David Condon Finds

From Organised Intentions to Creative Chaos.  Some people seem to live in spotless, Instagram-ready offices. Mine, on the other hand, often looks like a stockroom suddenly exploded and then decided to settle in. There are packaging materials all over the floor, leftovers from my last shipping order preparation. Shipping supplies all over the desk, and boxes of stock still waiting for labels I promised to print “tomorrow.” My mobile packing table always has anything other than packing materials on it so I can never seem to use it as intended.

I originally decided to write this post out of sheer frustration with the user review process that many DVD and Blu-ray retailers use. Don’t get me wrong, I like shopping online where reviews are visible. But too often I find myself getting angry at the nonsense some people leave behind.  How can the exact same Blu-ray receive both glowing 5-star reviews and scathing 1-star write-ups? After buying a few movies myself, I sometimes come to the conclusion that half the reviewers are either mad, clueless, or just full of it.

Lately I’ve been asking myself a question I never thought I’d need to: is my blog content actually being stolen by bots? Search engines like Google and Bing have always crawled websites, and that’s normal. But when one of my new posts here was hit nearly 900 times in just 24 hours, it didn’t feel like ordinary indexing. It felt like something else and it left me wondering if something is taking my work, where it’s ending up, and whether I’ll ever even know.

Are we in trouble as a planet, as a species? Every single decade since the 1970s we’ve been told the same or similar warning: “In 10 years we’ll be in big trouble if nothing changes.” The bogeyman keeps shifting. Back in the 1970s, headlines warned of a looming new ice age. By the 1980s the panic had moved to the ozone hole and skin cancer. In the 1990s and 2000s it became global warming and rising sea levels. And now, in 2025, it has been rebranded once again as the “Climate Crisis” with most of the consequences already listed — rebranded new buzzwords for a new decade, but the same old gremlins rolled out to scare us into action.

Seventeen years of self-employment has taught me one thing: working for yourself is equal parts madness and freedom. Some days it feels like feast, other days famine. And yet, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I could take a steady job, with the payslip, the pension, the clocking out. So why stick with a life that can be feast or famine? This post is about the daily tug-of-war between freedom and chaos and why, for me, the independence still wins in the end no matter the financial cost.  If you’d like to know more about how I ended up on this road in the first place, I’ve written a post with a little more detail here  about why I’m still self-employed . Maybe it is worth a read too.

Every so often, I feel the need to step back from my usual topics and write something that’s been niggling away in the back of my mind for a while. This post isn’t about woodcraft, or even the day-to-day struggles of running a small business, although in some ways, it’s connected. It’s about leadership and how those who are meant to represent us are often doing the exact opposite these days. Sometimes it looks like obliviousness, but more often, it feels like something else.

There’s something about LEGO Star Wars that hits differently when you’re an adult. Maybe it’s the precision of the UCS (Ultimate Collector Series) sets, the joy of display-worthy models, or just the excuse to spend a weekend building a Star Destroyer without apology. And yes, there’s also the quiet satisfaction of knowing your mates are more than a little jealous, even if they won’t admit it. In this post, I’m sharing some of the UCS kits I’ve already added to my collection, the ones still on my wishlist, and why each set stands out. Not just as a toy, but as a piece of modern fandom and design. Whether you’re a long-time collector or just getting started, you’ll find plenty of inspiration (and maybe a few “must-haves”) here.

Introduction – A Changing Country I've been more than a little nostalgic of late due to all the current bad press in our country and indeed the rest of the world. I began thinking about my younger years and all the goings on of the past and how different life was ' back in the day '. After a bit of mental gymnastics looking over the last few decades, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the 1990s was the last time Ireland truly felt alive. 

I’ve just crossed 10,000 views on this blog. For some people that’s just a number, but for me it’s a milestone worth celebrating. When I started writing here a few months ago (May 2025), I had no idea if anyone would actually read my posts. Now, seeing that five-digit total feels like proof that showing up consistently really does work. I wanted to touch on some of my early struggles on this blog so I've listed a few posts that may be of interest. I've also grown a bit as a writer and with that experience, my blogs have become a little better and easier to read. (I hope lol) 

You can spend years working at something you love but sometimes it takes explaining it to someone else to see it clearly for yourself. That’s something I learned twice: first when I started teaching woodturning, and then all over again when I started blogging about it. Who knew it could be so difficult and  yet so simple at the same time?

