Not the to-do list, or past and future challenges

We all have a to do list. I don't know about you, but mine is epic, vague, scattered across my computer, my phone and my memory, and nothing ever gets done. This is something I do intend to address.

However, today's post is not about the to do list, but the want to try list. I don't know if this happens to other people who start to build a more deliberate, individually crafted life, but the list of things I want to try keeps getting longer and longer and longer. I really want to render lard. Why? I don't use lard in anything, but maybe I could or should. And it's another skill, a historical one linking me with generations past, and one which would come in very handy should we ever raise and butcher our own animals (in another lifetime). Plus it looks so white and fluffy in blog posts. Want.

It's not a ripple when you drop a pebble in a pond - smooth, even circles gradually spreading. The process is more akin to simulations of how pandemic diseases spread (there's an example here if you don't know what I'm talking about). One dot glows. Then several close by. These fade as glowing dots appear, covering ground but seemingly hapharzadly, faster in some directions than others. It always looks a very wild kind of spread, unlike the orderliness of the ripples. (Hope I haven't freaked anyone out with the pandemic simulation!)

That's how simple living is evolving for me. Not a steady, orderly, progressive interest, but surges of interest in certain areas, drawing me into related fields, before another surge draws my attention elsewhere but the prior interest draws me back and soon, before I know where I am, I've covered the globe. 

Yoghurt making leads to cheese making and sourdough and beer and fermented foods. Homemade beauty proucts lead to homemade cleaning products, no-poo and growing my hair out, which leads me to begin to develop confidence in my own unconventional fashion choices prompting me to try Project 333 and ultimately set out to customise and handmake my wardrobe. Setting out to grow a few herbs introduces me to permaculture and soon I've put my name on an allotment waiting list and started looking into heirloom seeds, green manures and polytunnels. Now I find myself reading about rendering lard, building a garden smoker to smoke bacon at home, and goats' milk vs cows' milk.

I'm just taking a moment to step and think 'woah!' It's great that I've read loads on keeping chickens and am already aware that, for example, chickens are not naturally vegetarian, they like taking dust baths, they need grit in their diet and fresh eggs do not need refridgerating. However, given that keeping chickens is a long way off, maybe I should focus on things I can do now? So I can add to the progress I've made which, when I get caught up chatting with a colleague, seems to be rather a lot by 'normal Western life' standards. To be entirely honest with myself, reading about chicken-keeping is another form of escapism, a distraction from the life I'm trying to build here, today, and which requires me to step away from the computer screen.

It's very easy to get so caught up in the idea of the simple life that we put less energy into actually living it. Perhaps it's better to log off and just be present here.

Background music

I'm back! Sorry for my brief absence. Two reasons for this - firstly, work has been incredibly busy and stressful. I have been repeatedly reminded that rushing work just means I make more mistakes and have to go back and do it again.

Secondly, last night my lovely boyfriend took me for a rare treat, a classical music concert, for my birthday. We saw Bryn Terfel singing various operatic exceprts and it was brilliant - he's not only a good singer, he's a brilliant performer and entertainer. He thoroughly deserved the standing ovation and the riotous applause at the end.

Image from bozar.be

I was thinking on the way home about music, and how I listen.

When you're at a live music event, you're fully there. (Or at least you should be - anyone checking emails when Bryn Terfel is singing needs their head examined). I turned off my phone and focused totally on enjoying where I was, and it's very rare that I'm so present, so switched off from distractions and worries and a constant stream of reminders. I enjoyed it so much, it made me wonder why I wait for such rare and special occasions to be totally present in one experience. Why do I allow experiences and pleasures to be diluted by allowing interruptions in?

It's been quite a while since I sat and fully listened to a piece of music. I often listen to music, but it's normally background music. It's a kind of escapism really - by listening to music or the radio while I'm at work, I'm trying to half-pretend that I'm not there. That's not a very good practice, and to be honest it probably reduces my focus and my productivity. I'm thinking I might challenge myself to a week of no headphones and see how that changes the time of day I leave.

Using music as background noise also means I don't get to think about the music itself - to learn to understand or appreciate it, to develop preferences and favourites. I haven't 'discovered' a new piece or a new artist for quite some years. As you may be able to tell, my music tastes tend towards the classical, and the pieces I love most are those I know well, so that each note is a memory of another listening experience, and a reminder of the person I shared it with. With the first note of Die Walkure last night, I was standing with my dad in our old living room, bums resting on the radiator, listening together, while my Dad identified the different themes and marvelled at the precision of the brass section. It also reminded me that we haven't done anything like this together for far too long.

