Looking Back & Moving Forward [272]
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the state that you feel in, what is your capacity, do you feel engaged, do you feel creative because if everything's going well you kind of should. Hello and welcome back to Art Juice, this is honest, generous and humorous conversations that will feed your creative soul and get you thinking with me Alice Sheridan and me Louise Fletcher.

And this is a sort of welcome back episode into the new year. And I just want to start by saying, and I'm sure Louise agrees with me, thank you for all your messages, checking that we are okay. Are we okay? We're okay. We are okay. But yes, it has been a little bit of a pause, although probably the longest pause we've done, but in what has been almost five years. So...

It wasn't planned either, was it? Let's just talk about that before we dive into what we're going to be talking about today. No, we never made any arrangements. As per usual? Yeah, as per usual. So we didn't say, let's have a break. We didn't have a big argument. We just, well, you were busy with things. I was busy with things. Then Christmas was there. Then I was really not feeling it for a couple of weeks. I don't think you were feeling it either. Yeah.

Sometimes you get to this point when you do a lot of teaching or a lot of content creation where you just don't want to hear yourself anymore. Yeah. I just don't want to hear my own voice. I want to hear other people's voices. So I wasn't feeling it. And then you messaged the other day and said, what about this idea? And I thought, yeah, actually, I feel a bit more like doing it now. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's very lackadaisical because I used to be the one that was like, we have to stick to a schedule. We have to, we won't increase our numbers if we don't stick to a schedule. And that's true. I don't think we're that bothered about that anymore.

No, I think it came much more from a place like the end of last year got a bit challenging for me. I had personal things with my parents that was going on. It felt like there was a lot being asked of me. And this was one thing where I felt, actually, if I don't feel a great pull towards doing this, this can be optional. And actually, I think

Just feeling that, just recognising that, it was a huge relief. And I think when we had a little bit of a pause, I thought we thought, oh, it'll be one or two weeks to give ourself a little bit of a break and then we'll have something. And it didn't happen. The spark didn't happen. And what I noticed was that over that longer period of time, just with having more space,

Just within my whole week, and this doesn't take up a whole week, but it's just an extra thing. It was just one extra thing. And without it, other things started to get easier. I just really enjoyed giving myself room. And it's interesting that you talk about other people's voices. I felt much more it was...

shutting off the other people's voices it was not listening to other things it was giving myself space to come back to what I really need what I really want and then yes we did get into Christmas and all of those sort of things but coming out of that into this new year I feel like suddenly right now we're ready to go again and it was simply because I really did give myself a hibernation time and it was gorgeous

I think I gave myself time off my newsletter as well. Among the messages I got, someone said,

Almost in a chiding tone. I really do miss my hearing from you. Like, yeah, that's important in my week. And I was like, well, actually, this silence is important in my life. I apologize that, you know, you've I'm sorry that I'm not the kind of person who can keep churning something out. But I've written that newsletter every Sunday for you.

four or five years I don't know how long with a couple of short Christmas breaks but nothing as long as I've just had but what it gave me the space for was what I've realized is I was in the middle of creating this follow-on course for students of my other course and it's it's started now so this is not a promo for those who write in and say don't advertise your own things it's

But I was in the middle of creating that and that had so much energy in it that I was really excited about. And every time, you know, just like when a painting is going really well, I'd create something. I go, oh, this is going to be so good when everyone does this exercise. And when we do this together, when we talk about this.

And so not having the podcast and not having my newsletter kind of dissipating my energy kind of made me see the power of focusing on what's feeling really exciting at that moment. And so I didn't so much have quiet, although I have been very withdrawn socially and just, you know, on my own a lot, creating all this stuff.

But that doesn't feel alone to me because in my head, it's really busy with everything that's going on. But it's just been really lovely and re-energizing. And now the course has started and it's beginning to bring effects already in the first week. And it's just...

Wow. You know, really, really fun. And maybe that's why I feel more like I can give energy back to this now. And I did a newsletter this last Sunday that will have gone when you listen to this for the first time in about five weeks. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting idea because like it does throw up. I mean, I think it throws up for, you know, a lot of artists who,

And ask themselves, I've had this big thing, we've talked about it a bit before, about consistency. And I think while it is true that where you put your attention, where you put your focus, as you say, that's where things grow. I also think it's really important to give yourself a time to check in on that and see if that is still right for you.

