Category: Land Of Anne


100 Days Of Awe: Day Eighty Three – Full Moon Friday

Day 83: Full Moon Friday

IMAG5002After a week of roller coaster riding Friday was a pleasant middle of the road day, not too high, not too low, not too slow, not too fast, pulling the strands and the threads steadily together before heading out for a moonlight stroll.   My phone, of all things, inform me that this is the night of the full moon while Facebook is littered with notes about the rarity of a full moon on Friday 13th, something that has not occured since 1991 and will not occur again until 2098.  It also coincides with a burst of solar flare activity, all in all a combination of events that triggers stories of myths and supersition.

The full moon in June was known as the “strawberry” moon by the Algonquin Indian tribes as it marked the time of the year to harvest the fruit.  It is more familar here as a “honey” moon because of it’s colour – a result of the juxtaposition of the sun at it’s highest in the sky and the moon at it’s lowest giving it it’s yellow colour -and the fact that bees in their hives were at the height of their honey production.  However honeymoon is probably more familiar as meaning the holiday a bride and groom take after their wedding as June was the traditional month for marriage ceremonies.  All in all a full moon with a few more stories than normal attached to it.  My experience of it was a game of peek a boo behind the clouds as I tried to take a photo which had me smiling at the end of a rather focused serious day.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Eighty Two – A Better Class Of Day

Day 82: A Better Class Of Day

IMAG4997Regents Park Liriodendron Tulipifera

A blank canvas of sleep held me steady and restful, while the flotsam and jetsam of yesterday floated away.  A beautiful sunny day and Jimney Cricket is back at my shoulder.  With the help of an early morning bizz on the buzzer from the postman I hit the day at 7.30am.  The pleasure of time to land back in life lifted and carried me in plenty of time to the RIBA – that’s the R-I-B-A rather than riba which has the tinge of a passing reference to a multinational transport company or a Spanish call to arms.  The Florence Hall, on the first floor is a stunning piece of art deco architecture, peaceful and magnificnet, was my suggestion for my meeting with Suzanne Gowler of The Great Generation.

Suzanne was delighted with the choice of location which was the ball that got us rolling on the possibilities as well as logistics of my contribution to the future of the organisation.  Moving from a charity to a social enterprise the vision is to integrate experiential learning programmes that bring best of corporate brains to experience and serve in the creation of sustainable projects in developing economies.  There are an abundance of demand on the ground in countries like Africa, India and Sri Lanka among others and the next challenge is establishing the corporate partnerships and customising the programmes.  It ticks alot of my boxes.  The next step is to get to Uganda to become orientated around the projects on the ground at the end of July.

With plenty of food for thought I moved on to lunch with Liam Cullinane, over from Galway to visit his NUCCA chiropractor.  NUCCA  is a unique chiropractic technique that involves aligning the top bone in the neck, the atlas, or C1, to allow the rest of the spine and nervous system to function at its optimal potential – literally ‘puts the head back on straight’.   21 years ago Liam was seriously disabled by meningitis.  He is insistent on pushing his capabilities and sets the bar high for himself.  He has just returned from a trip to the North Pole as an observer at the world’s coolest marathon and is getting ready to return to Atlanta to visit the Carrick Brain Centre an advanced centre for brain repair and rehabilitiation.  Liam couldn’t speak highly enough of the work that is done there and the impact it has had on him.  What I love about Liam is he believes, he has vision.

