October 2020: Discovering Nora Bateson
This month I embarked on the next chapter of my life.
The Universe conspired to help me along my path to thriving and meeting my life vision of being surrounded by mountains, water and mint green grass.
I had pages of things to be happy about.
It was a time of composting ideas, savouring this year’s allotment harvest and turning it into dishes I’d never tasted before.
Co-director of the Simplicity Institute, Samuel Alexander’s book Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation, gave me the real sense of hope and excitement my life has been missing for a very long time.
I had to wrestle a lot of internal resistance in order to solidify my main aspirations for the next little while (my brain trying to protect me from taking a step into the unknown once more)?
Occasionally someone enters my orbit who sets me on fire intellectually, creatively and emotionally: thank you filmmaker, writer, educator and President of the International Bateson Institute, Nora Bateson, for giving me fresh perspectives and warm data!
The littering pandemic concerns me and I’ve been thinking of ways I can help to tackle this.
Instead of collecting more and more information, I resolved to only get more involved with people who make my heart sing and whose outlooks resonate with my own.
I was introduced to the journey to GameB with Jim Rutt. This explores an alternative way of living to GameA - the Western Civilisation status quo we are all encrusted in.
Having become involved with Encountering A New Normal: an Online Network for Neurodiverse Womxn Artists, I’ve had a welcome chance to workshop some of the poems from my forthcoming collection, 2020: Less Social Media / More Social Distancing - My Year in Daily 50-word or character poems. Also hearing truly inspirational online readings at 1 am from poets hosted by The Poetry Project based in New York in the USA, has been an enormous joy.
Other valuable courses I had the pleasure of participating in this month were: Craft Council UK’s ‘Meet the Maker: Making the most of your mailing list’; a participatory arts gathering with ArtWorks Alliance; RSM and BAPAM’s webinar about performance anxiety for musicians; a Brighton Artists Network Skill Sharing session; ‘Stress Busting’ and ‘Get Fit for Freelancing’ with the FEU.