Producers Pool - Dates in the Diary pt1

Towards the end of 2019 I was introduced to the concept of the Portfolio Career and it was a mindset game changer.

2019 was also the year I asked myself, which I often do year on year - "If I won the lottery what would I do?" The answer has been the same for as long as I can remember. To fund and produce independent small scale theatre working with emerging artists and directors.

This time I accepted I’d probably never win the lottery but ya do want to do this.

I know my craft as a stagemanager, my digital learning and project experience has encompassed social media and associated productivity technologies, podcast audio recording and production, I can edit video.

Mobile live-streaming and virtual worlds. Audience and augmentation.

Technology and theatre.

Not for technology but for engaging immersive idea revealing story-driven theatre. Unusual productions in extraordinary spaces. A big part of the lottery dream is to have the money to fund it.

Then there is like-minded professional networking. Nothing is more aspirational than spending time talking, listening and strategically dreaming with fellow producers. All on differing trajectories in their own careers. A community of collaborators. A tribe of mentors.

Chris Grady hosts Producers Pool.

I was, since 2018 forever attempting to synchronise my meetings in London at Equity or events by Cybersalon to draw a three-card trick where I’d get to attend a Producers Pool, Equity meeting and a Cybersalon event. Trump card would be to fit in a theatre show too.

I would augment my attendance at events on occasion, to showcase remote access potential. The immersion in ground-based experience made the strategic split to include cloud-based access hard to make happen when I was the on needing access and not providing the access which was the ultimate aim, to extend attendance.

The value and reward of cloud access were invisible to physical organisers. The concept appealed but in practice, the management of the physical event was enough.

Blending Digital and Physical looked to be a pipe dream. Then came Covid. One of the first to embrace the opportunity to pivot to digital was Producers Pool. Hurrah!

So independent producers and theatre-makers meeting monthly often with an influencing peer speaking currently happens online.

What do you have to offer?

What do you need?

This leads to the momentum and mindfulness of conversations. 

What can I offer? Insights, experience and practice to pivot to digital. What do I need? The blending back to physical with gradually lowering balanced percentage extension option to attend either way and get the same influencer insights and networking dialogue.

I don’t ask much! Am I asking too much?

Monthly on the last Wednesday, until further notice starting January 27th if you are interested in joining Producers Pool find your way to the Facebook Group.

For the mindfully invested. 

The journey starts here www.chrisgrady.org/producers-pool
Producers' Pool (UK & International) - next meeting 4.30 pm Wed 27th January

Are you starting the year slightly unravelled?

MyWord 2023 - Balance

If you are starting the year slightly unravelled well you are not alone. Resolutions are ill advised but selecting a word to live by through out the next 365 days has been a foundation for me for a few years now.

This year after much thought I am needing to go with ‘Balance’.

On Jan 1st I reached 11.15am before my first wave of anxiety passed over me. This years word and it’s application to my life ‘Balance’ has many meditations before it.

I have plans for 2023. There is uncharted territory. There is perspective to recognise and secure. ToDo lists to compile and close. Balance to be pursued in my work and my life. Balance in how long I spend on tasks and assign to projects. I currently struggle with balance.

Tread lightly in January. Listen to your head and heart. I am resilient yet fragile. Delicate yet resolute. #MyWord for 2023 is Balance. What is yours?

It needs no explaining. One word. No requirement to copy paste and share but you are free to do so. My image was created using Canva perhaps you would like to make a #MyWord image for yourself. Print it as a card for you wallet or purse. Use it as your desktop wallpaper.

Previous words I have lived with… Boundaries (2020), Mindfulness (2021), Posture (2022).

I spent December in ‘overwhelmed on a rollercoaster’ mode!

Welcome to 2023… on my terms with a new resolve.

See you around.

Continued Mindfulness

My focus app of choice has I think at the close of January wk 1 got me back in the board.

My note to self is to decisively close all apps, browser windows and tab, reboot and re enter. Returning to the surface when working in digital hierarchical structures Eg Google docs, should never be overlooked.

I know all this but it demand rigorous practice. Finding new solutions while being mindful of what you have and why you return to those services, platforms and apps is vital.