I was so glad that I had allowed an open afternoon for a casual open ended catch up with my friend Barbara.  Barbara lives in Fitzrovia, just off Oxford Street.  It seems so posh and upper crust but Barbara is wonderful, normal and down to earth.  My neighbourhood park is Little Wormwood Scrubs her’s is a royal park The Regent’s Park – covering 410 hectares, with a rose garden of over 30,000 roses of 400 varieties, the largest grass sport’s area in London, an open air  the London Zoo and carefully cultivated gardens, an open air theatre and a great range of exotic (to me) trees and shrubs.  I got particularly excited about the tulip tree not just because of the wonderous flower but because I love the obviousness of it’s common name.  A tree with tulips growing in it.  All in all a better class of day.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Eighty One – The Toilet Of Myopia

Day 81: The Toilet Of Myopia

IMAG4954Even The Toilets Tell Stories At The Museum Of London

Life is always life.  Ebbing and flowing, cluttered-clotted atoms, milling and bouncing, ever expanding.  Billions and billions of multi-coloured fragments of life crowding around us so I suppose it is no surprise that I can get trapped in the detritus of dark, scowling, scummy, eddies of stuff.

Monday was a slow, muggy day with a slam up against the wall before bedtime, Tuesday had an excited Jimney Cricket zest for life with a gentle, cruisey cushion of an end to the day.  By wednesday the pendulum had swung back around and my day became magnetised around the email that told me that I hadn’t got the job I was interviewed for on Monday; plunging me back into the toilet of myopia, gazing up into the bottom crack of twisted bitter self.  I struggle to extricate myself to be the observer, in fact I didn’t make it, like a spider trying fruitlessly to get traction on the sheer ceramic sides I just kept slipping back and getting more and more frantic and wound up. Everything I touched kept reflecting where I wasn’t; webinars about the gifts I wasn’t using, newsletters about the things I wasn’t doing to make money, even yoga turned out to be a standoff with a belligerent bunch of OAPs.

By the end of the day Thursday’s commitments began to crowd in on me; I had another interview and had a packed diary of trips to make best use of my daily travel pass.  I had to realise that whatever about my casual meetings my commitment to travel across London to see a friend just out of hospital would be a disaster in my current state of mind.  Stuck in the commitment of it rather than the joy I knew cancelling my trip was the best decision but I felt pretty crap about being a wimp to my emotional state.  My friend was beautifully magnamous assuring me she was having plenty of visitors and somehow I was slowly hoisted up to the lavatory seat.  I realise now that deliberately choosing to fail at this one thing resurrected me to the bigger picture of life.  Instead of fussing about my day ahead, making sure that I could demonstrate that I had read and researched for my interview, checking out suggestions for lunch, planning precise timings and details I decided that the most important thing was to be comfortable and rested.  Somehow I managed to creep to bed frayed but calm, raw but surrendered.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Eighty – Yesterday Is So Far Away

Day 80: Yesterday Is So Far Away

IMAG4932Dog Rose, Wormwood Scrubs

There is a magic in sleep.  A reboot of the mind, a memory clear out, a releasing of resources back into the resource pool and a termination of background processes. I woke early and surprisingly bright, I could swear that I had Jimney Cricket tapping away excitedly at my should insisting that I get up to meet the day before it came and found me.  This started at 7am.  I managed to resist for 30 mins before I arose to stretch into the morning.  What a delight, a wonderful two hours of connecting with myself and connecting with my intuitive practise before strolling on the scrubs taking time for the dog roses and dawdling before forfeiting yoga for an afternoon at the Museum of London.

I had never heard of this museum despite working for a year or more withing striking distance of it on London Wall.  An event from Sparknow, the knowledge and communication consultancy, titled Stories In Action caught my attention in a recent newsletter.  I think of myself as a story teller both in the traditional sense of the word, loving the telling and sharing of ancedotes and vignettes, but also as an intuitive coach and practioner stories are the access point to truth.  I was curious to see how stories are being used in the corporate world and who these other story tellers were.  It was one of the most delightful of days, warm and welcoming and London unfolded to meet me.  The museum is walled away in the centre of a roundabout, a mini Universe dedicated to the story of London and it’s people.  Sparknow worked with the Museum to use story to elicit their content framework priorities and this case study was a core component of the event but not the only one.  There was rich layering of strands that we chose to participate in, engaging, clever and informative and shortly to be the subject of a separate blog.  It was a new audience for me, not only because I didn’t know anyone but also because the texture was unfamiliar – it was corporate, clued-in, stylish, creative, sauve and relaxed.  People stood tall and straight, were open and engaging.  I am aware that we receive what we reflect to the world and it did strike me that perhaps the change is in me not in the world around me.  Wine afterwards in the London Wall Bar & Kitchen was considered and generous.  Conversation ranged from the Appalachian Trail with the author of To The Woods, to a Jon Pawson barn conversion, memories of Crouch End, the John Deakin exhibition at The Photographer’s gallery, stories of the Inner Temple, mediation and a bit of business chatter.  Eclectic, curious and delightful indeed.  Yesterday is so far away.

