Weekly Meander #20: Zooming in, zooming out – what does progress really look like?

Thoughts & lessons from a school play & the first seeds of research for my next film

Hi! Thanks for joining me on this weekly meander through my week just gone – with a focus on my evolving working life. If you’re new here, do check out this post for a bit more about me. TLDR: I'm a documentary filmmaker coming to the end of distributing my debut feature doc -about the history of nuclear power - and currently exploring/expanding into new professional avenues whilst also navigating parenting & perimenopause. Some balls may be dropped!

You'll also find recommendations of great reads I've seen on Substack 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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Hello, hello.

And a particularly warm welcome to my new (old) subscribers joining in the fun over here at Substack fresh from my longstanding newsletter in a different corner of the internet - hopefully it’ll be just like pulling on a comfy old jumper (but without the slightly biscuity smell!)

As I write this, we're on the brink of a possible historic sporting moment in the patch of the planet I call home, with the England football team within touching distance of their first major international trophy in my lifetime¹.

For folk outside the UK who may not be quite so familiar with my national team's travails, England last won the World Cup in 1966 and didn't make it to another major final again until 3 years ago when they lost to Italy on penalties in the delayed 2020 European Championship final – tonight they will meet Spain in the final of this year's Euros [UPDATE: ENGLAND LOST 😢].

And only in writing, am I realising how this ties in with what I wanted to write about this week, regardless of the match's final result – the question of what actually constitutes progress and how and when we recognise it.

Image / Ben Sutherland

Much has been made in the media of the team's progress since current manager Gareth Southgate took over the job. There have been highs and lows, great results and – as recently as the group stages of this present tournament – some underwhelming and disappointing performances. But arguably, it's only when we look back across the past 8 years of Southgate's tenure to the ignominious defeat to minnows Iceland that ended England's Euro campaign in 2016, that that progress truly comes into focus.

And that's very much the same sense I had myself a couple of times this week when I was brought up short by the passage of years – that sudden sense of progress over the long view which you don't always see or feel moment to moment.

The first was going to look round a prospective secondary school for my eldest, who'll be starting his final year of primary school come September. And then later that same day watching him with his entire year group in the annual play performed by the Year 5's for the whole school and Year 5 parents.

We're incredibly lucky that in an era of harsh cuts and ongoing decline in arts provision in state primary schools, our son's school is an arts champion school - and as such he's had some amazing opportunities through his time there, including the last time his whole year group performed a play together for parents, as part of the National Theatre's Let's Play programme.

That was early on in Year 1, when they were still so small, barely out of reception (and on the other side of the pandemic that would subsequently shape so much of their primary school experience). Sitting in the theatre this week watching those little kids transformed into much bigger ones – all long legs, big voices and glorious pre-teen potential – I felt intensely aware of how much they've all progressed in those intervening years.

As well as how much progress I've personally made in that same period. I read a great post this week by Substacker

Hannah Ashe

reflecting on the 12 months since she left her job as a teacher to embark on a freelance career:

12 months in to a life I didn't know was possible

Her list of achievements over the past year was a great prompt to take a moment of my own to zoom out, take a look backwards and recognise and celebrate just how far I've come since watching my 5 year old make his stage debut back in 2019 - these being some of the main headlines:

• Given birth to my second child

• Released my debut feature film at the height of a global pandemic

• Sold said film to Netflix and booked dozens of screenings with universities, schools, conferences, government agencies, NGOs, community groups etc in the UK and overseas

• Worked on another film that's been screened to sell-out audiences in cinemas across the UK

• Worked through a step by step programme to create a strategic plan for the next steps in my career, both in filmmaking and beyond

• joined the Female Entrepreneur Association and Leonie Dawson Brilliant Biz & Life Academy to learn new online business skills

• started Meandering Over the Pebbles and published 26 posts on Substack over the past 7 months

It's not a bad list. Yet for much of the time it's been happening, I've felt like I've been making almost no progress at all. Why is that?

Well, I think one reason is that while these all seem like fairly big things, they were and are made up – as nearly everything is – of lots and lots and lots of small things. Yet we so often fail to recognise the value of all these small steps, when each one can feel like it's pretty insignificant.

So as well as zooming out, I wonder if we shouldn't also turn the zoom ring in completely the opposite direction. Extreme close ups in films are so effective as they jolt us out of our usual perception to see things differently. What if we zoomed right in on all the little steps that make up the daily stuff of life?

Image / Carlos Felipe Pardo

This too has been on my mind this week as I've been reading and thinking about the impact of chronic illness and hidden disability for the new film project I'll talk more about below. When your capacity is constrained by pain or severe limitations in energy, even small, every day things can be an immense challenge. But each day that you get up, have a shower, maybe write or read or go for a short walk, or whatever it is that you can manage that day... each of these small steps is progress, and worthy of noticing and appreciating as such.