And when I say I had quiet, I just hadn't, there was just more time. And what I did, yeah, I mean, you went in great as an entire new course. You said, oh, I'll leave you alone for a few weeks and look what happens. Yeah, yeah. Mine was smaller. So mine for a while, I've had a sense of wanting to create a smaller, like more mastermind group.

And it's just never felt like it's had the time to come to fruition. And that really developed into a thing. I had the idea for it. I talked about it. I filled it very quickly. We've had our first meeting now. And that is the same. And all of a sudden it felt easy, exciting, like I wanted to do it.

And I just think this it's a very interesting relationship we have with where are we giving ourselves to? Where do we need to be placing our own responsibility in doing things? And, you know, where are we doing that in anticipation of what other people expect from us? But also we do have a responsibility to ourselves to look after ourselves first. Yeah.

And to give ourselves what we need. And I think sometimes that does take a little bit of a break. I mean, I'm always banging on about seasons and having breaks over winter. And it's not my most creative time, but it has felt very different this year. All of which to say...

It's not that we're not doing this anymore. We don't know yet at the moment what it's going to look like going forward. We might pick up again on a more regular basis. It might be more ad hoc. I've got a couple of conversations lined up with people to talk with things about that I haven't even told you about yet.

And I love having it as a platform for that. But we'll just see where it goes. So anyway, this week's conversation is prompted by a message from Heather who messaged. We were talking. She was checking if we were OK. And she has a lovely tradition which we thought that we would bring in today.

as a very gentle sort of year review. Now, have you done lots of year review things this year? Or do you do that? Or do you not bother with it? I sometimes do that. And this year, no, I didn't. I'm trying to think, did I do anything? Not really, because I was so full on into creating because my course began January 6th.

So I was really full on with that. So no, absolutely zero reflection this year, although it is something I used to do. We even did a public thing on that, didn't we, one year? Yeah, it was a while ago. And I do usually like that middle time between Christmas and New Year to do that. Yeah. This year there was no reflection. There was just go, go, go.

What about you? Did you do anything? I kind of the opposite. I've sort of done, I've done my version of it and I've done somebody else's version of it too. And it's been a really lovely cementing. I think last year was quite a lot, there was quite a lot of change happening for me. And it was really lovely to actually take that time and really think about what the year meant and

where it led me and I think there were a few thoughts and ideas that I had noticed that I'd been having towards the end of the year for example I had been thinking oh this year's been a bit of a write-off because the first half that was very busy there was a lot happening in the second half was a bit slower and it was a time to really actually look at that and see if that was true and

or actually it was satisfying and it led me in different directions. So I really changed how I ended up feeling about the year. So it was lovely. It was a lovely thing to do. But Heather's question was,

Or her thing that she does is she says, in her family, we've got a tradition that on your birthday, you answer two questions. And then the answers are recorded in a birthday questions journal. What a beautiful idea. Both Louise and I said we'd probably lose the book or not. Yeah, I forget to do. But it's a really lovely idea. So we're going to use Heather's questions. So the first question is...

Ready? What is a bit of wisdom you've learnt this past year? When you asked me, when you sent me that, I kept thinking it's a loaded thing to say you learned something because you can learn something intellectually but not learn it as in change anything actually. Yeah.

And there's one thing which you're going to cringe at that has made a difference to me this year. Just at the latter part of the year, haven't read the book, just heard it on a podcast. And it's you're going to cringe because you mentioned it on threads. What's her name? Mel Robbins. Oh, yeah. Let them. Yeah.

And so I haven't read the book. I don't know what the book is. I don't really know who she is. I just heard her on this podcast. And what is amazing about this? So the general concept, which you can tell us how you feel about this, but the general concept is of letting go of control, the usual idea of letting go of control, and

Which, you know, I don't think I was aware exactly how much energy I was expending on controlling. And so the example she was, I'm driving, I'm driving up this lane, I'm driving up this road, which goes from Yorkshire to the Lake District, which is a really annoying road because everybody drives really slowly. There's nowhere to overtake. People are going on their holidays, tootling along and you need to get somewhere and you get stressed.

So as she's talking about this idea, which is when people are doing things that annoy you, just let them do the annoying thing. And then you decide what you're going to do in response. Stop wasting mental energy on them. And as I was driving, I was going, bloody old people driving at like 30 miles an hour. And I suddenly thought, okay, let them drive at 30 miles an hour.