tells the story of the world’s greatest city and its people. It cares for more than two million objects in its collections and attracts over 400,000 visitors per year. It holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. – See more at: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/corporate/about-us/who-are-we/#sthash.7mBmGQOV.dpuf
The Museum of London tells the story of the world’s greatest city and its people. It cares for more than two million objects in its collections and attracts over 400,000 visitors per year. It holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. – See more at: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/corporate/about-us/who-are-we/#sthash.aeWiQq3H.dpuf
The Museum of London tells the story of the world’s greatest city and its people. It cares for more than two million objects in its collections and attracts over 400,000 visitors per year. It holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. – See more at: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/corporate/about-us/who-are-we/#sthash.aeWiQq3H.dpuf

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Nine – Body Bits

Day 79: Body Bits

IMAG4920The highlight of my day was a late night dash to Tesco’s for a Snickers bar – I managed to resist the Maynards Discovery Patch Body Bits and Animals but the garish brightness of these bouncy point of sale packages managed to lift me enough to grab a photo for the day.

Yesterday was sluggish, today was like treacle.  A warm and muggy day, a working day to put your shoulder against or if was your wont a day to sip coffee on a city sidewalk, sunnies on and face to the welcome warmth but instead I tipped over into the yawning maw of inertia and hopelessness.  Today I had my first interview in 3 years, for a part time job.  I was excited about it.  A short bus ride away, a lovely character building, a small, dynamic, business looking for organisation and project managing for relocations and home renovations.

The short bus ride turned out to jagged stop start of a journey, through narrow residential streets, navigating double parked cars, facing off to burly trucks and  stuck up the bum of a rubbish truck.  Uncharacteristically I had given myself plenty of time so despite this edgy start I was still early but the tension of the trip left me raw.  The interviewer was charmingly pleasant, the office was as lovely and welcoming as the pictures I had seen. There was nothing particularly untoward about our meeting but it felt like time had slowed down in the most unpleasant way as I watched each exchange between us like a slow motion rally, showing up minute imperfections, fraying thoughts, daggy cul-de-sacs of answers and my flat heavy responses.  The soft sheen of sweat broke out on my face, a lazy dribble of it slide down my cleavage and the itch of my raspy linen trousers start to nag urgently.  It could have been the replay of a winning ace but instead it felt like a car crash.   I thought it would be a relief when it was all over but it was painful to feel all smashed up.

I work with the premise that my thoughts and feelings are not a true reflection of reality but I am glued in fascination and awe to the power of this one tiny event put under the microscope. To my ego so much more than a part time job is at stake rather it is a challenge to the status quo and it slams me up against the wall to show me who is boss.  I observe what is going on and I keep on observing as the afternoon slides into evening and evening slides into Tesco’s and a dark night stroll with a Snicker’s bar.  There is nothing to observe any more and the nagging day melts into the now.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Eight – Buttercup Sunday

Day 78: Buttercup Sunday

IMAG4906I recognise the slow, sludgy energy of my resistance to completions coming on.  It has been creeping up on me over the past couple of weeks.  The more I ignore it the more the power of it’s grimy grip claws into my heart clogging the portals of awe and wonder.  There are only twenty two days left to do; I have already done seventy seven entries well over the half way hump, I have navigated training immersions, a malfunctioning phone battery, loosing my phone and being offline.  The end is in sight and I am on my knees.  I am blinded to awesomeness, I struggle to hitch my heart to the joy of discovery and serendipty.  Yes there is stuff going on, chores to do and a preoccupation with my first interview in 3 years on Tuesday but the weight of the resistance is disproportionate.  This is the snatching of failure from the jaws of success, the unconscious chaffing of self doubt and unrelenting focus on proving my incapability.

