It’s strange to consider that being busy is not helping my energy levels! When I was teaching, it was important to have ‘meaningful teaching moments’ rather than just keeping students occupied with ‘busy work’. I’ve realised that I do a lot of busy work because I am procrastinating.
Lisa O’Neill (see previous post) calls it ‘procrastination paralysis’ and writes: “Reading this book might be changing your life, but is there something you have been putting off? A phone call? A small job? PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND GO DO IT!”
A friend of O’Neill termed the phrase ‘actionator’ to describe Lisa, who gives strategies for overcoming procrastination and quotes Benjamin Franklin who said, ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail’.
This morning – unplanned – I pruned the grapevine to reveal squillions of grapes in various stages of ripeness. But was this just busy work? I haven’t got to the watercolour painting yet, and there is more on my mental list…
Sometimes energy can seem elusive. Where’s it gone? Where does it come from? I’m not into self-help books as a rule, but this particular book seemed to do the trick: I’ve been feeling energised for the last few days – although maybe I feel it seeping away a bit now…
I have posed the photos of the front and back covers of the book on my watercolour gear which has been cluttering up my desk for days, because I’m hoping to gather up the energy to restart that hobby. Oops! ‘Cluttering up’ probably gives negative, energy-draining vibes to that hope.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book very much. It was well-organised, straight-talking, funny, and made a lot of sense: it has common sense, is sensible, and simply made sense. It helped that the author is a kiwi, which perhaps accounts for her straight-talking.
A major plus for this book is that it is supportive and not critical. It acknowledges the things which drain our energy and is helpful and comforting. I loved the advice to wear your favourite clothes everyday. The author is honest and open about herself: “As an opinionated, extroverted show pony, being seen and not heard and only speaking when I was spoken to took enormous effort!” That, to me, resonates with how women are expected to behave – as people pleasers. “We decide to settle for a role as a background character in other people’s stories. I am here to tell you that you are the main character. Enough of this back-seat shit!”
The book is divided into sections: Physical Energy, Emotional Energy, Mental Energy and Spiritual Energy. In the Emotional Energy section O’Neill writes about people who can drain our energy. She calls them ‘contaminators’ as opposed to people who give us energy, who she calls ‘contributors’. I’ve often felt a bit guilty that there are friendships I haven’t maintained or when I just can’t warm to someone. This book analyses why that might be so. That is helpful.
In Mental Energy, the author acknowledges that everyone is different, even neurodiverse. “Getting your head to work for you is one of the best things you can do. You need to start with awareness. What are you like? Are you negative? Impulsive? Intense? Work out what you are like, and then you have two choices: own it or change it. What you think, you become, and what you feel, you attract.”
O’Neill uses the hilarious image of our thoughts as goldfish. “…they swim in one ear, do a lap and swim out the other. Sometimes they want to continually do laps!” That made me laugh out loud and want to hold on to that image. Although some things in the book are not my thing (diet supplements, chakras) there’s a lot in it I want to remember and refer to again. I might have to buy a copy when I return this one to the library. I found it on the Recent Returns shelves – maybe another lucky person will find it that way too.
I was in a frenzy of activity today having discovered weevils in a new, unopened packet of wholemeal flour. Closer investigation found them in the bran and the plain flour – and an unopened bag of sugar. It’s not a good feeling to throw food out, but not a good feeling to pretend the bugs aren’t there and use the food anyway! Particularly if you’ve researched the bugs and seen the pictures – magnified a million times. Yuck. At least the food could go in the compost. Then I lifted out the flour bins, cleaned them and dried them in the sun, vacuumed and disinfected the whole space behind, sprayed for insects, put down diatomaceous earth for good measure, and went shopping for airtight containers – and supplies to fill them.
What lurks within?Clean bins and airtight containers.
So much for being in the time of the sixth mass extinction. I’ve had infestations of ants, passion vine hoppers and now weevils! The insect world appears to be thriving.
