As you read this, I will be dashing for a train with my youngest. We are off to the big smoke and thence to Wembley to go to the Eras Tour (Taylor Swift, in case you have been living under a rock for the last year). Somehow, I had not looked it all up and planned it properly because we discovered last night that we won’t actually be able to get to Paddington in time for the last train. I was sure that we would, but everything I looked up last night suggested that we won’t get out of the arena until 10.15 pm, which is the exact time of the last train. I thought we’d get out at 7.40 which would give us 2.5 hours to get to Paddington.
So, instead, I have booked another hotel near Paddington (having had to stay in one on Wednesday night due to storms in Nantes meaning I missed my booked Eurostar and ended up being put on the last one of the day) for Sunday night. And we will be getting up super early and getting the train back from whence (not sure how I have managed to use ‘thence’ and ‘whence’ in one newsletter already – what year is it, even?) she will be going straight to school. I did this with my eldest and her best friend a five years ago (BTS that time, not Taylor Swift) and we ended up getting about three hours sleep in total having missed the last tube out of Wembley and had to get a night bus to Paddington. Really, really, really hoping that doesn’t happen this time. It looks like there are tubes running for a quite a while after we get out, so should be OK.
So, I won’t be having a chilled Sunday. But I will be having a fun and exciting Sunday and hanging out with one of my favourite people, too. And getting a veritable shower of music therapy. I always, always, always forget that loud music is one of my best mood boosts ever!
And talking of mood boosts and loud music and remembering what helps you push away anxiety/stress/sadness… I had a week off work. On holiday. (Albeit in not brilliant weather – I have instead come back to some lovely weather.) With no responsibilities (well, mostly – there was a bit of emotional labour type stuff that followed me across the channel instead of staying in the Cotswolds). And yet…
I got back on Thursday afternoon and had a plethora of my old anxiety symptoms show up and hit me over the head. And they came back again on Friday. Surely I was supposed to come back all untensed and relaxed. My initial thought was that (similarly to my realisation back when I had my original stress and anxiety symptoms – read about them here if you haven’t already) it was all about the work that I was stepping back into. I’ve mentioned, I think, that different types of work come with different effects on my mental health. Some work (often of a repetitive and mind-light nature) can actually be quite meditative and calming; at the other end of the spectrum the managing kinds of work, or even non-managing but on an ‘agile’ workflow, can provide super massive doses of cortisol that my body really doesn’t like.
And there may well have been an element of that contributing. But it was still there when I finished for the day and was having a pleasant time cooking from scratch. (By the way, it’s almost time for the launch of The Illustrated Plant Kitchen – the intro post will be going out on Sunday 30 June and then it’s going to be unpaywalled for July so you can get a taste – I will try very hard not to make that joke more than five times a month – before deciding whether to subscribe and whether to take the paid subscription. I’m really excited about this new newsletter and have been getting lots of things ready in the background for it. Talking about and drawing plant-based food is just going to be soooooo much fun!) And it was still there a bit when I was sat playing Trivial Pursuits with (most of) the family. And, while it seemed to have disappeared once I hit my desk on Friday morning, it came back again Friday afternoon and evening.
And I’m honestly wondering about whether I should have taken some work with me, or at least taken the laptop so that I could write and do things like finish the update to my website (I’m about half-way through prepping a new landing page and a new way of organising my portfolio, which I’ve been working on since… well almost this time last year). I could have drafted or even written and scheduled a bunch of newsletters… Because it honestly felt like I didn’t do any more exploring or culture-soaking-up or sea paddling than I would if I had brought work with me. I did read a fair bit, but not masses. I only drew a really little bit.
And I did not come back feeling like a brand new human being. Which is what’s supposed to happen after a proper holiday, right?
Chris and I talked about it a bit and think, firstly, that the storm delays and not knowing whether I’d make it back until late would have almost certainly flooded my body with cortisol. I felt really calm about the whole thing, because I found out fairly quickly that there was a responsibility on Eurostar to put me on the next train and to even put me up in a hotel if it ended up too late for that, so I knew I would be OK and would get home eventually. But there’s a good chance that I felt calm because of the cortisol and adrenaline rushing round my body.
We also talked about the fact that going away and doing nothing and feeling like you missed something is actually part of the usefulness of having a proper holiday. Now I know that I would like a laptop with me, in order to have more creative possibilities.