Opening to awe is simple.  I can do it effortlessly.  The minute I surrender the need to know and declutter the now wonder is there; it has a personal flavour, lots of nature and sky, funny combinations of colours and things that tickle my fancy.  Mostly they cause me to be wide-eyed and smiling, sometimes sad and contemplative.  It is an act of will to drag myself out into the muggy day and up to Little Wormwood Scrubs, in between the fluffy edges of the flocking clouds there was warm, warm sun.  The park is alive and smiling, the green carpet dotted with clover, daisies and buttercups; brighter than brightest yellow buttercups; oh so cute but believe it or not toxic to cattle, horses and other livestock.  Who would guess.  I linger to soak up the sinking rays.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Seven – Lucky Bitch

Day 77: Lucky BitchIMAG4900Who smudged dat cloud?!  Where are it’s artfully accidental edges where angels can dangle their delicate ankles?  How come it has been stretched across the sky merging into blue like the ocean on the shore?  I wonder how it feels to be a cloud dispersed and scattered in the heavens, are there tenous threads holding together the sequins of it’s being or is every fleck of fluffiness being hurtled into nothingness alone in glorious solitude?

I turned my heart inward this morning thinking about my lonely phone lost somewhere in my meanderings yesterday, my centre dispersing as I stopped believing in me and started the spiral of downward interrogation.  Teetering in the space of my anger for not being present combined with wallowing in the mourning of the loss of my contacts and my photographs on the one hand and fatalistic submission to a new contract and handset on the other hand I was irritated, dejected and slumped in inertia.  As it happened my 24 month contract is up for upgrade on the 10th of June, today is the 8th, so my timing is pretty perfect and fortunately convenient.

It was so easy to stay at home and not to pursue the possibility that my phone was waiting for me somewhere.  That is what I did for most of the day.  Eventually I went back to Tesco’s, where I was SURE I had left it.  Nothing there.  Then on to the fruit and veg stall where I got my apples.  Their distress at my loss triggered my distress.  Just two more places to check out before the necessary stop at the local police station.  It took all my efforts to be present and not project myself into the yawning queue of The Law.  It was in the Oxfam Bookshop, where I bought a birthday card but had no recollection of putting down my phone, that I received the best of news.  I was elated, delighted and astoundingly reunited.  My experience was smoothed by the ease of barring and unbarring the phone with O2 online.  All in all I am a lucky bitch today.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Six – Lost

Day 76: LostIMAG4893

A Rose Released

As I walk down Portobello Road I am noticing my heart opening to embrace this scuddy, electic, quirky, tie-dyed world of my neighbourhood.  It dawns on me how much and for what a long time I have been resisting London, desiring and yearning to be elsewhere than here.  It seems I am surrenduring to the Summer bouyancy of it, curious about the fedora with a feather, the decor of L’Epicerie, the possibility of a stall in the Portobello Arcade, sniffing at the La Cave a Fromage and making notes to self of the multitude of wine bars and cafes that have to be tried on.  Like yesterday there seems to be a different dawning, a drive to action, to stepping into life and experiencing it.  It seems like I have been stopped waiting for the green light to go for far too long.  I am not in a hurry but I notice that I am not in the effortless ease of the ebb and flow of Friday afternoon browsers, tourists and lackadasical locals.  Perhaps I am still crunching on my gears; out of sync I am clumsy.  I bump into and graze off crusing human beings and the subtle irritation builds as the opticians are closed before closing time, the dress I love is in every size but mine and there is no sign of mint in Tescos.

