Sorry.
Is it limp to say I've been busy?
But I have. It's a question I'm often asked - are you busy? The "recession" did for a while mean I could answer "No". But the respite has been short lived. I am now (and have been for the last 3 or 4 months) as busy as I could possibly be, and then a bit busier than that. And then just a wee bit more activity squeezed on top.
Do I like busy? It's good, but it reminds me of the adrenalin toll that being long term busy takes, and the creative spirit it robs. In the middle of my little patch of Yorkshire, free from traffic noise, and in a space to empty rather than fill, creative and beautiful things can happen. In the hurly burly it isn't that they can't, it's just that they don't much. Too busy. Too busy to think.
It's a good job people in organizations are way too busy to think otherwise I wouldn't get half the work I do. Much of that work is to get people to slow down long enough to think. Ironic then that just recently I've had so little slow time myself. Still here are some notes of the doing I've been doing:
- Saying "have you been to the opticians recently?" in a coaching session, and meaning have a think about the glasses you are looking through....
- Being challenged myself about lines of connection running on axes of physical beauty...
- Running across the gravel courtyard and swearing at Blackie who's stripped my netted cherry trees the cunning blighter.....
- Listening to multi faceted sides of argument about personalities and their difficulties with not a penny of profit motivation to guide it.....
- Accepting that things can come to an end...
- Generating new retail concepts....
- Plotting to get the man the top job...
- Inventing an experiential conference design, and building chaos into it....
- Hearing managers ask permission to laugh (My God!)...
- Writing a rewrite of tales of the Arabian Nights to inspire participation....
- Visiting Jimmy in prison (he's bearing up well)...
- Worrying about A. in YOI, where he's so depressed he's on 24 hour suicide watch...
- Deliberating whether catharsis is needed by talking about problems rather than getting on with solving them....
- Watching the world go by in the artificial street at Gogarburn...
- Producing a personal vision on an ordnance survey map...
- Telling people to drive slower...
- Reading Caught by the River.....
- Wondering whether Mike and my "cockle shell heroes" adventure canoeing down the Trent might be on after all (note to self: dig out old commando cap comforter)...
- Spreading out the Randonneur map for St. Hippolyte du Fort and plotting our Raide Cevvennois... (buy Zippo lighter for fires, consider tarp for basha)..
- Arguing about whether you have to die to get to heaven or can have a bit now...
- Saying "you're not just nice, you're amazing"...
- Setting close up photography as an assignment...
- Noticing bodily tension and how infrequently I am truly relaxed. Taking good note of Michelle's advice about chakras...
- Weeding the vegetable garden and discovering that this makes me feel claustrophobic...
- Wielding a machete. My kinda town....
- Building a Zara House in the garden with Ken who moans the whole bloody way through the exercise...
- Skipping breakfast...
- And dinner...
- Going out on my bike just to go out on my bike, rather than beast myself...
- Feeling like I was thirteen again....
- Being amazed at Lucy's luminescent quality and impressed by her idealism...
- Billing so much I think "that can't be right"...
- Making stuff with peas and tiny broad beans as I've got so many I don't know what to do with them...
- Eating the one cherry that Blackie didn't get from tree 7...
- Thinking I must have names for all my trees just like Stella, the cherry named after Ged's Mum, and Ged, the old chestnut he is....
- Hoping for rain to break the static...
- Searching out a decent BMW R1200GS for riding to Italy...
- Admiring George's kilt...
- Getting pissed off at the British Museum for having nothing that helps you access cuneiforms...
- Eating at John Torode's place...
- Using "I'm a f*ckin' vegan" (in Welsh accent) as a catch phrase...
- Being upset about playing Cox and Box...
- Walking home by moonlight pissed (eight miles from the station - lovely country lanes but feet ripped to shreds in Church boots)...
- Making major shirt investments...
- Praising EAT...
- Playing Elephant Balls with David...
- Only occasionally pausing for breath.
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