Yesterday I finished probably the last major piece of work in my working life. It was a tender for succession funding for a service we provide. Tenders are tricky things: the density of information, crossing between "tell us about policies you have never heard of and don't have" and "tell us about your approach to partnership working in a thousand words which is probably about five hundred too many." That moment as you are hovering over the submit button: is it all there, have you checked everything? And then it is done and you are released back into your world, propelled like a seed from a bursting pod.
A random collection of random thoughts from the aftermath.
Friday 26th September 2025
Hard to countenance that it's taken the best part of forty years to find the correct ink cartridges for my pen. I had and used the converter but, having made the decision to use a pen - we must have discussed it, the gift-giver and I - how come I never went into a proper stationer's in all that time and found the correct ones? Was I not ready to become a person who expresses themselves?
I watched a Struthless video yesterday as part of my wind down from the intensity of writing a tender. He talked about creativity and that expression is the opposite of depression. There was also a novel idea, I think in the comments, of having emergency first aid boxes, including one for creativity (also as a counter to doom-scrolling).
I like Struthless, his obvious and entertaining talent, his sweet self-effacement and honesty, and his thoughtful messages of hope in a troubled world. You are what you eat: eat joy, eat kindness, eat creativity. That is the resistance. Build your own reality, which is about how people can be trusted - at least those that do not want to be in ...
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... power. Harness your creativity, joy and EXPRESSION to offer an alternative.
A Jimmy Cliff [song] was scrabbling at the end of my consciousness yesterday. I could remember a few of the musical phrases - bluesy, slow, something about coming home, sadness - but I couldn't remember the singer, the song or the words. Eventually, excavating, I found it was Many Rivers to Cross and not, I can't get home, but, I can't "find my way over." These phrases haunted me:
And this loneliness won't leave me alone It's such a drag to be on your own My woman left me and she didn't say why Well I guess, I have to try.
It's the music that plays, even when the words are missing. The soulful gospel yearning. That line - my woman left me and she didn't say why - has jumped out at me before. Was I singing this? I can't remember. But I did come down the stairs one morning spontaneously singing Save the Last Dance for Me, lately of Michael Buble and previously, the Drifters with Ben E King on vocals. Imagine.
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I was looking for John Rogers, and his latest video arrived in John's Studio Notebook, full of infectious enthusiasm, and ideas about slow writing: hand written. And the joy of pens, paper, pencils, stationery, ink. The difference in being deliberate, intentional, doing better, not doing more.
John feels like a contemporary, his walks of London but especially, his video about stand-up comedy and mentioning people I knew, place[s] I knew. I almost wanted to shake my head to clear it: were you there, John, did we speak, laugh together, share ideas? Probably not but it was a bizarre sensation.
Yesterday, bizarrely, ChatGPT mentioned,
Would you like me to find suppliers in [your town]? [your town]? Where did that come from? You mentioned it, I took the cue from you. I did not, this was the first mention (...). Oh, that must be from the context of the conversation, or a glitch in my processing. [Your Town] is a large town in the UK. So are Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and London, but you're not mentioning any of those. Are you lying? No, I take nothing about you.
...
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... and later, You must be able to trust me. Well, of all the gaslighting conversations.
Ian McKellan has started turning up in my YouTube feed as an exponent of Shakespearean acting and speaking blank verse as if it were everyday language. Why stage/theatre acting is different to film acting. It's part of my research into Christopher Marlowe and Deptford Strand for @mortgagedland, immersing myself in that time and place, Elizabethan London. Do I think that Kit Marlowe will speak to me.
Maybe, are we already summoning, the digital algorithm is responding to our own electrical impulses sent out into the universe? Picked up finally in a form we can see on our social media, google search, platforms.
So Jimmy Cliff serenading me as I cross the rivers from tenders and the state into psychogeography, Kit Marlowe and art practice, John Rogers a delightful companion and Struthless lighting the way and acknowledging the doubts and fears and still turning up.
And finally, you don't need to be productive.
References Many Rivers to Cross - Jimmy Cliff A chaotic guide to making stuff instead of doomscrolling - Struthless Embracing Slowness and the Art of Slow Living - John Rogers Speaking Blank Verse, Macbeth - Ian McKellan Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Macbeth - Ian McKellan Stage and film acting - Ian McKellan