A National Language, Barely Spoken. Ireland is one of the few countries in the world where a large part of the population seemingly feels awkward or embarrassed about speaking its own national language. After many years of learning Irish in school, most of us can only string a handful of words together — Dia duit, Go raibh maith agat — maybe a sentence if we’re brave like '' An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas? '' which was drilled into us on day one and probably the only line spoken with confidence by all Irish people.

Why Buy Me a Coffee Works – and How You Can Support This Blog Running a small business is a major juggling act, there's a good reason why self employed people have bags under their eyes and a caffeinated nervous energy look to them on a semi-permanent basis. There’s the work you do, the admin you planned for — and the admin that snuck up on you. Then there’s the website you maintain, the content you write, the ads you try to make sense of — all while figuring out how to keep the lights on, the wheels turning, and the bills paid. And all of this on a narrow budget of both time and money in a life that ain't getting any longer. Even when things go well, small businesses rarely have the luxury of a cushion. That’s where Buy Me a Coffee comes in — a simple, no-fuss way to support what I do here on this blog and behind the scenes in my business. And you can do it too!

Why I Keep Rewatching Sons of Anarchy — Even When It Drives Me Mad I’ve just finished rewatching Mayans MC, and as usual, that led me straight back to Sons of Anarchy for what’s probably my fifth full rewatch. There’s something about this show that keeps pulling me back in, even though I have a love/hate relationship with some of the content, especially the parts that try (and fail) to involve Ireland. So here's a breakdown of what I love, what makes me cringe, and why I’ll probably watch it all over again within the next year.

Why I'm Going to Spend Less on Google Ads — Thanks to AI Overviews You’ve probably seen the advice flying around: “Increase your ad spend to stay competitive on Google.” With AI Overviews taking over the top of search results and organic clicks becoming harder to earn, many large businesses, small business owners and bloggers are pouring more money into Google Ads just to stay visible. I'm doing the opposite.

I’ve been using a basic cookie notice on my website for years and, to be honest, I never really paid much attention to it. But recently, there’s been a big push from Google for website owners like me to upgrade to a proper Cookie Management Platform (CMP) — the more advanced (and paid) kind that meets stricter compliance requirements for things like Google Ads and GDPR. So I did it. I installed Cookiebot, and now I have a full breakdown of how people interact with that little pop-up. And here’s what I found: a lot of people — at least a third — choose to reject all cookies.

There was a time when courier services were a lifesaver for small businesses. Fast, trackable, offering one rate regardless of box size or weight and a welcome alternative to the long queues at the post office. But in recent years, many of us have started to ask the same question: what happened? If you're a small business owner in Ireland, you’ve probably had your fair share of headaches with couriers and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Missed collections, phantom “attempted deliveries,” and the endless loop of automated or non-existent customer service... it's frustrating, time-consuming, and damaging to customer trust. So why is this happening? And is it time we re-evaluate how we send and receive goods in 2025?

What TV and Film Get Right (and Horribly Right) About Human Nature I was watching  The Last Ship  again recently — not for the first time — and something struck me all over again. It’s not the virus or the bombs or the zombies that make these post-apocalyptic worlds so terrifying. It’s the people. But is that really how people would be — or is Hollywood just colouring us all with the same brush? A brush that generates a lot of money.

Hoping for a Miracle Let’s be honest — if you live with any kind of chronic pain, inflammation, or restless nights, you’ll try just about anything that might help. Tablets, snake oils, electronic devices, praying to your fairy godmother — anything to bring relief from what ails you. I’ve always been a bit sceptical of “miracle cures,” especially when they’re splashed all over social media ads promising to heal you overnight.  Before I go on: I have a series of posts on Peripheral Neuropathy if you'd like to read how I found relief after reading this post.

 What Happened to My Website Traffic? A few months ago — and seemingly overnight — I started noticing my website traffic slipping. Not just a slow day here and there, but an over-the-cliff drop in clicks and visits. The posts that once brought people in — especially my carefully written affiliate content — just weren’t pulling the same numbers anymore and very few were actually following my links. I went from a modest traffic level and some small commissions to nothing at all. Be sure to read my other post  Why Google Ads Is So Hard for Small Businesses after you finish here!

So, why have a title like that for a blog post? Sure, isn’t every self-employed person loaded? Living the dream, setting their own hours, taking days off whenever they like? Expensive holidays in the sun...two expensive cars in the driveway. Give me a break! That’s the story you often hear but the reality is a little or a lot different, especially when you’re a one-person business in Ireland in 2025. “I’ve touched on a related side of things in another post too — about  why I keep blogging  for my business even when it sometimes feels like nobody’s reading. Feel free to have a read when you’re done here.