There’s nothing I love more than disappearing into a world of my own. A dream world, a fantasy land where mad-hatters come for tea and the future is orange. Like the tights I just bought for my autumn look…
My favourite things to do are all about withdrawing from the outside world, holing myself up in my creative sanctuary and contemplating on my own. I like to dock my iPod and play it on random, cut out fabrics and create mood-boards, scrapbooks and write lists of all the things I plan to do, today, tomorrow, next week, next year. So really, I’m quite the opposite from Penelope: Hoity-Toity-Hot-Bit-Of-Totty-Girl-About-Town. Probably a good thing to balance out the chi!
Oh reading is another favourite thing (a solitary pursuit again..), some of my favourite books are:
- The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- Wild Swans, Jung Chang
- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt (I still think of it now, and I read it years ago!)
- The Pursuit of Happiness, Douglas Kennedy
- Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan
- The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
I don’t get to read a lot, or as much as I would like to, as I’m always sewing or doing housework! I’m quite fanatical about housework really, which I fully believe was inherited from my mother who cleans her bathroom daily(!??) I like a nice, clean slate before I begin my creative work, and often I use it as an excuse to delay starting my actual work.
Creativity comes in waves too, and being a Piscean who is always swimming in opposite directions, it can be hard to capture and capitalise on my creative waves and be productive into the bargain. So while I’m a fish swimming in all directions (I once described myself in a job interview as a salmon swimming up-stream towards my goals!), I’m also a bit of a night-owl and really get into the creative ‘zone’ towards the end of a normal working day. I find myself at my peak when it should be time for bed, which inevitably leads to either staying up until 3am and waking up exhausted and grumpy the next, or burning myself out mentally trying to write down all the fabulous ideas on one of my many lists - phew!
As you would expect, I also love actual swimming in a swimming pool, and have recently started swimming regularly again for both physical exercise and mental relaxation. I get some of my best ideas when I am swimming away, and it really lets your mind tap into deeper thoughts of consciousness and that fantasy-land state which I love.
There is nothing freer than weightlessness in a tranquil pool. Solutions and amazing ideas just dance into my mind when I feel so free and alive and refreshed and energised, all at the same time. They say that the average number of thoughts experienced every day by an adult racks up to 12,000, but I always think I must be special and different from everyone else as it seems like so much more?
Like the sea, I can also experience dramatic changes in my emotional state; one minute calm, clear and controlled, the next a frenzy of excitement or the ‘perfect storm’ of a mid-afternoon rage! The Rage can take me by surprise sometimes, and is often focused on a very insignificant and undeserving obstacle such as a forgotten password (computer says no), or there are keys in the door preventing me from getting mine into the lock…I think this aspect of my personality is also responsible for my feverish creative excitement, and the energy I feel at peak productivity, so I can’t really ask for one without the other?
I would also say I was a ‘fast’ person when it comes to going about daily tasks, such as walking around, shopping, driving etc, a bit like a powered-up mario cart! This likely causes a reasonable about of low-level rage, just waiting to bubble over when it reaches 100 degrees, as there is always someone who will walk out in front of you or dither at the wrong time and if you’re in a rush…its the perfect storm waiting to happen!
So there are many strange facets to my inner-most persona (actually, I am an inner Scorpion according to my astrological chart), and it all adds up to make me, me. I love that I have a very rich, complex inner life, all to myself. The only problem is when the outside world tries to come in, with its white-noise distractions that pose a threat to the creative equilibrium. Beeping horns, televisions (especially loud adverts), piercing ring-tones, screeching trains, shouting. Down with that, and up with swimming fish-owls who stay up late and like drinking redbush tea and eating chocolate-orange…