🐥The Paradox of Now #15

Back Seat Bolt in Bucharest

Hi people!

Some of you actually told me where you read this newsletter.

I always imagine I'm chucking these words into the void, but it turns out a few of you are lurking in the shadows and send lovely messages.

I see you.

It’s hard to explain how much it means when someone messages me about this thing that I do.

It keeps me going when I have my ‘CBA’ moments.

This week, the newsletter was read:

🛏️ On ‘le bed chillaxing’
🚽 On the loo
💻 At a work desk
🚗 And… in the back seat of a Bolt in Bucharest on the way to the airport.

We’re going international, babycakes.

Next stop: world domination (or at least Ryanair’s in-flight reading list).

Now let me give you a taste of what's coming:

🐥 The sexiest books I have ever laid my eyes on
🐥 Stalactites vs. Stalagmites
🐥 A Wotsit and dribble correlation?

🥚Eggstra News🥚

Your weekly dose of some fascinating and fun finds:

📚The Folio Society – Beautiful books I somehow just discovered. Birthday wishlist? Yes please.
🎧Caramel – A song by the band Sleep Token. Genre-blending brilliance. On repeat this month.
📝 Commonplace Book – A chill, no-pressure way to start journaling.

The Paradox of Now 

Paul Mayo is a wise man and has always said about the secure investment of gold. So this one is for you Paul.

Gold hitting record highs

The price of gold keeps heating up. If the record-breaking year of 2024 wasn't enough, gold hit a major historic 2025 milestone by crossing the $3,000/ounce threshold!

Here are 3 Key Reasons:

1. Looming economic & political uncertainty

2. Increasing central bank demand

3. Rising National Debt - over $36 Trillion

So, could gold surge even higher?

According to a recent statement from Jeffrey Gundlach, famed American business man and investor… “Gold continues its bull market that we’ve been talking about for a couple of years, ever since it was down to $1,800.” He expects gold to reach $4,000/oz.

Is it time you learn more about precious metals?

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I’m also on the following social media channels:

• Instagram - The Paradox of Now

• LinkedIn - Scott Mayo

Want to feature here? Message me on socials and let’s see what we can do.

The Friend’s Sofa

Written by a now converted Vertical Friend

He lay there.

Not slept. Just… lay.

On a friend’s sofa that might as well have been a raft afloat his stream of consciousness – deep within the cave of himself.

They sat.

Upright. Speaking. Breathing.

Alive in ways he wasn’t sure he remembered how to be.

The world around him was tilted.

He was horizontal. They were vertical.

And he couldn’t tell if he or they were right.

The cave inside him was vast. Not romantic like a tourist’s wonder, but damp, echoing and
lined with the slow drip of what he never said.

Stalactites: the sharp thoughts that clung to his ceiling mind.

Stalagmites: the memories he tripped over daily.

He was never sure which would impale him first.

Years had carved them silently, shaped by neglect, avoidance and fear.

He lived among them and could still not confidently name them correctly.

His headtorch – that elusive third eye flickered.

Dim.

Like a candle in fog. It offered shapes but not definition.

He only ever saw silhouettes of himself.

Never anything more.

He wondered if you could get glasses for this kind of blindness.

Contact lenses for the soul?

Because he needed something.

Someone.

And maybe that someone was him, if he could ever find himself in the dark.

One hand held his phone.

His thumb hovered over the doctor’s number.

His body still. His mind not.

It raged.

You should be stronger.
You are a burden.
You’re wasting their time.

The familiar chorus of deafening whispers seeping through from between the stalagmites.

And yet the others sat.

Present.

They weren’t afraid of the cave.

Or at least, they didn’t run from it.

One of them spoke. Not with pity, but precision.

He’d been here before.

Not this cave, perhaps, but a neighbouring darkness.

One of the Vertical Friends spoke of how he journaled.

How he read the Stoics.

How Epictetus sat with pain and still wrote:

And somehow… that didn’t sound dismissive.

It sounded freeing.

He wasn’t fixing him. He wasn’t preaching. He was just offering a flint.

His torch flickered. A pulse of warmth.

Brief. Almost imagined.

But in that flicker, he caught sight of something he hadn’t seen in a while.

A path.

Not lit, not paved, not easy, but it was there.

The phone went back into his pocket. Not because he didn’t need help, but because he believed he could help himself for the first time.

That night he ordered a journal.

And The Daily Stoic.

Amazon Prime providing next day delivery therapy.

The next evening, he started. It was unnatural.

Gratitude was near impossible to find in his distorted and darkened cave landscape.

But he did it anyway.

He wrote.

Scratched the surface of the cave wall. His own primitive drawings. Proof that he existed.

Days passed. Drips slowed. Mind examined.

He learned about the cave.

He learned about his cave.

And the beauty of the inner textures and the fossilised stories.

A silly mnemonic, but in his cave, it was poetry.

Each journal entry, and Stoic reflection his very own picks and ropes.

His tools of escapism.

Not a sprint toward sunlight, but a steady rise toward vertical.

Seven years on he still lives within the same cave.

But now he maps it. He invites others in.

He lets them see the scratches on the wall that spell:

And so this serves as a gentle reminder to you.

There is always a path.

Sometimes it starts on a friend’s sofa.

Sometimes it starts with a flicker of a torch.

Sometimes it starts with writing one word on a page.

And sometimes…

It finishes with writing a newsletter in the vertical position.

Helping people to improve their small corner of their cave.

🐥 Haiku’s Haiku 🐥

Haiku is thinking of mixing things up a little bit. Maybe find a new spot to take the original photo?

He’s always with me wherever I go, so I said that we can try it out.

But he still wants the same background so that we can watch the seasons shift around him.

Let us know your thoughts when answering the poll at the end.

🌴 Palm Tree Euphoria 🌴

Don’t worry, that’s not this week’s question. Haiku has already handled the LEGO segment with grace and dignity.

But it felt too perfect a segue to ignore.

Last weekend, me and the people I call friends had a much-needed reunion.

A pre-Glastonbury warm-up to remember how to talk to each other before five days of mud, music and madness.

Purposeless fun was had.

Naturally, we digressed into chaos early doors and resurrected one of our finer games:

The record:

TEN… for now.

Ten puffy orange logs, jammed in like a cheesy game of edible Jenga.

The Chief lost approximately 60% of his body’s moisture content in the form of Wotsit-infused dribble… but heroes rarely get to choose the terms of their legacy.

I adore these people.

And their unapologetic abnormalities and willingness to be weird.

No one remembers NoRmAl.

That’s why I will remember them forever and tell their stories even when I am no longer in their presence.

So the question is:

Send me your attempts. Bonus points for style, flair, and dribble.

Disclaimer: The Paradox of Now is not liable for choking, dribble damage, or Wotsit-related existential crises.

See you next week you Dashing Ducks.

P.S. if you liked this week’s worth of word dribble, forward it to a fellow duckling you care about.

Word of beak is how we help improve our small corner of the world.

PLUS… Doing so gets you a FREE gift!