Weekly Meander #10: A Change is as Good as a Rest

Inspired, returned, revived...

Hello! Thanks for joining me on a weekly meander through my week just gone – with a focus on my working life (a way for me to document a time of professional transition as well as a little shot of motivation and accountability to keep me pushing on!) And in case you're new here and wondering who on earth I am, do check out this post. TLDR: I'm a documentary filmmaker coming to the end of distributing my debut feature doc and currently exploring/expanding into new professional avenues whilst also navigating parenting & perimenopause. Some balls may be dropped!

I'm still quite new to Substack and really enjoying finding my way around so you'll also find my recommendations of great reads I've seen in the past week. If you enjoy it, do feel free to leave a comment. And of course I'd love it if you would consider subscribing to get all my posts delivered straight to your inbox.

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And just like that, I'm back at home.

Of course, it did take a bit more effort than simply clicking my ruby slippers together three times – but I'm one hundred percent with Dorothy on the sentiment, if not the mode of travel.

For all it's foibles (that broken light in the living room, the front door that needs a good kick before it will open, the lingering odour we just can't quite seem to get rid of in the utility room, no matter how much fresh air and Febreze we throw at it?!) there really is no place I'd rather be.

After 11 days - counted down meticulously by my 4 year old - with my niece and nephew in Lincolnshire, I boarded my train back down south, at almost the exact same time my brother boarded his train north from London Kings Cross (I believe we must have passed each other somewhere near Stevenage, but sadly the exact moment went unnoticed by either one of us – sorry Stevenage).

Fortunately, the train gods were smiling and after a journey miraculously devoid of cancellation or delay, I arrived home to be met by a freshly-vacuumed and toy-free living room carpet – heaven! And a massive hug from my 10 year old – thank goodness he's not quite grown too cool for mummy cuddles yet.

And I was happily back in time for the walk to get my daughter from nursery too – a job I've oftentimes found burdensome, but which honestly felt like something to relish after the week and a half I'd spent away from her.

I chose the almost-entirely-off-road route over the downland and down the steep wooden steps cut into the hillside – and as I crested over the top of the hill looking out across the valley below, my inner Julie Andrews bubbled to the surface and it was all I could do not to burst into a rendition of The Hills Are Alive.

Thankfully for anyone in the vicinity, I didn't. Well, not out loud anyway. Here’s Julie’s infinitely superior original if you need a little mood booster.

I'm aware it's a horrible cliché, but of course it's true that distance can help you see things more clearly. I think I'm pretty good at counting my blessings and make a regular effort to practice active gratitude – but returning to the mundanities of my own life with fresh eyes has definitely added a little extra spring to my step.

There's something about the routine of life carrying on without you that feels different from simply returning home after a holiday or other trip away with the people you live with all the time. Perhaps it's just an extra appreciation on either side for your particular place in the ecosystem of your own home.

If stepping outside your own life for a few days isn't something that happens regularly for you (as it certainly isn't for me), I'd definitely recommend seeing if it could be something you can make happen.

I've never done a creative retreat, though I've always wanted to. The chance to focus on creative projects for a while entirely uninterrupted by the ins and outs of your normal everyday commitments is obviously enormously appealing. But now I can see that an absence from the daily grind could also make you value that ‘grind’ so much more once you return to it - a potential benefit I'd never really thought about before.

I'd love to know if this rings true for anyone else. Have you ever been on a writing or other creative retreat? How did you find it if so - and what was it like when you got home afterwards? Let me know in the comments!

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WORK WINS THIS WEEK

I really only worked 3 days this week as I was travelling for most of Tuesday and was back to my regular 'mummy day' with my daughter on Friday. Yet I'm pleased to say that after the past few weeks of perpetually feeling like I was failing to achieve anything much (largely for very good reasons, but still), this week I really felt like something much closer to my normal working self.

I was able to clear out lots of unread emails and get on top of various little admin bits and just generally had a greater sense of mental spaciousness and clarity. I'm hoping some more consistent sunshine will soon be arriving (enough of the never-ending February weather vibes please!) and with it more of this positive energy to take into new projects. Watch this space.

In the meantime, here are my work highlights of the week just gone.

1. Coffee with a nuclear historian at Lincoln University

I don't want to get ahead of myself but it's been my experience time and again that people and opportunities have come into my life just at the moment I'm ready for them. And I have a little inkling something like that might be the case here.

