A diary of Jon's life

Chinese food, spilling it on the laptop, trying to shake off fatigue, eating too much Chinese food, Man U losing to Liverpool in the FA Cup, spaced out face and knowing that something good must be around the horizon.

Oh and a shit ton of FIFA.

Comes from many different routes, but my favourite is word of mouth. I grew up with street teams and evangelicals spreading the word of whatever it was they loved - music, religion, TV, food and whatever else. If it’s genuine, excited discussion about passions, it is more likely to make me want to check it out, than anything else.

So if you try to run and market your business on Twitter, don’t behave counter to your attitude or try to mask it with a sad face professional outlook. If your restaurant is fun and the food is spicy, don’t sit there tweeting ‘two for one offer today’ and leave it at that. Talk about the things that inspire the deals, the silliness that leads to the prizes, the thought that went into the collaboration or something. Be passionate, and people will have to pay attention.

Friday. What a day to get down on. Still hungover and exhausted from Wednesday, I went and joined Louis and co up in London. He’d won a meal for 5 at one of our favourite places in the city - Chilango. Chilango is a mexican restaurant, much in the same way as Chipotle is - but the atmosphere and staff seem sillier and the food tastes better. We’ve been pretty fortunate in that Eric Partaker, the man behind the business and user of hilarious tweets (@chilango_uk) has been doing competitions online since the dawn of his twitter account, and over the last year we’ve won individual burritos, burritos and drinks and now this meal for five. We usually eat there when we’re going up to see Arsenal play, so to have free food before an Arsenal game is even better. 

So we started our night with free burritos, only to find out it came with a free beer too… can you imagine the joy in Louis’ face at the prospect of free beer?

From there we went on to this New York style bar that had a great jukebox, decent drinks and bras on the ceiling, over in Angel. The atmosphere was pretty light, the place was packed, and the drinks kept coming. Quite liked the vibes there.

Went on from there to meet up with my friend Katie, who I met at the Skylar Grey gig with Sam back in August. She’s one of those people who smile with their eyes, not just their lips, you know? Like, you can tell it’s a genuine smile and not just the practiced and time perfected art of fakery. Either that or she’s a great actress. She was in town with a load of people from Canterbury, who’d done this LGBT event where about 30 people got on a bus that took them to London, dropped them outside a few gay bars, and would pick them up at 3.30am to take them back. We got together at a place called Popstarz (“The Den”), which wasn’t so bad really. Downstairs was urban music - hiphop, soul, rnb - and upstairs was indie-rock and pop. I danced a lot, didn’t really drink much and we went about our ways home. Made for a good night though.

Regular sleep keeps your mood heightened, your brain active and alert, and the ideas fresh enough to be worth having. Your physical appearance is going to improve if you have good sleep (and exercise), and your involvement in conversations, dance, travel and whatever else are all dependent on that.

Also being tired really sucks. I mean, it’s obvious but I forget that sometimes.

Pretty much don’t remember much about the twenty sixth. I know I didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t sleep well at all. I had ideas to write down but by the time the first line was there, my brain was wandering somewhere else. I don’t work well on poor sleep, so if I’m going to be out late, I need to stay in late, too. I think I actually got up around midday. My thoughts are still disjointed, writing on Saturday because I followed up the poor sleep with another late one, but it’s January and when people come around, you have to make time, y’know?

I think people like me because I know what I like, and I’m not really ashamed of it. That’s what fandom can be - I like Star Wars, and I don’t mind if someone thinks that isn’t cool because it is something that makes me happy. If you like certain music or certain people, stick to your guns. Don’t be worried about liking more things and being open minded but don’t be ashamed of that either.

Went to Mikill Pane’s EP Release show at The Book Club in Shoreditch. Got there a bit too early and drank a few too many before the show started, but he went IN and the crowd were looking happy. Will Power was DJing, XO Man jumped on the Follow Fashion track, Ben Clemo on the Guinness and Blackcurrant EP. Random Impulse was celebrating getting signed to Universal, Murray getting his video hits up to some next level, and me, I was just happily drunk. Ran into Musa, too (TheKingsWill). Great night. Went to a bunch of bars, danced to new tunes, got home at 4am instead of midnight, felt wrecked since.

I’ve been incredibly selfish minded lately. I tell myself I’m trying to guide myself towards better things, but really I’m selfish. And I need to adjust to that.

Avoiding sleep by finishing The Legacy of The Force series. Forgot how awesome it gets and how ridiculous, too. Really glad I finished them again.

More self awareness than not.

• to exercise a lot more
• to eat more healthily
• to start making savings
• to move out
• to improve my photography with the equipment i have
• to take more risks
• to ask someone out just to have taken that risk
• to spend an hour just hugging or making out with someone
• to spend less time indoors
• to start doing MidTea as a permanent thing
• to play less video games and drink less whiskey