In praise of the audiobook

Posted on 02/04/2013 by inktuition

I cannot praise the audiobook enough.

Perhaps considered the plainer cousin of the ebook, or the slower version of the traditional book, the audiobook has never really been regarded with much appeal. By me. Until now.

I never really saw (or heard!) the point of an actor/actress drip-reading me the contents of a novel that I could devour by conventional reading methods in a fifth of the time. That was until I chose to take a seven-and-a-half-hour trip in my not-so-fast car from south of London to central Scotland.

I picked a gripping crime novel from the modest choice of audiobooks available from my small local library, believing that I would be so transfixed by the plot that the trip would simply fly by. Without actually being on a flight (my usual way of travelling north of the border).

And it did. The interminable monotony of the M6/M74 stretch of the trip transformed into a joyful distraction for a driver who didn’t even notice the cramp in her toes or the dragging in her lower back. Until later.

The audiobook had 10 CDs that stretched over 11 hours. I ended up listening to four CDs, with the fifth poised for play. I love to listen to local radio as I enter a new area/city, to help me feel oriented.

Being lost in a book is something that has made me feel alive and connected since I was first able to read. I am so captivated by the plot and the exquisite diction of the actress reading the book that I cannot wait to hear what happens next.

I love being engaged with a book so that I lose track of reality. What better time or place to do that than on a journey where a book can enrich, enlighten and enquicken!

Why a ‘misleading’ DVD makes me question my own writing integrity

Posted on 29/03/2013 by inktuition

I prefer the cover of a DVD or book to be explicit about what is implicit.

I am raging. I am SO angry. I can’t believe I bought a movie DVD that seemed to be the authentic article, when really it had misled me into believing it was the real deal.

I’m talking about a DVD I bought in good faith that had the title, image and look of the original movie. Except it wasn’t. The DVD wasn’t fake, as such, but I got caught out.

It wasn’t until a few minutes in to watching the DVD that I realised I couldn’t connect with the original I’d seen at the cinema. Had we arrived late? Had we just forgotten the opening? I started to become convinced that this strange movie must be a viewing extra we’d missed by turning up to the cinema just on time, trying not to spill your popcorn in the dark, and hoping to have abbreviated the time spent feeling cross with the endless ads and trailers.

I was so angry: If I had spotted that the DVD wasn’t the genuine article before I bought it, I would have been happy with my bargain. But the fact that the DVD marketing company happily played on the distracted, hurried, trusting shopper that I am makes me boil with rage.

And I felt betrayed: One of the comments on the buying site I looked at (when I realised my mistake) was: “Hit the back button and don’t buy this rubbish.” If I remember correctly, I bought the offending DVD from a store (which I believe has now gone into administration). If I was buying the thing online, I would have at least had the chance to review what other writers had said, and take the time to click ‘no’. I wish I’d had the chance.

But ultimately I felt toxic shame: Am I doing this with my own creative work? What if I were to mislead someone in thinking what I was writing was really something else? I come across contorted titles of books, albums and even blog posts that make me think I’m going to expect a particular thing, and yet the reality lets me down.

Is this a gap between expectation and reality? Should we seek ‘obscure’ titles for our work that are understood only by the ‘clever’ inner sanctum, or should we seek to produce a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of book/article/artwork?

Ultimately, I think my answer to this is don’t try to deceive anyone. Least of all yourself.

Soul symbolism: If there’s no such thing as an ‘accident’, what does my bumped car mean?

Posted on 22/03/2013 by inktuition

“Superstition and accident manifest the will of god.” C. G Jung

“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.” Aristotle

My car got bumped today. To be specific, the other driver thought he had more space than was actually there and, in his impatience to get through the too-tight space, his car gouged the side of mine. Or at least, that’s what it felt like as his metal got intimate with mine. It sounded as though he’d put a huge gash in the side.

He admitted liability and ran off to get his insurance documents. I stood there in wobbly shock, mind blank with what to do next in this situation, while other drivers in various states of hurry swore at me to move out of the way. Not a pleasant or uplifting experience for eight o’clock in the morning.

OK, so the physical damage was minor. But emotionally the bump has ricocheted through my day. I certainly didn’t feel I was handling this accident with grace or dignity. I’ve never had to claim on my car insurance before, and I’m loathe to start now. But more than that, I always interpret symbolically the events major and minor that happen in life, believing that Jung says about there being no such thing as an accident. If that’s the case, then what could the bump on my car mean, and what have I learned from it? Is there a deeper meaning? What’s my soul trying to communicate with me.

