100 Seconds to Midnight

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...

Whilst busy doing "nothing" I am in the middle of preparing a workshop on Setting Goals for Artists and Creatives. This may seem incredulous given my last post but as the saying goes - you teach best what you most need to learn. Without giving too much away, and therefore rendering my workshop superfluous before it's even begun, the overall premise is simple - rather than focusing on the end result, you attend to the process that is going to get you there. So, to give a couple of (possibly not entirely random) examples, instead of pinning all your hopes on being happy when you reach your somewhat arbitrary dream weight of 60kg you put your focus on finding ways to enjoy healthy eating (that doesn't rule out the odd piece of cake!) Thinking (somehow) your life will be improved when you can run parkrun in 24 minutes becomes - how can I motivate myself to consistently go for a run midweek? I have been trying to adopt the principals since the New Year, and unlike the us...