Picking up the pieces

Someone sent us a card once which said “When life throws you lemons, make lemonade”. Sometimes though it is hard to see the way out when you are weighted down with so many metaphorical lemons. So you carry on doing what you do, running from the past, doing anything not to look forward and managing to completely miss “now” from any part of your life. It has been like that for a long time at CannyMaker HQ: I realised it is now 8 months since I last posted anything on this blog, and 16 months since leaving Camberwell. Time flies when you have your head in the sand.

Over the last few months, I’ve been doing some mindfulness training, and slowly trying to sort things out. I’m not sure what I’m doing or where I am going – both in life and work. In life I’ve at last been slowly making my metaphorical lemonade, and it is time to do the same in work. Perhaps the uncertainty will bring back the creative freedom which was lost in the post-MA haze of trying to make a career of it. Mum often says to me, “don’t try, just do” (I think that might have been from Yoda), but it is true that we are often guilty of trying too hard and not just getting on with things.

I thought I would start again, looking back through all of the ideas pushed aside during my MA. There was some really good stuff in there which was left half-explored and it’s time to blow the dust off. My starting point is the pure pleasure of a brand new sketchbook, and the topic I had originally in my first week at Camberwell – that of liminality and the liminal space. Now with my new practice-based research skills, I might have better luck at detangling the topic which I found just too big at the time. I dug through some of my old ‘inspirations’ notes and found this quote from Do Ho Suh; it suits both the topic and the life lesson rather nicely.

“I see life as a passageway, with no fixed beginning or destination. We tend to focus on the destination all the time and forget about the in-between spaces.” – Do Ho Suh