Newsletter
- WatchTo5K - accessible via the 🏃🏻♂️ menu item or this link - documents my progress in building up to being able to run a 5K through use of the Watch to 5K Apple Watch app;
- OnTheRoad - accessible via the 🗺️ menu item or this link - where I am telling the stories behind slides that I took during travels back in the late 1980’s.
- When I traveled in eighties, when at best all that was available was phrase books, I was able to make myself understood, even if sign language was the best that both parties could do.
- I have got myself into a routine of sorts for learning Portuguese - busy work days aside, when my mind is just too tired to attempt the language. From this, I find that I am beginning to notice words when I hear people speak, and that gives me hope. I came into this language with no knowledge of it. Now I am beginning to recognise sounds. I tell myself that I just have to relax around the learning process, and put expectations aside.
Monday April 15, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday April 15, 2024
Dear Friends,
Being home, being back in Britain, always fills my time. Whether that is sitting talking with my mum, catching up with friends (on the phone and in person), or going for walks. Routine is not so present in my life and I find that with that my writing diminishes. I want to write, but find myself either too tired to concentrate or in need to wind down from the last social activity.
I know that there are subjects that I would like to write, or finish writing about, but they stay there nagging me in my head and have not made it onto paper, or my computer, yet. (Hey, I have just caught myself, I am writing this now. It is first thing in the morning, so perhaps that can be a time?)
Anyway, the upshot of this reason or excuse is that this week my posts are mostly photographs. Specifically photographs from the Micro.blog April Photoblogging Challenge. A couple of the prompts have been a challenge to find photos for, but it is also a joy as I look back through past photographs for one that fits the prompt, or to go looking for subject matter to take a photo of.
I hope that you enjoy my attempts at the Challenge.
David.
Monday April 8, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday April 8th, 2024
Dear Friends,
Well the weeks feel as though they are creeping up on me quicker. Though this one could well be because I have had a lot going on.
I am writing to you from the opposite side of the world. I have returned solo to England for my mother’s 90th birthday celebrations and am spending a couple of weeks here to catch up with friends and also some work as well. The celebrations were a great success, and I’m grateful to my sister for seeding the idea of a party last year.
Travel has always been a part of my life, as my On The Road series shows, ebbing and flowing in time at home and time away. As I have got older, I’ve noticed that it is harder to get me out of the front door, even for a short trip. I’m fine once I am on the road, but I can sense in me resistance to departure as I get ready to leave, and almost have to be kicked out of the door on that final day. This trip was no different.
A photo challenge is now taking place through April on Micro.blog, the platform that hosts my blog. In the past I have made it to the end with some photo challenges. Others I have run out of steam on a few days or weeks into the challenge, getting stuck on one of the photo prompts and before I know it I’m not posting any more. As of writing this letter I have managed to complete every day so far, and I hope to cross the finishing line. So you will see that a number of the posts for this last week are photographs from the April challenge.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
David.
Monday April 1, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday April 1st, 2024
Dear Readers,
I had to laugh this morning. It’s related to the post that I put out yesterday around busyness (see it below). I had been trying to slow myself down, to be focused and get done what needed to be done, but obviously it was not working. I forgot that this newsletter was going out today.
That’s humbling and at the same time an opportunity to try that little bit harder and see where I can improve.
I think back to a story that an old Buddhist friend told me. He was talking to our teacher, a Tibetan monk who had grown up and been trained in a time and place that no longer exists - old Tibet. The Tibetans have done a great job of preserving their culture in exile since the Chinese invasion, especially in India, but the conditions will never be quite the same as the Tibet of old.
Anyway, back to the story. My friend was talking to our teacher (Geshe Damcho Yonten - Geshe-la for short) about a project that he was involved with. My friend said something which I guess we have all said at sometime in our lives, “I’m doing my best," to which Geshe-la replied, “No your not."
It was typical Tibetan humour to make a point. Geshe-la never disrespected the efforts of others. However, if he sensed that someone could hear what he had to offer, he would share some words for them to reflect on. In this case, yes you are doing well, but you have the potential to do better….and better again. Don’t forget that.
So as we enter the fourth month of the year, I sit and remind myself - I am doing well, and I can do better.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
David.
Monday March 25, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday March 25, 2024
Hello and welcome to another weekly roundup of posts to my blog.
