99 Days of Something – #1
Last year I managed a 100 day series of blog posts starting with this one below. 100 Days of Wonder was inspired by having booked tickets to a 100 Years of Wonder Disney on Ice and being 100 days out from our Disney trip. I also had Covid so wasn’t up to doing much and spent a lot of time in my head, watching TV and scrolling through photos. You can read the whole – rather random series by going back through the posts if you wish. I did that yesterday because I wondered about doing something similar again. Yesterday was our 100 days out from our next Disney trip day. This time Disney Paris. I realised I missed the discipline of taking time to reflect and write every day… and then I didn’t actually write anything yesterday.
So, here I am wondering whether it is worth trying again to string a series of blog posts together in a similar way. 99 Days of the discipline of writing, even just a little bit, every day might help keep me focused and might actually help me make progress with some writing projects. What do you need to write well? I have never been one for sitting at a desk. I always had a desk, I rarely sat at one. I am more of a notebook on the sofa, typing away in a coffee shop or lounging somewhere random kind of a girl for writing. But I do spend a lot of time at my desk at home so today I put up some things to make me smile. On the left I framed the packaging from the 3 Disney Coffee bean varieties we bought on our last trip. On the right are 3 postcards I bought in Philadelphia in May. So yeah, my writing and creativity is usually fuelled by Disney, Coffee and the inspirational words of others. Let’s see how this works for the next 99 days.
100 Days of Wonder – #71
Happy 2nd Advent
Happy 2nd Sunday in Advent. To the Magic Kingdom tree picture I took, I’ve added Disney tree number 2, a tree from Wilderness Lodge. I have seen a few pictures of it online recently and it always looks magnificent. I re-watched a documentary about decorating the Disney parks for the holidays the other day and was again struck by the detail and effort. Christmas decorations are refurbished annually, there are so many individual touches that are perhaps not necessary and so many corners that could be cut… but they are not.
I think for me Disney World is always a reminder that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing right, with attention to detail and proper pride in doing good work. I think sometimes we, or certainly I, rush from task to task and am focused on getting it ticked off the list that ‘good enough’ is all that matters. In many ways that is a good thing. I have way too much work to not work on a good enough principle but that should not take away from some things taking more priority than that. Which are the good enough things and which are the doing it right things will vary between us and over time. There is also joy to be found in perfection, sometimes more so than in just getting things done.
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
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