The start of the year mindfulness I initiated in 2021 is a major contributor to the success of 2021. I am recognising this as I stumble into 2022 with my new word.

Aggregation of words is going to be necessary. This means my list would grow annually.

2020- Boundaries
2021 - Mindfulness
2022 - Posture

Externality is important too. I ask myself why I blog rather than privately journal.

My notebooks are chaotic and imposing upon myself structure to present prose for reading is a push into and beyond my comfort zone. I get disheartened when the view figure is low but I remind myself here at the start of the new year that it’s purpose is not for the reader but for me to share in case a someone around me is curious about how I work as I’m not very good at sharing this stuff. I welcome others to share their thoughts either in the comments or to post a link to there own voyage into mind sharing.

Focus Keeper was a 2020 app and I do focus more productively when running it though a day. I have an old iPad2 as a viewing screen where I keep the Focus Keeper app in sight. It’s clean and simple. It defines 12 session each session containing a 25 minute work stint and a 5 minute break after 4 sessions there is a 25 minute break. There is a sound library of clock ticks and ocean waves to underscore your concentration if music isn’t playing. I like this especially when editing video and audio.

12apps from 2020 PDF link - https://bit.ly/12apps2020

Firming up my ‘default diary’ for the coming weeks to mid February calmed my underlying anxiety welcoming Google Calendar back into my consciousness. Finally I felt the need to return to Trello. These have been my saving graces.

Embarking upon some serious multi depart planning I have added a Gantt Chart extension in Trello to map tasks and timescales against each other to optimise team, tech and travel.

It you need an anchor to your day I recommend Focus Keeper.

Mindfulness Cycles

Feeling numb? It’s a new perspective on my mindfulness cycles. It started to manifest just less than a week ago. I missed a zoom lecture that I intended to attend out of respect and interest for a team I’m working with. There was not expecting on my attendance but I have wanted to ‘show my face’ or in these times ‘list among the participants’. I reflected on my now and realised the then, when I should have been, and embracingly wasn’t. I had totally blanked. I felt like I’d blinked out and missed several hours. Really disconcerting.

It happened again only hitting the recognition circuit on receipt of an email asking if the link was correct 4 hrs after I should have hosted a late evening UK time social for the Online Branch. Horror! This is one I should have been at. This time wipe was disconcerted. Especially in the light of Thursday!

But it didn’t end. It was it seems uncontrollable. Even as I was experiencing it... very disconcerting. Almost up to the present and the writing of this post. Bank holiday was a Monday! Yes and for the previous 5 Mondays I’d been hosting Adam Curtis ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ zoom screening with catchup and conversation. Yep blanked that too.
Strangely and fortuitously so do the fellow regulars.

I needed a Brain pause and reset.

I will be mindfully observing that this Saturday.

Mindfulness in March - Seeing Red.

Visual text overload. It’s a Dyslexia thing. There is only so much interpretation of squiggly lines forming letters combined to form words, strung into sentences I can process. On top of that their is the expected reciprocal text return.

I’m just searching for some mental equilibrium. 

I just want to listen or talk.I visited Clubhouse and Stereo. Nothing grabbed my attention. I considered firing up a conversation but on Stereo swiping through the available people I got shy and wasn’t sure how I’d start a conversation. 

Then I looked for an online piece of theatre but where to start and I don’t really have time for a full length show. What about a podcast? There is part of me that wants live right now. So after scrolling a few update feeds in Facebook and Linked in I remembered I forgot to watch my fellow Equity Online Branch committee member and sharer of my first name Caron Reidy’s YouTube monologue screening. I’m going to do that.

Here is the link. Caron’s monologue “Red” starts at 26”50’

https://youtu.be/UefaGAyl0vc

Recorded media is a fabulous technology. I’ve not seen Caron perform live on stage. I haven’t seen any TV episodes. Before COVID it would have just been showreels. This was a wonderful treat. And a genuinely good performance.

Uncertainty, Opportunity, Ideas and Knowledge

Uncertainty, I have that in abundance. What about you?

I have opportunity but I’m not good at monopolising on it.

I have ideas but I don’t realise their potential.

