13. This is my shit blog about the Somewhere / Anywhere project

I wrote the following on 7 June 2022. I’m including it because it feels representative of the experience, and that might be helpful to other makers. I’ve added notes and a reflection at the end.

This is my shit blog about the Somewhere / Anywhere project

I’ve been struggling to write about the project.

Maybe because the project doesn’t really exist. 

Today I released myself from watching hours of an old white Australian man talk about permaculture (he did create it1) I often spend too much time on research. It can be a safe space for me to hang out.

I definitely want to carry on making this project and working towards it and I really want to write some stuff. About what I think about making. 

I just find it difficult to get started and have faith in what I’m doing / thinking. That’s ok – I just need to dive in a bit. And trust myself to find a way through it.

I think I need to set a daily word count – 300 words a day about the project. For the next week. Then I can start to get some real movement on that side of the work2. 

On Thursday I’ll curate a list of subjects.

Then I’ll just start writing and then I’ll plan some time to edit next week. And make a new plan from there.

Ok so I’m at 200 ish words right about now.

I want to work on this project because I want to forge a tiny pathway for myself through the work I do. 

I want to give myself the chance to make in new ways.

I want to be creative.

I want the chance to fail and reflect.

I wonder if I want to work in community?

I will include a reading list and visited list and try to write a mini-reflection on each book / article or trip.

I’ll re-connect with all the cool people I wanted to connect with and take it from there. Emails to people on the train tomorrow maybe?

And I’ll look to fall back in love with the project. Reset my intentions and refocus.

Reflection on this blog

As I was trying to pull all of my writing together I found this angrily titled document in the folder. Well, in one of the folders. Being in pain can really mess with your document filing.

Initially I just moved it into the right folder and thought it would never see the light of day, even though it felt very true to my experience of the DYCP. Then I saw She Goat  A very serious performance lecture - about their DYCP experience. They shared lots of the things that didn't go as planned and it felt so good to sit in the audience and witness. That, as well as all the brilliant stuff they shared on Instagram in quirky and cool ways, there had been some crap times too. 

It also fits with the permaculture framework of feedback and care. I wasn’t taking care of myself particularly well in relation to the work, in fact I was being a hyper critical manager, squashing any ideas. So that’s partly why I'm sharing this, in the hope that it might enable someone else feeling stuck to feel less alone in that experience.

I also recognise that in writing I was trying to get in motion. That had I been less critical I might have kept writing, that I knew the solution to the predicament was to make. This is a really useful reminder to myself as I can let the desire to get it right stifle any sort of doing.

Notes

1 He also sort of didn’t. And just writing this encouraged me to read around decolonising permaculture. Which was really interesting, the links are in the bibliography.

2 Spoiler. I didn’t. I did start writing more though. And when I came to the writing it flowed. I had imagined weekly missives from my delicious creative process. In the end I wrote lots of fragments and then wrote in quite an intensive period near the end of the DYCP.