I think I have had writers block.

I have not been able to write for a while.

Anyone else felt like they have been stuck in a rut – have so much to say yet the need for perfection leads to procrastination, then the inevitable paralysis and nothing gets done! Ambling alongside ourselves, keeping us company, habitual negative thought partners - self-judgement, doom storytellers telling us it is a waste of time, useless, what’s the point, who is going to really read and listen anyway?

I simply lost the joy in free writing and I think I just needed to let go. Stop this fear of failure – what is perfection and what is failure anyway? After all, they are only made up stories we tell ourselves – we can make up and swap for positive stories, can’t we?

So I shared my angst with

gilly smith

. ‘You need to Dream Write’, she said. We use the Dream Writing process to free up creativity on her incredible writing retreats in rural East Sussex. ‘Let’s make a vision board’.

An hour together on zoom, I was making a talking vision board with her, tearing up an old issue of Vogue, as we talked about what I found. ‘Pull out what comes to you’, she said. So I did and we talked through the words and feelings I had. The creativity I yearned for came back and I felt a new lease of writing life ahead of me. It may not always be perfect but it is a restart for me and over the next few weeks I would like to share my dream writes with you, in whatever form they take. I would love it if you could comment, let me know how you combat ‘the block’ and share your feedback as I enjoy my writing journey again and ditch these negative demons.

Dream writing – Flowerbomb – 7^th August 2024

There is perfection in beauty

Or is there? What we see on the outside is not necessarily what is going on the inside.

Let’s take a beautiful image – a swan, serene, gliding up a river, against the tide, rivulets of ripples in its wake, diamonds glistening in the dimming evening sunlight, majesty in motion. Who knows how hard he is having to work to achieve that pace. That momentum to move forward. Against the tide. No one. You can’t see. The work is invisible, unseen to the naked eye, only he knows his challenge.

A beautiful image of a female model, pictured above, perfect hair and make-up, styled to perfection. Flower bombs of blooms in her hair, unnaturally challenging the reality of gravity – selling human perfection in a perfume? Selling dreams, feelings, transformations, encouraging the need to cradle one’s self in scents and aromas to fuel empty souls and senses that we did not even know were there.  A visual depiction disrupting our weakened desires to continue to look better, feel better, smell better, be better, and enabling us to believe we can achieve this image of perfection.  

What is perfection? Is it real? Can it be achieved? Is perfection very personal to each and every one of us?

My anxiety and OCD fires my desire for perfection when I am creating menus, all sensory controls in place, creating culinary enchanting magic spells, to be forever indelibly engraved into those food moment memories.

It is exhausting and exhilarating as I taste in my head the orchestras of flavour, textures, colours, scents to form my perfection crescendo. The momentum to continually move forward and do better. Against the tides of my performance anxiety. You can’t see. The work is invisible, unseen to the naked eye. Only I know of my challenge until it is there on your plate, at your table. My vision, my version of perfection.