This has been a wet winter and as such some outside jobs that needed to be done in the garden have been sitting, waiting for the weather to clear up. Seasons here in Hawaii don’t have as clear a delineation as more northerly latitudes, but there is a definite change in weather patterns. In the part of Maui where I live the weather becomes wetter, and although the day time temperatures can reach the high 70F(21C), mornings and evenings are cold and the trade winds that blow through the islands can be chilly.
This last week, the weather has started to clear…at least there have been windows, and I used it as an opportunity to get outside and tackle invasive plants taking over, power washing concrete on which mold can grow in our hot and humid climate. The upshot of this has seen me posting less this week, especially as the week progressed.
Another victim on the outdoor work has been my runs on the Watch To 5K program that I’ve been following. I’ve worked as much as the day has allowed and exhausted myself in the process…so no running. The exhaustion piece has also been a lesson to me in my running. Each week the program has me running more and walking less. On top of that the running intervals are longer. By the end of the last run I was truly wondering how I was going to keep this up and just took an extra day off both through tiredness and feeling a bit dispirited. However, a chance conversation on Mastodon with a coach has given me some perspective, reminded me that I am not to expect the same results as forty years ago (now there’s a surprise!), and suggested some helpful pacing and running schedules for me going forward. I hope to get back into it this week.
Until next week…
Thank you for reading.
David.
Monday March 18, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday March 18, 2024
Hello there. It is David Johnson here with a weekly roundup of posts to my blog.
It has been a wet week here on Maui, especially in the area of the north shore where I live. This region is one of the wetter parts of the island, but even so this week saw more low cloud and persistent drizzle than we normally have. I love the moody weather, probably because of growing up in England, and anyway sun is not in short supply here on Maui - the change is welcome. However, the rain could have curtailed itself a little earlier than it did.
Warm, tropical, wet weather lends itself to mold and as soon as the rain backs off I’ll be out with a pressure washer to clean off the green and black that are slowly appearing on the concrete.
My running practice with the Watch To 5K program got back into swing this week, which I am pleased about. I am seeing progress and feeling stronger in my body for having a regular exercise routine.
This week I got out another in the “Story Behind the Photograph” series. I’m enjoying putting this together, and allowing myself to look back and reflect on what was a rich time for me in my life, defining the direction for a great part of what came next. Aside from just making the time to write, the major roadblock to a new chapter being published is the process that I am using to get slides to a digital format ready to publish online. Still it is working.
Please do get in touch if you have any comments or questions. I can be reached at ctt @ omg.lol.
Thank you for reading.
David.
Monday March 11, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday March 11, 2024
This week has felt like a real mixed bag - work being done on the house, a visit to the doctor - both of which have follows this coming week….And then for my wife’s birthday we spent a night on the island of Oahu, in Honolulu. The Hawaii equivalent of a visit to the big city. Maybe by some world cities standards Honolulu is a baby, but for me coming from rural Maui the island metropolis is a visual and aural stimulant. We walked a lot. Visited the Honolulu Museum of Art - a beautiful old building, worth a visit whether for a current exhibition or for their permanent showings - to see an exhibition by the British artist David Hockney.
In old China Town we had a sushi dinner in a sake brewery. I love visiting China Town, feeling the historical bones of that part of the city and the part that it played in the harbor which is just a stones throw away. At the same time lamenting the way it feels like it is just about to take off, but always feeling a bit run down. Hidden in those buildings are some wonderful places to eat, art shops that come and go, old bars and markets.
Thank you for reading.
David.
Monday March 4, 2024 Newsletter letter
Monday March 4, 2024
Well it has been a long while since I sent out a newsletter to subscribers. The pause was initially caused by an illness last summer when I got pneumonia while visiting Portugal. Then that pause turned into a larger gap.
I am now remedying this omission but with a slightly different frequency.
Previously I sent out the newsletter on the first of each month with a hand curated selection of posts that I had made to my blog that month. I am now experimenting with sending out the newsletter every Monday with all posts from the last week. I will continue to include a accompanying letter.
There are two projects that I have started since the last newsletter, both of which can be followed via my website’s menu - all updates to these projects will also appear in subsequent newsletters, as part of my weekly feed of posts. They are:
I hope that you are happy with the changes and continue to subscribe. This last week we have had family visiting and so it has been a quiet week post wise.
If you have any comments, please do get in touch at ctt @ omg.lol. My email address is at the bottom of the newsletter.
Thank you for reading,
David.