So… I’m not entirely against going away and not taking work with me. And I’m actually kind of done with going away for a bit (three times in the space of three months is a bit much, even for me – and that’s actually not counting a trip to see my sister and a one-night and one-day trip to the circus with her, plus an extra day and night away tomorrow). I think I’m ready for a few months of enjoying (and putting some actual effort into improving) our home and going for local walks and meeting up with friends and creating in my own comfort space. Something Lidija said in a recent post gave me some understanding there:
I need to have my station ready to go if I’m ever to draw anything.
While I don’t need a particular station set up and have built a lot of portability into my process, I definitely feel more comfortable and creative in my home environment.
So, I shall be looking forward, after today’s crazy fun and loud Sunday, to having lots of chilled Sundays to come for a little while (and I’ll be interested to see when my feet start itching again).
AI generated images
By the way, I will definitely be writing more about AI images in relation to writing and Substack writers (or just AI ‘art’ in general). When I posted this note earlier in the month, it was down to a momentary feeling of sadness at the opportunities missed to showcase human-created art. And, while I still feel that sadness, it is now with a lot more understanding about why people might use that Generate button. But I need to be in the right headspace to dig into it properly, and I’m not there right now.
What I’ve been reading
I finished Clare Mackintosh’s A Game of Lies while away and loved it. I had forgotten how much, and why, I used to love crime series. And it’s because of the whole ability to build up a connection with characters, combined with the fun of a mystery. DC Ffion Morgan is a great character, but there are also quite a few others in the books who I’ve grown very fond of already. And these are set in Wales, which is a very special place for me (though North Wales, where I’ve actually never been – really must rectify that soon), because my father was Welsh and my sister lives in Wales now and it’s just a great big cwtch of a country.
And now I’m reading Diane Evans’s A House for Alice, which I’m loving as much as I loved Ordinary People and am now also realising I haven’t read her other books, so should probably see if I can get them from the library (my attempts to not buy books this year and use the library and the massive whole-house library we have here has fallen by the wayside, often in the bookshop at St Pancras station, but I am determined to get back to using the library a lot more). Again, it’s very character driven, but she’s also really good at painting pictures with words – emotional and physical pictures; I literally get illustrations or cinema stills flicking through my head while reading.
What are you reading at the moment? I love to hear about new books!
Sounds like quite the Sunday for you! 😅
I've been struggling with the AI image situation for close to two years now. As a lover and supporter of art, but not an graphic artist/illustrator myself, I find myself producing images as a creative curator. I don't feel the images are the art, nor that I have magically created the images through expert prompting and the like. But I do find uses for those images to complement my other work. Stories, narratives, wordplay. I give the images titles and themes at the very least when I use them, and I like to make art around the images, rather than see the images as art itself.
Reference images have been useful. Sketching something and using that as a base to guide the AI, so the focus is on something I've made. Pushing me out of my comfort zone of not having being one to draw much in the past (other than comics for friends many years ago!).
I agree with you about working with illustrators. One thing I've been considering is to reach out and ask if I can use a few of an artist's themed works to help shape an article. My guess is that some would love that, and others would think only I'm set to benefit from such a thing. Either way, I'd much rather do that than use a random Unsplash photo that vaguely fits what I'm writing about. And, one day, hopefully I could license or commission creatives. That would be incredible!
With the public having been handed these algorithmic tools with no real context or preparation, and with legal and ethical complications to boot, it's no surprise that opinions and expectations are so mixed. For now, I'm trying to find my way through all this, with the knowledge there's unlikely a true way "through" at all, since I'm being pulled in all directions at once.
May your next few Sundays be a far less raucous affair, even if this Sunday has been exciting and musical and something to remember. 😌
You brought up some very interesting questions. One thing I have been mulling over recently is how the whole have-stressful-life-and-recover-with-short-holidays thing might be kind of flawed. Because as you say lots of work stress and feeling of responsibility tends to come with us… then you’re working on your holiday which makes it not a holiday or you’re coming back to this looming pile of tasks that gives you anxiety. Because every task is endless now, and self-expanding somehow.
I think we need more manual work honestly. Like a simplification of sorts. Yesterday I was cleaning a corner of the house and found a massive tangle of rope left from one of my failed upholstery efforts and I sat slowly untangling that rope and then winding it into a neat ball and I could feel the wellness seep into me through my fingers. Before every task had meaning, and an end. You did things in their time. I don’t think there was anything that compares with, say, a perpetually filling in-box.