Sunshine Blogger Award

I have won the Sunshine Blogger Award – yay!

Thanks to Jess, who nominated me at: https://daringtojess.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/the-sunshine-blogger-award-ii/.

Here are my answers to the questions Jess gave me:

1. What is the number one thing on your bucket list?
   Become a world famous author.
2. How do you relax?
   Eat chocolate and meditate.
3. What is bringing you the most stress right now?
   Answering questions like these. 🙂
4. Would you rather be the best of the worst or the worst of the best?
   Oh, neither. I refuse to fall into such boxes. 😉
5. How would you want to change the world?
   By writing interesting and informative stuff.
6. What would you do if you couldn’t fail? (I like this question, thanks The Walk of Thoughts!)
   Succeed! 😀
7. Do you fear judgement?
   Yes, sometimes. But only when I’m being bad. Generally.
8. How do you deal with judgement?
   Do good things. 🙂
9. What moment would you be happy reliving forever?
   None of them; that would be way too boring.
10. Name 5 of your strengths that you’re proud of.
    Creativity, legs, writing, dream catching, ability to learn and willpower.
11. What’s your favourite song from your favourite band?
    The one that springs to mind is Yellow by Coldplay, but there are lots and lots.

I’m not going to nominate anyone because I guess I have the perception that we’re all too stressed out trying to deal with what we already have on our plates, but thanks for nominating me, Jess – hope this is what you wanted.

The Dark Side

 

My favourite chocolate is Marks & Spencer Swiss Chocolate – specifically Extra Fine Milk. However, I understand that Dark Chocolate has more health benefits than Milk. So when I went to M&S an hour ago I bought one of each: 125g each of Milk and Dark (as you do).

Seems to me that the main differences are in the fat, sugar and fibre contents:

• Dark chocolate has 24% more fat than Milk
• Milk chocolate has 86% more sugar than Dark
• Dark chocolate has 367% more fibre than Milk – yeah, nearly four times as much!

So – do I go for the fat, fibrous bar that will make me poo better or the sugary bar that makes my mood fluctuate like crazy?

For now it’s going to be one light, one dark, one light, one dark … let’s see how I go on with that.

You Are Valuable

Wriggle your toes.

Move your attention from your toes, along and up your feet until it reaches your ankles.

Slide up your shins slowly, feeling the shape of your bones until you reach up to your knees.

Then move upwards from your knees and onto the bare skin of your thighs, slowly, delicately feeling your skin as you do so, and as you reach the top of your thighs, pause and rest your attention on the sensitive skin at the junction of your legs.

For those of you who are new to this place, it is called private.

Only allow access to those people you can trust to protect and cherish your feelings.

You are valuable.

Scar Tissue

Did I tell you about the time I climbed the apple tree, went out onto the thinnest branch and reached for the biggest, juiciest fruit? Did I tell you how loud I screamed when the branch broke and my falling body was impaled on the thicker, sharper bough below me?

The doctors were still digging wood out of my back weeks later. I still have the scar. I used to show it to girls and tell them it was a shark bite. Who’d believe a thing like that? Who’d believe a word I say?

---

Reached too high,
Fell too far.
Touched the sky,
Feel my scar.

 

Learning Design

Having completed a degree in Computing with Psychological Studies, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing and currently being half way through a Masters in Creative Writing, you would think that I would be uniquely qualified to write about pretty much anything I want (not to mention having a head so swollen that I can hardly fit in this room). But, once again I find, within me, a knowledge-gap.

I now know that I know little about Learning Design (LD). This, according to Edutechwiki, is ‘the activity of designing units of learning, learning activities or learning environment.’

Strikes me that LD would be a useful thing to know more about. I have always had the faint hope that people would find some use for the words that I write. I hope that they will be learn something new and interesting out of all the thousands of words I have written over the years so it would be nice to present what I say in a way that would make this easier for them to do this (yeah, I know – too many words in this paragraph with most of them being redundant).

So, what do I need to know? Just off the top of my head, it seems that the basic principle seems to be that courses of learning should be designed in such a way that they make it easier for the student to absorb the learning on offer. On one hand, this seems to be easy enough – just make the information clear, accessible, interesting and informative, right?

On the other hand, there may be many different kinds of people accessing the information. What is easy for one person might be difficult for another. How does the designer ensure that people of disparate abilities all benefit from the same material? Should it be individually tailored by means of a pre-assessment of knowledge/capabilities, or should basic material be mixed with the advanced material in the hope that there will be something there for everyone?

I’m sure that my thoughts have only scratched the surface of a deep body of knowledge, and already I see challenges. How much more would I find if I decided to wade further in? I also know that I’m talking out of my arse. I know virtually nothing about this subject. This is what it feels like to be vulnerable. I open myself up to your criticism. In fact – I welcome it.

(inspired by a post on the blog of Martyn Stevenson-Read)

Home Sweet Home

After a hot and epic tour through Italy, Switzerland and Germany, I have arrived back home to England. There surely are lovely things in Continental Europe, like unspoilt mountains, beautiful works of art, fancy shops and mile after mile of pure, green nature, but not one of these things has home written on it.

This was the sky above Manchester as the plane came in to land. Below the clouds, the landscape was predictably dull and grey, but with just the right shade of familiarity for me to smile and thank my lucky stars that I was back – safe and sound.

Got home at minutes to three in the morning and then pretty much slept until the alarm went off four hours later. It’s funny, but I haven’t really felt sleepy today although I know I’m tired by the way I have to read sentences several times before the meaning goes in.

A good trip, but I’m glad to be on this comfy sofa, in this cool room typing these words. Is there no saving my spirit of adventure!

 

Good From Bad

 I drew this in the boring part of a meeting. I was going to say that it’s an example of good coming from bad, but now that I look at it – I’m not so sure.

However, I do know that when I’m in a bad mood or when I’m bored, and yet I still push myself to be creative, I can produce some good stuff. Do you ever find that?