Many longer pieces of music take you on a journey, and I loose out on that when I instead have fragments beamed into my ear while I'm also having a conversation. I can vividly remember when I was given a CD of Karl Jenkin's 'The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace' for Christmas - when I arrived home I flopped on my bed with the liner notes and listened to the whole thing from beginning to end. I have a far better sense of what that is about, and how the different segments fit together, than many pieces I know snippets of nowadays.

So four lessons from a wonderful evening - be present, turn off distractions, make new memories, and follow the journey from beginning to end.

My 30 Day Challenge: Tubeing it old school

I love TED talks. They always make me want to completely rebuild my life - or rather, they make me believe that I can, that we can all make huge changes. The risk is, of course, that you spend so long watching TED talks that you never get around to making any of those changes a reality.

This one here is pretty cool, and brilliantly illustrates the power of the baby step:

Bitten by the baking bug

So what is it about Great British Bake Off that has me dusting off my apron and tutting at the poor array of baking equipment in my cupboard? (Seriously. Can't even do a Victoria sponge.) 

I seem to have been bitten by the baking bug. In the last week, I have made: one loaf of white bread with linseeds (and who'd have thought that the humble linseed could so totally transform bread?); one batch of rotis, ginger and oat cookies, chocolate chip and walnut biscuits, and now I have a teeny tiny batch of meringues in the oven. I've never made meringues before, but I've been meaning to try for a while, and with an egg white left over from the biscuits, I thought - why not? The world's smallest batch of meringue ever made. Fingers crossed they come out well.

The times, they are a-changing

So the move is almost upon us, and I can proudly announce that I will be moving house in the most eco-friendly way possible - by train. (That's not the reason, it's actually cheaper because my boyfriend gets these vouchers from work, which give him money off green stuff like train travel). However, the flipside of this is that I can only take what I can carry with me - one suitcase and a big rucksack. That's not a huge amount of stuff, but we're leaving some here.

So there's a lot of emotional stuff flying around right now - I've had an interesting year here, and I think I've learned a lot, but I also feel that I let a lot of opportunities pass me by. Places I didn't go, museums I didn't see, people I didn't befriend as thoroughly as I could have... Some of it was beyond my control - I spent a lot of this spring helping my parents with stuff, but a lot of it was just due to laziness, bluesiness and apathy on my part. I have an ongoing problem with apathy, and it frustrates me no end because I feel that by this age I should be able to get on with tackling problems like a sane adult, rather than putting my head in the sand and hoping they'll go away!

Somehow, I never manage to convert this sense of general regret into a determination to get more out of the next experience - always the apathy and always the sense of lost opportunities. But I'm going to try, this time. Maybe I should make a list? :-)

On Resolution

(1) Rediscover silence. There is no opportunity for quiet here, really. Everywhere you go there is background noise, usually music. This is a nation obsessed with music - in the metro stations (where they play classical music in the evenings to keep drunken youths out!), in supermarkets, in shopping centres. Add to this a house in which at least three of the following can always be heard: a loud and violent game on X-box, CSI or similar on the tv, The Big Bang Theory on a laptop in the SAME ROOM as a tv, a very loud boiler, a poppity-ping, and someone running up or down stairs. This is not a recipe for tranquillity and contemplation. I think I am distracting myself too much with the delights of youtube and my DVD collection, so I think a little more reflection and quietness would not go amiss.

(2) Stop sitting still. This may sound like it contradicts (1) but it's part of the whole trying-to-avoid-meaningless-distraction. And also getting more exercise, which boosts my mood and my energy levels. Ideally, this becomes a postitive cycle. Anyway, the idea is that when I've got an hour to kill, I go for a walk or cook a more elaborate meal rather than watching youtube and eating speculoos biscuits.

(3) Don't wait. This really is the key resolution for this year. If there's something I want to do, I'm going to try and make it happen. I have a tendency to wait - I'm not really sure what for. For it to happen on its own, or for someone else to guess and make it happen for me - I have no idea. But it really would be a waste for me to spend my time waiting for something which I could have achieved or experienced in the same amount of time.

Notably absent from this list are the things which people (read: my parents) would probably like to see. Key to these being punctuality, being more accountable, and getting a decent job. My current attitude is that, if I can incorporate the three ideas above into my life more effectively over this next year, then things like punctuality and accountability will naturally follow. I'll keep telling myself this, thank you very much.