Short Film: ’40 Mile Birthday’

UK lockdown, are you over yet!? There’s light at the end of the tunnel, springy temperatures slowly emerging, but for some reason that cabin fever-feeling is real these days and seemingly affecting my creativity levels. One week passed by and I hardly put pen to paper, or digits to keyboard rather. Disappointed? Well, so am I. Writer’s block you say? Maybe.

Having a proper think about it though, I might have been overdoing the ‘staying productive while looking for work’-bit throughout the last few days, weeks even. To make up for the lacking professional engagement, I’ve been trying to cram in too many things, to do my bit, to have something to show for myself. While continuously trying to learn something new here and there, endlessly filling my brain with new information, I forgot to give it some time to process, to make new connections, weird and wonderful as they may be at times.

Not wanting to let you down either, I tried to force myself to write which made the inability to do so even worse. Forcing creativity is probably not the way to go, I do know that, especially after reading Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc., which I will tell you more about next month. But for some reason I was still unwilling to accept defeat, for my own as well as your sake. It actually quite upset me not being able to offer you some entertaining and distracting — let’s not even mention inspiring — words this week.

So, instead of continuously flogging a dead horse, that horse being me momentarily, I figured inspiration can come from anywhere, even from a 12-minute short film that conveniently landed in my inbox the other day. As so often, timing could not have been any better since the movie tells the story of Dave Cornthwaite who decided to celebrate his 40th birthday in style and on 40 different modes of transport, one of them apparently inspiring me to shake up my daily walks. Hopefully the first step in the right direction to get rid of that blockage, to let loose for a bit, embrace that inner child, and well, get better at picking myself up again, literally.

Having mentioned lockdown birthdays recently, I thought this short video could offer some ideas, a little laughter, especially when wooden stilts come into play, and an entertaining kind of approval that it’s okay to give yourself a break sometime, to get cosy in a wheelbarrow and let others do the pushing for a while:

Thanks again to Adventure Breaks (now Adventure Solos) for not only teaching me how to wild camp but also sending inspiration my way as and when needed. While my creativity is nowhere to be found and I’m clearly overdue for a Just Being Vacay, feel free to head over to their page if in need of outdoor adventure advice, events, books, movies, you name it. Make sure to come back though as I hope to be of service again soon — lacing up my boots right now to let nature do its magic. 🥾🌷🌳🪱🌱🌻🐞🍃🐾

PS: Hiking boots today to give my bruised behind and ego a bit more recovery time, but roll on spring indeedy! 🛼

PPS: What’s your non-motorised vehicle of choice to maybe join in for Dave’s 50th? 🎂