So, scrub the first two ideas mentioned back there, now I've had ANOTHER idea.
I was diagnosed with ASD in 2019, and with ADHD on top of that in 2020.
This makes sense of EVERYTHING.
Everything I am, everything I've always been.
Not least that like a magpie, I have an instinct to hoard fascinating or potentially useful things. Information, pictures, articles, inspiration, songs, ideas. This is a manifestation of the autistic love of collecting.
However, in the keeping of all this stuff I am completely disorganised. This is the ADHD.
On the laptop I have endless random files and folders. Thousands of photos, images and documents saved, bookmarks I'll never look at again, pdfs and music files and snips and the rest of it.
In real life there are overflowing boxes stuffed with paper - clippings, magazines, notebooks, postcards, souvenirs, tickets and programmes, paperwork. Piles and piles of books - there are never enough books. A desk I can barely see, let alone use.
It gets a bit overwhelming sometimes, especially when you live in a tiny attic bedsit (three strides across from bed to sofa) which you haven't really left since March.
But I was reading Austin Kleon's blog the other day and realised that like him, I too could use my own small corner of the internet to put some of this stuff out there. Share it, rather than keep it hidden away.
Maybe that would channel this need to collect into something more useful AND more organised.
If I find something interesting or lovely, chances are someone else will too, right? And if I post it here there's a chance I'll both remember it exists AND be able to find it again? If it's safely blogged then maybe I can finally close that tab I've had open for weeks, throw away that scrap of paper?
This could spell the end of my paper mountain desk nightmare.
This can only be a good thing.
So, in the spirit of all things Kleon, I present to you some things I enjoyed on 2 January 2021.
1. 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney, which lead me to this gorgeous acoustic demo version of Cilla Black's Step Inside Love with Macca on guitar:
And from there to this, Cilla and Dudley Moore performing If I Fell, which never fails to put a smile on my face (song starts at 0:49):
2. Related: Pete Paphides' McCartney Mixcloud podcast, celebrating Macca's new album. Gotta love Macca.
3. Ryan Photography on Twitter: "Did anybody else stalk a tree in 2020?"
(I didn't, due to not leaving the flat much between March and December, but I have done in previous years: evidence here.)
4. An incredible essay on nature and mortality at What A Shrink Thinks:
"I wonder if I want to be a therapist anymore. I often want to talk about things that most my clients are not interested in. I want to talk about death and acceptance and climate breakdown and loss and grief and to have compassion for ourselves even as we struggle to comprehend our own destructiveness. I think of how species over-grow and damage a particular ecosystem if they find themselves tossed by wind or water into environments where they have no predators and abundant prey. Are we any more conscious, as a hive, as a collective, than a colony of beavers who flood and “destroy” a prairie and transform it into a swamp, or a swarm of locust who kill all the plants and all of the other species that require those plants to survive..."
I would definitely be interested in talking about things like that. Read the essay here.
5. Jacob Collier, who I'd never heard of before this amazing clip popped up on my Twitter feed. Wowzers.
6. The fact that Switzerland - a landlocked country - has a merchant navy (from Ben Coates' book The Rhine).
7. Korean National Ballet's haunting lockdown videos:
8. I finished something I started today, which happens so rarely it warrants a mention.
A scented candle ran out last week and on a whim I scooped out the still-warm waxy goo with my finger and smeared it onto a piece of paper. The next day I added gold poster paint. The paint ran like mercury over the wax and settled in droplets. I let it dry. Next I fancied seeing what would happen if I smeared the wax with dry pastels (dry because I didn't have oil-based). This wiped the gold paint off and made the wax pleasingly dirty. I scratched it with a fingernail until it looked suitably furious - I had decided, somewhere between the pastels and the scratching, that it was going to be an expression of rage about 2020. Today I added the text, which involved a battle with Microsoft Word and transparency sheets and took two attempts to get right due to being an idiot and smudging. It is now tucked in my visual diary, where it will sit undisturbed until I die and somebody throws it away. Here it is, hope you like it:
9. I typed up a list of all the books I read in 2020. There were 74. I'm a bit cross about that because the goal was 100 and I had all the time in the world to achieve it, but none of the concentration.
10. Finally, if we're going to attempt the traditional January resolution of 'post one photo a day' then here's today's effort (I didn't go out, what can I say):
The calendar - Books & Cats - was a Christmas gift from a friend who knows me scarily well.
Happy New Year. Stay safe x
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