Categories
Mindset

Living the Life of the Mind (Without Going Crazy) – with Margaret Pinard

Margaret Pinard is one of the good pals I’m grateful to have made through writing this blog. She has been very supportive over the last few years  – thanks Margaret! I asked her to write for you about life as a self-published author – because she’s managed to write and publish three entire novels since I’ve known her.

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Creative Inspiration My story

A Month of Mini Time Capsule Videos

It’s hard to admit this on my blog that features the word ‘creative’ in the title, but I’ve been creatively blocked for a while now when it comes to my own projects (as you might have guessed by the lack of posts recently). I have a bad habit of starting up something creative with great gusto […]

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Career Development

Finding Your Voice Online – Interview with Nicola Balkind

Are you a writer, or do you want to be?  Then you’ll probably want to have a listen to this in-depth interview I recently recorded with Glasgow-based Writer and Content Specialist Nicola Balkind. Nicola is giving a workshop in Edinburgh on Finding Your Voice Online (at the Skriva Writing School on Friday 23rd October) where she will help writers create “a […]

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Career Development Creative Inspiration Productivity

Why ‘Grit Conquers All’ when it comes to creative work

“An ounce of practice is generally worth more than ton of theory.” – E.F. Schumacher (author of the book Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered) At last year’s Small is Beautiful conference in Glasgow, the first speaker was writer and author Jocelyn K Glei, who at the time was Founding Editor and Director of Behance’s […]

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Career Development

Micro-Businesses in the UK: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful

‘The Second Age of Small’ is a new report jointly produced by artsy e-commerce giants Etsy and the UK organisation the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). They’ve put together a handy 9-part summary of the findings on their website, so in order to mark the 2nd Small is Beautiful conference happening this week in […]

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Creative Inspiration

Video: Edinburgh’s Secret Courtyard

This is my highly unofficial Guide to the Hidden Door Art Festival 2015, filmed on the final night (Saturday 30th May). Running time = 5:15 minutes which  admittedly is long for an internet video these days, but there was a lot to pack in. (Also, there’s some NSFW language at the beginning). I’m convinced this was […]

Categories
Mindset My story Personal Development

Perfectionism is not an end of level boss

A bit of faith, every day. And I can be happy. I don’t know about you, but I tend to hold myself to high standards, and often fall short of them. I want to practice positive habits every day and am pleased when I manage it for a reasonable stretch. But not accepting that I am […]

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Creative Inspiration

Behind the Scenes: Hidden Door Arts Festival 2015

On Wednesday evening I managed to invite myself along for a sneak blogger’s preview of this year’s venue for the Hidden Door Arts festival – and the space and art taking shape there is incredible.

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Uncategorized

(Un)Productivity Summit: podcast, video & photos

At the beginning of this month I attended the first ever World (Un)Productivity Summit at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales. In attendance were: Michael Nobbs (Wales) Mary Gordon (Scotland) Lourenço de Azevedo (Portugal) Fabian Kruse (Germany) Milo McLaughlin (Scotland) The summit consisted of a gentle curriculum of talks, walks, chi kung, meditation, crocheting, research and writing in the beautiful library, accompanied by […]

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Uncategorized

Witnessed: Concrete Antenna Artist Talk

This week a few friends and I attended an excellent ‘artist talk’ at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop which just happens to be in our local area. You can see some of the photos I took at the event above.