What’s the best way to build self-confidence?

I am not really the best person to give hints and tips on building self-confidence because as a character trait in others I find it can be built on pretty flimsy foundations. I would make a rather wild observation that often the most self-confident people build their confidence on the most unstable and unreliable foundations. So I view unquestioning or showy self-confidence with a fair degree of scepticism and distrust.

I constantly question myself and really believe that every day is a schoolday. Knowing that the foundations of my confidence are constantly under review might sometimes make me seem less than confident but actually I might just be reviewing and reflecting on new information or the shared wisdom of others. All waiting to be stored in my confidence foundations ready for future use.

So before building self-confidence always check that your foundations are sound, because self-confidence in the wrong hands is dangerous, unattractive and nothing to be proud of.

How do you build loyal subscribers?

How do I build loyal subscribers?

A big question for a big number #1500

1500 oldmortuary ponderings, before that the Pandemic Ponderings. Pandemic Ponderings started the accidental habit of a daily blog.

So perhaps the answer is that I turn up nearly every day and increasingly so do many of you. Not so long ago 20 readers logged by WordPress was one measure of my daily reach. Recently things have become a little giddy and 200 is not unusual.

Like all big questions in life I don’t have definitive answers but a few principles that work for me.

I never set out to have a quirky moral compass, it has just formed over the years. I know it is not perfect but I always distrust perfection. Wabi-Sabi is neat Japanese phrase that sums up my feeling.

Not being perfect has always seemed a good path to travel and I know that that is hugely controversial. And also not for everyone. But knowing when to stop is every bit as valuable as starting.

I can do perfect, but for personal perfection I aim a little lower.

Maybe that is the secret to building anything worthwhile.

Subscribers

A Family

Friendships

There is an interesting footnote to this. Although I am an avid manipulator of images. I build in deliberate error, using several different apps and hand drawn or painted elements.

The rise of AI in image creation is unstoppable. Recently every organisation seems capable of producing posters to advertise events that are retro, homely or ( even worse) wholesome. The absolute perfection of these posters makes me feel queasy. A genuine physical response not too dissimilar from mild travel sickness. I can’t really explain it. Maybe my desire for slight imperfection is more significant than I realise.

What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?

There are many reasons I write a daily blog. Witnessing is one of them. I have always been fascinated by the day to day lives of  ‘normal’, run-of-the-mill, people , like myself. Not the famous, infamous,grand, important, iconic,good, bad and ugly( beautiful) people who habitually occupy the world’s media.

I just love the observation of people going about their daily lives.

As a British person with a peculiar interest in normality I would love to see how Britain between January 2020, when we left the European Union and May 2023 when the World COVID Pandemic was declared over, is viewed with the retrospective wisdom of 100 years.

British people are a blended island nation, who talk a lot about the weather. Sometimes about Wars. And unlike any other nation, have a couplet of 21st Century woes.

Businesses failed because of the joint enterprise of Brexit and Covid.

Relationships failed.

Communities broke up.

People took the fork in the road that they would never have considered were it not for Brexit/Covid.

It is not in the least unusual to hear 

” Well, of course, there was Brexit and then Covid”

We are a nation whacked by a double whammy.

As an individual, Brexit/Covid galvanised me into  daily blogging/ diarising. Something I had wanted to do all my life but life got in the way.

I used to dream of keeping a five year diary. I never achieved it, despite being nerdy, and at times, an insular child.

Jetpack, the app that supports my WordPress blog page has a new-to-me feature.

Suddenly I have my 6 year diary pages to look back on.

I promise not to share these here too often but I find them fascinating, of course I do.

The great ponder of the day is, will they survive 100 years, and what will my great-grandchildren make of them?

Pandemic Pondering #77

Pandemic Pondering #436

#229 theoldmortuary ponders

#631 theoldmortuary ponders.

#937 theoldmortuary ponders

#1310 theoldmortuary ponders

Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.

