As 2021 began I lived in Texas, and my exercise consisted of jumping up and down for about 4 hours a day as part of my two live streams, during which I’d swing the occasional kettlebell.
I'd reached the best place I’d ever been mentally and spiritually, after finally conquering a gang of dragons that I’d been at war with my whole life.
But there was something missing.
When I was a little kid I liked comics and music, I got in fights with bullies every single day, and was literally that kid who got picked last for the football team. I got the impression that people like me didn’t DO sporty stuff, so I didn’t, and when I left home on the eve of my 16th birthday, I launched myself fully into the excesses of what I thought, from my reading and cultural exposure, creative people did.
You can imagine how that went. I’ll write a book one day.
It wasn’t til my early 30s when I was preparing to move to the USA that I thought to take my physicality seriously. By day I worked on my DJ library, and by night I ran on the beach and did pushups. Soon I was in the best shape of my life.
Then I moved to LA and became a club DJ, and the accompanying lifestyle of shots and afterparties soon had that best shape of my life fading away.
Presently, I invented Meaningwave. And as I integrated the lessons from the music, things changed fast. I made JBP’s Drinking Song, which said alcohol is a shortcut to random adventure. So I chose my own adventure, and soon that LA DJ lifestyle too faded away.
As '21 began I lived in Texas, and had been finally granted my new visa. We had to vacate the US immediately, to visit an embassy and get our passports stamped. We flew to Mexico. Due to an international pandemic of foolery, the Embassies were booked till 2022. It was OK. We loved Mexico. We made friends. Found the perfect local coffee shop. Next door to the coffee shop, a gym. I wandered in one day, and took a CrossFit class. I didn't even know what CrossFit WAS.
I've been going 5 days a week ever since.
As 2022 begins, I'm in the best shape of my life. Stronger, healthier, happier than I ever even knew possible.
Here, in Mexico...
I finally found that missing something.
Timelapse of me drawing my new avatar
Tools: Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil
Own the NFT at https://opensea.io/akirathedon !
BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER FROM BERTON AND THE DON!
TELL THEM NOW!
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley's poem of 100 years hence!
STREAM https://go.meaningwave.com/TELLTHEMNOW
Art by me!
Own the NFT! https://opensea.io/akirathedon
And we’re back with the Meaningwave Top 50 (https://go.meaningwave.com/MeaningwaveTop50)! Counting down the most streamed Meaningwave songs across DSPS from the month of September! We have a gang of new entries! Re-entries And one song that’s shot up a crazy 42 places!
Join us LIVE for the countdown now (https://linktw.in/ivUtbc), or if it’s not now, enjoy the full Meaningwave Video Chart Show at your leisure!
(https://linktw.in/ivUtbc)
Meanwhile, you can follow the official MEANINGWAVE TOP 50 playlist
(https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UIGI0QaY5OUtlectWkd2H) on your streaming service of choice here.
(https://go.meaningwave.com/MeaningwaveTop50)
PLUS! You can follow the BOTTOM 50 playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2XjYmRnNGPwbN3FNa3JUyZ) the 50 LEAST streamed songs - here!
(https://go.meaningwave.com/BOTTOM50)
Speaking of which, I get messages all the time from people asking what streaming service to use to make sure we get paid the best. To be honest, they all pay so crazily ...
“When I make that error
When I let
Discipline down
There’s only one thing to do
And that’s
Get back on the path
Get back on it!”
(https://go.meaningwave.com/GETBACKONTHEPATH)
As some of you have noticed, I’ve been getting up at 4am for the past couple of weeks. This is antithetical to my usual mode of being, which would have me working until 4am. This goes back to when I was a child, and I’d stay up till 4 or 5 reading under my duvet with a lamp, then have to be kicked out of bed to go to school. Some of my earliest jobs involved having to get up at what I considered ungodly hours - my paper round when I was ten or so, and later my job at Boots The Chemist when I was 14, which had me rising in the dark and walking an hour to get to the job itself, all before the sun rose. I held negative associations with early rising, and so as soon as I had control of my schedule, I went right back into covert book mode and stayed up as late as I could and thus rose accordingly.
But on the rare occasions where ...
I worked in a bunch of factories when I was 16/17, after I'd left home.
Sauce factory. Cardboard box factory. Car door handle factory.
The former was the hardest because I was working in the freezers, packing bags of sauce for 12-hour shifts with nothing but local commercial radio and the speed-addled ramblings of my co-workers to entertain me.
The cardboard box factory was the most fun because I got to slide down this three-storey chute into a skip full of cardboard and jump up and down in it to squash the cardboard down. I'd always leave the place shredded with paper-cuts, but that made me feel like a warrior.
The car door handle factory was the worst because it was the most boring - literally just picking a spring out of a greasy bucket and jamming it into a wedge of plastic then passing it to the old lady to my right, for 12 hours, in a giant air-hangar looking-ass hall with a great big clock looming over us, that ticked with all the lugubrious lurching urgency of a ketamine zombie outside a ...
