A somewhat self-indulgent blog. I like to create poster art out of my photographs. I am currently one week into my first visit to Australia. All the glorious things I have seen or the gorgeous people I have had the pleasure of meeting have made this a memorable week. I know that future visits will never quite put my creative head in the same spin as this week’s first impression. This cartoon captures some of my swirling thoughts. Vivid colours. Expansive seas. First Nations art, whilst remaining respectful and without misappropriation. Awe. The first scintilla of a love affair with a new to me country.
What should or could I do less of? I have no idea.
Less is definitely more artistically, but as a lifestyle ethos I fear I would struggle to give up anything for very long. Even giving up chores or dull tasks might change life in a way that might not be comfortable. Floating imperceptibly from one Status Quo to the next suits me very well. Allowing life to dictate a path often works better than a rigid personal doctrine.
Plans have their place but serendipity often brings more enlightenment.
The most delicious place to dodge the rain and be inspired to do more, not less.
My pondering head is ablaze currently, so much new inspiration, so much of everything in a new continent. Now is just not the time to be thinking of doing less of anything.
Even the trees in rain, spark a little twinkle in my soul.
Sandals are my favourite things to wear and as they come in pairs, that neatly spares me from thinking of a second item. Which would be a hard task.
My feet are free spirits who dislike full enclosure at any time of the year. This year in particular my feet have prolonged sandal wearing until exactly this point when a very late summer holiday has taken us to Asia.
A dark November switched overnight to something warm and exotic. Sunbeams on my toes. They are somewhat tired toes, slightly puffy from a long period of travel but very excited to see sunshine.
My toes particularly enjoyed my evening bob in a rooftop pool. No anaesthetising chill forcing them into socks and boots, just a quick dab and they were ready to see the night.
If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
What a perfect prompt for this morning. My head has had a very busy night whilst I slept on.
I have a fair bit of experiencing no sleep. Night shifts, 24 hour shifts and a head that gifts me insomnia when times are tricky. Hence the swan images. I am pretty good at appearing to float calmly while life throws me curve balls and incendiary devices. Under the surface though I am paddling furiously and not always in the right direction.
My head is a bit busy right now but I am sleeping well. But my dream world is very creative. Writing an in depth blog overnight that in dream world was rather good, in my opinion, but that I have no recollection of the details. In another remembered dream loads of paintings in shades of orange.
This more or less accurately answers the question. In a world where I didn’t need sleep I would be more creative.
But we all need sleep and a lack of sleep absolutely affects how creative I can be. However if the streets at night were safe for women I would walk more. Night walks in central London gave me some of the best experiences of walking through famous and architecturally beautiful streets without crowds. I felt safe in a way I could never feel in a provincial city or in the countryside.
So that just leaves me reading and nibbling. Great for knowledge, not so good for the waistline.
What’s the first impression you want to give people?
It is my birthday weekend so with more accuracy than is normal I can say I have been making first impressions for exactly 68 years and 2 days. Most of them are absolutely way beyond my control and because I have never been famous the first impression I create has almost never been recorded. There will be H.R records of interviews where my first impression has been recorded. Groups of friends will have anecdotal memories of first, second and third impressions. My point being that first impressions are largely out of my control. On occasions I may set out to make a favourable first impression but without feedback how would I ever know if I had achieved ‘favourable’. I think I am a bit of a ‘slow burn’ for most people. I try to be friendly, kind and effective with an open mind. I am loyal until I am not. I am not too invested in creating a ‘first impression’ because I genuinely believe that is largely beyond my control. However a ‘lasting impression’ has far more heft and gravitas. Something that is built up over time by doing my best to be a decent human being.
Who is the most famous or infamous person you have ever met?
I can’t actually say, as I met either end of the scale professionally. Now for the famous end of the scale it is somewhat comforting to say that the most famous person I ever met was an entirely likable human being. What is less comfortable is that the most infamous person I ever met was also an entirely likable human being.
