I am a bad blogger

in the meantime go here to read about Eskimo Disco my friend H-C's partners band and and vote.

Flow

Fantastic blog post from Jory Desjardins. I'm tempted to copy the whole thing but do hop over there.

'My mother tells me I'm on a writing streak; What's really going on is I'm learning the art of cultivating my connection to flow. I know what times of day I'm most likely to hear the voices. I know that, even if I have a thousand other things to do, if I go to a Starbucks or coffee shop, I can fool my mind into thinking I have all the time in the world. in this unrushed atmosphere the voices feel welcome. I do not look up to the lights at Starbucks and pray for the divine to strike me like a double espresso, but I sip coffee and silently summon it forth. "OK," I say. "I'm just gonna sort of start writing random stuff and you're going to help me connect the dots, dig?" Nine times out of ten I'll hear a voice asking me to repeat what I just said so that it can take in what I've written, and then it corrects me. The voice has great rhythm--it coaches me like my dance teacher did when I was a kid, "Keep your head up! Point your toes. Bop, bop, BOP! Stay on the beat."

After a while the voice gets tired and ducks out. I read what I've written and fix a few typos. I'm bound to read it the next day and curse myself for the typos. But I also marvel at the outcome and wonder, where the hell did this come from? Who really wrote this? '

Arctic Monkeys Wedding

I got caught in a hail shower and then a hail and sun shower. In Africa we called the concurrence of rain and sunshine a monkeys wedding. I therefore call this the Arctic Monkey's Wedding.

Patchwork blog via 52 Projects

oh and heres a link to Naked Ambition a calendar raising money for Bristol Uni's Rowing Club for a friend

Just different

Wow this morning I was experiencing complete frustration. I had earache in the night and still had twinges this morning. As I've had a cough as well and in the autumn was under par for nearly the whole of November I thought it best to cancell my plans for today and stay at home. My plans consisted of moving forward various projects which I want to do to get 2006 on its way. Instead I've been shuffling around the house sending plaitive emails to friends begging for sympathy. Then I checked one of my email accounts and noticed that I've had a ton of emails about my spare room which I'm letting. I then had a few phone calls about the room. So I was able to schedule times for people to come and see it tomorrow. Rather than being a waste of a morning. I've actually been able to do quite a lot just where I am. Sometimes things are different from our plans but I have to remember this doesn't necessarily make it worse just different.

The Artists Way

I think I've posted about this book by Julia Cameron before. Her 12 week course has made innumerable changes to my personal and creative life. I'm currently doing her follow up book 'Walking in the World' with a friend. In the meanwhile there is a group of bloggers doing it online and blogging about their experiences.

doable resolutions

I found a great post online in a blog (which I now can't find) about doable resolutions. This person's take was to commit to something for one lunar calender month. Next one starts 14th January. The result is that you have only committed to 4 weeks at a time. It makes a new change or habit less daunting and therefore you are more likely to stick with it.

It made sense to me - once I've got rid of my current cough I'm going to try and implement more exercise.

the eight irresistable principles of fun - found this a few months ago and lost link so posting quickly!

green lights all the way

Hogmanay Greetings!

