Weekly Meander #1: Starting imperfectly
Losing my voice, losing my footing, finding the positives
Each week I'm documenting the stuff I've got up to in my working life, whatever that looks like (currently it's mostly finishing up the final stages of distributing my feature doc and working towards launching my new life stories business - plus thinking about new documentary film projects, particularly, though not necessarily exclusively, around nuclear issues).
This is mainly for my own benefit – I seem to get to the end of most weeks feeling like I've barely achieved anything so it'll be nice to start to build up a record of what I *have* done in any given 7 days. But hopefully some of it will be fun and interesting for others to read too 😃Thoughts, comments etc always happily received.
Oof, what a week! Never one to overlook a metaphor when it's right in front of me, I couldn't help feeling a sense of recognition when I was walking down the hill to collect my son from school on Thursday (we live at the top of a very steep hill and don't own a car, so I spend a lot of my time trudging up and down its slopes).
After hours of torrential weather, I could see the usual rivers of rainwater hurtling down the hill at top speed. But it was also incredibly windy and I noticed a phenomenon I don't ever remember seeing before in all the years we've lived here – the water was simultaneously rushing downhill AND being blown uphill.
The result was fascinating and a little mesmerising – though being my usual, disorganised self, I was in a pretty big rush so couldn't stop to enjoy it properly. As I got a little further down the hill the phenomenon all but disappeared – I guess the wind had dropped enough that gravity was now winning that uphill/downhill battle.
And that's when I had the thought – this is what my life feels like at the moment. I'm trying to move in one direction. But there's another equal force pushing me back and stopping me. Or at the very least obstructing my 'flow'. (It also led to a ridiculous, but very funny, conversation about Sisyphus with my son on the way home, but I think you probably needed to be there for that one, as they say!) Anyway, it certainly seemed an apt visual symbol of how life’s been feeling this past week.
It was already going to be a trickier than average one as my partner was away with work from Sunday to Thursday. I'm very conscious of my privilege in this regard – single parents, I salute you! But he and I generally do a pretty good job sharing parenting and household duties fairly evenly (we both work part time to allow for this, though he has a 'proper' salaried job, so does do more hours than me in a typical week).
This means when he's away I really notice all the extra cooking, laundry, bin emptying, school/nursery runs etc that lands on my plate. It was also an unusually long work trip for him meaning I lost one full day out of my usual working schedule.
On top of that, it was a big week for one of the kids, with a lot of big feelings swirling around that – so I had to be at the top of my game in terms of my emotional support there (as well as making sure not to neglect the other sibling).
Then the cold I've been struggling to get rid of seemingly forever developed into full blown laryngitis. I literally couldn't produce a sound with my voice for a day, as well as feeling incredibly run down, tired and just... poorly.
And to cap it all off, in a moment of pure parenting rage & frustration that flared up in the midst of trying to wrangle everyone out the door dressed, breakfasted, with packed lunch made and on time... I tripped and fell down the stairs with my daughter. She was fine – jumped up and walked away with barely a murmur. But I wasn't. I was hurt. I was shocked. And I was scared about how this momentary instant of losing my temper had led to this happening. And it could have been so much worse.
Thankfully there was no serious harm done. But it was a wake up call. I’ve been struggling with surges of anger lately - the perimenopausal demon is definitely on my shoulder now. I am finally seeing my GP about this and other symptoms this week so hopefully sunnier days are just around the corner, on that front at least…
Anyway all of this has meant it's been slim pickings for me in terms of getting much work done this week. But after a couple of weeks when I've put 'write Substack post' on my weekly to do list and then completely failed to do it, literally just writing and posting THIS feels like an achievement to celebrate!
Work Wins This Week
While this hasn't exactly been the inaugural 'weekly meander' post I'd imagined writing, it is a true reflection of how my week’s gone so, that's ok! I'm certainly hoping as the weeks go on I'll have more to write about in terms of documenting my various strands of work but, for now, this is what I did manage to get done...
1. Went to see the touring nuclear weapons theatre show 'A Family Business' at the Corn Exchange in Brighton
I'm slightly cheating including this as it was at the end of the previous week but it was such a great piece of work I didn't want to miss mentioning it. Theatre-maker Chris Thorpe has created a really enjoyable, accessible show about the scandalously little-known UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021 (I was pretty shocked when only a few hands went up so say they'd even heard of the TPNW – and this was a self selecting group of people who'd chosen to spend their Friday night at a show explicitly about nuclear weapons!)
It was part interactive lecture – almost stand-up comedy in feel. And part recreated scenes with a small cast portraying various officials involved in negotiating, signing and ratifying the treaty. It was cleverly staged, friendly and intimate (Chris even handed out biscuits!) and it really brought the complex, hidden, and in so many ways unthinkable, subject of potential planetary annihilation down to a human, and at points even intensely local, level.
If you happen to be in Manchester, it's playing there for a week from 27th Feb and I'd highly recommend checking it out. And if you won't get a chance to see the whole thing yourself, you can get a flavour from this trailer:
2. Booked another screening of 'The Atom: A Love Affair'
In January I was invited to screen the film at a conference in York to around 200 nuclear postgrad students. It was one of the biggest audiences I've had at an in-person screening and I was pretty nervous getting up on the stage for my introduction and the post-screening discussion. But it was a great event – and also opened a few other doors, one of which was a screening at Imperial College in London in April, which I was very pleased to get confirmed this week.
I can definitely sense that screenings of the film are starting to draw to a close – we're in the tail end of distribution now for sure – so it's great to have this one in the locker and the future income that goes with it (my business income for this month stands at less than a hundred pounds so it’s very welcome..!)
3. Arts Emergency mentoring feedback Zoom call
For the last two years I've been a volunteer mentor for the amazing charity Arts Emergency, which works to make arts and humanities careers more accessible to young people from traditionally excluded backgrounds. Though I'm taking a break from mentoring in 2024, I'm still a huge champion for what they're doing and I was delighted to spend an hour and a half talking about my positive experiences as a mentor on Zoom with a fantastic researcher, who was also herself an arts practitioner meaning we had plenty of common ground on a personal level too.
This was actually on the same day I fell down the stairs and I was barely up to doing anything so this conversation really gave me a welcome boost at a time when I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.
What I’m Loving on Substack This Week
I got a real kick out of these two pieces, each in their way poking gentle fun at the genre of Substack growth-hacking posts. I'm feeling like my own journey on this platform is just very slowly burbling into life and it's great to be reminded that we're all on our own paths and small steps and small wins are just as important as the big blockbuster stuff.
I really enjoyed this online conversation between the inestimable
and Hussain Currimbhoy, Artistic Director of Canada’s HotDocs film festival. Looking forward to the second part. This quote from Hussain captures something so important about what films can do - and why I still want to make more, even though it’s far from easy work.Keeping our humanity these days seems to be … hard. Movies, film festivals are a gut check. That is why films are still relevant. It taps the drawbridges within us that connect us to strangers.
I got a new coat this week. It's great – apart from its woefully inadequate pockets. This Substack post made me feel SEEN 😄
Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE
Find me on X /Twitter & at LinkedIn
Life stories website – coming soon...
I very much recognise that feeling of being pulled in positive and negative directions at the same time. Sisyphus indeed.
Thank you for the shout out Vicki, I’m glad you enjoyed my post! 😃👏👏