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.
100 Days of Wonder – #17
Special trainers deserve special retirements. It’s not every pair that carried me through a marathon… the memories, the sweat, the swearing. These trainers were there for all of it. And so they will forever roam the Magic Kingdom. Ok so obviously I know that’s not actually what happens to them but there is something really lovely about the thought and the ritual. I like little rituals and traditions. I like how they mark things, create moments of reflection, make me smile and mark the passage of time in a positive way. I like my ‘new academic year notebook’, usually supported by a ‘new calendar year notebook’ and a ‘Easter notebook’ because one is never going to be enough. I like the end of term email and file sorting to mark the end of one term and the start of the next. I like our own traditions that have developed over time that are ours, just things we do – like strolling across to the Magic Kingdom on our arrival evening, having dinner at the California Grill on our last night and lunch at the Crystal Palace before we fly home.
I like our traditional Christmas morning run, I like the pumpkin carving (coming up soon), mince pie baking, Christmas card writing and our 4 advent candles not in a circle but in a line. I like how our traditions have mixed and also how they have evolved. I remember our runs at Bolton Abbey followed by breakfast fondly, a lovely weekend ritual for a long time until the food options changed. I love our monthly cheese box and the way we curl up in front of the TV with our cheese board and fizzy apple juice once a month. I like our first coffee of the morning being one we have together often sitting in bed. I like our seasonal lego to build and rebuild year after year. Some of the rituals inspire a sense of possibility -new notebooks, candles to be lit, advent calendars to be opened (every other day because we share) – and others invite memories – do you remember last year when we build the Haunted Mansion… and others still, coffee in bed, cheese boards, are just about taking the time to be together.
While most trainers are either binned or passed on through various charities, depending on the state of them, the special ones started a new ritual, a runDisney ritual. It allows me to mentally close off that marathon, that training cycle and bank it. I can look forward to the next challenge and all the possibilities that might bring and I create memories – those rainbow laces could tell a story or two. I like it, I’ll keep it going: A shoe selfie in the Magic Kingdom and then the trainers are ‘retired’ at the Contemporary resort so they, and a little bit of me, will always be roaming the most magical place on earth.
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