And the feeling of energetic release in my body was just like, oh, okay, so I don't have to use all this energy in trying to force their car to go faster. Yeah, because it's not going to make a difference anyway. It's not going to go faster. And you mentioned on threads that this is just common sense, and it is, totally. But something about that phrase in the last few weeks, I've used it a lot in my mind, is,

She gave the example of a super in this interview, she talked about being in a supermarket and the checkout things are broken and there's only one staff member in the queue and everyone's tutting and looking around and tapping their feet. And if you just think, let's say let's say it's be crap at running a supermarket, just let them be shit at it. And then I can focus on just something else.

And that feeling, big and small, so let, you know, the people who annoy me in my life be annoying. Let the person, the friend of mine who's super anxious, let him be super anxious and don't try and constantly calm him down. Like all of these things. I don't know, it's, what it's doing for me is letting me just, giving me a little tool to make me just breathe a little bit.

and go, okay, Phil used to have a saying, my former husband had a saying, not my problem, mate, which is a similar idea, which is like, okay, this is happening, not my problem. I can't control it. I can't fix it. And it's working for me in global politics. You know, it's working for me in lots of different ways because, but I completely get that it is, you know, nothing new.

But somehow that little phrase is just, I tell you what it's done. It's allowed me to see how many times I avoid taking responsibility because it's easier to try and control things. So if I say let them and then I decide what I do, maybe I don't drive on that road anymore. Maybe I don't go to the same place for my shopping. Maybe I end that relationship, that kind of thing.

that's a lot harder god now I've got to be responsible whereas if I just tap my feet and get irritated that's easy and automatic so maybe that's what it is that I like about it it's not the let them part it's the and then let me yeah do this

I think so. I think that the let them part, and I have to preface this by saying I have not read the book either. So maybe there is more in the book, but I have heard her talking about it. And I think lots of the examples she gives, it's often the way, isn't it? When it's something that you feel okay with, you're like, well, that's obvious, but that's the process of learning. So, you know, that's fair enough. But things like bad traffic, yeah.

You know, I remember that being a switch moment for me at one point.

where we were sitting in a traffic jam somewhere and my husband was getting irate and I just I literally thought it's not going to make any difference as to whether this traffic moves or when we get there any quicker it's not going to make any difference whether you get frustrated or I get frustrated about this at all so why would you choose that rather than just sitting here and listening to the radio and playing with games with how many red cars you can see you know and

don't get annoyed about things like that anymore. Yeah. I think it's, it's for me, it's not just those little things, although it is those little things, but I think for your husband and for me in that situation, what we mistakenly feel is we're releasing the bad energy by saying it out loud. We feel like, I feel like anyway, I'm letting off steam. Like I need to say this to you. I'm sorry. You're just going to have to listen to me rant because it's doing my head in.

Without realizing the way she was explaining it, and I can't remember the word she used, but the amount of energy you're expending on those thoughts. Yeah, you're like feeding that energy. You're feeding it. You can just choose not to feed it. And so I get why if it's easy for you to be that way, why it would seem ridiculous. But when it's not easy for you, it's like...

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. That just helps. So I'm not sure it's the wisest thing I've heard this year or, you know, I can't even remember all the wise things I've heard. But towards the end of the year, it's been helping me. But like I say, more from the perspective of realizing things I'm not taking responsibility for.

I think it's a really good other example of where you, just as a little prompt to notice where you say or do things habitually,

And with those things, those are all often things that are external and outside of you. And it's very easy to go, this is a problem because them, because that, because this. And that's much, it's much, much easier to do that than go, where am I in this? Like what actually could I be doing differently? And I suppose my version of it a little bit is,

Is there anything I can do to change this? Is there anything I need to do to change this? And very often the answer to that is if you can't do anything to change it, the only thing you can do is change your response to it. And I think that is a settling in. If there is somebody who is particularly annoying you, you're not going to change them.

