I have been reminded this week, as certain things have started falling into place, of the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. The whole piece is well worth a watch. However, one story in particular stuck in my memory. He tells of how when he dropped out of college, he took a calligraphy course. Taking the course had no practical application, and he had no idea how it would be useful.  Ten years later, when he was designing the first Mac, all that he had learnt in that class came back to him – meaning that the Mac had multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts. He concludes:

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

His gut told him to do the calligraphy course, and he listened to it. Too often, we try to connect the dots going forward – if I do x, then it will lead to y. Sometimes, we just have to do what our gut tells us to do, for no other reason than that.

As I ran, it felt good. So I instinctively relaxed more, at the same as thinking about what I was doing. Shoulders down, swing the arms, lower legs swing like pendulums. And in another moment, I suddenly realised that I did truly feel like I was floating along – I could feel that my spine had lengthened and that I was really covering the ground. This felt amazing.

I couldn’t keep up at that pace for more than a minute or two, but I carried that feeling with me into the rest of the run. As I ran, I was thinking that I would commit to writing half an hour a day. That could be on the tube if necessary, the important thing was to be writing. And why would I not commit half an hour a day to doing something I loved?

I was also thinking about what I would write when I got back, and that it would be on discipline, and how discipline provides the space for you to be free in. I also thought about my other act of discipline today – my first Marvellous Monday, or dairy-free Monday of the year. I have gone the whole day without eating any dairy or meat products, and can say that I have enjoyed it. A colleague at work asked me, ‘Do you think that you will see the benefit from just one day a week?’ She must have assumed that I was doing it for health reasons. Without wanting to go into too much detail about the whys, I said that it was an experiment. And it made me realise that having experiments is good, to get us doing things differently, even if it is just drinking earl grey tea without milk rather than regular builders tea – and therefore slowly training the brain that it is in fact easy to look at the world differently, to act differently.

My reward at the end of the run? Paula Radcliffe congratulating me on running my fastest mile yet, thanks to the wonders of Nike+ technology.

There was a final lesson for the day. As soon as I sat down to write this, some little gremlins in my head started chattering to me – why are you bothering to write this, who is interested? Why don’t you just do some free writing in your notebook instead? And I’m sure that free writing would have been fine, and a good thing to do, but the ironic thing is that this piece is titled ‘On discipline’. If I had given in to those gremlins, then I would have been undermining the very thing that I was going to write about. And I told them, ‘I am interested’. Those gremlins, from a positive point of view, turned out to be a very good reminder of what we contend with everyday – and how easy it can be to tell them to go away. Because, you know what, this is the first paragraph of the piece that I wrote,  then went back and wrote the rest. Gremlins. Dead. Ha.

It is my belief that we are often so focused on worrying about what we are going to do and how we are going to do it, that we actually neglect creating the space which would allow the answers to those questions to emerge naturally. The importance of creating this space first really struck me whilst I was watching a short video, featuring the Turner prize winning artist Keith Tyson. He is talking about the creative process and says:

It’s a process for me in having great faith in how these things will evolve, and after a few years experience of doing it, you learn that instead of trying to control the work, you just try and find the correct circumstances for the work to come into being’.

So, for example, he has a large studio, where he can work on a number of things simultaneously. He has a very gestational practice, he often doesn’t know about the precise direction something is going in – so having things out in open, and by surrounding himself with his early thoughts, creates the circumstances in which thoughts can develop and connections can occur.

A further example: Geoff Dyer  in his book ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ writes about Rainer Maria Rilke: “For Rilke … the real work was to organize his existence to will himself a life that would create the ideal conditions in which to work”.

When you are considering what you want to achieve this year, it may be helpful to frame your goals by thinking about what would be your ideal conditions in which to work. In December last year, I was in conversation with an acquaintance. She had a strong vision of what she wanted to achieve, and clearly great passion and determination to make it happen. Her perceived stumbling block, however, was her inability to write a plan of how to make it happen. She had been trying for months to do this without success. I shared with her the Keith Tyson story and the Rilke quote, somehow sensing that they might help but without knowing exactly why. As I was speaking, I could see her face visibly light up. “That’s it”, she said, ‘Thank you so much, you have completely unblocked me. It’s not a plan that I need to be writing. Instead, I need to be describing the conditions in which I can make this happen”.  It was one of those happy moments, in which by inadvertently helping someone, I then was prompted to look at my situation in a different way. I too, in my own way, had been blocked by the thought of writing a plan. And saw that what I needed to do first was focus on creating those conditions.

