getting stuff done: creating my life

I met Sophie Giblin when I did the inaugural Secret Salad Society at the Wild School in Brighton.  I think 2013? The Wild School was an experimental learning places set up by Charles Davis, Graham Walker and Premsager Rose.  It hosted many events and workshops that were all based on needs and ran by Wild School members.  It was a summer of collaboration, random events (making musical instruments out of vegetables, wild singing, very clear ideas, humming, improvisation....and of course Secret Salad Society)  I also did the humming workshop with Sophie.

Sophie did her first Fast Art workshop at the Wild School and went on to succesfully crowd fund a few pop up Art Galleries around Brighton.  I ran an Art Journaling session at her first gallery (my first Art gathering!) and taught Yoga at her second.  She is an incredible whirlwind of energy and initiative and totally inspiring.  She is currently living and working in New Zealand.

Check out this interview about her and her work here

Ah.  I feel SO MUCH BETTER.  Yoga class.  Really hard work one.  Really, really good.  I thought I might feel a bit weak having done nothing physical for so long. But it was if my body was crying out for it.  I loved it so much.  Like when you really really need to go dancing.  And afterwards you are hot and sweaty and a smiley mess and it feels so good.

So it was like that. My muscles are all feeling light and full of energy.  My whole mind was wired and malfunctioning and everything felt wrong.  But just needed to do that.  Yoga and art journaling are my valves.  Time spent with no brain noise.  Total immersion.  It reminded me of something a friend said to describe art. You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

So true so very very true.  I feel deeply nourished.  Thank you Yoga.  You really are my rock. 

I am feeling really introverted today.  Almost blue.  As if I were premenstrual, but I am not sure that I am.  I am finding it hard to stick to what I supposed to be doing.  I am struggling with confidence and bravado.  I feel the world is crowded with what I have to offer and everyone else is doing it better than I am. 

I don't know why I am feeling this.  I have good friends and allies.  I am who I am and I occupy my corner of the world.  I feel I want to not care and care more about money.  Or business.  I feel I am straddling two worlds.  I want to have a part time job and have the money sorted so I can be a free roaming artist and go into my studio and calm myself with making art. 

I feel I need more creativity.  Its been too long there is a yearning in me for deep quiet.  To be in the space where nothing else matters.  Where I am free of the world and its busy concerns.

I want to be truer to my self.  I want to relax deep into that space of genuine authenticity.  To cocreate and collaborate.  To feel free of the demands of what i myself have signed up for. 

I had a beautiful quiet day yesterday.  I have some work I love.  I want to escape my own methods of procrastination.....namely, fiddling with figures, research. I want to find the perfect venue.  I want to know my own worth be clear on my offers and who my ideal client is and where my clients hang out. 

My perfect venue is warm, calm, creative, modern rustic, it is spacious has beautiful views. It has an art studio - its a home of artists.  Its not just glitzy.  its wildly creative.  wild and creative.  and its got an element of deep comfort and nurturing.  Its a soft white bed and a clean warm bathroom.  its a high ceilinged barn with art on the walls.  It has a big table and space in the living room.  It feels creative and spacious.  its not too far from here.  there is delicious food.

it is quiet.  its where I want to go right now to feel spacious and creative and re align my bones and my spirit. 

fuck it.  let it just be.  am so loving the house right now.  the silence.  yes

Am doing a little mini ecourse with Andrea Sher....

