100 Days of Wonder – #68
It’s about time I introduced Figment. Here he is. He’s usually more purple than that but here he is in his Disney World 50th Anniversary celebration statue look. It will come as no surprise that I like Figment. (If you are now humming the tune from the ride, you are my people). Figment seems appropriate today because this week I have given two very different papers/talks that have left my little grey cells in overdrive. The good sort of overdrive. The sort that sparks the imagination, the sort that makes you optimistic about all of the possible futures and begins to get to work on ways of making them happen. The events have reminded me to dare to dream and that work which takes us closer to our dreams is always worth doing. Sometimes the idea of changing the world seems too big, too impossible. But as I have said before and Walt Disney reminded us ‘It is kind of fun to do the impossible’. And as Figment puts it:
We all have sparks, imaginations
That’s how our minds, create creations
For they can make, our wildest dreams come true
Those magic sparks, in me and you
100 Days of Wonder – #52
Here’s the Bear of Little Brain. This was taken at Epcot in January 2023 as he was doing his morning exercises. We stood and watched him for ages and got the giggles watching him trying to reach his toes. My anxiety has been sky high today and I have felt very ‘little brained’. I probably could have done with channeling Winnie a little more. Or just the feeling of standing and watching him. In fact I don’t think any of us really take enough time to just stand and stare or watch or just be. It’s all about productivity and that just ends up being counter productive because my work world should be about creativity and thinking and empowerment and inspiring others and none of that works well if my tank is empty. Winnie started his day with some exercise and some waving at crowds and some being silly and just the memory of that starts resetting my system and bringing my heart rate and anxiety levels down. I finished my day today with a Boxercise class at the gym. It felt good – sometimes you just need to punch the crap out of something to release the excess adrenaline – and there were some giggles too over my lack of co-ordination. The fact that I nearly passed out at the end and had to sit on a chair off to one said that felt rather like the naughty chair, is also a reminder to look after myself better during the day. Maybe pause, have lunch, drink water, drink less coffee… I can’t imagine Winnie not having a little smackerel of something at regular intervals!
100 Days of Wonder – #28
It has been a gorgeous autumnal day today which I spent at our University Open Day talking to lots of prospective students. I like Open Days, they are full of excitement and hope and the promise of things to come. We are also one step closer to Halloween so I am a pretty happy bunny. I’ll talk more about Halloween in the next few days but the picture I picked is deliberately more autumnal than spooky. It was taken in September 2017 which is the only time I have been to Walt Disney World at a time of year that wasn’t January. I like autumn for all sorts of reasons but have realised that I actually just like having proper seasons where you have more than just a vague temperature difference between them. Here in the UK, I love the changes in colour. It’s not just the leaves on trees, it’s everything. They blue skies are somehow a slightly different blue, the grey that so often settles in at this time of year is a reminder that not everything has to be sunshine and roses all the time and the deeper darker colours of autumn just somehow make my soul smile. They are perhaps more muted, less extrovert and in your face than some of the bold spring and summer colours and that suits me. I love the mist rising from the river, the fog that descends, the way you can be stuck in a cloud all day but half a mile down the road it might be bright sunshine. I like the moody and the dark but I like it even more because it is interrupted with spells of warmth and brightness. I also like the idea of autumn as the first phase of renewal. Autumn signifies getting rid of the old to make time for rest before the new. I like that pattern because it so explicitly recognises the rest that comes with winter. It’s not entirely compatible with an academic year cycle through. So as my soul is moving to shedding its metaphorical leaves and leaving behind the things that no longer bring me joy, the academic year really just begins. As we move towards winter, we gear up to be busier than ever whether that is socially or academically with assessments, marking and seeing everyone before Christmas (why?) … and as we head into renewal, at least in our academic calendar now, we are actually getting into the finishing straight of teaching. So I think sometimes my soul is a bit confused. I get more reflective as autumn moves on and I try and be explicit about finishing things and not immediately starting something new. I try and move with the cycle that recognises the move from one thing to the next but with rest in-between them. That’s not always easy, but I suspect it is essential to doing things well and staying well.
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