Whilst it might be a physical space that you need to organize, as in the artist’s studio, it might also be time space in a busy diary to do the work that you need to do, or it might also be the inner space conditions that you need to pay attention to. I think it is these inner space conditions that will be important to me in the coming year – particularly being heart-centred and being in the here and now. And, in turn, the space for the practices which will enable me to practice those qualities – whether meditation, yoga, running or cooking.

So, a question for you – what kind of space do you need to create for your work to come into being in 2010?

I find that having a theme for the year is more effective than guiding actions during the course of the year than making New Year’s Resolutions. New Year’s Resolutions are easy to break. Once the New Year has worn off, it is easy to lapse back into old habits. In contrast, a theme for the year is not just for New Year’s, it is for the whole year. So when considering what actions to take, I can make my choices in the light of whether it is consistent with the theme for the year.

For me, 2010 is the year of Olivia’s Kitchen. The themes of previous years have been more outwardly focused and therefore more self-explanatory. The year of dancing and flying was what I needed to do in 2009. But I also found that dancing and flying the whole time can be tiring, and so 2010 will have a different flavour. Olivia’s Kitchen encompasses a number of strands.

Heart-centred
You might not be surprised to hear that the idea for ‘Olivia’s Kitchen’ came to me in – yes, you guessed it – my kitchen. The kitchen is for me, as it for many people, the heart of my home. And during the course of this year, there have been a number of times when I have found myself standing by the kitchen counter, perhaps waiting for the kettle to boil, and a moment of clarity or inspiration has struck me. So in the heart of my home, I can be in touch with what my heart is saying. How can I carry this with me throughout 2010? Yoga is one practice that allows the heart to be heard, as is meditation. But it is also about bringing this stillness – and aliveness – into the everyday, whether it is whilst I am cooking, or running – or writing.

Creative, experimental, focused
For me, the kitchen is a place in which I can be creative, and I can experiment, try out new recipes. And this is the attitude that I want to bring to what I do this year, particularly in my writing. It is also about commitment to that space. And one commitment is to this blog. Last year, whilst dancing and flying, I had five different blogs that I started. This year, I am planning to be more focused.

Nourishing
The theme of Olivia’s Kitchen owes more than a passing nod to the book ‘Laurel’s Kitchen’. Laurel’s Kitchen is a classic vegetarian handbook, originating in 1970s San Francisco. My mother has an original hardback version, and I have spent many hours reading it, following the recipes as well as learning about nutrition. One my favourite sayings is from Bali – ‘We have no art, it is in everything we do’ – and I think that this sums up the philosophy of the book. From kneading bread, to combining colours on the plate so that it is a feast for the eyes as much as the stomach, it is the nourishment of simplicity and beauty that I want to share in 2010. For whilst there is joy in cooking, I find that the greatest joy is in sharing.

Being in the here and now
You may have noticed that the sub-title of this blog is ‘Experiments in the Here and Now’. I am future-oriented person by nature. One of my strengths according to the Gallup Strengths-Finder is that I am ‘futuristic’ – I am one of those of people who say ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…’. The flipside of this strength is that I have found it difficult to be wholly present in the here and now, without my mind running ahead. Intellectually, I know that ‘all we have is now’, as the Flaming Lips sung, but I have found it difficult to actually live this. I am beginning to get it though, and again this will be a key theme for this blog. The image of being in the kitchen represents for me this groundedness and presentness – and happiness.

A space for me
Having the theme as ‘Olivia’s Kitchen’ runs the risk of sounding self-centred. But that is what my heart is telling me that I need this year – a space for the essential me to grow. It struck me in January in last year that I am a writer. I have begun to accept and grow into this identity, but these things take time and space, training and practice (on which I will write more later). So if I am to fulfil my potential as a writer, I need to ensure that there is time and space in my life to nurture this vital part of me.

Whilst I am not making resolutions, I am making four commitments for the year, foundations in different ways for Olivia’s Kitchen. These are:

1) Compete in the Sprint distance of the London Triathlon on 7 August 2010
In 2007, I completed this race in 1:29:26, putting me in the top 10%. As part of the year of saying yes, this showed me what I could achieve when I put my mind (and body) to it. At the same time, I also won one of the biggest pitches of my career, and I don’t think that this was a co-incidence. I had discovered the concept of Flow. Taking the time to train had a positive impact on my work – and I remember really enjoying the training too. I am looking to rediscover this flow and discipline this year, and I think that this will be an important part of experiments in the here and now.