I have knowledge and continue to expand on it.

I have love 

I am happy

Traffic #back2physical or back to 2009?

There are 2 blog posts written years ago that get the most traffic.

One is What is Twittbot? A long defunct twitter collaboration platform which enabled multi user posting to an account without sharing a password. I wrote it in 2009! The platform is gone. 

The second is about the Echo Livescribe pen. Some of the pens have the LED screen fault. This post addressed a workable solution to enable continued use if purchasing a new pen wasn’t an affordable option.

Now I’m daily blogging I’m frustrated that also written in 2009 it with the TwitBott post gets more daily hits than all my recent 2021 efforts put together!

This blog is about sustaining mindfulness. For that it is serving it’s purpose.

I’m rather anxious as the world pivots back to physical that like waking from a paralysis to final get to be on par with my expertises I’m sink back into a slumber once the world wakes back up.
I only just found my feet.

I just hope I can keep my balance.

Listen for fullstops

.

Is there something you do that annoys you so much but have no idea how to change it. It’s an adaption of the fundamental unconscious.

 

I interrupt the end of others sentences after perceiving I have heard what they are saying. It’s actually quite debilitating to my professional mobility. I think too loudly, I react too vehemently, I over think, over and over.

 

How do you listen for full stops?

 

It’s not intentional, it’s not impatience, I do fear I’ll forget all my words if I don’t speak in response when I do. I know the full stop hasn’t come no to mention the pause that follows. 

 

What is that? Is that anything?

 

Walk - the Urban Adventure

Since lockdown far more people walk around West Park. Even without social distancing for COVID there are too many people for my sensibilities. I’ve taken to walking local streets gradually walking further out before looping back. Today we made itt out to Sandiacre and looped back to Long Eaton via Toton. A 6 mile circuit. For me a good Sunday walk.

 

I’m not sure how I will blog theses but I’d like too. Having reached the end of January reflecting on mindfulness I feel more present more regularly. I have plans to make plans. 

 

Conspiracies

I have always been fascinated by the supernatural and conspiracies. The ultimate blend emerging over recent years being the Mandela Effect. The collective recollection of an event or object being recalled differently than the majority consciousness. See Bernstein Bears, KitKat and Nelson Mandela’s Funeral.

But my interest is not in the conspiracy or unexplained occurrence but in why people want or need the conspiracy. The mutated sentiment of the closest collaboration, to conspire, to plan in privacy, the joy of surprise, the presentation of spectacle, the magic of theatre. All swept away when debased by obsessional thinking.

Why do people believe, insist and argue to the contrary that the planet is a flat disc? Why do some want to insist the moon was not landed upon in 1969? There is enough uncertainty in life. What purpose can these extremes of thinking serve?

Complacency should not be entertained. Anomalous incongruous displays of power should be questioned. Due diligence on every story should be equal to facilitate objective perspective. But just as YouTube proliferates the conspiracy videos it is burgeoning with thought provoking exposition. Quirky stories, remarkable coincidences, extraordinary histories, adverse triumphs, morose consequences, the faceted human experience and society reacting across the ages.

During a recent Tuttle online conversation QAnon and David Ike raised the question. I recalled a video from a favourite YouTuber on mine. Has a YouTube channel empire of insights. Simon Whistler was a great foundation for a search for videos on why.

Search based on a youtube I follow - Simon Whistler. Why do people believe conspiracy theories?

Simon has a portfolio of channels.

TodayIFoundOut - http://www.todayifoundout.com/

TopTenz - https://www.toptenz.net/

Visual Politik EN

Biographics - https://biographics.org/

Geographics

Business Blaze

Megaprojects - https://www.megaprojects.net/

Sideprojects

Do you?

Do you get enough sleep?

Last night after an angst ridden day juggling deliverables and deadlines I had a early night, exhausted after deflecting a panic attack with a few tears and a multitude of magnificent hugs.

Mindfulness... it’s the name of the game right now and I am enjoying the journey. 

I slept! 

I’m using an app called Reflectly. Is where the quotes I post come from. It’s pure mindfulness.

Simple, clean and usable.

Check it out - https://reflectly.app/