August 2023 Newsletter letter
August 2023
Well after a run of 14 newsletters, the last one being at the end of April this year, I have not sent a newsletter for three months now. April and May found my wife and I in Portugal, based in Alcácer do Sal where we have a town house. At some point during our two month stay I became unwell. Initially it appeared to be hay fever, allergies which I escape here in Hawai’i. While the hay fever was upon me, I think (I am still unsure), that I got food poisoning. What happened next, I am still do not know. All I do know is that I did not get any better. I won’t go into too much detail here. I am writing a blog entry to capture what I experienced just so I do not forget about it. Suffice to say that I lost a lot of weight and energy along the course of a month. At one stage I was unsure how I would have the energy to get home. But get home I did, and went straight to the hospital. It turned out that I had pneumonia.
I was warned that it would take me a couple of months to recover from pneumonia, but I guess that I found that hard to take on board…until the reality struck. The next couple of months were a slow recovery process. Indeed recent weeks have seen minor symptoms holding on. All this gives me some anxiety for when we return to Portugal. I don’t know how or where I got pneumonia from, and I do not want to catch it again.
So the last three months have seen me distracted, or simply lacking the energy to get a newsletter out. With the end of August here I am hoping that I can get back into the rhythm of getting newsletters back out on a monthly basis.
The other big news for me are the devastating wild fires on Maui which struck the island on August 8th, whipped up by the strong winds of Hurricane Dora which passed well south of the island. The devastation caused to the town of Lahaina are the images that have gone round the world. As I have said in one of the posts below, I don’t believe that there is anyone on the island who has not been effected or who does not know someone effected in some way by the fires. The sense of collective and individual grief feels omni present on Maui. And then there is the added economic shock of the mass exodus of tourists from the island, followed up by few visiting. The wrong messaging got out at the time of the fires, not encouraging people to come here. The island is still open for visitors.
Finally, I have not published a new podcast episode for over a year, and so decided to close down my Behind The Thoughts meditation podcast. Not wanting to loose the work that went into the podcast, and so that people can still benefit from episodes, I have archived the whole podcast on my website. Find it here.
As ever, thank you for reading.
Aloha,
David.
April 2023 Newsletter letter
April 2023
I write this at the end of April in a small church square, Largo de São Mamede, on the edge of the Príncipe Real area of Lisbon. Tomorrow will be the end of our forth week in Portugal, the longest period of time that I have spent in this country, and we still have five and a half weeks to go.
This has been a busy month, time spent working on the house. Workmen in to get jobs done. Hang things in the concrete walls that I would not trust myself doing, without damaging the house. Hanging electrical fittings that require high reaching ladders that we don’t have, and skills that I don’t possess.
We have started building up relationships with neighbours, making new friends, getting to know the area, and I have started trying to learn Portuguese.
The latter has been a challenge due to the mantra that I have lived most of my life by, that is, ”I’m not very good at languages.” While some might have more of an aptitude towards languages, I don’t believe that this belief about myself has been very helpful to me. In a world where English is such an international language, and a multitude of language apps make translation so easy, whether I am typing in a conversation with someone, or deciphering words on a sign, I find that it is very easy for me to be lazy with any language.
However, two things make me believe that I can speak Portuguese, even if at just a very rudimentary level.
Years ago, I remember a linguist friend of mine saying that to learn a language one had to be prepared to ”make a fool of yourself.” If there is a skill, along with language learning, that I don’t do very well, it is making a fool of myself. However, going back to my travels in the eighties, I’m pretty sure that I made a fool of myself once or twice! I remember walking into small restaurants in China, and then walking straight into the kitchen to point to ingredients, with the idea in my head of meals that I had had before. I always left on good terms with the staff, and with a fully belly.
On this visit to Portugal, I am beginning to notice a sense of confidence building - I whisper this! - as I start to notice that I can at times recognize what people say. I am starting to pick out words where before I just heard an apparent jumble of sounds. My hope is that the more time that I can spend in this lovely country, and the more practice that I do, that my ability to make myself understood in Portuguese will increase.
That is one area where I must make more effort - communication. Move from recognizing and understanding, to trying to make myself understood.
The posts that I share this month are a mixture of photographs from the last month here in Portugal, and reflections on what I am seeing and experiencing. I hope that you enjoy what you see here. Please get in touch if you have any comments or questions.
As ever, thank you for reading.
David.
March 2023 newsletter letter
March 2023
Hello and welcome to the March 2023 newsletter. I am hoping that I can get this months’ newsletter out on time. Time will be a crunch. Because of how Micro.blog, the host for my blog and newsletter, is structured, I will have a small window of opportunity to do the final editing and add this letter before jumping on a airplane to San Francisco. I shall probably be doing that editing sitting at the departure gate at Maui airport.