It's not going to shift. And if it's somebody that needs to be in your life, then all you can do is change how you prepare yourself, how you respond in the moment. Makes it all a lot easier. And also you can change what you are focusing on, which I know you're quite good at this. But in one particular situation where something was upsetting me, it was almost like I could take a step back and look at the bigger picture and

And say, oh, but so there's this one thing about this person which is upsetting me. But that's only because I'm putting all my focus on that. If I look at these six other things, I see that somebody told me this phrase, don't ask a plumber to fix the roof. And you can't ask everyone in your life to be everything. Nobody's perfect. So when we focus on the floor, we can make that huge difference.

And if the person is all flaws and no pluses, then that's different. That's a different decision. Most people are a mix of everything. And when you focus on the flaw, it just becomes massiver and massiver, like that frustration over traffic. But when you switch and go...

Oh yeah, but there were these six other things they did. If you think about it with a spouse or a friend who has let you down in some way, but have they just let you down because that's just how they are, but in this other way, they didn't let you down. I think one of my niggles with it as well is, does it just let people off the hook? I think it's the let them thing. You know, if there is a situation where somebody's doing something, behaving in a certain way,

that isn't respectful or whatever, not like your mum's situation. And if the phrase is let them, does it abdicate your responsibility and your responsibility

Like your own need to take care of your own boundaries and what you need. And does it put people more in a place where they can go, oh, OK, let them rather than. And I think you and I both feel quite strongly about this. Women saying, actually, this is not OK. Because then that's step two. So let them is let's take it to an extreme. Somebody is mentally abusive to you.

They're not going to stop because you cry. They're not going to stop because you say that hurts me. If they're that kind of person. Yeah. So let them is right. Let them be them. Yeah. Let you decide what you're going to do. So again, you've got to take responsibility back. Okay. I accept this person is a dick.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to pack my bags. I'm going to get in the car. I'm going to go. Or I'm going to start making a plan for how I can go. Or I'm going to call a friend. Or I'm going, you know, whatever. It's just, I think it's just saying that's the reality, isn't it? It's not saying let them do it forever and abuse you. It's saying...

let she the one phrase I heard her use is let them show you who they are and then you decide whether that's acceptable to you all right okay she's off the hook yeah anyway that's what's helped me what about you what has there been anything for you it's difficult isn't it like you say summarizing wisdom I think the biggest um wisdom that I've learned this year I think it was that

long program and it does absolutely tie into this that program that training I did about our nervous system response and where our body plays a role in all of this and I think that has led into me making firmer decisions about my health and

But I think what it really did was give me a real understanding of how we have these immediate responses to things and why it's so important to look at them. Like, really important to look at them, recognise when they're happening, be compassionate because you are responding to things on an automatic basis, but also to really understand how that feeds into...

like we talked about at the beginning, the state that you feel in, what is your capacity? Do you feel engaged? Do you feel creative? Because if everything's going well, you kind of should. Like it's a natural human state. And so if that's not happening, I think it's been very helpful to give me the opportunity

to let me rather than let them maybe to let me say, okay, if something's not feeling right, why is this? And knowing, okay, I'm stressed about things. I'm in a more permanent alert state than I need to be. Why is it so important to actually give myself the time to

to rest and what does that look like for me on the everyday basis? Am I always rushing from one thing to another? Is it okay the fact that it takes me till 11 o'clock to effectively get up every morning? And a lot of that is, for a huge number of years, that was not okay. People needed to get up, we needed to get to school, things needed doing, you need to get to work, all of those kind of things.

And for the stage that I'm at now, maybe that is okay. Maybe all the things that I do up until that point are important to get me to that launch, that liftoff stage. And what I've really noticed in this, in inverted commas, time off that we've had is when I've given myself more time, when I've created the capacity for those kind of things, I have felt more energy. It's not that less has got done. Mm-hmm.

I've been doing things better because I've been feeling better. Like I've started writing. I've written in, where are we now? I haven't done this mornings yet, but I've started writing on 750 words.com, which is, I don't know this. So it started, it used to be totally free. And this is, I suppose this is an extension of morning pages. And when I first discovered morning pages, which of course Julia Cameron talks about in the artist's way book,

When I first came back to that, I had small children and her recommendation is that you write for three full pages of A4 every morning and it takes about 25 minutes to do it. Well, A, my hands ached and B, I didn't have the time to do that every morning because I was being jumped on and we had to get ready for school and make packed lunches. So that wasn't going to happen. And I remember, again, being a bit frustrated and being a bit,

annoyed that I couldn't do it because I could see the value in it. And I've on and off with journaling. I kind of come back to it when I need to. But 750words.com, it used to be a totally free website. Now it's something like $5 a month after your 30-day free trial. And I think 30 days is a really nice length of time to use it and to see

Is this working for me? Do I want to continue it? Very simple. You have an account. There's an uninterrupted page. So it's not like working in a Google Doc. It's also not like working in a Google Doc because when you get to 750 words, you get confetti on your screen.