It's a subject I'll be returning to a lot I'm sure but for now I just I wanted to share this quote from

Dina Hassan

whose post for Disability Pride Month thoughtfully points out that there's not a clearly demarcated line between ill/well, disabled/able, that we all stand neatly on one side of or the other:

This got me thinking that we all have disabling experiences at some point in our lives. Regular life stuff like broken bones, postpartum, surgery, arthritis, fatigue, PMS, menopause, depression, migraines etc. can all compromise our energy and mobility. Disability is not such a distant foreign concept, everyone dips their toe in the club now and again. 

It feels important to me to give thought and attention to the experience of living with the challenges of disability or chronic illness, not just out of empathy and solidarity, but because we'll all have to deal with some form of similar challenge at different times in our lives. It's a part of being human.

And we need to give ourselves grace and recognise that progress might look and feel different at different times and for different people – yet all the same, it's there. Even if we can't always quite see it without the zoom.

WORK WINS THIS WEEK

1. Started moving my existing mailing list over to Substack

As mentioned above - and hello to all my Mailchimp friends, I’m so happy you’re here! A confession: I found the prospect of moving my existing newsletter daunting and procrastinated about doing it for ages - some combination of tech overwhelm and shyness about the somewhat more personal nature of how I’m writing here I think. But I’ve finally started the process and thankfully it has (of course!) been far less painless than I was imagining. I hope to complete the job and move the rest of my list over this week.

2. Reading & researching chronic illness experiences for new short doc

My longer term readers will probably be familiar with novelist and psychogeographer Philippa Holloway as I organised a virtual in-conversation event with her last year to talk about her fantastic debut novel, The Half-Life of Snails, about two sisters from Wales on either side of the nuclear divide.

But you may not know that Philippa lives with a rare health condition that seriously compromises her energy levels, something she touches on in her most recently published work, the wonderful mini-memoir Energy Crisis. And I’m thrilled to say that Philippa and I are in the early stages of a new collaboration aiming to transfer the essence of the book off the page and onto the screen in what will hopefully be my next documentary project - hence my research into chronic illness and disability.

If you know of any resources you think I should be taking a look at in this area, do let me know as it’s such an important topic and I want to be as inclusive as I can to make sure I’m doing it justice.

3. Researching potential collaborators/crew for same

In the same vein, I’m thinking hard about who the other creative collaborators on this project should be - I’m keen to work with people who have experience of chronic illness or disability either in their own lives or through their work. The conversation in the documentary world around who is best placed to tell which stories has dramatically evolved since I began making my first feature doc more than a decade ago now - and it’s something I want to be a lot more mindful of going forward.

4. Life stories session with a friend who's helping me road test my new business venture

Lastly, I’ve been neglecting the other work pillar I identified in the strategic planning exercise I mentioned above - namely my new venture helping people preserve precious personal/professional memories. But one thing I have been doing is working with a good friend of mine who was keen to make a life story video with her nonagenarian great aunt as a keepsake for the whole family.

With guidance from me, she’s recorded several hours of interviews and is now working to edit it all together. Seeing what’s working well and not so well for her is really instructive for me in helping figure out the different options I want to offer through the business. And once her project is complete, I may share some of the lessons learned - with permission of course.

What I can say at this point is it’s shaping up to be a wonderful record and definitely affirming that this work is valuable. And yes, the wheels are turning more slowly than I’d like. But I’m trying to take my own advice and remember that every step forward counts - slow progress is still progress!

WHAT I'M LOVING ON SUBSTACK THIS WEEK

My 'Countdown to Hiroshima' Begins--as First A-BombTest at Trinity Is Readied

For anyone with an interest in atomic history

Greg Mitchell

is a great writer to follow. He started his nuclear Substack around the release of the Christopher Nolan ‘Oppenheimer ‘ juggernaut but has branched out beyond the movie - and this post is the start of what sounds like a genuinely thought-provoking exercise to take readers through the build up to the bomb at Hiroshima in real time. It also goes into a lot of fascinating history behind the classic piece of on-the-ground reportage from Japan in the near-aftermath, by New Yorker reporter John Hersey - which you should definitely seek out if you’ve not read it (the original piece was published in book form in 1946).

Explode into Gold

As a Brightonian, I lapped up this gorgeous bit of writing from

Katy Wheatley

- we haven’t had that many truly golden days of warmth & sunshine so far this year but reading this conjured up the best of lazy summer living in the city I love to call home.

When did we start hating phone calls?

This is quite simply the funniest thing I saw all week. You’ll never think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in quite the same way after reading it.

Right, this has been a long one so I’ll sign off. Do say hi in the comments if you’re reading this in the app or on the website - it’s always nice to know what people are enjoying. And if you’re an England fan, I hope you’re not feeling too glum today. At least we’ve still got the Olympics to look forward to…

Catch ya later,

Vicki x

Proudly taking part in the Sparkle on Substack 24 essays club – this is post number 15.

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...

1. For clarification I'm talking about the England men's team here – the national women's team won the Euros in 2022, having previously made it to the final in both 1984 and 2009