…that’s what I am doing right now, on my phone. I hope that this arrives in one piece…
My last letter in part chronicled my February travels to England and Portugal for three weeks. This letter is catching me as I depart for the same countries, except this time I will be gone for two and a half months and not traveling solo, but with my wife.
The February trip was a maintenance run to Portugal to get some things done, and check on the house that we had purchased there at the end of last year. This visit will be a longer stay to get more acquainted with the house and town, and to make the house feel more like a home.
As I sit here and write this, I have mixed feelings about leaving. In no small way, that feeling is fed by having only been home for a month and now turning around and heading off for so long. But this trip had been on the cards for a while, before my February travels, and so it is no surprise. I keep telling myself that I’ll be fine once I am on my way. A far cry from my early twenties when I’d throw a pack on my back and walk out the door without looking back.
The mens groups that I am a part of here on Maui have started meeting again, with the pandemic now, for the most part, behind us. This month we held our annual gathering, our first for four years. It was great to be sitting in circle with like minded men. Men wanting to look at themselves, to be accountable for their actions. The day was challenging to me, I think in part because I realized how I cannot be as involved as I was, at least in the short term, because of my travels. These groups and the men in them, have been important to me.
This months blog posts have been dominated by the Micro.blog, March 2023 Photoblogging Challenge. Members of the Micro.blog community suggest a words which act as subject matter for each day of March. Jean McDonald, Micro.blog’s community manager, selects a word for the day from the words submitted. Those taking part then find a photo from their personal collection that for them fits that word.
So I have included some of my favourite photos from the month, along with a couple of other posts that I have slipped in.
On the home front, the weather has gone from wind, horizontal rain and strong wind, to sun. Winter felt as though it suddenly ended. The rain hasn’t disappeared, we live in a wet part of the island, it is just nowhere as intense and frequent as the first couple of weeks of the month.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to get in touch. It would be lovely to hear from you.
David.
February 2023 newsletter letter
February 2023
Welcome to my February 2023 newsletter. This month has been dominated for me by travel to Europe. A solo journey made up of two parts. First I stopped for a week in England to visit my mother. From there I travelled down to Portugal for two weeks.
Nothing specific was planned for the England leg of the trip. I simply spent some quality time with my mother, did some odd jobs for her around her apartment, and allowed myself to rest and get over jet lag which I find can hit me pretty hard when I travel east to Europe. It is easy being with my mum. Just outside of my mother’s front door is Durham Downs, a large, 400 acre area of common land that is protected my an old statute that prevents any building on it. I value being able to spend time up there, walking, breathing in the smells as only the nature of Britain can provide, and just sitting and being. Time in Bristol, and time on the Downs grounds and nourishes me. It fills me and reminds me where home is.
From Bristol, I flew down to Lisbon, Portugal. As I said in this post at the end of last month, my wife and I purchased a small townhouse in Portugal at the end of the summer of 2022. While we plan to spend longer there this year, I suggested that I head over there at the start of this year to check on the house, collect orders that were waiting and be around for people to come by and do a few odd jobs.
The visit to Portugal started off as a challenge. I walked into a cold house, something that I had not been used to probably since my student days. I huddled round a fire, and sandwiched myself between two duvets with my clothes on as the house slowly warmed up. Having blood that has been warmed by the sun of Hawai’i did not help with the cold. However, with time, as I started sorting things out and making myself more comfortable, I got into a rhythm of life there. Due to commitments at the house, I did not get out to see much of the country outside of the town of Alcácer do Sal. My Portuguese only stretches to a few words and so my communication with locals was limited. But I felt welcomed to the town and look forward to deepening my connection with the place and new neighbours.
More interestingly for me is how I used my time there. Or perhaps I might say, how my being in Alcácer and doing what needed to be done while I was there, impacted on personal plans that I had during my stay.
I had planned while I was there to do some writing, to prepare for a presentation that I am scheduled to give at the upcoming Micro Camp 2023, and if time allowed, at least lay the ground work for some new episodes of my podcast, Behind the Thoughts, which has been quiet for over a year now. I had not planned to do any of this during my stay in England. That was a time for rest, and spending time with my mother. However, while there was a lot to do in Portugal, I thought that there would be time around that doing to at least break into some of these personal goals. As it was, nothing happened.
