Activated
A conversation on following the thread
Dane Tomas and I are starting a London event series called Activated. It’s a 4 hour workshop for entrepreneurs, creative visionaries and people who care about having an impact with their work. We’ll be sharing teachings, talks and practices about purpose, creativity and creating work that has a big ripple without sacrificing your full self in the process.
We started riffing and recording because we wanted to capture the creative process which so far has been:
feeling the impulse
feeling the connection between us and what lights each of us up
massaging ideas together
adding some logistical things like booking a venue
wobbling around
committing on a deeper level to make it happen
feeling awkward, admitting we’re okay if only a few people come to the first one
striding forward
making this video
I share this because creating something and developing community from scratch requires an inelegant mix of will, determination and surrender.
I am starting to talk more about my time working in Downing Street and the years that followed in New Zealand and beyond. There is a depth study of self, sex, soul, power and leadership living in me and i’m finding the words.
As a writer, I can find words. They find me. On walks, in the kitchen, when i’m lighting candles and driving long distances. But there are words that need time, pacing and honouring. Not a premature ejaculation of opinion. A well-oiled, gently dissected appreciation of time, learning, humility and curiosity about what went unseen.
Sharing the inevitable pitfalls, uncertainties and sheer will and desire to follow intuition and as Michael Meade calls it responding to the ‘call that keeps calling’. For me, that’s soul.
I can dress it up - dress it down.
Over-spiritualise,
Under-spiritualise.
I believe in soul. The fire of the human spirit. The importance of hydrating our unique essence that lives under masks.
My attempts to share this belief, teach, guide, stumble and not fucking know come out in a few ways. This Substack is one. Workshops are another.
How to catch mist in your hands?
Let the smoke get caught in your eyelashes.
Turn your face to the wind and feel the essence of tangible, undeniable truth and meaning -
Got to start somewhere.
Got to put form around that thing - that holy thing.
Got to try and inspire, not for my ego but for my sanity.
I’m here to try -
May as well be a workshop in Hoxton next weekend.
