Thought I’d experiment this week by uploading a recording of me proofreading the post as I read it aloud to my mum on the phone.
(Photo taken on iPhone 16 Pro1)
It’s been one of those weeks.
Life these days has been working 7 days a week; 3 days with a logistics (project managing) focus and the other 4 are creative and dedicated to my acting craft, our film projects, meeting wonderful people, developing ideas, concepts and stories and helping other people with their ideas (working with Writing for Performance MSt students at Cambridge University is a true reward). I love what I do and who it enables me to be.
But whilst my weeks have been jam-packed with progress, it’s also the week my coffee machine broke (ahhghhhh!), our oven stopped working (thank goodness for air fryers and gas stoves), my bank account decided to close on me without any justifiable reasons and ladies and gentleman of the jury, my phone, with 5 years of voice notes, note notes, beloved contacts and yet-to-be-acknowledged-messages (that I had planned to get back to), DIED ON ME.
So friends and anyone who might have texted me within the last week, if you are reading this, please reshare your messages and I can save your number.
But of course this post is can not be only moaning. There surely must be some catharsis to my thesis(!)
Well, I just came off the phone with my wonderful Grandad of 80-something years, who spritely and compassionately remarked the words of King Claudius in Hamlet, “when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”.
How beautiful. How powerful that one single crafted quote could lift me from my downtrodden mood into an acceptance of the quirky characteristics of our existence. Life can be so bizarre, it really tries to challenge us.
But, she realises, if it wasn’t for all of the high-pressured times in my life, I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did through the experience of doing and maybe being too. It is naturally hard when you’re pushing hard towards a goal I think and when you’re stretching yourself beyond your current experience into your next level.
I’ll leave you on one of my go-to analogies that I love to remember in these (tougher) moments, learned during my time studying at the Kabbalah Centre in London.
(Highly recommend Kabbalah 1 - it not only positively improved my outlook on life but also opened up my creative channels, because I was able to understand myself better).
sent from mmy iPhoen