I have mulled over this a lot, not least because as my time in Alcácer came to and end, I started feeling as though I had squandered an opportunity to get things done. I was alone. Apart from meeting with and waiting for deliveries or contractors - and there was a lot of waiting, sometimes to only be told that I would have to wait longer - doing odd jobs around the house and going out to pick things up, evenings and at times points around the day, were mine.
Time has offered me the opportunity to reflect and while I still wonder if I could have got something done, I am sitting more comfortably now with the outcome, and hopefully have learnt something from it. The last article below, _ Resting in the Anonymity of Travel_, speaks to background of my reasoning. I will touch in on the contents of the article here, while allowing the post itself to say more.
I identify as a HSP, Highly Sensitive Person. In essence if there is too much going on on an emotional and physical level, I can be left exhausted due to a lot of internal processing. Once the exhaustion sets in, tasks that take more internal power I simply don’t have the bandwidth for, regardless of how much I want to do them. My evenings for the most part were spent relaxing, or taking a walk. That is what I needed - to recharge. I was aware of tasks that I wanted to do, but didn’t have the mental space to get them done. I have to accept that. This has left me with the question, “Is there a way to get bite size amounts of a task done? Instead of looking at the task as a huge project in front of me, can I bite off a small corner?” I know that my friend Michael Nobbs has some thoughts and ideas on this. I practice them sometimes….other times I either forget or fall into old habits and exhaust myself.
Life is certainly not short on lessons to learn from.
A lot of the posts that I have shared below document my time away, both in England and Portugal. I hope that you enjoy them.
As ever, thank you for reading.
David.
January 2023 newsletter letter
January 2023
I start this newsletter at an airport hotel on the edge of San Francisco airport, and continue it at 41,000 ft (12,496.8 m) as the aircraft approaches the west coast of Ireland. London in a little under an hour and a half. I’m guessing that I will finish this letter in the middle of the night in England while dealing with the disorientation of jet lag.
Hello, and welcome to my January 2023 newsletter. This last month has felt revelational to me. I will be sixty this year. Off and on over the last year, I have considered looking back and exploring my story. What I have done with my life to date, where it has taken me and for as long as I have left on this planet, what direction the coming years could take me. This has been a project that has sat in the back of my mind, but I have not delved into in any serious way. I think it has just been a sense of overwhelm. Where do I start?
Early in the month, I was on the phone with my mother when she suddenly asked me if I had ever thought of writing down my story, what I had done in my life as in her view it was interesting? It was a question that came with no prompt from my side and felt like an affirmation, a vote of support for the project. A few years ago, my mother gave me an envelope with letters that I had sent to her while I was away. A source of material as well as a trip down memory lane.
Then midway through January the family were all gathered in a small room where I have a projector sitting above boxes full of slides from my travels back in the 1980s. They asked if they could see some. A couple of days later I had finally got around to sorting some out, they really are very mixed up at the moment. By the time that I went to bed, I had gone through three carousels worth of images – about 240 slides. There are many more still to go through. My wife and I took pictures of some of the projected images. Some of those photographs I have shared below.
That evening of going through the slides brought back to me a time of exploration and discovery for me. This was more than nostalgia for my youth. Something was stirred within me, touching what I will call for now an essence of me.
So, I have opened folders in my note app and writing app to collect ideas and snippets from my Story. I don’t have any plans or ideas for where this project might lead, but I do want to follow it. I hope that I stick with it.
And ”Yes,” I did complete this in England, in my mother’s apartment, late at night.
I hope that you enjoy the selection of posts from this last month. Please do get in touch with any comments or questions.
Thank you for reading.
David.
December 2022 newsletter letter
December 2022
I write this as 2022 draws to a close. While I don’t usually stay up to see the New Year in tonight, weather permitting, I plan to light a fire outside and sit around it with some family and friends to welcome in 2023 . . . or at least stay up for a while into the night.
This last month has been filled with the Holiday season for me. Preparing for it, social activities. My posts this month have been more numerous than of late, and at the same time they have been short posts. Posts where I am checking in with what I am doing in that moment, or how I am feeling now. The Holiday time is something that I struggle with. Essentially the commercialism of it all and the consuming that happens on all levels, swamping a simple but important message. Yes, there is joy. Yes, there is happiness. And I feel that there is too much excess and no stopping for a moment, no pause. For the me the message of the Holiday period is lost. While I don’t call myself a Christian, Buddhism is my adopted faith of thirty plus years now, I have always felt there to be an essential message around Christmas, one that is independent of any faith. And that is a message of peace and good will.
