A thing I am working on…
Author: The Magpie at Midnight
Train delays and Sunny Worthing
My train has been cancelled and my evening is running miserably late. Here are some lovely sunny photos of my visit to Worthing 2 weeks ago to cheer anyone else standing and waiting in a cold train station right now.
I love these Victorian weather shelters on the beach. They had a bit of style.
Look, sunshine, the sea, blue sky. Imagine the feel of these locely tjings. Good luck, fellow travellers.
It may feel like winter now, but spring is coming
I was going to post this kind of thing over the weekend but am pretty tired right now and felt that, given recent events, taking a bit more time to think about things was appropriate. It’s autumn in the UK. I really love autumn and I really love spring in the UK. I feel at my most creative in these seasons that bring about profound changes in our environment.
At the weekend I was with family in the Cotswolds and had some time to get out with the boyfriend into the woods. I really love being in the woods, tramping about in fallen leaves and taking in big lungfulls of air freshly oxygenated by the busy trees. Kissing over kissing gates. It’s relatively well established now that spending time in green spaces is good for us. It can lower blood pressure and improve our sense of wellbeing.
There is a deep wisdom to be found in the woods. You can see this in the vibrant last flare of autumn, the bedding down of leaf mulch and slow winter decay. The rotting leaves release nutrients back into the soil, preparing the ground for the furious blooming of spring to follow. You can also see it in the busy, vibrant and glorious displays if diversity. In this, I believe nature shows us the way.
I’ve been thinking about these cycles of decay and of renewal. It may feel at the moment for many that we are sinking into a state of spirutal, moral and intellectual decay. This is a moment we should pay attention to. It’s time to bed down and prepare the ground for the spring that may come. It’s a time to decide what kind of ideas, what kind of people and movements, what kind of blooms, in all their splendid diversity, we will nature into growth in the coming spring. It’s time to make plans about how we can give those blooms our fullest support. It may feel very much like winter now, but spring is coming.
Fireworks and autumn leaves
I’ve been enjoying autumn. Yesterday I took a drive with my partner and his mum through Kent and Sussex. It’s easy when you live in a busy city like London just how beautiful this funny little country is. It didn’t take long for us to be driving through rugged wooded countryside and small rural towns full of pretty cottages. Autumn is splendid this year. The countryside is rich in red and gold, copper and bronze. This flare up will not last long. This season, perhapse a little more than others, feels like one of nature’s ways of prodding us into mindfulness. See this moment, stare into the richness of the scene. Smell the bonfire scent on the air. For all this soon will have passed.
Last night I went to the first firework s display I’ve been to for years. My sister used to live abroad and I used to find myself out of the country around this time of year visiting her. There wasn’t a bonfire. We were by the sea and the fireworks were launched off the end of the peer, soaring into the inky dark sky and exploding, their sparkle and colour reflecting off the water. Turn away for a few moments and you would have missed it. It’s not often that we just stand and look at something beautiful, but last night the beach was full of faces turned up to the sky.
Business for bohemians by Tom Hodgkinson
One of my guilty pleasures over the years has been reading the books of Tom Hodgkinson. I read both How to be Idle, and How to be free while I was studying and working in a relatively competitive environment and found them to offer both light relief and an idea about a different way of living. I may have not quite got to that different way of living, but the idea persists for me, a number of years later.
I was pretty intrigued to know what he would do with a ‘how to’ book of business. The core theme of Hodgkinson’s body of work has concerned working out how to do not very much at all, and how to ensure that what you do do is enjoyable and mind enriching. Tax returns and VAT aren’t either of those things, so I imagined it would be a stretch to continue in the same light style.
Business for Bohemians is actually a pretty sensible, pretty amusing book about starting a creative business. The book is in part an instruction manual, with very sensible advise about writing a business plan and keeping accurate and up to date accounts. But in the main it is memoir of his own attempts to publish a magazine, run a coffee shop/book shop, organise cultural events and run online courses. His style is self deprecating and aside from the numerous name drops, funny. He is generously candid about all of the mistakes he made along the way. The message, I think, is something along the lines of ‘look at the mistakes I made so that you don’t have too’. Anyone looking for serious advice about accounting, tax and VAT should look for something far more specialist. As a guide to beginners thinking about what it is they are trying to do, and what they are trying not to do, it is I think very helpful.
Putting things down, picking things up, starting again
Over the last few weeks I’ve been making a slow return to working on two projects that I started last year. At the beginning of last year I took a course in documentary film making and I took two courses in play writing. I’ve been interested in the process of documentary filmmaking for quite a while. A lot of my formal training has been in research methods and in the social sciences, and have some frustrations with the way that academic work gets communicated (or doesn’t) to the wider world. At the time this seemed like a good thing to understand a bit better, and a good fit with my existing skill set. I took the play writing course because I was stuck with a novel I was working with and thought it would be helpful to look at it from a different approach. But then I got hooked and decided I had to write a play, obviously. And I did, sort of.
