100 Day Project - Day Thirteen

So, I’m relieved (and not entirely surprised) to discover that I am NOT the only one who has several journals on the go at once. Or several reads. No wonder I like these people in my world. Amongst many other lovely things they bring to my life, they validate my quirks!

Interestingly, one of the quotations I shared yesterday was from Barbara Sher who wrote, amongst other titles, ‘Refuse to Choose!’, aimed at people she calls Scanners. I read it about 11 or 12 years ago and it provided one of the many “A-ha!” moments of my life. Scanner. Me to a T.

Scanners are people who, as she describes it, “others have called Renaissance men & women, da Vinci personalities, polymaths, multipotentialites, generalists, people with too many aptitudes, Jacks (& Jills) of all trades, eclectics, dilettantes or flakes.” Not all very complimentary labels, as opposed to Divers, specialists, experts, professionals, the Not-Scanners. But, despite this, the specifics of Scannerdom felt like my experience of the world.

And these are my Scanner-life journals. Those that are currently active. Each serves a slightly different purpose but really, they just represent a myriad of interests and an undeniable obsession with stationery. I realised after I took the picture, I also have a small one in my bag that didn’t make it into the shot and that this doesn’t include the digital ones on my phone and laptop. Eish! It is a bit of an addiction.

I didn’t share the pile of full journals – too many for a single pile – a whole box full in the garage. Nor did I collect the pile of blank books I have in waiting… that would just be embarrassing!

Along with ‘The Renaissance Soul’ by Margaret Lobenstine, this was very useful to me about 12 years ago. After a few rough years and a lot of self-doubt, it supported the reclaiming of a framework and vocabulary for who I am and helped me to feel okay with that, instead of thinking I was broken.

One of the most interesting insights from both reads was that the shift in focus to specialists being associated with success is a relatively recent one. Newer even than I’d fully appreciated. The rise of careers in science and technology, especially following the industrial revolution and again in the 1950’s, meant that arts, humanities and even history were devalued as “luxuries, irrelevant, silly, irresponsible”. For those of us with a bent and aptitude for arts, humanities or history, this was not a good development.

I think the tide is turning again but we’re still facing into some of this, even now. There have always been the renegade “arty” types but the labels for them, us, have remained largely challenging. It’s a slow turning of the wheel. My opinion is that in the future, scanners will be fully appreciated again for what they bring. Not better than Divers. But not worse. Not less successful.

In my work I’m experiencing this change in another form, through the shift from organisations that are considered and consider themselves machines, with individuals being merely cogs that turn them - alongside systems, structures and processes - into a recognition that they’re in fact more akin to living systems: dynamic, multi-faceted, learning, perpetually evolving. I think this is one of those, “Huh, how could it not be obvious?!” things but it’s surprising that many people – several of them fabulously “successful” don’t see it at all. Even now.

100 Day Project - Day Twelve

My journal and I hung out for quite a while today. While I was compulsively scribbling my scribblings, I was reminded of this little quartet of thoughts by writers on the subject of journal keeping, stored in another of my journals*, which I went and dug out. I think these sum up the need to journal for me:

“Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.” - Susan Sontag

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” - Isaac Asimov

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” – Flannery O’Connor

“Let’s end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did.” - Barbara Sher


*because, of course, everyone has multiple journals on the go at once. Right? Or is that just me?!

100 Day Project - Day Three

I’m really squirmy in front of a camera. Properly uncomfortable, bordering on phobic. And I’m really uncomfortable looking at photographs of myself. I know there are many who can relate to this and many who don’t get it at all. It’s hard to explain. It’s more than just the fact that I inherited my Dad’s skinny calves and funny knees and wonky teeth and that I don’t enjoy seeing the ravages of too much sun and the march of time on my skin. I don’t hate myself. I just really dislike having a lens turned on me. The scrutiny, even momentary, is excruciating for me.

When I was younger, I’d go out of my way to avoid having my photograph taken but, in the same way as I challenge my viscerally unpleasant reaction to heights, I’ve actively worked on this because I know it’s not rational. Not at all rational. And I believe there’s everything to be learnt in exploring these places of discomfort within ourselves.

I try to avoid standing on chairs or climbing ladders (my body doesn’t distinguish between 6 inches, 6 or 600 feet, in its reaction) but I love an aerial view, so I deal with my height phobia by confronting it and pushing through the dizzying fear and the roiling nausea to get up high. Often, I get help to guide me up or to distract me as I go so that I can make it to the top of a tower or scale the treetops without freezing or passing out. Sometimes I just can’t do it. But, when I can, when I make it up whatever it is and I’m able to avoid looking directly down, I enjoy the view. So worth it. Every time I do this, every time, it makes me feel a little stronger, a little braver. It doesn’t stop the physical discomfort, the mild panic going up or the fierce anxiety coming down, but I do learn about my boundaries every time and I do get to do and see the sort of things I would definitely regret if I didn’t try.

One of the most amazing height-related experiences recently was zip-lining through the Costa Rican cloud forests. The zip-lines themselves were a doddle. I loved the sensation of flying through the air once I was launched into space but climbing the platform towers and moving around on tiny shelves built into the tallest of trees almost made me faint and puke. Literally. Was it terrifying? Yes. Was it uncomfortable? Yes. Am I glad I did it? For sure. It was magical.

So, back to photographs. The fear of heights is far more understandable than the fear of being photographed or looking at images of myself. I don’t believe it sucks my soul and I love seeing photographs of other people and even having evidence that I was amongst them. So, I wondered what it was that made me turn away and experience an almost uncontrollable urge to run at the prospect of being photographed. I don’t think it was like that all my life but certainly in my late teens and early twenties, I remember feeling this acutely.