I grew up going to a school in Britain where we always sung carols at Christmas. I would go to carol services and go carol singing collecting money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Those carols hold for me the message of Christmas or maybe the message that I hold for this time of year. It is just a simple association. When I hear carols, and I look to play them whenever I get the opportunity, my heart drops into a calm and quiet place, a place of reminiscence of times past, of times growing up, a place of gratitude, and at peace.
And on a more lighthearted note - living here on Maui, I struggle with Christmas in 70/80F sun. I always have done, though this year was my most comfortable. It should be cold at Christmas! 😁
December’s posts
Below are a selection of my posts from this last month. I wish you all a very Happy and Peaceful 2023.
Thank you for reading.
With very best wishes,
David.
November 2022 newsletter letter
November 2022
Hello and welcome to the November 2022 edition of my newsletter. I write this sitting outside at dusk. I look out on the shadows of the night, as lights from distant houses break the darkness. It’s still. Very still. The wind of last week, and that which helps to keep these islands cool, has blown itself out. I sit listening to the crickets, to a distant dog bark, occasional traffic on the nearby highway (a two lane road running the length of Maui’s north east shore). Otherwise all is still and quiet, an atmosphere that fits me well. I am home alone this evening, and sometimes silence and stillness is what I do best in. It rests me, my mind and body. It quietens me. I allow myself to sit and listen to the quiet, to feel the stillness, to let both fill me and envelope me.
My return home
Give or take a few days, I have been back from Europe for a month now. I was pleased to return. To stop living out of a suitcase, to stop moving, to be in one place - specifically home - and just ground myself, taking stock of our last six weeks on the road.
Being home, a project that I wanted to start exploring in November was one of story, my personal story. I can’t say exactly what had prompted this, I think that it has been simmering for a good while. Next year I will be sixty. I am planning something for that time, to look forward, to what the next couple of decades of my life might hold. The story now was more about what have I done with my life so far? What have I learnt in the adventures that I have been blessed with? With this in mind, I decided to use NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, as my vehicle for starting on this project. I didn’t expect to get far with writing until I was back home, though the irony is that I wrote more on the journey home than I wrote for the rest of the month.
The project isn’t dead though. The resolve is there. I want to see what the project will reveal. I just have to figure out the method of execution. I see some obstacles along the way - some self-inflicted (so some self-examination needed), some just what life throws at us - but better to keep an eye on the goal and navigate these as they arise. Step by step.
This month’s posts
One of the posts that I have shared this month is of a pile of letters and cards that my mother gave to me. They are writings from the road that I sent home while on my travels over the years. As I said in the post, ”Maybe there is a story in there?”
I hope that you enjoy this month’s collections of posts. Please do get in touch if you have any comments or questions. I’d love to hear from you.
As ever, thank you for reading.
David.
October 2022 newsletter letter
October 2022
Hello and welcome to my October 2022 newsletter. I am writing this at the end of a long visit to Europe. I’ll be starting my journey home as this newsletter goes out. Most of the posts that I have shared here come from the journey of the last six weeks.
My wife and I left Maui in the closing days of September and now November is just beginning. As I was putting together the newsletter, even finding time on this trip to do that has been a challenge, looking back through my blog I was amazed at the ground that we have covered, both literally and figuratively. And I haven’t even shared every detail of the trip. Time to post has felt constricted.
We started off in England, visiting my mother who I have not seen since my father passed away a year ago. My sister and her husband also came to visit. traveling from New Zealand. All was going well until my sister and husband contracted COVID. Life in my mother’s apartment became very tight and uncomfortable, with everyone having different ideas as to how to handle the situation. Then on the morning that we were leaving for Portugal, mum walks out of her bedroom with a mask on. She had COVID!
Our first few days in Portugal were nerve wracking for me, with my aged mother now unwell with COVID. Thankfully my sister changed her plans and my mother is now doing well. Indeed we will see her briefly on the trip home.
Our visit to Portugal was brought on as we have bought a small house just south of Lisbon. That adventure has still to unwind, but we spent a week there sorting out some initial things with the house and laying the ground for the future. During that time I met up with Maique Madeira from Micro.blog (the hosting platform for my blog), and he showed me around Lisbon while we chatted. A lovely morning - thank you for your hospitality Maique.
From there it was onto Italy for my wife’s nephew’s wedding in Florence and some time traveling with her sister and husband. There was a part of me that was not looking forward to this part of the trip…the introverted part of me. Yes I have had some times when I have just wanted some quiet time, to step back from the socializing and seemingly continual do, do, do. But I have enjoyed myself.
