Pursue Activities You Don’t Care About

I’ve found solace in painting, in the gentle rhythm of dipping the brush into colour and spreading it across the page. Then dunking it in water and watching the blue, pink, and green twirl and create a new colour entirely.

I love how painting doesn’t have a language. We can’t speak it or weave letters into patterns that reflect our lives. You just see different shapes and shades dance upon the page. And while you do it, your mind clears because here, you’re not on the hunt for unique metaphors and trying to stir magic from the mundane.

Your biggest task is keeping the colour within the lines. And hell, some of the best painters don’t even bother with that!

Painting lets you turn on music with lyrics (impossible with writing) and fall deeper into a hobby you don’t love or care for. Painting could be uprooted from my life tomorrow and all I’d feel is a tiny pinch, nothing compared to losing your biggest passion. One you’d be nothing without because life just wouldn’t make sense without it.

I think everyone needs a hobby they’re “meh” about. An oasis to throw yourself in when your passion project weighs you down like a great stone. I love painting because there are no expectations, there’s no ambition, and once you’re finished, that’s it. You throw it on a pile with all the other mediocre works.

And it’s that promise that keeps me afloat.

Tapping into Your Creative Realm

Came across a great article about using your subconscious to spark creativity. When daily life moves at break-neck speed, sometimes creativity feels constricted and impossible to access.

So here are two activities to spark your subconscious.

The first begins with Thomas Edison’s advice: “never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” 

So, here’s how you do it:

1. Before settling into bed, close your eyes and take a minute to request your subconscious. Start small, for example: “please let me find creative ideas for new blog posts.”

2. Take two minutes to visualize yourself bossing your request.

You’re going for a walk and the world is sparkling with potential. You have a notepad and you’re scribbling away, endless titles pouring into your head. That evening, your titles are glowing in a pool of light from your desk-lamp, and you’re tapping away into the night. 

3. Now imagine the feeling of accomplishment. How do you feel once you’ve got pages of potential blog titles? Confident? Invigorated? 

Perfect! Let these positive feelings sink into your slumber, so your subconscious can work its magic. 

Like everything worth having, the results won’t be instantaneous. What I love about this exercise is how it encourages us to form good habits so we can build a foundation for a thriving life. 

So keep visualizing the motions, carry a notepad and pen everywhere, and let the emotional requests bloom into creative ideas.

*****

Josh Waitzkin, a former chess prodigy and tai chi world champ, inspired the second exercise. He harnesses the power of “thought-dumping”. 

To do this:

Grab a notepad as soon as you wake up (yes, before your phone!), and thought-dump everything that passes through your mind for the next few minutes. 

Waitzkin calls this “crystallized intelligence” as you gain clarity, creative ideas, and knowledge. You may find new insights but if not, you’ll have cleared some valuable mental space before starting your day.

Do you guys have any tricks to getting creative? Would love some inspo!

Living in a Forest

In October we began our cycling expedition from the UK to Porto, Portugal. Since then we’ve tackled the monstrous hills of Spain’s Northern region, survived trench foot, and got tied into a Catholic pilgrimage.

We made it to Porto before Christmas and now we’re in a town west from Lisbon, though you wouldn’t believe it. The coast is lined by golden cliffs, occasionally interrupted by fortresses, so surfers carve against an ancient backdrop. Surreal.

But the most memorable experience is living in a forest. As it’s the middle of winter, it comes with plenty of obstacles, so I thought it’d be funny (borderline tragic) to share:

WHY FOREST LIVIN’ IS GREAT

*You’re a fairy now!

*After a day tied to a computer, the stillness amidst the trees is revitalizing. And with no internet access, you wind down in wholesome ways like reading, cards, or writing

*We’re in a bougie town so you feel rebellious living for free

*You spend days differently.  On our days off, we challenge ourselves to recipes, difficult over a camp stove.We’ve mastered pan pizzas and on Saturday spent three hours making dumplings

*Being awoken by bird-song feels right

*We don’t have air-beds (the rain destroyed them) so we sleep on a tarp to protect us from the cold mud.  But no longer have back pain!

*We cycle to town each morning.  There’s no better way to jig your brain in gear, breathe crisp air,  and admire the morning light cast over the cliff-face.  The sea is calm in the early hours too.

No More Bitching, Bitches

“Ugh, I don’t know, can I say something really mean?” A boy wearing glasses asks, leaning across the table so his girlfriend can inhale every word.

“What?”

She’s almost gasping.

“I just find Olivia has nothing to talk about unless it’s about herself.  She’s really boring.”

“Ohhh my god, right!”

*************************

Everyone gossips and it makes an easy passtime especially trapped in a limbo like a train station.  It’s addictive too and if you have no idea what to talk about with new acquiantances, it’s a quick way to establish common ground.

This happened loads in the hospitality industry, it felt like we had returned to high school.

Employees stole money from one another or stood in the smoking area by the bins, electrified with toxic words, as red-hot anger coiled around their blue plumes of smoke.

Going to vow in 2020 to stop bitching about other people.  A lot of you probably don’t.  But if you do, it’s because you hope to quieten your own self-hatred, if only for a little while, but in a cheap and dirty way.

In 2020, we only speak highly.

❤

“Sucks to Be You”

I was in the standard waitress get-up, splotchy apron and unkempt plait, as tap water gushed into a customer’s glass.

“Aww,” a co-worker said towards a baby with a woollen hat enclosed around his ears.

“I want to be a baby,” I said to no-one in particular.

