Ten Year Blog Review : Part Three

This is part three of my ten year blog review, it covers common themes that have concerned me in the months of July through to September, with accompanying inspirational pictures

 July: education and travel

A continuing theme in July has been my travels around Europe in my late teens and early twenties, they formed the basis of a musical play called 'Another Day, Another Place'. This picture is a collage, including many of the postcards I collected on my travels.

August : work and identity

My job as a librarian has informed several of my blog posts. The above picture is about my reading habits throughout my life. You can view more about my interest in books and my book reviews on GoodReads.

  
 September : childhood and spirituality

I was a Sunday school teacher for about a year from around 2010 to 2011. I focused mostly on virtues and St Paul's ideas about the fruit of the spirit. Above is a picture of my virtue matching game.

Flower sketches

I drew these flowers to illustrate 'Get Well Soon' and 'With Sympathy' cards for my craft stall. I love drawing, especially faces and flowers, and hopefully will continue to do so. Drawing nature is a good way to de-stress and relax.

Amy's Eyes

While working on her A'level Art projects Amy drew and painted a lot of eyes. They were supposed to represent various psychological states such as psychopathy, BPD, avoidant personaltiy, schizoid personality, depression, PTSD and anxiety. These are a few of the most striking images.

The Star Heart Cafe

I have loved spending time alone in cafes since the 1990s. Pubs have taken over a little in the past few years, but the call of cafes is never far away. I have run two imaginary cafes in my life. The first was The SubVerse Poetry Tea Room which ran for five years from 2000 to 2005. The second is The Star Heart Cafe which is both my blog and my craft stall which both started in 2013. There is generally something civilised about a cafe, hopefully something comforting; it's social but not intimate. Hopefully you can just relax, be yourself and not get bothered too much by anything or anyone.

ALF by the sea

I crave living a simpler, slower life. I often imagine myself living a simpler, slower life by the sea, possibly on my own. We at least manage to get down to the sea once or twice a year. Below are some of my favourite pictures of our times by the sea. Cardiff and Brighton are possibly my favourite seaside places, but these holidays were all quite special.

 Cardiff

Cornwall

Whitby

  

Brighton

 Isle of Wight

Torquay

Self portraits by Amy

While studying for GCSE and A'level Art Amy started to produce a lot of self-portrait paintings, these are a few of my favourites.

Sweet dreams

The above picture is one of my favourites from Amy's story 'The Legend of the Dream Box'. It hung above her bed for a few years before being replaced by one of her abstract teenage paintings, shown below.

6B460 Review

6B460 Review (written in April 2020)

 

My 6B460 review was meant to include a review of a visit to Belfast, but because of the Covid19 Lockdown all my travel plans have been postponed. I decided to go ahead and write the review anyway. Hopefully I will have visited and reviewed my future trip to Belfast before this blog turns ten in 2023.

1. Visit Belfast and Northern Ireland

I was due to visit Belfast at the very end of March and the beginning of April 2020. Because of the Covid19 Lockdown this failed to happen. I don’t know when I will get to visit Northern Ireland, hopefully sometime before November 2027, which is when I will turn sixty.


2. Work in libraries for at least thirty years

I celebrated thirty years as a librarian in February 2020, just before the Covid19 Lockdown, by visiting the British Library’s Buddhism exhibition. I was pleased I celebrated my three decades of library work with some style. At the end of March I started working from home. I hope I will keep working well into this decade.

3. Keep a blog going for ten years

I started my blog in 2013, the year my dad died. My blog is now seven years old and I have scheduled posts until 2023. So hopefully, even if I don’t write so much in the future, my blog can keep going for a full decade.

4. Play classical piano pieces in public for ten years

I started playing classical piano pieces in public in 2010 shortly after starting as a semi-professional piano teacher, teaching my daughter’s friends. After facing a crisis of venues in 2018, I managed to keep playing until January 2020. I don’t know how much public (or private) piano playing I will do in the future.

5. Practice Buddhism everyday

Living through the Covid19 Lockdown has made mindfulness feel even more important to me. I am getting better at mindfulness, meditation and ‘il dolce far niente’. I go for a walk everyday and enjoy slow tea and food, listening to music, watching films, drawing, gardening, reading books and poetry. I find I am much calmer and try to be kind and patient.

6. Live a good enough life

Luckily we managed to celebrate my mother’s and my daughter’s birthdays in February 2020, before everything shut. It was a time when appreciating a slower, simpler life was becoming more of a priority. I feel that I have done what I could with what I have and hope that will continue.