Kind: Articles

The following quote from this article caught my attention.

My disorder … was the part of me who always knew I was worth protecting.

This is a perspective on mental illness that has never really occurred to me. Yes, I understand that it can be a protective reaction gone awry. But the idea that it’s fuelled by a sense of self-worth, albeit one buried deep in the subconscious, is something I’ve not considered before.

For me, an absence of self-worth goes hand-in-hand with anxiety and depression, fuelled by a desire to be ‘normal’ – whatever that is! So to see a mental disorder as coming from an inherent sense of self-worth, however small and hidden that is, totally flips my usual perspective on its head. Changing my relationship to my anxiety is a strategy that helps, and this view could definitely help with taking a more kindly approach.

One way or another, I’m regularly passing through or am otherwise in the vicinity of the Somerset Levels. As a result, it’s difficult not to be aware of peat extraction.

The National Trust are taking mushrooms off the menu due to the use of peat in the production process. Got me thinking about whether peat is used in the production of mushrooms for Riverford Organics, where we get our veg box from. I’ve emailed them so we’ll see what response I get.

I love mushrooms. Makes me wonder about growing my own.

Keep looking out for our swallows. I saw Portland Bird Observatory reported their first on the 18th. The earliest ours have arrived is around the 28th but I’m ever hopeful they will turn up sooner.

Happy Vernal Equinox! The sun is up for more than 12 hrs now and it’s the start of astronomical spring. I don’t recall learning of the astronomical seasons before. There is a clear explanation on the Met Office website.

Even though we are not getting too many days with significant rainfall, there aren’t many at the moment where there is none at all. It’s rather telling that it only takes a few millimetres of rain and the quantity of surface water on both roads and fields is very visible.

I don’t recall ‘mud season’ carrying on for this long. We are over half way through March and I’ve got to admit it’s somewhat passing me by, in the sense that its differentiation from February is not that great. Spring is definitely happening and I appreciate the bird song, the blossom, the flushes of green in the hedges, but it would be nice to have it drier underfoot. Going outside still largely requires donning wet weather gear.

Reading: Finding the Mother Tree Suzanne Simard

I had been planning to write about my impressions and such from listening to Four Thousand Weeks but I’m going to buy the book so that I can go through and make notes. While there was no one thing that stood out as deeply profound¹, it was full of thought provoking points that made me want to go away and think about them. Listening to a book like this is fine, but it does make it tricky when you want to stop and note something down.

Additionally, I was in the middle of listening my way through Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything when my reserved copy of Four Thousand Weeks became available, so I’ve immediately picked up where I left off with the former. It’s a pretty dense book, in a good way, so all my attention is on that now, and I want to finish that before I return to Burkeman.

1. This originally said ‘there was nothing that stood out as deeply profound’. When I read it again later I realised that was not quite what I meant, so I’ve changed it.[↩]

Finished listening: Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman

Weeks, possibly months ago, a friend recommended I read Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. When it came out I made a mental note to read it at some point and then instantly forgot about it. My friend’s reminder, as it turned out, was a timely one. I reserved the audiobook version from the library and have got it just this week.

I do a lot of thinking about how I use my time, how I give it meaning. Having recently accrued my first half century here on this planet, it’s natural for that reflection to have taken on greater significance.

I haven’t yet finished listening to the book but I am enjoying the permission it gives, if that’s how to put it, to look at things differently. An affirmation of how my thinking has changed over the last few years and a path to keep following.

A combination of available daylight, work commitments and a lot to do at weekends means I haven’t had much time or mental space to give to photography since the start of the year. And I’m itching to get out and do some more.

At the beginning of this new project, I bought several rolls of Fomapan 200 with the intention of getting familiar with the characteristics of a particular film stock. What I have found, unsurprisingly, with the overall lower light levels at this time of year, is that ISO 200 is a bit slow. Fine during the middle part of the day but tricky at either end.

So I’m pushing the roll I have in the camera by one stop. I’ve never pushed or pulled film before so I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.