{interview me}

it started with jamie,
danette played along,
and now it's my turn...

i was super excited to see what danette was going to ask me
but had to wait until now,
when i had some clear space and time,
to allow my thoughts to hatch...

but, first things first,
THE INTERVIEW RULES

* if you want, leave me a comment with your email address saying: “interview me”
* i will then e-mail you five questions of my choice
* you can answer the questions on your blog {with a link back to my blog}
* you should also post these rules, along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you.
* it would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger

danette's questions for me:

1. if i were to take a photograph of how you are feeling right this second, what would it look like?

at first glance,
possibly somewhat unremarkable.
a casually,
erm, very casually,
clad woman sitting in a very messy room...

but, on closer inspection you would notice,
other than my somewhat questionable attire
(i'm wearing my comfy best: the husband's old grey t-shirt and pj bottoms!),
the rosy glow of my cheeks...

you would see the hint of colour celebrating the precious spring-summer rays.
and my tousled hair,
alluding to long lazy hours in bed...

you might remark on the sparkle in my eyes,
which bore witness to three days of bliss.
of sunshine,
friendship and love.
of shopping,
frappucinos and music.
of nothing particularly significant,
yet special all the same.

yeah, it would be one of those photographs which you might easily overlook,
but realise there's actually a lot more to it...

2. what is your ideal artist's date?

my ideal date would be messy.

paints, paper, glue, glitter...
music, coffee, chocolate.
drawing, cutting, pasting,
sticky fingers,
splashes of colour in my hair,
sparkles on my face...

critic asleep,
muse out to play.

3. if you could have one of your senses magically magnified and intensified for one day, what sense would you choose, and how would you play with it?

for me it's got to be my sixth sense.
oh yes, to have this sense magnified,
to truly feel it,
would = fearless creative abandonment.

i imagine it to be like,
lying in a darkened room with a powerful piece of music playing;
just loud enough so that it surrounds you...
until everything is one:
until what i feel in my body,
see through my eyes,
hear, smell and taste,
is the music...

yeah, to feel like that completely and totally for one day?
wow, can you imagine?

4. tell me about how you dance.

i think the way someone dances can tell you a lot about them.
and i think there is nothing sexier than a woman dancing confidently.
at one with her body,
her feminity and her humility,
there is something so alluring about a sense of humour mixed with a sense of rhythm!
and i am always a little envious.

i move about a little awkwardly most of the time;
particularly when i don't know the song.

however there are glimpses.

give me a good song to dance to,
(= one i can sing to)
and suddenly my inhibitions are gone.
for those 3-something minutes i can nearly lose myself...

more of those moments please!

5. what are you proud of that most people don't know about?

this question really had me stumped.
a lot of material achievements came to mind,
but nothing i am significantly proud of.

i've also overcome various trials and tribulations,
but again,
nothing i would necessarily class as remarkable or worthy of particular note.

in fact,
and i am genuinely not seeking to be modest here,
there is nothing specifically i can think of.
that is not to say i don't acknowledge or value my achievements;
but i've just bumbled along like most people,
with my share of successes and failures...
i guess i'm proud of that alone!



thanks danette, i really enjoyed these!
anyone fancy being interviewed?

i was having a conversation with one of my clients the other day.
he is a convicted criminal,
with offences of robbery and drugs to name a a few.
like many of the people we work with,
his childhood was poor.
not in poverty,
but poor.
and things didn't come easy.

when C was sentenced to custody at quite a young age,
it unfortunately had the opposite affect on him.
instead of acting as a deterrent,
C decided the risk of getting caught,
versus the reality of prison,
made the odds for the dark side pretty damn appealing.

as the lure of bling bling pulled C deeper and deeper into this new world,
he became accustomed to,
and enjoyed,
the status of wealth.
suddenly he was not only buying whatever his heart desired,
but he was also getting treated with a certain respect he was never given before.

when did we start living in a world where only the symbol of wealth was seen worthy of respect?

when did what you have become the measure of a man?

anyhow,
we sat and talked for well over an hour,
exploring and challenging each others viewpoint on the world.
it was fascinating.
because here i was talking to someone who has lived a life so completely foreign to me,
someone who is speaking of values completely incomprehensible to me,
yet i realised,
someone who shares all the same needs, wants and fears as me.

what we believe is important and,
even moreso,
how we obtain these 'things' is worlds apart;
yet the underlying motivation is the same ~
acceptance, self worth, and love.

for many years i've defaulted to others for acceptance,
because so much of my self worth was invested in it.
i longed for love and,
when i had it,
i wanted to do everything in my power to preserve it.

i am learning now,
to find acceptance within.
this nourishes my soul and,
in turn,
my sense of self.

i still want to do everything in my power to preserve love,
but i know now,
the best way to do that is to be true to myself;
and support cam in all he needs to be true to himself.

on the other hand,
for C,
he believes he needs all the trappings of gold to make him feel worthy;
to others and himself.

with a new family,
he believes he needs to provide them with material abundance,
to show how much he loves them.

i don't know if any of his views have changed as a result of our discussion,
or indeed,
if they ever will.
nor do i justify or condone any of the criminal activities he has been involved in.

but in that hour and a half,
i saw him.
not a criminal,
but a man-child,
so desperately trying to find his place in this world...
like so many of us.

what labels have you shed recently?

postscript: i don't write this to absolve anyone of criminal activity. for every crime committed there are untold victims, as the ramifications of an offence often reaches far beyond the obvious; however one thing i have noticed is something is amiss in the values of our society which is allowing this to happen. i feel what happens out there goes beyond the bad individual and there is something more systemic which, until explored and resolved, will make it a long road to rehabilitation...

