Journalled on Tuesday, 10th of June 2025 | Santo Cristo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 21 degrees, warm, and overcast.
Today is Tuesday, and it’s been a productive day. I journaled twice, worked on four separate videos, and got through my daily classes as always.
I have never felt so productive with video work. The truth is, I have only been doing it since October of last year, but even in that short time my output has grown enormously.
My journaling has come just as far. What used to take an hour or more to write now takes about half that time, and more importantly, the quality has improved. My writing, my vocabulary, and the whole way I put words on paper have come a long way since I started journaling.
Today is also the first day in almost two weeks that I have not been coughing constantly. Exercise has been on hold because of it, but I think tomorrow I will ease back in, starting with skipping and kettlebells, and swimming too if I am really back to normal.
Beyond the classes that have been part of my life for so long, my priorities right now are exercise, writing and journaling, and blogging and video creation.
Looking back, since I began each of these disciplines separately and independently of one another, it gives me real pleasure to see how much I have improved and evolved in each. The few people who have had contact with this new work of mine have acknowledged its relevance and worth, and that means something.
I have said before that external validation is not the final goal, and I still believe that. But when someone chooses, unprompted, to tell you your work is good, it is a quiet confirmation that you, I, or anyone else is on the right path.
Money isn’t the be-all and end-all either. It is welcome, and it certainly helps you keep going, but what matters even more is knowing for yourself that your work and your craft are good and relevant.
Think of how many painters, writers, and other talented people were never recognised in their own time, only later, and sometimes only after they had already died.
That does not change who they were or what they made. They were still talented, still creative, maybe even ahead of their time. What changed was time itself, and everything that shifts along with it: circumstances, situations, people, time again.
Thinking about it this way, time can work for us or against us, depending on where we stand and what we expect from it. One more piece fits in: truth, an important factor that lives alongside everything else in our lives. Truth is the fundamental, final partner of time.
Truth does not always appear when we want it to. It can be staring us in the face while we remain blind to it, not because we are careless, but because we are not ready yet, or because we do not yet have the tools to receive and fully understand it.
But given enough time and the real journey we follow, truth eventually finds its way to us. Not always as we expect, but what we once couldn’t understand simply reflects our capacity to understand at that moment. Over time, it becomes clearer as we prepare.
My whole life in Brazil, my daughters, past relationships, and more recently Julie, have shown me that, over time, who I am matters more than anything else, not for others, but for me, for you, for my well-being and yours, and for the well-being of those who truly love me and you.
Even though the skills I have picked up have not brought much monetary reward so far, I am certain they have made me better, not just for myself, but for the people who matter to me, in this short life I get to live on this crazy, complicated planet.
Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.
In bed by 10 p.m.
Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.
Richard
