Went to Vilnius in Lithuania this month for a long weekend. I hadn’t heard of it before. Googling it beforehand, I found the marketing campaign they’d done recently. And when I got to the airport, the “where the hell is it” theme continued. Love it, would recommend (the approach to marketing, and the place).
So much to appreciate here
Feel each decision that you make
Look, nothing you can buy will ever make you more whole
Hold Your Own – Kate Tempest
This whole fucking thing thrives on you feeling incomplete
It is why you will search for happiness in whatever stupid thing you crave in a moment
And it is why you will never find it there
It is why you will sit there with the lover that you fought for
In the car you sweated years to buy
Wearing the ring you dreamed of all your life
And some part of you will still be unsure that this is what you really want
Essential work-lunch reading
Bloody hell, I actually wrote something.
Read where to get lunch when you work near Bermondsey Street (which I don’t, any more)
Breaking the monotony
I started following the Creative Independent on Instagram recently because their newsletter is a good useful resource when you’re in a creative rut, and their feed is full of really nice, helpful little quotes like this one.
The weird specifity of American signs
Spotted in Orlando, Florida, in May 2019.
Turn everything off
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
How Disconnection Boosts Your Creativity – Austin Kleon
Neck as long as an arm
I’m re-reading Heartburn by Nora Ephron because if any sentence can shove you out of writer’s block and into a room where you have no option to create something just as good as the thing you’ve just read, it’s her casual description of the “other woman” on page 2.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
What three words describe your writing process?
Er… panic, panic, hope.
And what is a crucial aspect of your creative process?
Mmm… panic. And hope.
And what would you say to anyone in a creative rut?
Um, read. And walk around. And call someone that you can complain about your rut to.
Well, yes.
From This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett