Week 42/2021: no show

Week 42/2021: Week of 18 October 2021

No show day

This week started as last week ended: in lockdown. I’m not going to speak for anyone else, but for me a three-day lockdown wasn’t a major issue because I could still go walking and I still had access to coffee.

The biggest disappointment by far was Kramstable not being able to perform in the Eisteddfod, which was scheduled for 4.00 on Monday afternoon. Yep, they missed out by two hours and the committee said they weren’t able to reschedule that segment of the event. Fortunately, the lockdown ended as planned at 6.00 and Kramstable’s drama teachers had hastily organised a show for their students who were supposed to perform. It was fabulous, and hard to believe that the kids had only been rehearsing for just over two weeks and had only had two coaching sessions within that time. It’s disappointing that they didn’t get to perform at the Eisteddfod but I am so grateful the teachers for giving them opportunity to show their work. Kramstable did a fantastic job with his monologue, and I continue to be excited to see his progress in drama every time he performs.

We had to wear masks whenever we went out until Friday but I was happy to be able to go back to the coffee shop for my writing time. I was also glad to only have one day in the office this week because I ended up with a huge headache. I suspect this was from a combination of having a mask around my head all day, wearing my contacts, which I wasn’t used to, and having to juggle between my computer screen glasses fogging up and not wearing them at all, alternating between being able to see but not being able to see, and not being able to see but being able to see.

After that, the Show Day holiday (or No-show Day as some call it) was a relief.

I didn’t do any work on any of my 21 things this week for a variety of reasons so I’m not going to make a list of what I didn’t do.

Instead, some other cool stuff. I read the book The Soul of the Camera, which is by David duChemin, and he recommended having a look at it at the end of The Compelling Frame course (thing 11).

It’s a beautiful book that I learned a lot from and took away a lot to think about. I also completed a photography course from Jonas Bendiksen, which, while quite different to David’s book, gave me some very similar takeaways.

The key thing I got from everything I did this week is to keep on feeding my mind with new material from all over the place: art, performance, movies, books, photography, science, going to new places, even reading the news. There was a quote from Steve Jobs that I think was also mentioned in the Brainsparker course (thing 17) a few weeks ago, which is along the lines of creativity being simply about joining the dots. You need to have a lot of dots so that some of them can be connected. I see it all as linking back to my desire to develop my capacity to explore, which I also identified in the Brainsparker course.

What was the best thing about this week?

Seeing Kramstable’s performance was wonderful. And almost as good was having a day off to read and work on my courses.

What didn’t go so well / What do I want to do better next week?

I’m not going to go there!

What I’m reading this week

• The Meaning in the Making by Sean Tucker
• Mindfulness-Integrated CBT for Well-Being and Personal Growth by Bruno A. Cayoun
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle
• The Soul of the Camera by David duChemin
• Born Into This by Adam Thompson
• Australian Druidry by Julie Brett

Habit tracker

• Days I went for a walk in the morning (Goal = 5): 7
• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 0
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 4): 0
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 4 work days): 4
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 5): 4
• Days I shut my computer down before 9.30 (Goal = 6): 7