2) Write, write, write
I know that this is not framed as a SMART objective. Last year, I tried setting various objectives – blogging five times a week, writing for an hour a day, writing 7,000 words a week – none of which I sustained. So I am making writing a priority, and I am confident that the ‘how’ will fall into place. As for the ‘what’, I am again content to let this unfold. I have various ideas, and I look forward to seeing how they develop.

3) Marvellous Monday – dairy free day
It seems appropriate to have a food-related commitment for the year – so mine is to make Monday a dairy free day. I took it as a good sign when an article on triathlon nutrition had 6 vegan recipes out of 8. I am interested to see how I can break the dairy habit one day a week, and if this affects my eating patterns the other six days (when I am a pescatarian, ie eat fish but not meat).

4) Carbon Accounting
I am going to use the website Carbon Account to keep track of my gas and electricity usage, so that I can measure carbon emissions from my home – and hopefully do something about reducing them further. ‘We manage what we measure’.

Over the course of this year, I will be reporting on this blog on my experiments in the here and now, and sharing my learnings. I hope that you will drop by.

What is your theme for 2010? What is your heart telling you that you need? Please do share your thoughts. And here’s to a very happy 2010.

1. I like writing poetry. I like the combination of structure and minimalism – it suits me.
2. Writing is something that I want to do everyday. I enjoy the connections that emerge from writing and that would remain buried if it wasn’t for the writing.
3. Writing enhances life. Supercharges it. Dare I say it – gives it a purpose.
4. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a plan. Just get on and do it anyway. The plan will emerge. It may not emerge in 30 days. It may only emerge in retrospect. But it is there.
5. Saying that you are going to write a book when you have not had anything published before is like saying that you are going to run an ultra marathon, and the only running that you do is to catch the bus. Writing takes training.
6. If I am writing about my life, I need to make sure that I am doing something interesting in my life. Or at least write about it an interesting way.
7. Artists need the inspiration of other artists.
8. Writing is catching the rainbow, or carrying a sunflower seedling home with you.
9. Write all the time – on the Tube, in an exhibition in the middle of the room, in a café. And observe.

10. Writing is a spiritual practice. It connects me to myself, and to the wider world.

11. I entitled my journal of jottings, ‘Book of Light’. I like that title. My muse is a tree goddess. My writing is a tree growing in that light – and towards that light.

12. I can believe in myself as a writer. I wrote of needing to protect my ‘fledging identity’ as a writer. It may be fledging, but it has wings.

13. Sit down to write, even when you don’t want to. And keep writing through the don’t want to, until you come out the other side.

14. I now understand why so many young or beginning writers write about writing.

15. Lists are good. Lists are underused. They are a useful tool for ordering thoughts.

16. My problem is not a lack of ideas. My problem is that my ideas change all the time. How will I know when it is time to stick with one idea? I suspect that I will just feel it.

17. It is important to have a clean house to write in. As long it is not obsessively clean because you spend all of your time cleaning rather than writing.

18. Lightness – that’s what I am aiming for in my writing. A lightness of spirit, not a lightness of thought.

19. I need to learn to write at different paces. When I am writing longer pieces, I tend to write at one pace – medium fast. Like when I went running, I used to trot along at the same pace, although I knew that I would get fitter quicker by varying the pace of my running. Writing poetry helps me to write at a different pace.

20. I am enjoying doing my little photography project alongside the writing. ‘Growing creativity’ involves taking pictures every day in my garden, and posting one a day to Flickr, along with a brief description. The photography practice reinforces the importance of observation – and the importance of showing up every day. That is one idea that I have had and stuck to. Maybe there is a lesson in there for me about how to structure a project.

21. I am annoyed by the coverage given in the Guardian to a woman who wrote about her year without sex. Actually, what annoys me more is the number of people who read it – it was number three in the most read online articles when I looked. And it wasn’t even about sex – it was her year without sex. I am probably just jealous – of the writing, not the year without sex. And I read the article. Just to see what I was not missing out on.

22. I had an idea of my book as a scrapbook. I still like this idea.

23. I need a new 30 day project. My original idea was to have a question for the day and then see how the answer emerged – in writing, in photography. The key is making sure that the questions are good.

24. I need to get moving again. I think that I write best when I am moving – eg swimming, skiing, running, cycling.

25. I am going to pay more attention to my dreams. I liked that the dream about the frog signified that I was going through a period of change. Last night, I woke up with a start thinking that there was a wind storm happening. I looked outside. All was still.

26. I still believe in the concept of the Creativist.

27. I have great admiration for people who do finish a book.

28. Richard Long is an inspiration to me – the way in which he combines walks, interventions, photographs, text. Some of his earliest works were made in Epping Forest.