For now though I am looking forward to getting home, my wife as well, to rest, regroup, get back in our routines…and see what comes next.
This month’s posts
And so onto this month’s posts. You will mainly see photographs and a few short reflections on the trip.
Thank you as ever for reading.
With best wishes,
David.
September 2022 newsletter letter
September 2022
Hello and welcome to my September 2022 newsletter.
I am back in the UK visiting family, staying with my mother. Last night my sister and her husband flew in from New Zealand. Distractions are at a maximum. I’m grabbing some early morning hours to pen these words.
I was going to say that two things have marked this month for me - post COVID symptoms and then this trip to England and onto to Europe for a family wedding. However, I am going to add a third, the first anniversary of my father’s death. I was aware of this approaching and was managing the time with some quiet reflection. But returning home has heightened my awareness of his passing. I have included a couple of recent posts that I have made to my blog relating to this anniversary.
I think as well that the Queen’s death also played into my reflections around death. I found myself returning again and again to the BBC’s live stream of Her Majesty lying in state. My views on the British Royal family are ambiguous, shifting and changing, but I had deep respect for the Queen, and listening to her Christmas broadcast was a part of my seasonal ritual. Like most of the people in the British Isles, I have never known a time without her being present. As was said so often in the broadcasts following her death, the Queen was a constant. Of course in our ever changing world, constants change.
I mentioned in my August newsletter that fatigue plagued me after testing negative for COVID. That, along with an on and off cough, carried on into September. I write this sitting on the other side of fatigue, it is definitely receding, but I was reminded of a time twenty or so years ago when I went through a period with chronic fatigue. A time when it was difficult to do much. Through some wonderful acupuncture treatment and Chinese herbal treatment I made a recovery from that illness, though the seeds of it have remained in me and are triggered at times. Because of that the post COVID fatigue had me concerned (dare I say frightened) that the symptoms of twenty years ago were returning. Some days it was difficult to do anything, feeling as though I was dragging myself through treacle. I find a lot of people hearing fatigue and thinking, “oh you are tired,” but no it is so much more than that. Like a weariness that eats into my bones.
So below is a selection of posts from September. I hope that you enjoy reading them. Please pass this onto to anyone who you think might be interested, and thank you for subscribing.
Wishing you well,
David.
August 2022 newsletter letter
August 2022
Hello Friend,
Well if one thing could define August to me, it would be COVID. After, how long is it, two and half years since the initial breakout? After watching COVID travel around the world. Following Maui become so quiet with no visitors allowed in. Watching the vaccines being rolled out, and tensions rise as debates raged about when to ease a particular restriction or let life return to normal (will that ever be possible?), only for some restrictions to be tightened again. After traveling across to Europe a couple of times and still dodging the COVID bullet. After the world changed in ways that three years ago I don’t believe any of us would have imagined, COVID finally found me two weeks into August 2022.
I write this three weeks after testing positive and six days after testing negative, and I am not out of the woods yet. Fatigue has been my biggest struggle. It feels like a slow crawl out of a hole, but I’m getting there, that I do notice in me.
I realize through all of this that I also have a lot to be grateful for. I might have been the most unwell that I have been for many years, but I still have my life. We all know, even if just through the news, those who lost theirs due to COVID. Of those who couldn’t get to say “goodbye” to loved ones.
I think that through all of this, through all that has happened over the last two plus years I sense that I haven’t really taken it all in and processed what the implications are, how it has effected me. And I wonder how true that is for the world at large? I march on with my life, but I do try and find time to sit and reflect through meditation, writing, just sitting quietly, on the happenings of the last three year, and to me some of this just feels like a lot to take in. Perhaps through a lack of time, perhaps due to my own avoidance, or perhaps because some events simply need time to process and I am still working through that time…whatever the reason, for me I feel that I still have some personal work to do to process the time and the mark that COVID has left of me…on us.
Story
One thing that I have found very present in my life of late has been the idea of Story. In short that revolves around my story, what I have done in my almost 60 years (next year) on the planet. I don’t know why this subject is feeling more present right now? Maybe because of the awareness that 60 is not far away? But the reason be as it may, I am aware that as I reflect back on my life - you’ll see some photographs from the past below - that there is also some deeper reflection behind the surface images. I am not sure what story comes out of that, but I sense something there that I would benefit from exploring.