By the time I get home I am juice-day hungry.  And then I notice that I haven’t got my phone.  I have a grrrr in my gut now.  Back to Tescos but there is no sign of it.  The market stalls I stopped at are wrapped up and closed for the day.  We ring and ring my number and it just goes to voicemail.  The O2 chat agent bars the phone and reorders my SIM in no time at all. I am lucky it is only 3 weeks to my contract renewal date and I am already eligible for an upgrade but my plan to forego the cost of a new handset may well be scuppered unless, like Mary Ellen’s nose, my phone turns up.  Lost perhaps is really just waiting for me to come back.

Update:  Lost WAS just waiting for me to come back – what joy to release my photos.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Five – The Medicine Is Working!

Day 75: The Medicine Is Working!

IMAG4851Iced Pink Sky, Dalgarno Gardens, London W10

The changes are subtle but not insignificant.  I am sleeping better, not so much going to bed earlier but when I sleep oh do I sleep and for long luxurious stretches.  After last week’s training extravaganza I slept for a solid 10 hours.  It was so delicious.  Not that I knew it was delicious at the time but waking up knowing how long and how well I slept was a delicious feeling, sensually delicious in fact.

But here are other signs too.  Today I got the bright idea to join the local Library.  Now I have lived where I live for over 16 years and the library has been here for all of that time and even longer.  It has never crossed my mind to join the library.  Today it seemed so obvious.  Clearly there are a confluence of factors; I love reading, particularly before I go to sleep.   My inclination is to buy the books I want to read; many of them I want to keep but more of them I pass on to Oxfam books or sell on Amazon now that I am actively keeping my personal possessions to a minimum.  Of course I have gone geeky and I love my Kindle books but sitting in front of a screen all day, followed by a little telly, doesnt endear me to read a Kindle book. Financially things are also tenuous and I cannot justify prolifligate spending on books thugh not a month goes buy when I don’t by at least one.

The idea to join the Library hit me like a flash of light – a flash that has been travelling at a very slow speed from a very long way away.  Joining the library was so exciting, even if the Librarian in charge appeared to poking her eyes out to keep boredom at bay, despite the raucous belching and farting from a bunch of study resistant school girls and the heavy somulence of some amphorous other bodies.  I was excited by my choice of plastic membership cards.  I went funky town.  I was excited by the invitation to take out up to 25 items of which 15 could be books! I was tempted by the audio books but Spotify does me for CDs and blinkbox serves my video needs at a comparable price with the addition of Tesco Clubcard points which I convert to airmiles.  In the end I read about the iChing, the Mayan 2012 prophecies – which is a little pointless now unless they were out by a year or three – and The Evening Standard before I got excited all over again about the electronic wizardry used to check the books out. Gone are the days of rubber stamps and handwritten dates though curiously all of the books come with a check out slip.

And if the whole Library idea wasnt enough I found myself dashing out of the flat up to the park to capture photos of an iced pink sky.  Without a coat.  Seriously the wonders will never cease.  It could my recent Creative Warrior training, the HRT trial, my recent haircut,  a combination or all three or none of the above. Whatever it is it is different and I am liking it.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Seventy Four – Sainsburys Sky

Day 74: Sainsburys Sky
IMAG4829The weather is teasing us.  The calender says June but the Guy in the sky is playing April or is it October?  The firmament is cluttered with clouds, rent-a-cloud are doing unseasonally good business.  Ducking and diving between showers I get to yoga and up to Sainsbury’s, it is mild but my bicycle saddle is soggy.  It is tempting to keep my hood up and my head down but my heart is watching out for awe and wonder.  I marvel at the clotted vista above Sainsburys’ Car Park. At home the guffaw of greenery at my window and the twinkling of the elusive sun tantilise me while steel grey heavens and sudden weeping tears deter me.  Summer should be here but it is playing hide and seek today.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.