You get a little reward. You get badges along the way. You get a little green tick mark for every day you've done. So if you like that kind of gamification element of it, you can get it. It also does things like it will analyze your writing and tell you what kind of mood you were in reflective. I find that sort of stuff a bit annoying. I don't want it to tell me what I was thinking. So I kind of skipped past all that bit.

But just this sense of having a new habit or practice that I've committed to because the reasons for it are more meaningful to me right now. I'm finding it very helpful. Very simple formatting. You can bold things. You can underline things if you want. And I'm just being really playful with it. Some mornings I'm just doing free writing. Some mornings I'm following journal prompts that I've got copied somewhere else.

And it's very interesting that you get to about 500 words and you think I've had enough now. And then it's often the bit that comes after it where you go, oh, that was the important thing. And I think that also comes true very often. I think the same is true when you're making work, when you're painting, you get to a certain point and it's so easy to stop at that point. And I think that's why all these practices work.

help feed in yeah so it's not public it's just for you it's a journal not a blog yeah yeah

Oh, interesting. One useful thing I have discovered for anybody who wants to try it. So my default Chrome browser is Chrome. And if I do it in Chrome, my typing's a little bit atrocious. All the typing marks stay. If I do it in Safari, it auto-corrects my fat-fingered typing. So it's a bit more satisfying. But I haven't really gone back and read things. But one of the things that I have started doing recently is when I've written it,

I will just do like a two line summary at the top that might just say something like today is just mind offloading blurb or this has got some ideas in about something else and hashtagging things because you can do a search, which is where I think it possibly is more helpful than just doing hand writing in a notebook.

Yeah, because my friend, the writer, John, he just is clearing out his attic where he writes. And he said he's just going through notebooks from years. He's been writing since he was 15 and he's kept them all.

But he doesn't want to throw anything away because there might be an idea in there. So he's going through everything before he throws it away. What was I going to say about that? I've always struggled with writing diaries. It's funny. I've got like a diary and then nothing for a few years, then a diary, then nothing for a few years. And I can never keep it up.

But I sent you a message saying I heard something that I really like the sound of. I've tried gratitude journaling. I just end up writing the same thing every day and I get bored of it. But this person had just had a journal where they just write down gratitude.

something interesting out of that day. And it could be the sky they saw. It could be a funny conversation they overheard. It could be a joke someone told them. And they don't put any explanation or any background. They just put that thing. And I thought, oh, I wish I thought that when I was younger because I probably could have managed that. And then it would be so interesting to look back on all those years and see the thing in that day that you thought was interesting or funny.

But I haven't done it. So is it a bit late now? I don't know. Maybe I'll start something like that. It would have to be, you know, literally just a few lines for me to keep it up. I just can't write about myself, which is weird given how much social media things I can do.

Maybe you're just written, maybe you're written out by the end of the day. Maybe the words are too much.

And for some reason I wrote and that's when I was obsessed with boys. It's just boys. And it's just so funny to read it. It's like there's one where it's like, I am so broken hearted. I will never love again. My whole life is ruined. And then there's a gap of about three weeks. And then it says, I met the most amazing boy today. Yeah.

Back in the years when I thought boys were the answer. Oh, how sweetly innocent I was. But yeah, it's funny to read those because they're so overwrought. And I wish I had diaries for all the periods of my life. I'm sure it gives you an amazing perspective when you look back on things. Yeah, I think

I'm not sure how much you need to look back. I think that's why I quite like doing this annual review process so deeply at this time of year, because in the rest of the year...

I don't do it so much this year. I have set up a weekly accountability thing with somebody, just two of us. And so that will be very interesting because we, I've set mine up on Notion, which is a whole other topic for another day. And that's going to be interesting because there will be a whole record. And I suppose in other ways, I have it a little bit in those weeks, you know, when I did my tasks in the weekly planner thing.