At around the same time plans were forming for me to look after my niece and nephew during my brother and sister-in-law's absence overseas, I was sorting through my large array of ring binders with assorted print-outs from all the years I was making my nuclear film. And in amongst a pile of papers, I spotted a piece I'd saved by a nuclear historian who was based at Lincoln University, a mere 20 minutes up the road from where I would be staying at my brother's house.

Of course I immediately I got in touch and was delighted when he replied to say that not only did he know all about my film, but he'd recently put it on a reading list for a new third year undergrad course he's developing. As basically a random person with no relevant credentials who somehow ended up spending years immersed in the nuclear world, I often feel a degree of imposter syndrome with the many extremely qualified academics I encounter – so this is a genuine thrill!

And thus it was that on Monday morning after dropping the kids off at school, I hopped in my brother's car and made the short drive into Lincoln, the cathedral looking magnificent on the skyline, even in the drizzle. After we finally managed to find each another in the student union cafe we settled in for a coffee and a super inspiring and stimulating conversation ensued..

Middle aged campus selfie

Lincolnshire is the site of extremely interesting activity, past and present, with regards to nuclear waste here in the UK and it turns out we'd both been looking into this, with our filmmaking and academic hats on respectively. And this happenstance of us meeting face to face might well turn out to be a really fruitful connection. For now there's nothing concrete but it feels like there are definitely exciting potential avenues to be explored...

2. Zoom call with a nuclear non-profit in New York State

This came about via a US academic I contacted, who didn't have the capacity to take on organising a screening himself but thought these guys might and so put us in touch. It was great to chat and it seems there may the opportunity for a few possible screenings as NY state is pretty big! We'll see – I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

3. Booked a virtual screening & webinar of the film

In the meantime, I have another event now confirmed on this side of the pond, with the UK Society for Radiological Protection. This has been a reeeeeeeeeally slow burn – I first contacted them all the way back in summer 2021 and though they expressed interest then, it's taken till now for it to finally come before the relevant committee and for the the funding to be agreed. So I'm really happy it's going ahead at last. In this case at least, patience really was a virtue.

4. Submitted my 2023-24 business records to my accountant

There's nothing terribly exciting to say about this apart from – hooray, it's done! We're putting in a backdated film tax credit this year as I was finally able to pay some long deferred fees from the production of 'The Atom: A Love Affair', a portion of which can now be reclaimed. And knowing how keen I am to get this much-needed cash injection, my accountants have bumped me up the list of clients to work on my return much earlier this year than they usually do. Another thing to be grateful for!

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WHAT I'M LOVING ON SUBSTACK THIS WEEK

The Welcome Death Of Great Things

There’s been a run of depressing news in the documentary film world lately, from the shuttering of the long-running Human Rights Watch Film Festival and mass exodus of programmers from Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, to the ongoing post-pandemic downturn in cinema attendance for docs both in the UK and in the US. Not to mention the relentless drive for celebrities and true crime from the streamers who dominate the documentary landscape more and more.

So hearing of the (not unrelated) closure of Participant Media, one of the most successful producers of social impact docs, from Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ back in 2006 through to the utterly compelling ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’, about artist & activist Nan Goldin and the American opioid crisis, in 2022, felt like another tough pill to swallow. But then I read this from

Ted Hope

and it made things seem just a little less crap:

I am in favor of ending things. Yes, I vote for death; let’s keep it around. I love contemplation, but I love decisions even more. The fact that everything ends leads us to start new things […]

How do we take actions? How do we make things better? We make decisions. And one was made with the shuttering of Participant. We can all learn from it. We need change and now it has come.

I’m with the band

Liz Champion

is a new find for me here on Substack and I’m really enjoying reading her words. This is a very fun story for any ageing superfans out there. And she’s not wrong about Glenn Medeiros either 😄

143. Seasonal spears

I love asparagus. Spargelzeit - as the Germans deliciously call it (though their asparagus is, disconcertingly, white) - is definitely a highlight of my food year so of course I loved reading this piece all about it, complete with great mixed media illustrations from

Rebecca Holden

. Wanna find out how to eat your asparagus like posh people do? Then read this now.

Super Seconds Festival - Meg Fatharly

One last quick one. Jess is a fabulous artist/illustrator herself (I have one of her beautiful bird prints on the shelf by my desk) and does a great job of spotlighting lots of fellow talented makers too. The Super Seconds event she's highlighting here and in a few other posts looks brilliant so definitely one to check out if you like the sound of getting your hands on some unique creative pieces with a bargain price tag.

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Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

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Life stories website – coming soon...