But there were problems. The film school that I enrolled with decided to change the dates of their course without really giving me much notice and I ended up trying to do both things at the same time, and have a full time job too. It worked for a while, but then I went through some crappy nonsense in my private life, and started a new job, and it didn’t really work anymore. Up until the beginning of September I’d not really worked on either project for 12 months and was not feeling great about that as I really wanted to finish something well enough to send it ‘somewhere’. I also have a film maker in my family, my dad, who kept gently reminding me that I should, ‘Work on my film’. And he’s right, I should be working on my film, because I got lucky with a really good story and could do something really interesting with it.
It took me a bit of time to work out what the blocks were on continuing with both projects, but I think I have a list now.
- Space – I was living with a friend of mine at the time and didn’t really have a huge amount of space. I’m kind of messy, and didn’t want to leave my mess all over his flat, so I ended up with a kind of squashed psychological space to work in.
- Teaching style – on the doc film course at least I felt a little as though I didn’t gel with the tutor. I think she’s great film maker, and loved talking to her about films. But she’s very much from the observational documentary style school. I wanted to work with other artistic things, like animation and set up pieces of film. I think I felt at the time that I wasn’t really able to make ‘my’ film so I did’t make a film at all.
- Time and Timing – the timing was bad, I was sad and exhausted. I was still getting used to living in London having moved from Cardiff, which is a much smaller, calmer city and one that I knew very well. I did’t have time to feed my creative self and that meant I couldn’t really put the work in that was needed.
- The fraud police – would anything I produced actually be as good as I thought they could be?
Above are some images I finished off yesterday that will part of an animation for the documentary. I’ve been writing new scenes for the play. So what’s happened? What has changed? I can think of two things that have really worked in ‘unblocking’. The first is that I cut out a load of things that I was doing, including socialising with some people that kind of drained me a bit, and carved out that time for doing creative stuff. Small, achievable projects first, at which step by step led me back to the ‘big’ ones. I’ve also come to realise that part of my creative process involves giving projects long ‘down’ periods as this enables me to come back to them with a new perspective. So not working on either project for a year doesn’t feel un-natural with hindsight.
Second, and I think this is the big one. I moved in with the boyfriend. We got a place together that gives me more space, and that helps. But I think the real key here is him. He’s constantly and consistently supportive, and frequently cooks the dinner so I can get on with something else. He’s such a tidy organised person, and yet he tolerates my creative mess everywhere, and he does it all with humour. He’s always happy to listen to my ideas, and talk to me about that, while never once said ‘you should do this’. I think that’s enabled me to regain some creative confidence. I had been told in the past that picking the right partner was really important, and I had been a bit dismissive of that, because at the time I was single and thought I could do it all myself. Turns out that advice was pretty good advice, after all.
Midweek making
So this is what I get up to midweek, while watching old episodes of Startrek. Exciting times….
Alyssa Monks: Beauty in imperfections
I’ve just watched this TED talk by the painter Alyssa Monks about her art and how it changed after a the loss of her mother. Definitely worth a watch.
Crowdfunding, peer to peer investing, and passive income
When I started this blog a few months ago one of the things I wanted to experiment with was generating income from sources other than my job. The aim is to reduce my hours a bit and have more time for artsy things. Actually I’ve not really got to the point of generating any extra income but I’ve pulled the trigger on the reducing my hours and will be doing so next year anyway now. That’s quite an incentive to try to get some of these internet income strategies to work a bit better.
Early on in this experiment I came across the phrase ‘passive income’, which doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin (you can read my carping on about this here). One of the ways you can generate passive income is to invest in things that pay interest or a dividend. This is actually something I’ve been having a go at for the last 3 years now, with tiny (but increasing) amounts of success.
I’ve been particularly interested in investing through peer to peer, or crowdsourcing platforms for investment, and have active investments now in three different platforms, Abundance (peer-to-peer lending for investing in renewable energy), Zopa (peer to peer lending) and Property Partner (crowd funded property investments). I like the idea of crowd funding and peer to peer as they feel a bit more democratic, and a bit more ethical (I know that none of my money here is being invested in fossil fuels or weapons for example), which has led my choices here.