29. You need to work at good writing. It doesn’t just happen first time round.

30. This is the end of the list. And a beginning. I am still thinking about the questions project. It does seem to fit in with my current interest in questions. Questions as the catalyst in an experiment. The magnesium strips which are dropped into the chemicals. And all starts to fizz. That is a decision then. That is going to be my project for the next 30 days. A question a day for the next 30 days. To be answered through exploration. The rules are that each day I need to go somewhere outside my home and look at the world through the lens of that question. The answer can be in writing or a photograph. I will randomly assign the questions to days. I do not expect to be able to answer the question in the course of a day. The experiment is – what is my experience of looking at the world through that question?

You can follow progress at the address below. Let me know what you think!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sprinkel/sets/72157619109903532/

Salad leaves

Sometimes I just want to dance, and who knows
where the dancing will lead me
Sometimes I just want to dance, be held tight
holding you close, and release me
Sometimes I just want to dance, when there’s
no music playing, but just in my head
Sometimes I just want to dance, sometimes
I just want to dance

Sometimes I just want to fly, and fill my
lungs full of cold mountain air
Sometimes I just want to fly, swooping on
wings feathered and quilled with joy
Sometimes I just want to fly, one v in a
graceful v, arrowing the sky
Sometimes I just want to fly, sometimes
I just want to fly

To begin – to take the first step in a series of actions. To cause to come into being. From the Old English, ‘to open up’.

To begin, you do need to open up. Open yourself up to ideas, the possibility of failure, the possibility of success. Of things turning out differently than you imagined.

A beginning is an opening, you don’t know quite where it is going to take you. How big the opening is, how hard you are going to have push to get where you want to go. Some beginnings are secret openings – a concealed door to a secret garden that only you know about. Others are a gap in a hedge, that you get a glimpse through to the other side and have to scramble through, collecting burrs and brambles along the way. Other beginnings are openings in the waves, you’ve spotted your opportunity and need to time it just right, so that you can catch the wave and surf back into shore.

And sometimes you need someone to recognise that opening for you and gently guide you in that direction. And you need to be open to listening.

I was just hopping down to the corner store to buy a litre of milk. At the end of my road, a clean cut young man in a suit, with a ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ badge said to me:

            ‘Excuse me, do you ever think about what the purpose of life is?’

            ‘Yes’, I laugh, ‘lots’.

            ‘And what do you think?’

            I laugh again. ‘I don’t know. I’m still getting there’.

            The discussion continues and I drop into the conversation that I don’t believe in God.

            ‘I believe in the Universe. I believe that everything is interconnected. But I don’t believe that there is one God. Having one God would exclude other gods, and I believe that there are different ways of looking at the world’.

            ‘I haven’t heard that one’, he admits. He is probably about 18 and from driest Utah. ‘Essentially, you are saying that if there is one God then that would mean that diversity of views was not possible’.

            ‘Yes’.

            ‘But there has to be one Truth. Something that is red is red’.

            ‘No. You look at the world in a particular way, and you have your truth. I look at the world in a different way and that is my truth. You look at that dandelion, and you see that is yellow. I look at that dandelion, and I will see a different yellow. How we see the world is affected by who we are and what our experiences are’.

            ‘OK, but you have to accept that there are some things which are fact. I am holding this coat. You can’t argue with that’.

            ‘No, that’s a fact. But you can’t say that God is a fact’.

            ‘But what would it take for me to prove to you that God does exist? I can’t show you through a scientific experiment. But I can tell you about many things’.

            ‘God is a belief, and you can’t prove a belief. It’s something that you feel’.

            ‘Exactly. Like you can feel the wind that is blowing now, even though you can’t see it’.

            ‘But a feeling is something that you have to experience for yourself. You can’t tell me to experience a feeling. You have to arrive there through your own journey’.

            It was his turn to laugh, I don’t think that this particular scenario had come up in missionary training camp. He told me about the groups where I could explore questions like this, but I explained I was on my own journey. We thanked each other and I walked away with a slip of paper promising all the answers at the Mormon website.

            As I was hopping back with my milk in my rucksack, I was thinking I would really like to have an answer for ‘what is the purpose of life?’. Even just so I can talk with the next missionary I bump into. And I did come to an answer on the way home, which was ‘Our purpose is to connect with what our purpose is, and what the gifts are that we have to share, and then share those gifts generously’. I’ll test that out next time.

I am having skiing lessons this week, and one word has changed the course of skiing. Dancing. The instructor said ‘Imagine that you are dancer, on your toes’. So now, instead of being hunched over, clenched, telling myself to relax – I am just relaxed. I am on my toes. This is the year of dancing and flying, after all.