And so today is the start of another year to see how far I can go.. again.

The High LIne by Dale Phurrough

What inspired me most today was a report on From Our Own Correspondenton the High Line, Manhattan’s park above the streets. Listening to the report I was struck by the wonderful creativity of turning a disused railway line into something new, vibrant and beautiful that isn’t all about white-washing and commercialisation. It seems to be both a grand gesture towards the past transforming something disused and decaying and redeeming it and turning it into a living and beautiful place – that isn’t open only to people who can pay.

Looking through the website brought me to the website for the Kitchen which made me dreamy about creative people coming together and building something that makes a difference.
Maybe it should start off small at my dinner table but I do have dreams about bringing people together to work on projects together, to make good things out of what is old, apparently hopeless and going nowhere. A disused railway line transformed into a beautiful open space that helps people see the city from a different perspective. Robert Hammond had gone to a local meeting expecting to hear plans to save it from demolition and discovered there were none. When he met travel writer Joshua David there they discussed what could be done and set up the Friends of the High Line.
I don’t know what this year is going to bring. But I choose the High Line as my inspiration.

The School of Life is the baby of Sophie Howarth, formerly of Tate Modern, who found herself after five years in the job frustrated by the lack of dialogue between culture and self improvement, two areas that she felt equally passionate about: “The cultural world was just so snooty about everything to do with personal development, but I felt there was so much potential for the two to interact.”

So she decided that it was time for a change. She found the School of Life building, a beautiful Georgian shop in tree-lined Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, then enlisted all her best contacts, including de Botton, who is a founder member of the teaching staff. Howarth’s vision was of a place where you could go to think seriously about life, a private but open-doored university where you could take courses, read books and even travel in new ways.

Some of the courses are on work, which interests me.. and also the sense of learning and developing as a person.

“The Idle Parent is a new book by Tom Hodgkinson which argues that kids and adults alike need to play more and work less. We put far too much effort into parenting. If we leave our kids alone, they will become more self-reliant and we’ll be able to lie in bed for longer.”

The website is intended as a forum for the Idle Parent.. and the first four statements of its manifesto are these..

We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals

Also I read this about Sue Steward photographing her mother’s hands after she had died.. The emotion of remembering stayed with me for the rest of the day because I notice peoples’ hands… I can still remember my grandmother’s, whose hands were so like my mother’s.. and my hands I know are like Mum’s and my nieces are almost replicas of mine.. Men’s hands I love too.. and so because when I checked out Mark’s hands I couldn’t believe how perfect they were to me, I took a photo of them too..

Which brings me to something I was reading today:

“Our authenticity is found hidden in the small details of our daily round – home, family, work, pleasures. We think it’s the big moments that define our lies – the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed.” (Sarah Ban Breathnach, Something More)

I have some decisions to make – about work mainly – as there may be a job on the horizon. The thing I’m not sure about is the hours – it’s more than I currently do in my part time job and will mean less working at home, more in the office. Working part time has helped me shed the tiredness and sense of drudgery that comes from unrelenting daily routine.. But what I cherish most is the fact that having more time has allowed me to do more things that give me pleasure, to take time over things I usually did with some impatience and always on the hoof. But there’s a part of me also that isn’t sure about working at home so much.. I miss the collaborative part of working. So there are questions.. but I think the challenge will be to maintain my joie de vivre whatever I choose to do.

“I sit on the floor, bring my knees to my chest, curl my head down to my knees, and try to make myself as small as I can. In this minimalized shrunken state, I have nowhere else to go; I cannot become smaller, I can only expand and grow. And so it becomes a ritual of discovery for me. If I lift my head and straighten my back I become Tall Egg…
“I also like Egg because it forces you to think about change. Once you shrink yourself into a fetal ball, you have no choice to do something expansive. You cannot hold the starting position forever, though you can hold it for as long as you like. Eventually, though, you’ll have to do something. Egg is an exercise that teaches you how to accomplish the most difficult task in any creative endeavor: begin.”

Another suggestion I like because it also challenges me to take this work seriously, is: Take a Field Trip.

“When scratching turns into frustration, take a walk. But just don’t walk anywhere. Add some utility to it. Have a goal. Turn it into a field trip by imbuing the walk with a steely determination to come back with something in hand.”