Today feels like a breath of fresh air in my heart and soul. It is a good and a big day full of work and effort and passion and HOPE. One of the things that has helped me this week is using a time table instead of a to do list. Adding times to the tasks and laying it out on a spreadsheet of half an hour rows (just like we used to at school) has actually helped me a lot with over planning and despair afterwards. I used to put loads of things in and "be okay" with stuff not getting done and rolling over to the next day. Trying a different method has shown me just how not okay I was with 'being okay' about that, especially on days where a lot of stuff rolled over. As the artists way says: "set small and gentle goals and meet them". I judge this to be good advice because for me Consistency beats Passion, Drive, Despair or Talent 10 time out of 10. So now I have a timetable just like I did at school: 8 columns by enough rows for each one to be half an hour of the day from 9am to 11pm. And my trick to using it has been to ALWAYS leave a half hour gap between each task. This both allows for overrun / for me to start tasks early, AND forces me to not pack too much in to the day. The frustration comes all up front when I am planning and have to leave stuff out rather than afterwards along with a message of 'failure' for not getting it all done. So I am enjoying my breath of fresh air and my new weekly scaffolding / time table.

I really hate admin days. My shadow loves them as they get between me and the truest work - the art - whilst being "productive" and therefore "aren't bad" and I should "do more of them" etc etc. But is there a deeper shadow about being a good enough artist? or getting the admin done quickly enough? or being successful enough at protecting my time? Yes, absolutely, its like a hazy room full of eval cigar smoking villains all working on their own evil plans to foil the hero. Or a hydra I must face each morning when faced with competing distractions and tasks. Shadow after shadow comes up to say "FOCUS ON ME" "NO FOCUS ON ME!" And the truth for me today, is admin days are better than letting the admin creep into the art days, because if I don't do the art straight away then I rarely get to doing it at all, if I do I judge it is usually of a lesser quality when I am tired and stressed from it having taken so long. Even this post, here today, 'necessary admin' is turned into a tool of procrastination to avoid doing the bigger, scarier task of messaging people and asking for work. Of sending them my CV and of asking them if they have any contacts they could set me up for a call with. But now I have done this task and I have to decide if I will do the big scary one or another smaller one that feels safer and less threatening to my current story - that I can't make it as an artist, that it wont all work out well and that I will fail and have to crawl back to a horrible office job. I HATE that story, it twists and cuts at my innards, it rots and decays my heart. I hate it. So, what will I do for myself? I will tack the big hairy scary monster like its a rugby player on the other team and I will risk getting absolutely crumpled to do it. And it will be scary, but it need not be horrible. it need not be suffering.

I failed to check in yesterday after having said I would each day until the 25th. Why? Firstly the easy logistical answer is I forgot to add it to my physical written to do list. And I could say "I will remember to add it going forwards" but that would just paper over the crack. The deeper message here is that I was prioritising pleasing other people and getting their validation. I was worried about making sure my partner was okay and was not upset at me. I was worried about an MKP call happening later that evening that I wanted to be impressive at and was also afraid of attending. I let my desire to seek validation, fuelled by my belief that others can actually provide that validation get in my way and take me off mission for the day. And I felt that the whole way through. It is an old and well worn wound for me and one I know well and was conditioned into growing up. But it is also a wound that only I can heal now as an adult and one that I must heal in order to grow and progress. And I am hoping this is the year to do it. What can I do to serve myself instead? I can write. I can do my art-form today and give it 110% just like I wasn't going to until I wrote this. And in doing so I can show up for myself and not seek validation from outside, but inside me. And I can say no the next time someone or something tries to distract me from that. No matter how scary that feeling is.

Checking in very late today as I had a very 'off day' I woke up to a sick partner who felt very much that their sickness was both my fault and that they would not be cared for by me if they shared how they felt about it, so I spent most of my day caring for them without any time to prepare to do so. And I did it, and it was okay, and I am proud of myself for doing that, its not long ago that I wouldn't have been able to be that kind to both myself and to them. So I'm checking in and checking out all in one motion, but hopefully tomorrow being a Monday will bring with it more intentionality and less need for reactionary behaviour.

Today I was in a speech competition with some really fantastic speakers from across Poland. Didn’t win. But actually had a great day. Lot of fun. Learned a lot. That said, I got some shit ‘feedback’ from the contest organiser and the area leader. She said she wanted to talk to me in a normal tone, and then asked me ‘what happened’? Before launching into a monologue on how my speech totally bombed. Totally unstructured; very little useful content for me to work with. I was caught off guard, because I didn’t expect feedback on the speech, and as an area leader I expected a higher standard of communication from her. In MKP we talk about having a shield - this was a moment I didn’t have mine ready, and her words had too much impact because I wasn’t postured appropriately. I was demotivated after hearing that. But within an hour or so I’d set it aside and was back to having a good time. This might sound basic. But even just a few years ago, this kind of thing would have totally ruined my day, and sent me into a shame spiral. So my unexpected Win today, is realising how much more resilient I have become over the recent years. Mainly thanks to men’s work and the work I’ve put in. Have a blessed weekend. J