Along the way of life I have met all sorts, not all of them were entirely likable human beings. Maybe I was just lucky with my two extremes. Doughnuts have been used to protect the identities of the famous and the infamous. Humans and doughnuts are all a question of taste
Lets not talk about how I manage my screen time. Lets talk about the person who nodded off to sleep. Possibly reading one of my duller blogs and let their forehead nod or their finger twitch whilst reading a blog this week . 1,028 times! One blog a lot and a lot of blogs just once. Whatever were you thinking. U.S.A I am looking at you…
I am a pondering blogger with a small loyal band of regular readers. 50 Views is giddy. 30 exceptional. 20 about normal.
A few weeks ago someone fell asleep at the screen and I got 200 views on one day. My x axis had to grow, which is all well and good until life returns to normal and my 20-30 readers suddenly look like tiny blips wandering along the y axis. Readership returned to normal and my x axis shrunk accordingly. If returning to normal from 200 was a problem. It was nothing compared to this week’s landslide slippage.
So how do I manage my screen time?
Well I could write more blogs to keep up with my trending rise.
Or perhaps, more sensibly I could get out and about and find some normal low level ponders out in the real world. Once the giddiness wears off of course.
Of all the pleasures of a self-directed semi-retirement the joy of not suffering the futility of annual appraisement interviews ranks quite highly. In fact never having to engage in the whole silly game of being appraised with questions like the one below, simply to tick a box, is fabulous.
What will your life be like in three years?
The tool of appraisal, feedback and goal setting in the right hands and minds should be a positive interaction in the workplace. If only such things could be honest, organic conversations. Hopes and ambitions shared in either direction shared with no judgement with the aim of increasing well being and contentment.
We all lie because honest uncertainty never ticks the box.
The joy of being human is that none of us can predict what our lives will be like in three minutes time let alone 3 years.
On Saturday whilst doing a very regular car journey, and while stopped by a red traffic light, a boy racer lost control of his car and skidded backwards towards me. His car stopped 3 yards from mine and he sped off. Nothing happened. In the 3 seconds or so when I was certain he would crash into me I knew my time would be up. But it wasn’t, the red light changed and I drove off.
What will my life be like in three years? I have no idea, and that is just fine with me.
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
A recycle, repurpose, reuse and re-home Festival/Holiday weekend, held once a year in the Autumn.
Whole communities could offer their surplus stuff for free or for a charitable donation. Just a pile of stuff on a table outside the front of their homes or at an agreed community space. A whole weekend so everyone gets the chance to both donate and treasure hunt. One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure hunt.
I am a big second hand shopper. It is the most sustainable way to live, giving stuff that has already had a life some extra years of use. The illustrations for this blog are my latest acquisition. A Gentleman’s Working Kimono Jacket.
The lining
It pairs very nicely with a pair of winter Corduroy trousers that also had a life before me.
History in general fascinates me. In many ways it is the imperfection and biased recollection of facts and events that makes history all the more intriguing. Academia strives hard to nail down historical facts. While human memory throughout history differs in subtle and monumental ways. Humans involved or indeed uninvolved in historic events have an opinion on how or why something happened depending on their own prejudices or expectations.
Someone writes or records in some way their viewpoint on an occurrence and that becomes a fact which others might question. And then more research is done and another book/paper/ theory is let loose.
For this reason alone my choice of fascinating historical event is the Covid Pandemic. Because I experienced it first hand and that only 5 years down the line there is swirling abiguity about some of the facts and outcomes of the virus that stopped the world.
My earlier daily blog, Pandemic Ponderings, records the event as it impacted my small space in history. Do I remember things the way they actually were. Would reading them again surprise me?
200 years down the line on 2225 how will the Covid Pandemic have altered the world?
On reflection my family and friends were relatively lucky and yet we experienced huge grief and sadness. The harm of that period lives on within each of us.
Almost every human in the world felt something similar and many were so much more badly damaged than us. How will all that unhappiness in a whole population have shifted the shape of our world for ever?
Out of bad experiences good things rise, different paths are taken. Enforced choices become the lived experience.
I am capable of swimming every day in the sea, with friends I would never have met had it not been for the Pandemic. I moved house to be next to the sea so swimming was easier and then a whole other, quite bonkers world opened up.
For a whole worldful of people to have a single event that changed them is unprecedented.
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