But the gratitude thing, by the end of the day, I'm too tired to write usually. So I did something. I messaged you about it. I had what I called a logbook because if I called it a diary, this is where words are so important. If I called it a diary...

Then it felt like I had to write a lot in it. And I picked a deliberately tiny, tiny book. And I think the first one, it was a little one from Muji. It was probably only about three by four inches. And on one page, I just had to do three little drawings of something good that happened that day.

And it was one of the things that I used when I was sort of coming through and out of depression or times where just life felt like it was a bit much. It was just a really nice to refocus before bed. And I quite like the fact that they were like little drawings, little doodle drawings, not like, oh, I'm sitting down to do a drawing, like rubbish drawings. And that's quite fun to look back on.

I was going to say, I'd be stressed about, I'm not very good at drawing from imagination. Like I have to have a model to draw something realistic, but you would just, they could be like... Oh, this looks like a six-year-old's drawn it. Yeah. Seven-year-olds. Yeah. Like really, just to make it a little bit more visual. Yeah. You know? I for a while kept a visual diary. This was back in like 2014, 2015,

and I like those to look back on because the thing I liked about a visual journal so that was when I drew something from not every day but certain days and it might just be like um

sitting outside in the sunshine and I drew the edge of the table in a chair garden chair but something I wrote a few words about what was happening at that time and I can look back on those and because I drew I've got a memory of the day I can picture the temperature what I was wearing and I have an appalling memory I really don't remember great big chunks out of my life and

And those visual journals, I do remember those times and exactly when I did the drawing. And again, it frustrates me, but I just have to accept it's not something I could keep up. It just was not for me to do that all the time. But I do love that I've got a few years where I can go back and remember events of my life because I've got the drawing that reminds me. It's so...

interesting how we can jump so quickly between I can see this is a good thing I can see that I enjoy it I can see how it's good for it good for me and how easy it is for us to give that up and then if we've given it up we can be so judgmental that we gave it up rather than just going this was a thing I enjoyed doing it for a while now I don't want to now I'm not doing it and that's

I don't know if I'm still going to be doing this. I don't know. Maybe I'll fall in love with this and I'll still be doing it. Maybe I'll be fed up with it by the, I mean, it said something, it's got some stats that, you know, only 64% of people who started in January are still doing it by the 10th or whatever it was. Okay, fine. Maybe they've decided it's not for them. I don't know yet, but right now this is helpful because,

And I think that's just worth thinking about. What are you doing that's helpful? That's it. If it's not, don't do it anymore. We haven't talked about the second question, which was, what was the second question? What is something you are looking forward to this year? Or what is something you'd like to do that you've never done before? Oh, now here we go. Fire me up.

Yeah, you'll have all sorts you want to do. Oh, yeah. That you've never done before. I'm not a do things I've never done before person. That is not what gets me excited. So because here's my probably very Yorkshire view on life. It'll only be a disappointment. It'll never be as great as you think it will be.

In the end, you're just searching for meaning and purpose in your life. And you can find that right where you are. You don't have to go anywhere. So sorry for being so bleak. But that is my perspective on going and doing something I've never done before. I'm not that interested. Okay, what is something you're looking forward to? But what I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to finishing the studio here where I am in Cumbria. I'm looking forward to that being ready to paint in.

Yeah, I'm just really looking forward to that and I don't have any plans to go anywhere and do anything else that I haven't done before. The other thing I'm really looking forward to is creating a bit more space

I do things for free because I totally get that not everyone can afford to pay for things. However, I think I do too much of that for my own health and well-being. It's too much to give a free podcast, a free video every week, a free newsletter, social media posts that are educational. It's too much.

I'm looking forward to giving myself more space so that I can create things like momentum this course that I'm doing which has I can't even tell you how it's fired me up not just for the teaching and anyone who teaches probably knows this if you teach painting it's for the creativity it brings me so yeah it's creating sparking ideas for me I'm making more work I'm excited about what I'm doing

What about you? Tell us. Go on. Go tell us all the things you're going to do. I'm an adventurer. This is what I've learned about you. You are a natural adventurer. I am. And I'm, yeah, I'm excited about travel-y things. And at this present point in time, I said at the beginning, I'm not often creative. I have not got clear what am I excited about yet.

ideas for my work at the moment we did an exercise in connected artists this week which i call the creative audit which is like it's it's not rocket science you're going back through your previous work and looking for the points i am looking forward to doing that but i'm not ready to do it yet i don't want to do it yet i'm excited about other things i am looking forward to

getting a crazy cloud of ideas. I don't know if this is possible. I really don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to try. Crazy cloud of ideas settled into a little bit more of a system and for no other reason than to let me feel a little bit more settled with it. I have ideas in notebooks. I have ideas in pieces of paper. I have ideas in my notes app. I

And at the moment, they're just all, you know, like flies buzzing around your head. They're not flies.