So am going to do it here... Celebrating 2015

• What did you create?  - I created  - I find it really hard to look back!  OK.  I created in 2015 - a course called "declutter your head".  Several paintings. A vision board.  The circumstances for doing my Art of Creative Living retreat this year.  Friendships.  The opportunity to do a caoching course.  Some Oracle cards. Many many pages in my art journals.  Looking back I feel as if 2015 was a preparation year.  I am looking forward to MORE creations this year.
• What are you proud of from the last year? - I know this sounds very light - but I am most proud of how I managed the summer holidays.  2014 was awful and we were so at a loss and didn't go away and Hub was working and Bub and I just felt at a total loose end.  It was due a lack of planning  - which had previously not mattered - somehow in previous years it had all just panned out well despite the lack of planning.  Series of fortunate events meant that we did stuff and had fun and had things to do.  But 2014 was more like a series of unfortunate events.  We missed things, the few plans we did have fell through  and we missed being with other people due to these plans... etc etc.  But in 2015 I planned it and it worked.  For 6 weeks in the summer Bub and I had plans and we did them.  We went to Dance Camp East for 9 days of camping with friends.  We went to visit my folks.  We went to France.  It was all super good.  It worked and I loved it. I am also proud of the fact that Secret Salad Society got resurected, I feel have made some good new friends in 2015.  And created a new network for myself.  I have also achieved a good deal of work  - certainly in the last 3rd of the year - which has meant I have been busy but not too busy and earned good money.  I also investigated coaching training and I have made a decision on which one to do.
• What is there to grieve? Personally I don't feel there was anything to grieve for me.  But The War in Syria and the boat refugee crisis is pretty awful.  The children drowning and all. And The UK governments decision to bomb as a way to stop terrorism. 
• What was hard? - Nothing was really hard.  Perhaps that is the only thing to grieve  -I didn't do anything that really made me feel as if I had conquered a challenge!
• What was disappointing? as above. I had wanted more progress than I got.
• Where did you grow? I grew in confidence and in terms of knowing the direction I want to take
• How were you brave? I don't really see that I was particularly brave in any respect.  I began to ask for the help I need towards the end of the year.  Its about acknowledging my needs and asking for them.  If that is brave.
• What were the unexpected blessings? Work so that I have money to contribute to our family.  A gift of money from my parents to help with house refurbishments (yet to come) My brother being able to come on holiday with us when my husband could not. 

Yes it feels as if 2015 was a funny sort of year.  Apart from the great success of the summer holiday most of it was about groundwork  - things like research and broadening and building my network.  All good stuff to set me in good stead for 2016.  

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So today felt like the first day back at work.  Honestly I need a few days to clear the crap out of my office that had accumulated over Christmas.  My 'work room' had become the Christmas prep room (not entirely finished as I was mainly in bed with the Flu from 23rd-28th) and then we had house guests and gave them the master bedroom  - which meant that all the surface stuff that generally no one sees - got displaced to my much smaller work room.  And then the trip to see my family got tucked in at the end of the holidays - rescheduled due to my virus.  So instead of few days post New Year to sort it all out............Ah it was a veritable junk room this morning.  Its SO MUCH better now.  Though it still feels like a way to go before I am really ready for the new year.  But many minor tasks have been completed.  I can see the floor - and its been hoovered.  I can see my desk and I can sit my chair at it.  Definitely getting there.  But not there yet.  Sigh.  More to sort.  My art materials likewise have been in and out and off to do workshops and back, involved in some home made Christmas gift making and then not tidied away properly - all mixed up in different bags and all that.  But that is tomorrows task....  And I have applied for new debit and credit cards which will mean that all our tranactions will finally be coming out of the one bank which is no longer Barclays.  I will be able to get access to all of the figures and know exactly what money is going where.  We have childcare sorted for next week, an appointment set up with Bub's teacher and several playdates sorted.  My hotel accommodation is booked for my upcoming work and I have paid the first installment for the coaching course I am going on.  I have also had a long coaching session with my colleague Al who is skill swapping with me.  I now have a whole host of new avenues to consider but also renewed enthusiasm for a couple of my projects this year.  Bring it on.

Today my gorgeous son had a whole thing going that managed to make me totally lose my rag.  He was refusing to go upstairs and get his swimming things because he was scared.  However he would be fine apparently if I let him use his Nintendo as he climbed the stairs.  He was afraid of the window.  He would also be fine if I went up with him.  It escalated to a war of wills as I initially started off on the I will help him overcome his small fear and I will tell him I believe he can do this thing and insist that he does it.  Ah.  How wrong I was.  And how desperately he clung to the belief that he was truly afraid of the window.  Even though somehow the Nintendo would help him.  Or I could.  And I did lose my patience with him.  I took him upstairs to send him to his room where upon he was able without fear to collect his swimming things from his drawer.  I had to go into another room to calm down.  What was THAT all about!?  He is not at all afraid of the window anymore.  Did I do the right thing, the wrong thing.  I tried so hard to stay consistent.  And didn't.  He seems OK now.  But he managed to work himself into a right frenzy of "I CAN'T!!!!" with wailing and weeping and shaking involved.  Sorry Bub.  I love you, but that threw me completely.  Apparently a friend says her 8 year old can also freak out about going upstairs alone sometimes.  Its not as if it is very far - our house is a tiny cottage.  Sigh.  I wonder what if anything he has learned about overcoming fears.....