After some contemplation, I came to the conclusion that it’s not the act of being photographed that’s the problem. It doesn’t hurt and I don’t feel unsafe. It’s not even that I can’t bear what I look like when I see myself from outside. I have odd toes but only one head and most people would consider me quite normal-looking. I concluded that I dislike it not because of how I look but how I feel. And, having someone else pause to look explicitly too, whilst taking the photograph, intensifies that feeling.

I realised that I am almost always uncomfortable in my skin. Uncomfortable. Rarely in pain, seldom comfortable.

Don’t mistake me. My body functions well and is healthy, for which I’m so thankful. I don’t love living in a cold, grey climate but I have warm clothes - yay for thermal fabrics and layering. I found a lot of help with this when I discovered Ayurvedic approaches to health and understood my dosha’s needs better. I appreciate my senses and I enjoy what they offer. I practice being present through my senses and I revel in that. But still, I feel a distance between ‘me’ and the world I inhabit. My body creates a veil. For the most part I feel that it separates me from how I experience the world, rather than connects me directly to it. Like a filter I can’t pass through. Except in very rare moments. Very rare moments; the number of which, in my lifetime to date, I can count with only my fingers & toes. It’s weird, I know. But there it is.

I am much better about having my photograph taken now. I seldom run away. As long as it’s quick, I can hold my breath and it’s done. I invite myself to be more appreciative of the unremarkable ten-toes-one-headedness of myself when I see it and, sometimes, I even enjoy looking at one now. Usually because of how I felt when it was taken and how it reminds me of that.

This is a picture my sister took when we were swimming in the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica and despite all the above-mentioned things that make me squirm, I love this picture.

I love it because of the memories it triggers of that magical day and the people I shared it with. I love it because we were having fun playing with some waterproof covers for our phones (witness air-bubble in bottom corner) and taking pictures in the water; a different perspective. I love it because we were bobbing out there for ages, chatting and laughing, and not once did I think of anything but being there. I love it because I didn’t know she was taking it and so I didn’t have the run-away feeling. But mostly I love it because, in that moment, I was completely IN the moment. In that moment, I was utterly happy in my skin. In that moment, I felt both unaware of my body and perfectly comfortable in it. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the water and air began. Weightless and warm. Connected and free. This is a state I very rarely experience and for me, and my out-of-whack Vata dosha, it’s bliss.

When I look at this photograph it conjures an echo of that moment and other moments like it. It also confronts me with the fact that what I experience every day is a low-level but deeply resonant hum of yearning for this. That is something I need to address.

100 Day Project - Day Two

Today I was office-based, which is to say, working at home. The beauty of working at home, although it isn’t something I often take advantage of, is that I can organise my time around client work to include some play during daylight hours. Today that mostly involved making a ‘mess’. Creatively, of course.

I’ve been creating these little ring-binder journals for the past few years, born out of a need to combine visual and verbal journalling and use some of the tonnes of creative stash I’ve collected.

Let’s talk about the stash for a moment. I’m not just talking about the irresistible impulse I have to buy washi tape and stickers and all things stationery whenever I can but also whenever I travel, receive gifts, flip through magazines or even get junk mail, I have this habit of hoarding bits that visually appeal to me or are memory triggers. I’ve done it my whole life. And, as my life gets longer, that amounts to a LOT of stuff! Nothing is beyond being kept – I even have some pieces of dried paper towel that I once cleaned paint brushes on because I love the pattern that was created. A happy accident… too pretty to bin!

For a long time, I kept these bits in boxes and carried those boxes around with me whenever I moved; houses, cities, countries, continents… that stuff came along – decades’ worth. And, for an equally long time, I felt the guilt of collecting, storing and transporting all this “rubbish”.

But, not anymore. Time has taught me that being able to lay my hand on exactly the right bit of collage material when I need it or the perfect ribbon for a gift I’m wrapping, far outweighs the silliness of having held onto that tiny thing for years. Stash = Treasure! I believe that creatives everywhere will know what I mean.

The flipside of this is that I also don’t want to die like a hoarder, buried under a mountain of junk. And I don’t want to inflict it all on whoever it is that has to clear out my stuff when I’m gone. So… I have become more selective about what I buy and what I keep, I do go through it at intervals and cull (makes great bonfire fodder) and I actively try to recycle, upcycle, use it in some way. If it no longer sparks joy, it goes. If I still love it, it stays but not just to languish forever in a box. Some gets incorporated into arty projects but most is really not that worthy. Finally, circa 2010, enter conscious and consistent journal-page making.

These pages are not art, but each is a collage, a mini assemblage of ephemera I’ve gathered, or a collection of words – either my own handwritten musings or quotations and phrases gleaned elsewhere. I have about a dozen of these little A5 ring-binders full of pages of prettiness. It provides the perfect way for me to combine some of these bits into pages that either become the bottom layers for my journal musings or just a pleasing visual interlude between them. They too get sorted and culled every now and again, and it keeps it all manageable. The boxes are reduced, the collecting has purpose, and I have an easy creative outlet and an endless supply of space to blurt my insides out onto.

What I couldn’t have imagined when I started doing it is just how much I love these pages. I love making them and I love using them. They’re a place to play, to ponder and to wonder. To dream. I don’t often wallow and wail in these journals. My plain paper journal is where that tends to happen. These are a happy place.

So, that’s what I was doing today. I’ll be collecting some ideas for #the100dayproject in them and they may form the basis for some other things I make down the line. Today, just creating some new background pages with bits I’ve collected on my recent travels IS the thing.