They're not as nice as butterflies, but they're not as annoying as flies. They're just there. OK. And I want them to settle. I want them to settle into different places. And I have never quite found a system that does it. And back in, I think, April of last year, I discovered a digital system called Notion.

that works on your computer beautifully and more importantly for me because of all of those ideas that I have on the go I can add to it on my phone it's like a massive whiteboard that you can put

pictures on, blocks of text on, you can make them look like post-it stickies by highlighting bits or it can be as simple as the notes app. The bits that I really love it are, you can make something like a hidden toggle section. So you can write something in a section and then you can just hide it away.

So you don't have it all in your face when you come back onto it. You can put information, tasks, all sorts into tables and tracking things and then have those link with each other.

So you've got, it's not like you've got everything just in one Google Doc or just in Todoist as a list. You can actually join all the dots together. And over Christmas, I spent three days sitting at the table going, why is this so complicated? This should be easy. Why is this so hard? I don't understand it. How do I just get this to do this? And I've started just by using it for small things. And I just keep getting, oh,

that oh that's clever oh oh this is nice oh I like this and it's feeling really fun to use and it's feeling like a lovely lovely place where I can have random ideas and I don't need to deal with them but later on I can bring them into something else and this is the difference between you and I because you spent three days

I spent like two frustrated hours and then went, oh, I'll just put recipes in it. So what the only feature of it I currently use is the web link feature. You can just like a lot of these apps, you can take a web link and paste it in and it creates a little image thumbnail for you. So for recipes, it's brilliant because you can organize them in categories and

But I'm not using half of it because I don't have your patience with it. And I didn't. I didn't for seven months of last year. I was like, I saw it and I thought, this is great. I do not have the capacity or the interest or the desire or the capability to deal with this now.

And now I'm thinking, I actually think this would be really helpful if I can get this working. So one of the things that I've got on there, apart from like, you know, goal related things, it's just life stuff. And I've, again, we're back to the words, I'm calling it my 2025 bingo list. Yeah.

um rather than goals or intentions so I would like to complete some kind of walking journey I don't know if we're going to do the whole length of the Thames but something that's just more than going for a walk I don't know what that looks like yet and I'm going to say this on the basis that I am perfectly happy that some of these will never happen yeah

But the fact that I've been able to dump them onto this list and even had that little spark of enthusiasm for, oh, complete a walking journey. What's that? That's meaning that in the last three weeks, my step count has doubled on what I was doing previously. Just because I'm like, oh, yeah, and I'm loving it. I'm going out. I'm busting all sorts of things like, oh, it's dark. I can't go for a walk because it won't be fun now. I've been going on late evening walks that have been fabulous lately.

That's where you are. Not so great where I am.

Why not? It's lovely in the room. Oh, I love doing it in Dartmoor when it's all dark and you just turn all the lights off and it's just the moon. I get a little bit like, even here, it's quite a walk down to where the studio building is. And at night I get my torch and I'm walking down and I'm like, there's nobody here. There's no X-Men behind you. There's no man going to come and grab you from behind. It's okay. I get quite paranoid on my own in the dark.

And so being out for a walk on these quiet lanes. And I used to laugh at my sister-in-law because when we moved into the country, she'd say, what if there's a murderer on the lane? And I'd say, what murderer would come on this remote lane waiting for someone to come by? They'd be waiting forever. But I do have it in my head. So I'm not great at late night walks. I'm a bit paranoid. What about if you just went outside and just sat with the torch off?

and noticed everything that you noticed in the dark and how the lights... I don't mind sitting out in the dark. Yeah, I don't mind because we see stars. We see amazing stars. Right. You know, light pollution. I don't mind sitting out in the dark and I'm happy to be in the dark if there's someone else there. That's fine. But I don't like walking somewhere. I mean...

