5-4-5b450 (5455)

It occurred to me recently that in 2022, it would be 5 years since I completed my 5b450 project. To celebrate this anniversary I decided to reflect on 5 things I have achieved over the past few years which follow on from my 5b450 goals.

1. Visit Belfast 4 visit New York City

Visiting New York was the biggest and best part of 5b450. My travel plans have been much more modest since then. Even so it took one and a half years for me to get to Belfast because of the Covid19 lockdown. Belfast was the last of the UK capital cities I hadn't seen, I thought is was a very good city to visit and I'm glad I finally made it there in June 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Paint garage 4 redecorate house

One thing that was easier to do in the lockdown of 2020 was paint the garage. I wasn't going anywhere much and I spent more time in the garden looking at the garage. It was looking quite shabby and I decided to paint it grey. It took me two weeks doing a bit everyday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Do a reading challenge 4 join a book club

My time at the book club was short lived, possibly due to 2018 being a very difficult year. I began to set myself reading challenges in 2019. I have set myself a special 6 book challenge for the first half of 2022, it features books related to my original 5b450 project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Work on the Calm Book 4 a School of Life event

I very much enjoyed the face-to-face 'How to be serene' event in 2017. In 2020 we purchased the School of Life's 'Small Pleasures' cards to help us through lockdown. For Christmas 2021 I purchased 'The Calm Book' for Amy and I to work through in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 5. See another play 4 see a play at the Globe

After seeing 'Romeo and Juliet' in May 2017 we managed to see three more plays before the pandemic hit, the last one being The Twilight Zone at the Ambassadors Theatre in April 2019. I hope we will see another play in a theatre someday, but I don't know what or where or when.

25 years in our London House

There were a lot of anniversaries in 2020 and I nearly forgot about two important silver anniversaries coming up in 2021 and 2022 to do with my home and my work. In August 2021 it will be twenty-five years since I moved into our London house. To celebrate I hope to visit five London places that I haven't got round to visiting before. These are

1. 2012 Olympic Park

2. Chiswick House and Gardens

3. Mile End Park

4. The Serpentine @ Hyde Park

5. Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre

I hope to review my visits throughout this year.

Garden Time

I am meant to be turning over a new leaf and spending more time in being mode and less time in doing mode, however, I do have quite a bit on my to do list this year which includes venturing into ecotherapy. I am lucky to live in London and have a garden and have decided one of the things I am going to do this year is spend more time in my garden both working and relaxing. Garden projects I have been working on so far have been

1. The front garden rose boarder

2. Solar lighting

 

3. Planters and succulents

4. More grasses

   

5. More garden furnishings

I'm not planning to do too much in the garden as I find mindful meditation (the art of non-doing) is better for my wellbeing, but a bit of garden time should be therapeutic too.

How green was my houseplant

   

Among my recent readings on ecotherapy were some eye opening articles on houseplants (Have they become friend and family substitutes? Why are they so popular with millennials? Are they bad for the environment?). 

My houseplants were all given to me by my friends and family. They were three and are now ten; 2 aloe vera, 3 spider plants, 5 jade-money plants. They do make me feel happier, as do my silk flowers, dried flowers and pot pourri. 

   

In January and February 2020 I had a major overhaul of all these 'natural elements' in my house. It was a bit of work but I have been enjoying the results and integrating my efforts into my mindful meditation practice.

Reverse Bucket List

After completing my mini bucket list (5B450) in 2017 I have had a little more to do with bucket lists. My new bucket list is called 5450+ which is more of a being list than a doing list. After a brief exploration of the blogosphere I discovered that reverse bucket lists could be a good exercise in reflection and gratitude. The sixteen items on my reverse bucket list are a reflection of my life over the past fifty odd years. I think the 1990s was a big ‘to do’ list for me: getting a job, getting a career, getting a house, writing songs, poetry, short stories, getting a husband, getting a baby. Since that time I have become more reflective. The last item on my list, ‘2 years of mindful discoveries’, offers the hope that the 2020s will be more a time for ‘being’ and less about ‘doing’.

Lorna’s Reverse Bucket List - A Meaningful Life?

1.      Thirty Years a Librarian (February 1990 –February 2020 plus)-after gaining my library degree-BA(hons)-in 1989

2.      Five decades of travelling (1970s-2020s)– (50 places in England and 33 other countries)

3.      A year of London – visiting 52+ interesting London places

4.      Found and lost love

5.      Learnt to drive

6.      Bought a house (with Richard)

7.      Twenty years since SubVerse (2020) – (active period was 2000-2005)

8.      Raised Amy to the age of 20+ (got her through school and helped her with qualifications) (2020)

9.      Twelve years a Piano Teacher (2008-2019)– helping pupils get fifteen certificates in ten years

10.  Ten years at church (2008-2018)- including ten months of Sunday School teaching from 2010 to 2011

11.  Ten years of Arts and Crafts (2010-2020)– redecorating the house, appreciating art and culture, developing craftwork

12.  Ten years in concert (2010-2020) – Playing classical piano pieces in various public places

13.  Two diplomas in the 2010s – Level 3 in Business Administration and dipABRSM in Piano Teaching

14.  Ran a craft stall in the Twenty-Teens (2013-2019)

15.  Ten years a blogger (2013-2023) – Highlighting my creative and therapeutic endeavours

16. Two years of Mindful Discoveries (2018-2020)

The photos are from the 'Bucket List Coffee' shop in Eastcote.

 

First book of the year

This is the first book I have read in the new year (and the new decade), below is a review of it.

Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I really loved watching the film of this book on Netflix, so I was really looking forward to reading the book itself. Luckily the book did not disappoint, although I found it strangely lighter in many places than the movie. The first part is thirty six chapters on enjoying food in Italy, as well as some story background and an introduction to Liz, I found it quite delicious. The middle section, Pray, is set in an ashram in India and features a lot of reflection on meditation. The final, Indonesian section, Love, seemed less well-defined as the eat and pray sections, it was about finding balance. I found the whole book was a very enlightening read.

I have changed my reading plan slightly for the year, while also working on a three year plan, covering the years 2019 to 2021. The three books below are helping with my mindful home and slower living projects.

 Below are four poetry books I hope will help guide me through the months ahead.

Ten Years of Arts and Crafts

I don't consider myself good on home decor, but after discovering 'Kirsty's Homemade Home' in 2009 I thought I would make more of an effort to bring inspiring art and craft into my house. After Christmas 2009 I had a strong feeling that I needed to improve the overall ambience of my home. I bought picture books, calendars with pictures I could frame, prints, attractive frames, cushion covers and I specifically ventured into charity shops to buy knick-knacks. I'm not very materialistic but the things I bought I now find useful for the mindful meditation of homely things.

Twiddle muffs for dementia patients

My hospital has been advertising for twiddle muffs and knitting for twiddle muffs for ages. I was going to attempt to make a twiddle muff myself, but I have been feeling too bogged down with life, so, instead, I decided to donate some spare knitting I did earlier in the decade, related to my dolls. I have been having a mega house clear out at the end of 2018, which has been both traumatic and therapeutic at the same time. Below are the fragments of knitting I am donating to the project.

Goodbye to All That (5B450)

2017 has ended up being quite a goal orientated year, mostly because of my idea for a 5B450 project which I had at the beginning of the year. The idea was to do five achievable things that I'd always wanted to do, but never got around to doing, before I reached my 50th birthday in November. These are the five things I achieved.

1. See a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre
One of our favourite London walks is between the Royal Festival Hall and Southwark Cathedral. Near the end of it is the Globe Theatre. Every time we passed it I thought 'we must go and see a play there'. We saw 'Romeo and Juliet' in May 2017.

2. Attend a School of Life event
I have been a fan of the School of Life since it was set up in the late noughties. The 'How to be serene' seminar I attended in June fitted in with my newly developed Stoical philosophy of life.

3. Get the house redecorated
Some of the house hadn't seen a lick of paint since we moved in over twenty years ago. I'd been dreaming of a pale orange landing (mango melody shade 3) for over ten years. Now I see it every time I exit my bedroom.

4. Join a book club
Always having my young daughter around meant not joining groups where I could socialise in the evenings. I finally joined an evening book club in early October 2017.

5. Visit New York City
The biggest of my 5B450s was my visit to New York City in late October 2017. I'd been wanting to go there since I was about 15. It felt like a dream when I rode in a yellow taxi from JFK to my hotel and sat at my hotel window looking out at Upper West Side Manhattan. I now have my photos and diary to look back on and I'm really pleased with myself for making that trip.

As well as these five things, I wanted 2017 to be memorable in other ways too. I made sure I had something special to do each month; whether it was a Bowie book signing in Kensington, a London walk, visiting Brighton and the Lake District, doing a craft fair or just enjoying a celebratory meal. I also had a few virtual goals too, like producing over 50 blog posts, making more use of Wattpad and writing more book reviews. I don't know what 2018 will bring, whether I'll attempt some goal free living, more in depth work or just help other people more. In the words of someone suffering from severe short term memory loss, I think I'll do 'whatever is beneficial'.

The philosophy of redecorating (5B450)

I have been reading a lot of philosophical books lately and these have helped me to bite the bullet and get the painters in. Below are seven major philosophical points I considered before getting the house redecorated.

1. I accepted the things I couldn't change and got on and changed the things I could more easily change. The kitchen is old but I quite like it, it was the peeling paint I couldn't' stand. The kitchen looks great now, still old but nicely, freshly painted.

2. The nice new painted look won't last, it will grow old, fade, get knocked. Yes, but it will look nicer longer. Just because life isn't perfect, it's no excuse for not doing good stuff; 'Feel the disappointment and do it anyway,' if it's a good thing, it's worth doing, just for the sake of doing it.

3. Somethings don't need changing. The bedrooms, bathroom and downstairs loo didn't need redecorating so I left them out. I just concentrated on what needed doing.

4. I had to accept my limitations. some of the rooms hadn't been painted in twenty possibly thirty years. I am obviously not a person who will paint them herself. I did attempt to redecorate the kitchen ten years ago (hence the peeling paint). We could afford to redecorate. We got other people in to paint the house. It got done.

5. I have limitations in moving stuff around. We have been in the house for over twenty years. We have a lot of stuff, but not too much, it all needed to be moved to get the house painted. In some physical aspects, I am quite a slow, weak person, I always have to work around this fact. It took me two days to move things out of the house and into the garage, but I did it.

6. We all had to be very patient and put up with a lot of disruption when the house was being redecorated. To keep the house running smoothly amongst all the upheaval took some effort.

7. I had to accept that my co-habit-tees would be less patient and useful than even I am, when all this was going on, I'm the one who really wanted it done. We were all disorientated, I did most of the moving stuff myself and made the decisions about the painters and the colours. I had to keep it all together.

It took ten days to get the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the hall, the landing and the porch repainted. I'm really glad I did, it was one of my 5B450 goals. I'm surprised I had to be so philosophical about it, but maybe it's not surprising at all.