I originally was going to have a very quiet New Year's eve with my parents and go to the end of a dinner party held by a friend. In the end when I got to the dinner my host spontaneously proposed going up to Arthur's Seat (a hill in the middle of Edinburgh) to see the Hogmanay fireworks. To my amazement we got a taxi at 11.15pm on New Year's Eve. We got off at the bottom of the hill slithered and slid our way to its middle rib known as Salisbury's Crags. There we had a magnificent view of the city laid out before us. We opened some gin & tonic which we shared to keep out the cold while we waited for the the countdown. It was wonderful. Some of the fireworks were almost over our heads. The others we had a wonderful view including ones being set off over in Fife. Sadly none of my photos will I'm sure do justice. One of our party sang a traditional new year's song (not Auld Lang Syne) and we stumbled off the hill again. I walked home cheerily greeting passers by.

~~~~

My brother and sister in law due to her work ended up going to the wedding of minor European Royalty during the summer. Naturally we wanted them to tell all. The best bit of the wedding they thought looking back on it was the journey to the reception. 'Green lights all the way!'. The next night after being told this story I got a taxi home and it was zipping along the almost deserted streets. Just before I got to my house the taxi driver said 'The lights have been green all the way'! I hadn't noticed but when he said this I felt a burst of joy. YES! This year which I have hoping to be different - will.

Why your camera does not matter

People know cars don't drive themselves, typewriters don't write novels by themselves and that Rembrandt's brushes didn't paint by themselves, so why do some people think cameras drive around and make pictures all by themselves? The most advanced, exotic and expensive car can't even stay in the same lane on the freeway by itself, much less drive you home. No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. Every camera requires you to make manual adjustments now and then as well, regardless of how advanced it is. Never blame a camera for not knowing everything or making a wrong exposure or fuzzy image.

Here's how I came to discover this:

When it comes to the arts, be it music, photography, surfing or anything, there is a mountain to be overcome. What happens is that for the first 20 years or so that you study any art you just know that if you had a better instrument, camera or surfboard that you would be just as good as the pros. You waste a lot of time worrying about your equipment and trying to afford better. After that first 20 years you finally get as good as all the other world-renowned artists, and one day when someone comes up to you asking for advice you have an epiphany where you realize that it's never been the equipment at all.

You finally realize that the right gear you've spent so much time accumulating just makes it easier to get your sound or your look or your moves, but that you could get them, albeit with a little more effort, on the same garbage with which you started. You realize the most important thing for the gear to do is just get out of your way. You then also realize that if you had spent all the time you wasted worrying about acquiring better gear woodshedding, making photos or catching more rides that you would have gotten where you wanted to be much sooner.

I met Phil Collins at a screening in December 2003. It came out that people always recognize his sound when they hear it. Some folks decided to play his drums when he walked away during a session, and guess what? It didn't sound like him. Likewise, on a hired kit (or "rented drum set" as we say in the USA) Phil still sounds like Phil. So do you still think it's his drums that give him his sound?

A fan from Michigan teaches auto racing at a large circuit. The daughter of one of his students wanted to come learn. She flew out and showed up at the track in an rented Chevy Cavalier. She outran the other students, middle aged balding guys with Corvettes and 911s. Why? Simple: she paid attention to the instructor and was smooth and steady and took the right lines, not posing while ham-fisting a lot of horsepower to try to make up for patience and skill. The dudes were really ticked, especially that they were outrun by a GIRL, and a 16 year old one at that.

Sure, if you're a pro driver you're good enough to elicit every ounce of performance from a car and will be limited by its performance, but if you're like most people the car, camera, running shoes or whatever have little to nothing to do with your performance since you are always the defining factor, not the tools.

Catch any virtuoso who's a complete master of their tools away from his or her sponsors and they'll share this with you.

read the full article here via kottke

the inbetween time - wanting striving and failing

Between Christmas and New Year is so w e i r d a space. Its the time that people start making resolutions, change job, get fit, move. I too used to make resolutions often to 'have more fun' in a life raining down with obligations. But its not specific enough and often I'd get to the end of the year and realise I'd had very little 'fun' let alone a big belly laugh on a regular basis.

I was lying in bed last night doing a mental inventory of my friends (prompted by seeing a friend on Wednesday who I was shocked to discover we hadn't seen each other for 6 months). Everybody I know has been walking slowly through the most horendous 'challenges' this year. Relatives dying of cancer, 3 breast cancer scares, degenerative blindness, a sister with breast cancer a brother with Hodgekins lymphoma (both brother and sister to the same friend), infertility, coping with parents growing older... I suddenly realised I had one friend without a major 'challenge' in her life and then remembered her cousin with the inoperable brain tumor!

We all have problems and one of the way we get through them is being a kindly presence with each other. Bearing witness to what we go through. I'm not good at this - when did I ever get the life lesson on how to help someone facing potential blindness? Was that one of the days I missed at school? I can only bring my ordinary human broken patched together wanting striving and failing self.

This year I've decided that my resolution is to be the imperfectly human me I am. Just as I am.

The friend I met (I wrote and erased a list of her 'challenges' it was too long!) said that after a close relative dying of cancer slowly and painfully over many months that her resolution was to stop putting off the things she loved doing but had put aside due to a focus on her work. She drew up plans for riding and skating in the coming year. Energetic outdoor activities she'd given up in her striving in her career.

What a challenge! I realise that I've been so focused on surviving the past two years I'm not entirely sure if I could write a list of things to do that would make me happy. Currently my list contains things I would like NOT to do. This is my second resolution. Remember and rediscover all the things that make me happy and do them and not let them get lost in the business of living.

Alternative Photographic Processes site - fascinating.

Saw Narnia yesterday

- did anyone else watching hope against hope that the cool whicked Witch of Narnia was going to win instead of those frankly dull and irritating children?

