Morning walk with Charlie led to many additions to my Autumn shots – great light – just a beautiful autumn day.
Just for variety I spent some time photographing some spiders webs in the wet morning dew.
I really like these three, just the right amount of abstract colour. Better resolutions on Flickr
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly, but still attached, to life at all four corners – Virginia Woolf
I am currently half way through a creative writing course and as a continuous task, as well as weekly assignments, we are to write a 30 minute screenplay. As I have never thought at all about writing screenplays this is a big ask.
It is proving a really great way to learn about some sides of writing. For me the most fascinating aspects are
Conveniently it transpires that a minute of screenplay is a page – so the target is clear – I need to write 30 pages. Currently I am on page 13, so a bit behind. And in true amateur writers procrastination fashion I have done just about everything today – including blogging about writing – rather than actually write.
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
Cynthia Heimel.
I have been thinking about focus – something that keeps coming up across the main things I am interested in – Business, Writing and of course photography.
In business anyone can be a busy fool – and much of the challenge is to focus. Doing this consistently, for a long enough time to get results, is far from easy.
In writing it can be so easy to drift off and just write almost because I can, rather than to contribute anything to the plot or action. This is particularly tempting in novels – but less likely in screenplays – as I am finding out in an exercise on my current creative writing course. The constraint in screenplays of not being able to get into a characters head – as frustrating as this feels sometimes – helps us to stay on subject.
We are all surrounded by so much potential for distraction. In business we can work with the wrong kind of customers, or pursue products and services that are outside of our brand and our strategy. In photography we can just snap away with little plan or thought for the story we are portraying. In writing it is all too easy to let one’s thoughts move away, and fail to finish the piece we are working on.
Focus seems to be something I need to work on, it’s challenging and interesting in many areas of my life.
One of the best Sundays for a long while – really enjoyed a morning walk with Charlie – and taking photos of some Sussex Puddles…. and then all about a log fire, family friend popping by to take Mum on a well deserved vacation – Mark Shepherd, Karen and Abbie dropping by for coffee – then a log fire, learning LIghtroom 4 – starting work on this website and generally doing the things I love.. fantastic and energising!
I am really enjoying the chance to touch base with the more creative side of myself, something that during the last 10 years I had really let slip.
Not just going to shows, but participating and pushing myself in areas which I find difficult and challenging. I am loving a creative writing class in Brighton, and have also started photography again. With all this has come new friends, and I am really enjoying being around people who love the night and can lose themselves in creative projects.
I took this photo last night and I think it captures something of that kind of atmosphere – late night working, deadlines and passion for what you do that breaks down barriers and conventions – which is so attractive and exciting to me.
After this year – which has been the worst time in my life – I feel so strongly that I am now coming out the other side.
I was sitting today in Sadlers Wells watching the Ballet Rambert and I just thought “it’s working” – this is what I want to do. This kind of life, the life that I am constructing now.
I do now want to let the barriers that I have had to put up over the last 15 years of crap completely go. It seemed that in the darkness of the theater I could feel them finally fall away, and I could sense the rush of excitement that was pushing against them just come flooding in.
I so want to find myself again. And I am.
I know its not going to be easy, but I am rebuilding something – an attitude and a world view that I always wanted to be, that I did once have – but has been lost to me for well over a decade. Multiple, thought provoking experiences. Pushing myself in areas that are uncomfortable – new experiences, travel, writing, the arts.
I am even thinking that I can actually improve on my old self from 15 years ago, build on it and leap over it – not just get back to some baseline but become something quite different. I have been through a nightmare but out of that experience comes lessons, wisdom and new opportunities.
I feel I can be softer, able to let things in because my own world is finally strong and not built on sand. It is a new place for me but I no longer need to be defensive – I can be comfortable both with where I am and where I want to be.
Personally I have really enjoyed the challenge of running and growing a business for the last 10 years.
There are numerous challenges, and anyone who survives it all and prospers needs personal skill, a great team and a fair amount of luck. To succeed in growing a company from nothing is indeed tough.
With this in mind I have been thinking of the business model that the politicians have who are notionally in charge of this country. Here is their complex model as I see it :
Revenue side
Product
Indeed this must be a challenge. Its not surprising that you have to behave like spoiled children all the time in order to let off the pressure.
It would take a great level of incompetence to so mess this up that we are paying £3.5 billion a month in debt interest alone. And to deliver such poor long term standards of living that we have an underclass that will threaten our stability. But that is exactly what you have managed to do.
Congratulations to the public sector in general and to the political system in particular. You have managed to completely fail in delivering the most simple business model the world has ever devised. I cannot begin to describe the difference to our society if we could get rid of all politicians, and spend £3.5 billion a month directly on the well being of our citizens.
Not just failed, but so spectacularly failed in your duty that you are in danger of permanently destroying something that has taken centuries to build – a civilized culture.
If you had any decency you would fall on your swords.
You would inevitably miss.