Back then, I was tired of sacrificing weekends to a red-faced boss. Like a doughy-faced baby, I ached to be doted on.

But now, looking around McDonald’s, all I see are straws searing plastic lids, yellow ‘M’s dwarfing a child’s excited face, eager for their mutant Mcnuggets, and the robotic bins dotted around the room, churning our leftovers.

In 2020, it’s the kids who have to save themselves.

Sixteen-year-olds have to mobilize if they hope for children themselves.  White haired men with dried up rivers creased in their skin are no longer needed.  It’ll be the young ones sweeping up our mess.

My childhood was during Hip Hop’s golden age, a yellow-tinged time, where afternoons were spent slapping mud onto a plastic table until something tangible was formed.  The afternoon ended with a bellyful of Monster Munch.

For the first time in human history, being a child is a curse.  And I’m so so sorry.

Happy Booze Year

The suggested reading on my Kindle have similar covers.  Empty bottles lay limp and sometimes wine pours itself into a quirky title.  Another is the figure of a woman blurred, either the back of her head or her legs, too ashamed to face the camera.

Tomorrow’s New Years Eve and it’s terrifying.  How do you celebrate booze-free? OD on caramel ice-cream instead?

Last week, my boyfriend’s friend visited and we stayed out until morning, destroying a few boxes of cigarettes a night, and sinking endless pints of beer.  On the third morning, one arose to find an eye sealed-shut, covered in a spray of purple, while the other had a sore egg-like growth on the back of his head.

The whole week was a blur of McDonald’s and cheap beer, encircled by a strange language in cloudy bars. By the end of the week, when the friend left, we hid in an eerie hostel with darkened halls, where obscene paintings stretched ahead as you climbed the stairs.  The most memorable was a topless woman getting her nipple tweaked on a bus, while another man robbed her.

Now we’re living in the forest and working hard to get money back up.  Christmas was drenched in vino tino and plasticy beer and I’m sure tomorrow holds the potential to plummet us into a dark, tangled mess.

This will be the first sober New Years Eve for 12 years, so we’re planning to eat pizza overlooking the sunset and feel the gentle shift into a new decade.

Happy New Years guys!

Always Leave a Trace

I don’t think it’s ridiculous to cry when you re-read what you’ve written and find out it’s shite. The dialogue’s so flat! So cliche!

The self-critic has the power to paralyze so you furiously stab the “x” button to keep the monstrousity lost forever.  Students have the luxury of the all-knowing red ink, crossing, circling, and underlining mistakes that have gone unnoticed.

But honing your craft alone is tricky.  All these blogs boom “read, read, read”, “practice, practice, practice” but what if your writing is still the worst thing ever?

Even though it’s cringey, we have to accept the wooden sentences and 2D characters that have found its way on paper.

But we have to keep records.

Whether you’ve left a short story on “Private” or it’s buried deep in your computer, bite the bullet and re-read your work.

I found my two-year-old blog the other day and decided to check out ~the past self~.  Was it really as horrific as I remembered?

No. It wasn’t.

And it broke my heart because doubt had sunk its claws into my temples and flooded me with self-loathing, disappointment, and zapped any confidence I ever had.

Sure, sentences were riddled with spelling mistakes and it was far from perfect, but it just shows how debilitating a lack of confidence can be.

OKAY, SO HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THIS & THRIVE?

The cure is to think like a male politician.

Not the sweet boy who chews his cuffs in the corner of the room but that guy who thunders his opinions the day after everyone’s wrecked, convinced his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and third-wave Feminism are correct.

It’s possible to emulate confidence.  You just have to tell yourself:

• “I’m always improving!”
• “It’s going to be an endless journey but I’m going to be gentle on myself.”
• “You can’t get any worse, you can only progress.”

This is the bolt of energy we need pouring from our fingers and onto paper.

We’ve got this guys!

food fit for kings

munch, munch, munch
fatten them all up,
birds cows pigs
go on,
plump ‘em up.

2077 a year to remember,
starving land and starving man,
perhaps it could be stopped for
wouldn’t it be wonderful
to nourish our land?
to let baby calves
stay with their mothers
instead of being ripped apart
limb
by
limb and
slapped up by greasy lips?

wouldn’t it be wonderful
to thrive on plant-based foods
rather than smushed gristle and bones
that we crave at drive-thrus,
treating our kids on a Friday night to
a fabulous feast of
pig fat and chicken beaks.
wouldn’t it be wonderful
to listen
to our bodies
that need garlic and parsley
to fight carcinogens,
no dairy or poultry!

Oh 2077 –
the year of death and decay,
and that’s just the plants and animals,
for your grand-children
will be left nothing organic or tangible,
nothing at all
but dead land and empty seas.

 

camus x bechdel

i have fallen into the world of graphic novels and have just finished alison bechdel’s the fun home – also didn’t realize that the ‘bechdel test’ came from a graphic novel? amazing!

literary works are a super important theme in bechdel’s memoir, they strengthen the thread-like bond the protagonist had with her father.  i can 100% resonate.

but this passage really spoke to me, particularly camus’ quote on death.

on point.

❤

Silky riches slip between my fingertips,
diamonds and pink bugattis,
alabaster-white jets and infinity pools.
Pass by and expect to break necks as
he drinks in my crimson allure –
tipsy
with flushed cheeks,
oh the way
this dress captures my shape
like cat-like models
in opulent magazines.
My curves flow in a river of luxury,
and all for tenner
a new identity,
a whole new me.