This is a prompt for a suggested blog today, from my blog hosts. Every blog I have ever written features a photo or photo’s of something that has caught my eye, accompanied by random thoughts and some minutiae of daily life.

What will catch my eye today. 1st of June 2026?

Let’s just see shall we?

Marilyn Monroe 100 years old today. Except she only got to live for 36 of her beautiful years.

How lucky am I to have lived 68 of my 100 years. Less beautiful, less troubled. Less dead!

Of all the Marilyn stuff I read today one was particularly troubling.

A businessman, Richard Poncher,bought the tomb above hers and demanded that his coffin was placed in his tomb upside down so that his body could gaze face to face with hers for eternity.  That is just weird, entitled and wrong.

The man’s wife had no qualms at a later date about trying to sell off the tomb and presumably her husband’s corpse  in order to make some extra cash.  There were no bidders. There are some strange people about. Mr and Mrs Poncher clearly deserved each other.

Today is a Monday, nearly always a Nana and Nona day care. It is a day of  Ferry spotting.

Hide and Seek.

And Dog walks.

So what caught my eye.

That a ferry travelling backwards actually produces a better photograph than when it goes forward.

Who could ever have guessed?

How do you stay motivated when learning something new?

I am lucky that being semi-retired and having stepped away from a full time career, learning something new is pretty much my choice, so I learn with great enthusiasm. But what I have realised is that having to learn things that may not have fully engaged my happy head spaces in the past has given me a bit of a super power of just diligently getting on with it. Recently I had to learn, at speed, the rules and advice for communal space vegetable plot gardening. Not exactly allotments but definitely strip horticulture, something medieval people knew about. I found it fascinating and like a lot of things it is a lot less about the fruit and vegetables and a great deal more about managing people.

So I would say finding fascination is the motivation for learning new things and just being diligent.

What’s a thing you were completely obsessed with as a kid?

Unsurprisingly as an only child, in a family with only one other child, who was seriously disabled, I was completely obsessed with becoming an adult. The power balance was completely out of whack in my extended family and life experience. Childrens T.V or radio was projected at children by more adults and nursery education did not exist. I was five before I met any more than a handful of children.

I don’t think any of this was particularly negative, I was just fascinated by the adults around me, who lived lives that seemed vivid beyond the boundaries of my small existence. After 5 there was a  realisation that real life was not as I had always known it.

Most people remember their first day at school. Mine was memorable because for the first time in my life there were more children than adults in the room.

Now my childish obsession seems rather tame. Just becoming an adult would have happened naturally.

What’s the most interesting local custom you’ve encountered?

I am interested in local customs and the human need to touch the legacy of previous generations, by doing something that has been done many times in the past. Let’s be honest, some local customs are barbaric, inhuman and fueled by fear. I am intrigued by the little ones that cause no harm. Like nailing a hot cross bun to a pub ceiling every Easter or Maypole dancing in May.

Maypole dancing was my first ever experience of a custom. Normal games classes were suspended late in April at my primary school, for us to be taught to dance round a tall mast with ribbons hanging full length from the top. We were encouraged to skip and dance around the mast, weaving a never ending plait of colour down the length of the pole. Nobody ever explained why we were doing it and as soon as the first blush of May was past, the mast was taken down and games lessons became tuition for the summer game of Rounders, far preferable to me. As an adult I know it is some sort of fertility ritual connected with Spring. But until today I have considered it no further.

Time to head off to Googleland.

I have never photographed a Maypole event , so did a quick little sketch with my travelling art pack.

With the accuracy of an Art App and Ai on my smart phone the header image was produced. One of the dancers even looks like 5 year old me taking the whole thing very seriously. But not hanging on tight enough to my ribbon.

Which gives me great hope for my quick summer , plein air drawings.

They usually sit in the sketch books, only a few ever become a real piece of art. Maypole dancing has shown me a new way of using them. May fertility of the creative mind.