounded easy at first. Four weeks of vacation was plenty of time. On paper, it would have worked. Never has time evaporated more quickly for me. I strongly disagree with victim mentality, but in this case the primary reason for the missed deadline can be blamed primarily on external factors: Stomach sickness in sunny weather and Constant rain while healthy.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistdiy, painting, house, renovationComment
Pod detox
Pod detox

Earlier today, while repainting our garage, my wife came up with the expression “Pod detox”. We have been painting for days on end now, often more than 10 hours per day. Neither of us have listened to any music, audiobooks or podcasts during these days. Usually, I listen constantly to conversations or audiobooks, so it has been a new (old) experience for me to only listen to silence. It is just like it was before, only that I had forgotten how to do it.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistpodcast, music, audiobook, silence, focus, diyComment
Ownership is sustainability
Ownership is sustainability

We are currently re-painting our houses, starting with the dog kennel and the garage the first year. The houses haven’t even been cleaned for a very long time, perhaps never, and it is a massive undertaking, at least three years. To outsource it would cost a small fortune and it isn’t that difficult to do a half-decent job so we went the DIY route to invest the money in more challenging tasks like plumbing and construction. However, things are only free if your time has no value. And time is the most precious commodity of all. Projects like these really highlight the importance of choosing a place you call home that you love.

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Philosophy, DiaryRikard Öqvistsustainability, home, ownership, diy, renovationComment
Home = Vacation
Home = Vacation

A common conception regarding vacation is to travel somewhere. To change your everyday environment for something else. I used to think exactly that way for most of my adult life, until we moved to our house. Now, I want to go on vacation to go home, which is the precise anti-thesis to my previous stance. There is no place on Earth I would rather want to be than home. How did that happen?

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Diary, ParentingRikard Öqvistvacation, home, parenting, travelling, road tripComment
I failed
I failed

For the past ten years, I have been practicing a musical instrument for 15 minutes per day. But in the past couple of days, I finally faced conditions too challenging to prevail. On the night between Wednesday and Thursday, both my boys decided to reenact Gary’s puking scene from Team America simultaneously. It was without a doubt the worst I have ever seen with regards to stomach sickness. And shortly after the boys had re-generated, it was my turn to do my own interpretation of the classic scene. As horrible as stomach sickness can be, I had a real eye-opening experience.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvistmeditation, focus, health, habitsComment
It takes very little to make things nice
It takes very little to make things nice

Last Thursday I had one of the best cups of tea ever and on Friday I visited the nicest public toilet in a gas station ever. And it was all because of unforeseen events that messed up my original plans. It was a great reminder about how important it is to always snap back into normal mode as quickly as humanly possible and not be upset. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you will certainly miss a lot of opportunities. Good planning and preparation is my personal savior in this regard.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistmindset, peace, acoustics, road trip, travellingComment