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...

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...

If there's ever a time to wake up, it's now Jerry Brown, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists At half past three on the 24 January 2019 I was the very grateful recipient of a one to one mentoring session aimed at kick starting my creative career, the photograph symbolic of my time having come. A year later and I can't help but feel that I've allowed it to slip by, in part due to feeling overwhelmed by living in a world that I increasingly don't recognise nor feel part of, a place where greed and consumerism are rife and pride in humanity is harder to find. I have made some progress with the launch of my creative career, but hurtling towards my 50th birthday I often become unstuck by technology that I don't understand and, a past master at self sabotage, it doesn't take much to throw me off course. I am very proficient at putting blocks in my way and sitting behind any number of excuses as to why not to do something. Yet over the past year there has al...