As I always do, I turn to my laptop for inspiration and insight. Through my keyboard I make sense of what’s happened and seek some kind of clarity and release. So, intuitively, here are the different levels of my thinking:

It’s just a bump. It’s all the other person’s fault. He should learn how to drive better. (Not a very empowering way to look at this).
Cars can signify goals and getting places. Is the bump a way of slowing me down and making me reassess the path I’m on? (Could be helpful to take some time to reflect and improve self-awareness and alter my road, if necessary).
The bump was on the right-hand side of the car. The right represents the masculine. Which part of me is the bump targeting? Which masculine energetic part of me is the bump making me slow down to consider? I’ll have to reflect more on this one, but it’s one to stick with.
What quality has manifested as a result of the bump? If I’m being honest, the whole debacle has been a lesson in patience. Perhaps the ‘accident’ will teach me to leave the house earlier and not rush down a crowded road full of other people in a rush, waiting to bump and shout at me. (Yes, patience isn’t a quality I have in abundance, so this insight has deep meaning for me).
I should be more mindful of everyone around me instead of always being head down to chase deadlines. Perhaps the bump was a reminder of how precious life is and how we can’t take things for granted mindlessly. The bump brought me straight back into the present and I’ve been driving oh-so-carefully all day. The car, as a representation of my conscious self in this world, has just been brought back into sharp focus. My attention is now revved.

Points 4 and 5 have the most resonance for me. Perhaps this tiny little knock on my car was a wake-up call, bringing me back to the moment. For other meanings, I’ll let them meander into my head next time I’m on a long drive (as ideas usually do when I’m nowhere near a pen to write them down).

I can already feel that the act of letting the ideas flow through my fingertips has restored me to some kind of dignity, and the bump no longer has its insidious grip on me. Perhaps it was no accident after all.

How can I celebrate Mother’s Day when my mum has dementia?

Posted on 10/03/2013 by inktuition

Mother’s Day hasn’t been the same to me for the last four years. Yes, I have a mother who’s alive. But no, she hasn’t known I exist for the past handful of Mothering Sundays.

My mother is 68 years old. She has Pick’s Disease, an aggressive form of dementia. The illness has had her in its vicious and unrelenting grip for at least 10 years.

Unlike other gradual forms of dementia that strike when the person is older, my mother’s strain came early and was swift and debilitating. Four years ago she knew me, she came on holiday with me, and she looked like a ‘normal’, healthy woman in her mid-60s. Yes, she was conscious that she was losing her memory. But she could still walk, talk, feed herself and go to the toilet and have a bath on her own. She could even dress herself and order herself a cup of tea – though money could be an issue, as she’d be inclined to forget where it was or just hand over far more cash than was required.

In the space of four years, she degenerated from a functioning human being to a bedridden soul who has the cognitive and physical abilities of a six-month-old baby. She can’t sit up. She can’t walk. She can’t tie her shoelaces. And she can’t count. She doesn’t know her own name. And she certainly doesn’t know who the strange person is sitting beside her bed. Just as a child learns new skills, she has gradually been stripped of hers. As I am stripped of hope.

It’s been about two and a half years since she last recognised me. The last time she was able to talk coherently, she was fighting with her carer who was trying to get her into the car. And when I said, hey, it’s your daughter, come with me, she replied with much authority: “I don’t have any children!” At that stage she was regressing into her very early years, the way people with dementia do. And I had to hold the hurt of rejection without being able to show it.

So, the poor soul into whose eyes I look for some kind of flicker of remembrance remained lost and on the tips of her own netherworld today. Just as I remain lost in that space with a mother in body, and yet without a mother in mind.

What gets me through Mother’s Day is knowing that, somehow, I still have a mother in spirit.

My bracing New Year’s Day in photos

Posted on 01/01/2013 by inktuition

What better way to celebrate the first day of 2013 than on a bracing visit to the Brighton seaside. With my only New Year’s Resolution being ‘gratitude’, I was blessed to tiptoe on the cobbled beach and take some stunning shots that capture the beauty of today’s extremely welcome (although unusual, given the recent torrential rain the UK has suffered) and benign sunshine.

The winter sunlight is putting the smile on our faces

The winter sunlight is putting a smile on our faces

The waves are frisky and a real treat to run in and out of (in spite of the cold!)

Continue reading →

The yin-yang of career: how to turn contradictory into complementary

Posted on 18/09/2012 by inktuition

If you’re in a career you’re meant to be single-minded. If you’re a therapist you’re meant to be caring. What’s the problem about combining them both?

I’ve struggled with years with people who compartmentalise their lives, splitting off their work persona from their private person. Split being the operative word. They are cut off from who they truly are.

Life has to be black or white. Grey is unpleasant, fuzzy and depressing. Extremes seem contradictory. Polarities seem impossible.

Except what if you get your meaning from opposing things, who is to challenge you otherwise. A boss of mind summed this up today as the business (writer/editor) side and the softer (therapist side) as providing the ideal yin/yang healthy combination of how people can and should operate.

Details aside, it’s nice to be open about one’s self, and be appreciated for it. And, instead of castigating the side of oneself that is perhaps out of step with the other, to perhaps for a second consider the beauty of the opposite. Instead of the ‘you’re wrong’ versus the ‘I’m right.” Think instead of the yin to the yang.

My soul’s lesson for today: what you do, you get more of (whether you want it or not)

Posted on 13/09/2012 by inktuition

On the train to work this morning, I wondered why the person who sat down opposite me needed to finish off eating his tube of mango ice cream (yes, at 8.30 in the morning!) with his fingers (yes, on a crowded train!) The sucking and slurping turned my stomach, and distracted me from a paper I was reading for my project.