I did at least realise that gosh - our own fears - are so often pure figments of our imagination that we feed and believe in so sincerely.  Recently I saw a photo on facebook that someone had taken of me sometime when I was about 21.  ah - if only I had known I was so beautiful then.  There I was all perfect skin and dewy eyed - but looking off kilter, a little sad, a little uncertain.  I know I did not feel beautiful.  I know that I was very unsure of myself.   And I often I still am  unsure of myself. Feeling that same feeling....afraid...  - but why?  what of? Seems to me that these fears are fabricated beliefs.  They are the "Scary Windows" my son was so very intent on believing - so powerful and believeable that he was totally stalled and unable to act.  And yet, a whole bunch of nonsense - created to stop us doing something or other  - that if we just breathed deeply and did  - those fears would evaporate immediately.  

Lesson:  Just do it anyway.  Its all fabrications.  Just scary windows.  not real.  not lasting.  Feel more Sure of that and of yourself. 

Its a totally British thing.  Pantomine.  Ludicrous and brilliant and awful and wonderful.  Thoroughly enjoyed it.  Thank you Peter Pan at Eastbourne.  Its a bit like going back to childhood.  You kind of know what to expect, its got songs and bad jokes and you get to shout and cheer and boo the baddies.  ace.

So am off to Suffolk tomorrow for our second Christmas.  Really looking forward to spending time with the folks. 

 I don't write resolutions.  I write a wish list.  I figure if I just write down things I wish would happen then at the end of the year I can look through and see which of my wishes came true.  I know that much of the time it will have been me that made them happen.  But I have been doing this for a while now and sometimes I get some really cool wishes come true.  LIke the time I got the "someone pays for me to go to Ibiza on holiday" one.  That happened.  Out of the blue.  I am going to put that down again....

This Year 2016 I WISH

Bub is happy & healthy
The guinea pigs are happy and healthy
We all have good health
An end to war in Syria
A family trip to Iceland
I pass my coaching exam
a great 50th birthday party or 5
for confidence and to be highly valued
a Holiday to France (in the hot sun!)
The art retreat I organise is really succesful and brilliant
Work goes really well with Lucy
Get Stuff Done club prospers
We get our loft room done without any hitches or glitches
We get a new kitchen and its fab
I win a big prize on the premium bonds
We are in credit and manage our budget really easily and well so that we have resreves set aside for known and expected expenses
We get the house painted pink!
We get a new door and its beautiful
Someone gives me a campervan
Summer weather is good and kind when we go camping
I get lots of great interesting work and am really well paid for it
Hub gets lots of really great interesting work and he is really well paid for it
I get to go on lots of art retreats and yoga retreats
I sell a big painting
I sell lots of paintings
I host a regular art journaling session and do one day introductory sessions that are really popular
I feel really in FLOW and that I am moving forward and that things are moving & progressing
People (really great people) seek me out and ask me to work with them - I do & its FAB
I seek out really great people to work with me, they do and its fab
I figure out how to make the Art Journaling / How to be A StARTist really work.
I get an artists studio.  Its beautiful.  I love it.  I paint in it lots.
I get a new iphone.  I win it somehow!
We work it so that we dont have to go to supermarkets for food any more  - in a good way.
Someone pays for me to go on the Prague Art retreat with Orly et al.
Pedicures are part of my life
I do yoga everyday and at least one class a week.
for something magical to happen that is so good and yet so unexpected it feels like proper magic
We somehow get enough money to move into a bigger and better home for free
The noisy neighbours at no 23 move out.  Oh and when they do I buy their house and gut it and do it up really nicely and we rent it out as a holiday let
I get a van with a bed and a cooker and a woodburning stove a bit like that woman at DCE
I go to Croatia and have a fabulous trip
Oh! yes the art retreat in Italy is brilliant!!
Me and Bub go to Italy and its an ace holiday
Bub gets really passionately into stuff  - like drawing and music maybe
Hub takes up Yoga
Christmas is brilliant - no one is ill and everyone gets what they want and has an ace time.
We go to live performances often and see some amazing art
Film club lives again
I get paid £16,000 in one month
Magical stuff happens
I love my work and my work loves me
Magic money comes my way
I do stuff I really enjoy doing and I don't have to work to earn money
A great 50th Barbeque trip  is had by all
We go to Chestnutt Cottage for a week's holiday
WE get a piano
Our Kitchen extension thing happens and I get a big table
Life feels good, purposeful and interesting