{struggling with green}

continuing on lisa's colour full journey,
i struggled today.

being back at work,
i probably should have used the opportunity to see my environment through new eyes,
but i failed miserably!

it's amazing how you can just function on auto-pilot,
get swept up in the days activity,
and forget to pause.
stop.
look around,
and see.

so all i can share are the green splashes from my evening...
beginning with part of my 5-a-day in tonights dinner:



and my man's green dragon tattoo! :)



let's hope i have more inspiration with the oranges and yellows tomorrow...

do you ever struggle to stop and see the colours in your day-to-day life?

{shades of blue}

playing along with lisa this week,
and today is all about the colour blue.

so i'm celebrating my new blue bag :)



and the blue laura ashley plaque which reminds me creativity can be found in the simplest things...



and i love this blue bowl.
not authentically vintage,
but reminds me of old school ice cream parlours



last for today,
but by no means lest,
my blue angel.



apparently she is made by some lady in south america,
and i found her in camden markets,
but i've never been able to find the stall i bought her from since...

what colour is dominating your day today?

{navel gazing}

i love my work.
and i feel lucky the question i ask myself is not,
what can i do?
but how can i do what i do,
better?

i can't help but feel sometimes,
all this navel gazing i do,
is a privilege of someone in my position.
and by that i mean someone who is working.
someone with money in the bank for everyday necessities,
and the occasional perk.
someone who is in love,
with someone who loves her back.
someone who had parents (despite their flaws) who loved her.
someone who was lucky enough to make it through most of school,
and can enjoy the magic of the written word.
someone who doesn't have to survive each day,
just to exist.

yeah, when you are that lucky,
you have time to meditate on life:
to dream bigger,
to battle your inner demons...
because you are led,
through books, the internet, friends,
to others who inspire you.
support you.
encourage you.
and finally to a place where you feel the sense of opportunity,
believe in the possibility.

this is the journey i have been on,
and i want to be able to offer a glimpse of this to those i work with.
most of whom have never thought about their potential
(probably never even believed they had any)
and whose lives have been littered with misery, heartbreak and crime.

but where do i begin?
how do you start?
these are the questions i've been pondering tonight...

what questions have you been asking yourself today?

{guilty pleasures}

1. little but fit james mcavoy, 2. gorgeous ryan gosling, 3. young but yummy robert pattinson, 4. spookily sexy derren brown, 5. hot robbie williams, 6. energetic billie joe armstrong, 7. super natural jensen ackles, 8. tortured dr house, 9. laugh you into bed paul rudd

what's yours?

{lost and found}

i used to journal avidly in my younger years.
in fact i used to write often,
spilling my heart onto the page,
for a detailed and gruesome post mortem.

looking through the pages,
misery certainly set up home comfortably between the lines.
i rarely wrote about my successes, achievements, celebrations.
instead, pages upon pages of woe stare back at me.

then i met cam and,
like someone ditching her best friend the first time a boy asked her out,
i didn't need my diary anymore.

cam breathed literal life into me.
and i moved from the lines of a notebook,
into the real world.
laughter and love became part of me and,
to be honest,
i was enjoying it far too much to sit down and write about it!

fast forward nearly 8 years and i am still as,
if not more,
blissed out.

yet something has been amiss and,
as each year flies by,
i've been subconsciously trying to catch it.
scrapbooking and photography...
soul coaching, the artist's way...
searching.

but i am happy.
what could it be?
even many of these blog posts have beared witness to the hunt...

and tonight it finally dawned on me.
i missed my best friend.
when i gave up journalling,
i realise now i gave up a relationship with me.

my journal grounded me.
it was an honest conversation with myself.
sure, it was probably a little morose and desperate at times.
but that was where i was at.
that was me then.
and if nothing else,
i knew what i was about!

but in the last years i've been in love,
i forgot to tell myself about it.
i didn't stop to share.
didn't pause to consider,
didn't think to express the magic which was occuring...

and that's what i've been searching for.
that's the subtle,
but vital,
ingredient i have been missing.

so i called her up tonight,
and we're going to get together again.
yes, i am going to start writing again.
not because i want to blog,
or because i should do my morning pages,
or even because i fantasise about one day being a writer.
but just for me,
to me.

what have you lost and found recently?

{peeking in}

we are moving next month, and our new landlord kindly invited us to the annual local village breakfast this morning.

held on the heath and set back from the main road,
down a winding path lined by bluebells,
we arrived at a dreamy clearing amongst a copse of trees.

it was a lovely way of gathering the villagers together in times where community is such an undervalued asset.
and, despite the typical grey clouds of a british bank holiday,
laughter mixed with the irresistible smells of sausages and bacon on the charcoal fired bbq...

it was all great except for the fact everyone there seemed so grown up.
with their 2.5 children,
picnic sets straight out of country living magazine,
estate cars and barbour jackets...
cam and i felt a little like we had gate crashed one of my parents parties!

the crazy thing is these people are not that much older than us.
so why did we feel this way?

is it about being parents?
is that the ticket for automatic entry to being a grown up?
will i forever feel immature because we don't (can't) have children?

i don't know.
what i do know however is i just didn't connect with the people there today.
for one reason or another,
perceived or actual,
we were kept very much on the periphery.

and it left us a little melancholic.
initially the self flagellation started.
it's because we're not good enough.
not professional enough.
not wealthy enough.
not grown up enough.

but, having spent some time thinking about it,
i realised that is not why we were feeling despondent.
rather, it's because we realised this was unlikely to be home.
in our eternal search for belonging,
we knew then, it wasn't going to be found here.

and you know what?
that is fine.
because having had the opportunity to peek into their lives today,
i note we live in vastly different worlds.
and, as beautiful as it might be for them,
it's not where i want to be.
and so our journey continues...

what worlds have you peeked into recently?