And my dog's no protection. So, you know, he wouldn't be able to help me if I was attacked. I realize it's ridiculous, but it is a fear. But that would be easy to say that too in London, wouldn't it?

That would be so easy to say. I definitely would say it in London. There's no way I would go out after dark. So you're very brave. This is what I mean. You're an adventurer. So what else apart from walking or is there anything else? Dead lifting, 50 kilos. I have no idea whether that's a hard goal or not a hard goal, but it's more than I'm doing now. So that's what's on the list. London day trips. A consistent 30 days with zero alcohol.

I've cut down my drinking a lot, but I don't think I've done a whole 30 days without. Actually, can I just take a moment to take some credit for myself? Because I haven't had any alcohol for, I don't know the day I stopped drinking.

but about five months now. Very good. But as a result, you see, the desire for it is not there in the same way. So things are changing. It's definitely, definitely shifting. So I've got more writing, writing at least one key piece of writing a week, whether I share that or not, I don't know. Here's a big one. This is a bit of an identity shift. Ready? Go on. Become a completer. Oh, yeah.

I thought you were a completer. Oh, no. I'm so not a completer. I will finish everything to 90 or 95% and then either say, okay, well, that's fine. It can go as it is. Or that's done. I've done all the enjoyable, enthusiastic, creative parts of it. And I just won't finish it off and ever share it or do anything with it. All the exciting parts done. In my head, it's done.

But it would be quite nice to finish some of those things and get them actually done and out. And then they can be complete. Learning to type properly. She's got a big list, everyone. This is going to be busy. Yeah, reading a book a month. And some of the other things are more business or personal things. So I won't share those. And also, have you got a word for the year?

I always try this and I keep changing my mind. It was speed. Let me ask a different question. Sorry, let me ask a different question. Have you had a word in the year in the past that's helped you?

I've created one since you told me about it. Yeah. You were the one who told me about it. So maybe four years. So I have thought about it at the beginning of the year. Honestly, I can't think that I actually thought about it much as the year went on. Yeah. I think I let it go like everything else like that. I think I went with the flow of whatever I was feeling like.

But I did have the word space come to me this year, and I am focusing on that at the moment as in thinking about where I can create that space. I've already done it physically. I'm surrounded by space, so that's good. But now mentally, how can I create that space? What about you? It was going to be amplify space.

which was more to do with the idea that if last year was about exploring things and some new directions, now is a little bit more about talking about them and bringing them to life a little bit more. Anyway, I've changed it. What is it now? Now it's upgrade, which feels more exciting, feels like it applies to different things. It can apply to environment,

travel, home, like some real simple things. Like last year, one of the things we did towards the end of last year is we went out and we upgraded our bedding sheets. I can't tell you. Unfound joy. I mean, you know, the difference something small like that can make. And I think that's an important thing is for me, it's just this idea of,

When I say upgrade, it's not about like making everything luxurious or better for the sake of it. It's just about how can I make this just a little bit better? You know, where are there things that are actually niggling me that I can get sorted out? That's an upgrade.

You know, where is there something that I want to do? And it's also helping me perhaps with maybe projects that I'm procrastinating on. You know, why? Why are you putting this off? And then when I think, OK, this is this is an upgrade. I'm like, yeah, I'm interested in doing that. I want to create something that is meaningful, professional, you know, attractive. I'm back on board with it again. Yeah, that's it. Upgrade body. Going to keep going to the gym.

I am astonishing myself by enjoying that. My dog says, I'd like to approach the new year by going out for a walk, please. He's jumping, sitting on this bench and he's jumping up and down. Like, can we go for a walk now? Can we go for a walk? Well, you know,

you can go for a walk um if you have listened and enjoyed uh welcome back we hope you have had a lovely start to the year and a nice break with whatever your plans are for the year or whether you're just letting it unfold gently and we will see you next time thanks for being here do share and let everybody know we're back for those people who aren't clicking on the sub follow subscribey thing wherever it is see you next time bye bye

Do you know, I looked at the number, show 272. In my head, we're on about 400. That's just how it feels. Why are we really only on 272? Feels like it should be more than that by now. Yeah, I agree. It's five years coming up, I think. It's been five years. It's been five years.

Really that's really not gonna help me get him settled down boys. That's his nose coming into the camera