From an ethical perspective I like investing in Abundance the most (this was also the first platform I ever did any kind of investing through, and made the process very easy without pretending to be risk free). This is a platform where companies seeking to develop and install renewable energy systems (wind, solar, biomass) can raise funds through the contributions of multiple investors in the form of debentures (long term loans). So many individuals invest little bits of money to make up they whole value of the loan. These are long term loans (up to 20 years) that are paid back twice a year in instalments with a good rate of interest (ranges between 5 and 7% on the projects I’ve seen). I really like the platform, and find it easy to use. You can also start with tiny amounts of money, and build up a little portfolio of projects over time, which is great fun. The issue I have had with abundance recently is that there haven’t been many projects to invest in, possibly in part because of the UK Government’s rather backward and disappointing approach to renewable energy in recent years.
I also lend some money through the peer to peer lending site Zopa. I only have a small amount of money in here so far but the return is relatively good (hovering at 4%). The idea here is you invest however much money you want to and Zopa slice that amount up into £10 chunks and lend it out to different people who are seeking loans. Again the loans get paid back to you over a period of years and you earn interest on them in the process. I find the platform easy to use, and there are a range of products available. It won’t make you rich but the rate of return is better than the majority of savings accounts at the moment. The risk with both Zopa and Abundance is that the people taking out the loans could default on them, meaning that there is a small risk that you can lose your money here. Both companies have strategies to minimise this and it is worth reading about these before you take the plunge.
Finally, I’ve actually really enjoyed investing in residential rental property through the crowd funding site Property Partner the most. Unlike the majority of routes into investing in property, through this site you can start with comparatively tiny amounts of money. The minimum investment amount is £50, and you can make regular contributions over time to build up a little portfolio. When you invest in property through the site you effectively buy shares in different rental properties (all residential properties). I really like that the site makes investing property accessible to people who are normally completely priced out of owning property.
There are 2 ways in which you can earn money back on your investment here. You can buy a few bricks in a property, hold onto if for a few years and hope the price of your shares go up, which given our current wobbly post-Brexit market is absolutely not guaranteed, indeed the value of your shares could go down. The second way, which I am more interested in, is to buy a few bricks in various properties over time, each of which generates a few pence or a few pounds (depending on the amount that you invest) in rental income each month. Even if you don’t have much to invest, if you can manage to invest a little every month, over time it could be possible to start generating a rental income that adds up to more than a few pence. There is always the risk that your properties can remain empty so will not earn rental income, although I’ve not had this problem so far. I’ve done my best here to invest small amounts of money in multiple properties to minimise the impact of empty flats.
At the moment both Property Partner and Zopa have a ‘refer a friend’ deal going on. If you use the links in this article to open an account and invest (or take out a loan too with Zopa) we’ll both get a £50 bonus, which is nice. The snag is that both sites require a minimum investment, £1000 for Property Partner and £2000 for Zopa, to earn the bonus. This feels like quite a lot to me, and is certainly more than where I started for any of these platforms. However I’ve not been disappointed by any of them so far, and have earned more in the way of dividends and interest than I have on other traditional savings accounts.
You are here by Jenny Lawson
So being ill can have an up side sometimes. I’ve been unwell with some awful head cold [wo]man flu and haven’t been able to do much work. I’ve been mostly sleeping, drinking honey and lemon, and watching telly, with a little web surfing on the side. The web surfing turned out to be a little too exciting for my ill brain and I’ve had to wait a few days before I was able to form a coherent thought about this.
I came across Jenny Lawson’s memoir Furiously Happy, at least a year ago through one of those Amazon ‘and you may also like’ recommendations. I loved it, having been bought up in the country with my own bunch of eccentrics, and from there I went on to read Let’s pretend this never happened, which I also loved. These books are very funny, and great books for anyone who has ever wanted to hide under a table at a public event (or regularly finds themselves taking a ‘time out’ in the office loo). Earlier in the week I wasn’t very well and couldn’t do much more than sit in bed and surf the internet. I spent some of that time diving into the Bloggess website and it was the first time I was able to have a really good read about her colouring book You are Here.
I really think this post is worth looking at for anyone who uses arty creative things as part of their efforts to manage mental health. Jenny Lawson writes vividly about her own arts practice (I have no idea if she would call it that, but her drawings are works of art) continually using drawing and doodling as a way of channeling negative or distressing thoughts or emotions. She is releasing a colouring book based on these drawings, alongside some short stories that work with the drawings, and what a beautiful thing it is (at least it looks that way from the pictures – the physical book won’t be available for a few months). Just go and look at the sweeping curves and swirling lines of some of these drawings. I really love how these drawings are intricate, and delicate, effective in evoking fairytale and myth. Somehow exciting and soothing to look at at the same time. I’ve ordered my copy, and I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying getting creative with this set of drawings. Or just owning them. Anyway, go and look. Now.
The Magpie at Midnight 