‘Wake Up Now’.

 Singing as the Darkness Lifts 04/03/2024 Episode 26 ‘Wake Up Now’.

Podbean Link for those who like to listen

ALT TEXT: A box full of toys. Or a box full of interesting things with most of the letters on top to spell ‘CELEBRATING’.

ALT TEXT: A picture in a frame. Or a photo of a discarded elastic band in the gutter which makes a heart shape with letters on top that spell all of the word LOVELY and show where the letter ’l’s get used up.

This morning there is a tight frost on the ground and I cannot sense what rides the air. I stand under a lavendered sky and something makes me sneeze, but still cannot get my senses to grasp anything other than slight bark.

Episode 26! Having only missed one blog writing week for Christmas Day I can clearly see how many weeks I have been on my new journey. (It still makes me laugh that Christmas Day was a Monday and although I knew I wasn’t going to put a blog into the world that day I actually forgot to smell the air!)

So, a new journey for over half a year. With the arrival of spring and the joy of having pro bono clients to work with this is a pretty good place to be on my path I reckon even if today the scent of the morning eludes me somewhat.

I have felt tired this week though and know I need to sort out my mindset about walking more to raise my energy levels. I do know I want to walk each day, I know I sort of don’t want to do it at exactly the same time, but I also know I need a better plan because I often end up not walking as much as I need to in order to feel refreshed. There’s that thing that sits in me about wanting to have achieved something by eight o’clock each morning. And I think that goes back to all those years of starting work at half seven and using the quiet time of the morning to get some jobs done before the more peopled part of the day began. Perhaps that’s why my hydration before eight feels important to me or my day starts better when there is a little job on my writing desk to attend to. I am not sure that fitting in my walk before eight each day will be the thing to do, but I do feel there will be a benefit to trialling this.

‘A good coach should be able to coach themselves,’ there’s that internal voice, and when I listen there’s another one chiming in with ‘Yes, remember how well it worked when you were procrastinating about painting all those fence panels!’ I will see what I can do with my walking goal this month.

Asking myself what I have done before that helps it is easy for me to recall my love of seeing the sunrise or the early morning sky rolling out the day, changing by the minute, on the drive to work. I was reminded of this too when the birds woke me on Sunday morning singing with their loud, joyful chorus. There’s a wonderful feeling to waking up naturally when my body and mind seem to have completed a sleep cycle. This is quite rare for me and I think I have also encouraged myself to have one too many snoozes lately.

I do however also have the perfect alarm clock which might just help. Not my first choice of wake up track by Mary Chapin Carpenter or my second or indeed the bird song on my light up clock, but this... My sister telling me it is morning. (I think the sound clip of this only works on the podcast version of this blog!)

I found myself celebrating the celebrations of people I share thinking time with a lot this last week or so. I love that I get to hear these joyful moments and I love the fact that there is a lot of brave and powerful work that goes on in a coaching room in order for these celebrations to shine.

I spent a pleasant chunk of time searching through old journals the other day because I wanted to find the origin of ‘Unwanted Rabbits’. I had received an email to say the poem will be published by The Broken Spine this month and after I did my little happy poet dance I began wondering about the drafting of this poem. No sign of it in my past three journals, but my computer tells me the first computer draft was written on a Sunday, a couple of days after writing on a Wendy Pratt course. I know it was not related to that, but I recognise that feeling of the creative energy continuing when I have been in good workshops. I also found out that I wrote my fondant fancy poem on the same day. I can clearly remember how that came about because it was part of an advert which caught my eye. As I write this I love the fact that I can remember seeing a headline and that I can also almost feel the silk inside a magician’s hat when I think about the rabbit poem. I don’t think I have ever actually touched a magician’s hat, but it is there at the end of my fingers.

I can remember telling Damien there would be more rabbit poems when I was interviewed by him for Eat the Storms. This one is likely to raise a smile rather than the one in my forthcoming collection which is a bit more visceral!

I will leave you now with fondant fancies...

 

This is the Last Day for Cherry Fondant Fancies

 

and I don’t know if it is the final day this season

or the very last day ever.

 

I have never eaten one,

but know that the chocolate,

lemon and strawberry ones

from my childhood

came in neat half-dozens.

 

They looked like the kind of cakes

that Alice would love in her Wonderland.

But no matter how many times I tried them

I could never love them.

Too sweet, too sickly

on too many Sundays

 

And yet if there were cherry fondants tomorrow

maybe I would take a box just to test

how my tastes are these days.