100 Seconds to Midnight

"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There are two ways in which I use Instagram - one is to post a photograph which appears on my page until I take it down, the other is to add to 'my story' and the post will appear for a day - but requires more effort to both see it and 'like' it.  So, when my 'Blue Skies - Happy Earth Day' story on Wednesday draws little attention and no comments I am unsure as to whether it just wasn't that noteworthy, or if in some way I have made an error of judgement and that a 'Happy Earth Day' is the very last thing the world was having on Wednesday and that somehow my enjoyment of it has instantly rendered me less empathic. Looking for evidence to the contrary, I took the book 'Braving the Wilderness' by Brené Brown down off the shelf and discovered that for the second week in a row I, (and now you) have inadvertently stumbled into the realm of Carl Ju...

Serendipity, n A combination of events which are not individually beneficial, but occurring together produce a good or wonderful outcome. Easter Sunday 2020, my plan was to get up and go for a run at 8 o'clock.  An extra few minutes in bed somehow eats up half an hour and I didn't set out until 8.30.  In another house, my friend gets side tracked by the (and I use the word lightly) need to complete another level on a game before heading out for her run, and in a third, another friend leaves exactly when he intended to. Somewhere a little after 9am these random decisions combine in an act of serendipity, our paths crossing at the point where our three running routes converge. Perhaps in different times we might have passed this off as co-incidence, we are all runners, we all live within 3 miles of each other and despite never having met either of them whilst out running before, sooner or later I was bound to meet at least one of them.  But when you are under lockdown...

The same boiling water that softens the potato, hardens the egg. It's about what you're made of, not the circumstances. Unknown This is the second time I've written a blog.  The first was a peek inside my one any only foray into the world of marathon running, I say peek but, after 750 continuous days, reading it was more of an endurance event than the actual race.  It became a daily habit that I enjoyed writing but grew increasingly uneasy with the fact that I was, to all intents and purposes, publishing a diary online and really what was the need?  It took a little over three and a half years, and a knee jerk reaction to the resetting of the Doomsday Clock, for the compulsion to write to resurface - what I've yet to really settle on is why? Without wishing to jump back into the realm of diary (but alternate stimuli have been few and far between this week) I have received word that my art submissions have been moved from someone's 'to look at later' p...

Live in the uncertainties my dear. Invent little moments inside those maybes and grow there. Akif Kichloo Early in January, on what was then a normal day, driving to walk the dog in an open space, free to speak to whomever I chose and able to concentrate long enough to listen to a podcast, I picked up an extraordinary email offering me the opportunity to apply to attend a European cultural conference.  The chance of my being chosen as one of the delegates was slim but, for me, the fact that I had been considered worthy of applying was huge. When, at the end of February, I learned that my application had been unsuccessful I was naturally disappointed but listening to the writer Olivia Laing being interviewed about a relationship breakup, I realised that when she talked of the promise of that relationship being something that was going to lift her into a different kind of life, this was exactly how I felt about the conference.  I had dared to dream of being catapulted stra...