To this end I have started capturing thoughts as they arise. I have no plan for how this project will evolve or when it might finish. I am just acknowledging its presence in my thoughts and interest, and so am simply following that lead for now. Manifestations of this exploration could appear in future blog posts and newsletters.
This month’s posts
Below are some posts that I made during August, mostly early on in August before I became unwell. While I had aspirations to document my time through COVID, apart from a couple of short posts as I emerged from the other side, I simply did not feel up to it.
As ever, thank you for reading,
David.
July 2022 newsletter letter
July 2022
Hello Friend,
Sharing reflections
July has been an unseasonably wet month in the part of Maui where I live. Parts of the island have been struggling with water shortages, while my family’s property is looking green and healthy. For that I am grateful, and at the same time I sense the wet weather ending and the drier weather of summer approaching.
Earlier this month I was on a Zoom call with a charity in the UK of which I am a Board member. All the UK based members were sitting there in summer clothes with that exhausted look of trying to manage the heat. I commented that it was hotter in Britain than here in Hawaii.
I feel as though the planet is under stress. One of the posts that I am sharing from the last month is about the death this last week of the British scientist, James Lovelock. Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, positing that the Earth is a self-regulating system. Lovelock had been warning for years about the results of humans' actions on the planet, and indeed more extreme weather conditions now appear to be more the norm.
I have found myself more productive in my writing this last month, of which I am grateful. This has felt like a month of reflections. I share with you below some of my blog posts from July.
Wishing you all a very happy summer.
As ever, thank you for reading,
David.
June 2022 newsletter letter
June 2022
Hello Friend,
Well I have been quieter in my posts this month. Not that I am the most frequent of posters at the best of times, but I feel that I have been vocal in my quietness through June.
I look back through the month and believe that the main thing that saw this lack of writing output was a lack of space in my life. I work much better when I know that I won’t be disturbed. Even having others in same room as or in vicinity of me, can have an adverse effect on my working output. I put much of this down to my identification as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). When I know that I might be disturbed at any moment by someone calling for me. When I am sharing a room with someone who does not sit so comfortably with silence, something that I work at my best in, my body is on high alert and finds it difficult to focus. When the sense of disturbance gets too much, or the work environment gets too loud (and I am unable to find somewhere else to work), I will either pick at what I am doing or find something else to do that will allow me some quiet and solitude. Along with the search for alone time, the aim of the latter is also to allow my body to settle, but there is always the nagging feeling of not doing what I want to do. Writing is a source of creativity and I would say a life blood for me.
I have family members and friends who can seemingly work in the midst of noise and chaos happening around them, but that is not for me.
So here is a selection of posts that I put up through the month of June.
Thank you for reading,
David.
May 2022 newsletter letter
May 2022
Dear Friend,
Following a day of interruptions and what I might call discombobulation I wrote the following in my journal last week (and posted it to my blog),
It’s been hard to find time to write today. I’m feeling it.
Writing is important to me, very important. I can trace the start of my time putting pen to paper back to when I was traveling in my mid-twenties. I don’t know what made me do it, but I started keeping a journal (or diary as I referred to it then) as a log of places that I was visiting and my impression of them. With time that morphed into more of a reflective journal on what I was thinking about life in general, or what the experiences of that day were bringing up for me.
On returning home, I carried on keeping a journal. It was not necessarily everyday, but fairly often. I would write about what I was doing and things and people who I might be struggling with in that moment. As my meditation practice started, I would keep my journal beside me and if something came up while I was meditating, I would stop and write, free flow, feeling as though I was purging the thoughts from my head and helping me to process what was going on. (I have never been taught that as a practice, but it has helped me - there is a blog post in there!)
The scientifically minded of me would like to understand what is going on, but if I can put that wish aside (maybe I will find the answer one day, but it is not that important right now as I know that the process works for me) and just trust the process, the business of writing becomes an essential part of me. The getting down on paper or in digital format what is in my head. Exploring thoughts or allowing creative description to emerge.
If I have days scheduled ahead of time that take me from writing time, I can comfortably manage that. However, with time that becomes more difficult. I am missing out on something. It is in part why I have set up a method for recording events into a digital journal. It allows me to quickly type some words and save them. It is like slipping in a quick one minute meditation if I simply want to keep the continuity going, but sitting for longer is not possible that day.
So I share with you here a selection of my writing, long and short that appeared on my blog through May. Please do get in touch if you have any comments.
Thank you for reading,
David.
p.s. just writing that felt good 😊