Fast forward a couple of hours and I am sitting in a fairly quiet sandwich shop with my laptop, trying to work on said project, and a big bloke sits down beside me, chomps his tuna and cucumber wrap loudly, and licks his fingers with aplomb every time he takes a bite. I only wanted a quiet corner to work on some writing, not to be interrupted by other people’s noisy eating habits!

It’s so annoying to keep magnetising experiences in my life I’d rather do without. (pic: istockphoto.com/michelangelus)

Why have I attracted two annoying people with questionable manners to sit down near me and interrupt me? I can’t think of any reason why I magnetised the noisy eaters into my energy field, other than the fact that I have been delaying putting the finishing touches to my project. And these aural and visual assaults are a consequence of not having committed to my day. Distraction breeds more distraction.

I pressed the snooze button on my alarm one too many times this morning, and so I was late getting the train. I needed to read and take notes but couldn’t do that easily because I had to stand up all the way. Lateness breeds more lateness.

I had my mid-morning snack later than usual today, so I wasn’t hungry when I ordered my lunch. Today they gave me a huge portion that I couldn’t finish because I was still full from earlier. Fullness breeds more fullness.

I think the lesson my soul wants me to remember today is Continue reading →

Expressing your fears takes their power away

Posted on 10/09/2012 by inktuition

It’s something therapists and writers have known for years, but now psychologists have confirmed that naming your fears stops them having so much power over you.

Giving a name to something, or expressing exactly how you feel, means you don’t have to deny the feeling or keep squashing it down. Sometimes the energy needed to keep it at bay is more painful and stressful than just talking about it anyway. Writers use that technique all the time: expressive or reflexive writing puts into words their feelings and stresses, and therefore externalises what’s going on inside and helps to process feelings and look at them objectively.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did some tests on people who are afraid of spiders, asking some of them to approach a tarantula, and to experience and label their fears. For example, to say: “I’m anxious and frightened by the ugly, terrifying spider.” People who were able to express their fears were able to get closer to the tarantula, and had less of a stress reaction.

Michelle Craske, a professor of psychology at UCLA and the senior author of the study, said: “The implication is to encourage patients, as they are exposed to whatever they are fearful of, to label the emotional responses they are experiencing and label the characteristics of the stimuli — to verbalise their feelings. That lets people experience the very things they are afraid of and say: ‘I feel scared and I’m here.’ They’re not trying to push it away and say it’s not so bad.”

The crucial point is this: “Be in the moment and allow yourself to experience whatever you’re experiencing.”

Why do we only truly appreciate the BIG moments in life…?

Posted on 09/09/2012 by inktuition

I attended the Paralympic Games this week. It was hard enough to get tickets to the Olympic Stadium, given the success of London 2012, and I was full of awe at just being there.

The Paralympics in London have been awesome on so many levels.

My eight-year-old daughter was beside herself with excitement: she’d been looking forward to it for weeks. She throws herself into whatever event, party or park she’s at, wholeheartedly and whole-bodily present. In comparison, I often find my mind wandering, and my body shifting to get comfortable. I envy her ability to truly live her moment.

Except at the Paralympic athletics this week, I lived mine. From the moment I entered the stadium – watching strong men in wheelchairs power across the finish line, one-legged men effortlessly clearing high jumps, and the whole crowd cheering for every other country’s anthems – I felt humbled to be human. Especially given the superhuman feats taking place in the stadium in front of me.

It was a hot evening, but a friendly and uplifting one. I breathed in each moment I was there, knowing there wouldn’t be any others like this. I didn’t want the lights to come on, because I knew that would signal home time.

I truly lived my BIG moment because I knew my chance to watch Paralympic athletics at the London 2012 Olympic stadium would never come again. So why don’t I appreciate all moments in the same way – big, small or otherwise – even though I know they won’t be repeated either…?

When you’re ready to follow your Soul, synchronicities will show you the way

Posted on 07/09/2012 by inktuition

As a journalist, I know when I’m onto a good story when I hear it from three different sources. That’s why I know my Soul’s telling me something when the synchronicities line up in threes (often in one day!)

My Soul talks to me in ‘meaningful coincidences’ that often come in threes. (pic: istockphoto.com/kellyreekolibry)

Synchronicity, in the words of the wonderful Carl Gustav Jung, are “meaningful coincidences”. They’re stuff that happen to you that can’t possibly be a coincidence, but they have a pattern and some meaning to you personally. They’re external happenings that have symbolic significance for what’s going on internally for you.

I take synchronicity as a sign that my Soul is talking to me. It wants to tell me that I’m on the right road, that all doors I push against will open without force, and that I’m evolving beyond just the skin I’m in.

Anyone on a spiritual path will know that at some point the Ego will surrender to the Soul. That surrender can take a while, and it can involve months and years of battle. One’s defences can take some dismantling. They cling on with their fingernails, refusing to give up. But when it’s time for the Ego to wave the white flag and admit time’s up, that’s when the Soul steps in. Ever graceful, ever elusive, the Soul has symbolic messages that the Ego has to be in a mood and state to receive and interpret.

I’m often in awe of how Soul can communicate. Here’s how it reached me three times in one hour: Continue reading →

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