graffitiman

someone has posted a large sticker on the side of a council litter bin, the sticker reads, “Stand up, smile, be happy”
And I do
everytime
and I am.

Several weeks down the line and my back is finally better, in fact it’s better than before which is thanks to the physiotherapist.
I’ve got 3 projects cooking at the moment.
1. adorn the trees down London Road with bright red bows
2. stamp boring electricity/telephone/signal boxes with “boring”
3. create a book of instruction for other marooned alien life forms

I ended up going to the Big Chill this year and was bitterly disappointed. It was nothing more than rampant consumerism, a gross and disgusting display of the more sordid side of the human character. Vomit, beer, drugs, swearing, and that was the family area.

Oh well, off to Bloom this weekend so may be a better time.

This entry needs to have some content in the body

All my spare time has first been taken over by a failing hard drive and then I did my back in and I have never, ever experienced such pain! 4 weeks on and I can not only sit here and type, which I was incapable of doing at first, and then to be able to have a positive attitude.

What, me be creative? You’ve got to be joking!

But I have just drawn a shape using a map, pins and different coloured cotton thread tracing my progress around Reading, today. I feel a walk coming on.

I’ve got a couple of hours on my hands, the kids need some fresh air and I’m off to the allotment to plant some potatoes and shallots, cover them with fleece and bask in the glow of having moved forward on the veg front.

The purple flowering broccoli is the best, it keeps coming back for more, or rather I do we’ve had about 6 meals out of it so far, only three plants!

It’s a bright Spring day and I decided to tidy all the Quadro, a kid’s outdoor construction toy that they quickly tired of. So I’ve tidied it up, counted it and put it on eBay. Done and dusted and one small step into making my life simpler. Love it.

I’ve been prompted to drink more water by …
actually I don’t think you need to know the in’s and out’s of my digestive system. suffice it to say that I have given up coffee, even de-caffeinated, as it has had a negative effect on my ability to enjoy sitting down.
And enjoy water again.

The printer I bought is amazing! I’ve had to stop myself from going printer crazy. the colour photos are stunning and the black 7 white are totally amazing. I’ve got a million cards to print and sell as soon as I get myself organised. Do I mean organised or have more time? Soon.

printed off another 8, different font, sprayed them with gloss varnish to help them last a bit longer. now I need to go out and sticker. It’s a bit early but maybe I’ll do one or two.

I heard a story, years ago that my ancestors in Elizabethan England were given land in Northern Ireland, the plantations, as a pension after many years faithful service. But do I want to dedicate my life to finding the connections? Hmmm.

Went to Bristol and picked up a second hand Epson R2400! Been fiddling with the software and getting it set up. I am so excited, unfortunately I have to wait until I get some re-placement ink, oh the plans I could make.

I’ve started lots of things and finished most of them, but not always finished everything I’ve started. Sometimes my priorities change. And you’ve got to give yourself a bit of lee way because not everything I started out to do was worth completing.

The word proactive was originally coined by the psychiatrist Victor Frankl in his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning to describe a person who took responsibility for his or her life, rather than looking for causes in outside circumstances or other people. Much of this theory was formed in Nazi concentration camps where Frankl lost his wife, mother, father and family, but decided that even under the worst circumstances, people can make and find meaning.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary the word’s origin is from the 1930’s. Merriam Webster lists the date as 1933.[1]

The term was popularized in the business press in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Though he used the word in Frankl’s original sense, the word has come to mean “to act before a situation becomes a source of confrontation or crisis” vs. after the fact. It is frequently contrasted in opposition to the words “reactive” or “passive.” Use as a contrast to reactive was introduced into the DoD vernacular in 1982 in the context of program risk assessment. Being a buzzword, the term proactive is ubiquitous but has indeterminate meaning.

In behavioral medicine, proactive often refers to a treatment approach where a therapist initiates contacts as opposed to reactive where the responsibility for contacts with the therapist is entirely on the client e.g. proactive and reactive quitlines for tobacco or alcohol.

I’m working on that first meaning, I think.

I’ve just skilled swapped a website for a book of my poems and pictures. My giving bit was easy now I’ve got to take!
But before that, horror of horrors I’ve actually got to decide, write, shoot all the relevant stuff. Better get on with it.

I belong to the blue-eyed club as well. The good thing is we’re more likely to recognise each other across a crowded bar.

Hard to know how to achieve this particular goal? On the one hand, it could be said, that it’s one of the easiest goals of my life on the other hand, and possibly more realistically, how do I measure it? I made 5 people laugh today, that’s one more than yesterday.

just remember that graffiti is NOT putting your tag everywhere, that is the same as pissing on lamp-posts, not very clever.

Get Ben & Jerry’s ice cream book! I’ve made just about every ice cream from this recipe book and they are all fabulous.

It bugs me a bit that nothing takes my family by surprise any more, it’s almost expected, de rigeur to be left field. I’d like a rest, put my feet up and drink a bottle of beer in front of the tv.
“Daddy”
“Daddy’s gone weird, Mum.”
“But darlings, don’t be silly, your Daddy doesn’t drink beer and we don’t have a tv!”