Laissez-faire would seem to be the approach I have to gardening. Especially at the moment when summer is ending and autumn beginning. Things look a bit wild. There are Japanese anemones falling about and over paths, the Cecile Brunner is overrunning its support again, the raspberry canes are looking shabby – yet producing lovely autumn fruit, the beans have finished and the leaves are yellowing, there are often toadstools, but…mushrooms? I discovered them inside the frame of the old greenhouse when I went out to pick leafy greens for a salad.
I picked three of them, leaving the fourth to do its thing, whatever that is. They look just like the ones you buy, with pale brown gills inside. Will I poison myself if I add them to a stir fry for dinner?
A blackbird’s nest was on the lawn this afternoon. There had been heavy rain and some wind. A great number of tī kōuka leaves came down in the rain and I wonder if the nest was in one of those trees. Although the nest has done its job, as the fragments of shell inside show, it seems a shame that such momentous effort should be brought to earth. The inside is packed firmly with mud, while the outside frame is looser (more so since being dislodged) with large pieces of bark, twigs and leaves circling the edge.
I can identify leaves from akeake, kōwhai, karo and tī kōuka (cabbage tree), as well as dried flower stalks, from the garden. The size of the nest, its heft, the use large pieces vegetation in the construction, and the colour of the eggshell fragments indicate that it is a blackbird’s nest.
We see blackbirds often and have come to enjoy their company, particularly their song, and their antics in the birdbath – plus the occasional argy-bargy with Felix. Not so much their scattering of dirt and leaves across the paths – but then, they probably keep the number of snails down. They do a good job of cleaning out the guttering.
VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
Wallace Stevens, from ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’
The full Wallace Stevens poem is in the side bar of the page about the blackbird’s nest on the site New Zealand Birds. I’m impressed to find poetry included on a scientific site.
Artichokes are a type of thistle, apparently. I anthropomorphise my artichokes because they look as if they’re waving their arms about. The one which ‘exploded’ in a cloud of thistledown the other day is increasingly earning the name ‘Boris’.
And for the Felix fans, here he is with his ears in lynx position and an intense look which says, ‘Get out of that egg chair and give me a treat’ (Whiska’s Temptations Seafood Flavour) – no ‘please’ required.
In the heat on Sunday I was surprised by the sight of an artichoke ‘exploding’ as the seed head opened and seeds went off in all directions. Gusts of wind took the feathery seeds which flew and drifted about the garden and into the house like large ‘fairies’ from a dandelion clock . Perhaps one will sprout on a sofa?
All advice is to cut off the heads of the artichokes before this stage, but then you’d miss the drama.
Two hot days in a row were all the excuse I needed to sit in a cool spot and read. Consequently, I’ve just finished this brilliant, entertaining and educative book by a 27 year-old historian. I had thought of skimming through it quickly, but it was so engaging that I read every word – sometimes more than once! The author would like to rescue the once famous (infamous?) visual satirists (mainly Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank) from Victorian censorship – Prince Albert burnt many he found in the royal collection. She claims that they were such an influence in their time that they likely changed the course of history. As the cover illustration shows, they caricatured political figures, here showing PM William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte carving up the globe – you could substitute them for Trump and Putin.
People would crowd to the bow windows of the printmakers (here, the shop of Hannah Humphrey) to see the latest cartoons – often in the hope (or dread) that they might feature in the caricatures themselves – and to buy some to add to their collections.
While portraitists and painters may have been held in higher esteem, the satirists were generally formally trained in those skills too. This image shows the contrast between the two forms: one an idealised portrait of a celebrated singer, while the caricaturist brings her down to earth.
I am amused by this send-up of a fashion trend in muslin dresses better suited to warmer climes than the English weather.
And here’s a Georgian traffic jam in London. I’ve included text again so you can appreciate the author’s very readable writing style.
Many of the caricatures are of brutal scenes, particularly of the French Revolution, which shocked the public and, despite general disapproval of George III and more so of his profligate heir, may have put people off trying the same thing at home.
Here’s a bit about the author, with a caricature of the Prince of Wales (later George IV) by Gillray below.
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