Cuteness overload

oh and keri smith has a sort of guerilla guide to christmas which looks great but you know what I'm so damned tired I shall look a the list, admire it and do nothing

cameo update

Hi Cameo supporter

Before everyone disappears for what I hope will be a cracking Christmas and New Year for each and every one of you, PLEASE don't forget The Cameo Campaign and here are some simple things you can do straight away to help:

1)) Register for email notification of the Cameo programme. This is a practical way to show interest in the Cameo and its films and to help staff morale - sign up, sign your friends up, get the programme
details weekly and please please please, come along to every film
possible!
Why are we recommending this action when the owners are not safeguarding the Cameo's future? Well, the for sale signs are up and the owners are starting to run it down - eg by stopping the membership scheme. Yet The Cameo is NOT a failing business and we need your help to show it is still thriving. It costs nothing to subscribe to the email programme, but it does show your interest in the cinema, which is judged by how many people come to see films, use the bar, and sign up to receive email programmes.

Please do all three! The Cameo needs you to go see films
in its lovely space, all year round, for as long as its there standing as a cinema.


Email a brief Christmas message to staff from you, mention you're
a Cameo Campaigner, and request to be added to their weekly email
programme. That's all it takes! Do it now at:
managers@picturehouses.co.uk

2) contact your local councillor and MSP to remind them of the Cameo situation and to urge their support in ensuring current and any future plans by City Screen are looked at critically and opposed unless the arthouse identity of the Cameo is kept intact, not least by ensuring the safeguarding of Cinema One, the Cameo's showpiece. Do it before Christmas if you can, and/or in the New Year!

We repeat, The Cameo is NOT a failing business. On the contrary it is not doing badly considering multiplex competition.

Sarah Boyack MSP and Cllr. Lorna Shiels have been stalwart in support of The Cameo. If you live in Edinburgh and not in their constituency/ward, please contact your own MSP and councillor - these individuals need informing of your concerns! Find your MSP and councillor if you don't know who they are,
via:

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/CEC/Member_Services/Wards/wards.html

3) As soon as the New Year starts, Save The Cameo will need your help again to bring The Cameo back on to the public agenda: please don't let it fade from view.

Write to newspapers, contact people, check the website regularly, and help make sure the start of the year promises a brighter future for The Cameo.

4) Soon there will be an email survey carried out of Edinburgh-based Cameo customers. This is important and we will email you soon with details. Please elp us by responding quickly.

Finally, "Its A Wonderful Life" is on at The Cameo from 23-29 December. If you can be there, please go to a screening, take your family - a great film in a great cinema.

Thank you so much for your support. Have a wonderful time.

Warmest wishes
Genni



Genni Poole
Campaign Coordinator
SAVE THE CAMEO
www.savethecameo.org

slow movement

There is a slow food movement but I want to start a slow travel movement. Not only is travelling by bus and train much better for the environment and safer than travelling by car but it doesn't cut you off from life. Packed into metal boxes, all you can do is observe life or wait in a traffic jam. On Sunday I waited on a wet street for a bus to visit a friend. While I was waiting, a small boy also waiting, gave his mother and I an inpromptu rendition (with actions!) of the 'Hokey Cokey' - completely entrancing. Then at the other end I walked to my friends house admiring the Christmas decorations glowing in the dark - if I'd driven all I'd have been thinking about was finding a parking space. Slow travel is the process of the journey being the destination, because we are already here. Stop rushing there, thinking that is where here is.

Free Christmas Cards

at Michael Nobbs - what a nice man he is!

Personally I write New Year cards if I do write at all.

camera mail look like a fun project.

Embracing what is

I stood at the bus stop this morning and realised it was still dark. We are rapidly reaching the shortest day. I'm not good at this dark stuff. I want to go and hide in a cave (sofa) knit and talk to kittens. My capacity for doing stuff plummets. I spend a lot of time fighting the urge to hibernate. I decided this week I wouldn't I would accept that this is the way it is at this time of year. Get through the last few weeks before the holidays and lo! I immediately felt much better less frazzled and overwhelmed. I began to enjoy the thought of christmassy things like visiting the German market in town.

Instead of railing and fighting a situation you can't change, the weather, co-workers, crazed christmas behaviour, accept it - it frees up energy.

What a month - I've just realised I've been over a month at this temp job. Its been a roller coaster ride and I've learned or rather re-learned so much.
1. You can't cope easily with what life throws you if you are ill and tired. REST is the no 1 cure for it.
2. Reframing - commute = thinking time not waste of time.
Temp Job = Arts grant
3. How much I've lost my connection to my original self. How much I've put other people before my needs.
4. Clawing back that slightly eccentric self. You will find me standing outside the main entrance of the World's 10th Largest Employer determinedly knitting at lunchtime in a bid to push back SAD.
5. Self care only I can do it and sometimes it means saying 'no' and I hate saying 'no' - it pushes every one of my people pleasing buttons. I have to practice more 'no'.
6. You can have a job and still create step by step. In between all this crazy temping, communting stuff I've put together a proposal with my noble long suffering producer. Its away being considered please annoy small mammals on my behalf.*
7. Awful things happen, which seem to career out of of nowhere. You survive. I've lost the drama perhaps because of the tiredness - I just don't have the energy. I just think 'This is the way it is'. And as soon as you stop banging your head on circumstance then there is more energy for other stuff.
8. Acceptance see above
9. Gratitude - focusing on what I do have instead of what I perceive as lacking makes life a lot easier.**
10. Stepping away. I keep on being tested. People keep arriving in my life or reappearing in my life who I realise are only there to distract me from what I really should be doing or really should be feeling. I'm practicing counting to 275, feeling guilty and walking backwards anyway.
11. When I don't listen to the wisdom of my body and walk in the wrong direction the pains in my feet tell me where to orientate myself.

*I used ask people to sacrifice small mammals on my behalf then I became friends with a vegan so instead if you see a fox just really annoy them by saying things like 'I don't think that colour suits you' and 'Didn't I see that coat last year in Maplin'.

** Sound glib but when a friend phoned and told me about the papparazzi attended vast media party launch do which I couldn't go to in London because I was temping I had to practice this a lot.

networking for introverts