Weekly Update – Sketches, Film Photography and a 10K Race

A hectic week but an interesting one.

I went to see a local production of Singer, a play by Peter Flannery. It was phenomenal but it kept me up at night, which meant that the following morning I headed straight to my local cafe. I sketched the barista but something didn’t work in terms of getting her face right – she turned out sadder than she is. Sketching tired is rough.

Here’s the rather messy pencil and pen sketch. I can tell just by the line quality that I was very, very tired.

A day later I went to sketch at the nearby park and you can see the difference in the line quality in this sketch:

Initial sketch:

Later that week the film photographs that I’d had developed were returned to me. Here are a few of my favourites:

The local community cat that I feed twice a day coming to say hi

I love the atmosphere that the film gives this simple photo:

All of these photos are unedited. I’ll likely clean them up later on.

Bridge over water at a nature reserve near Haifa

There was a fire on the roof of a nearby hotel. I took this photo a day after the fire, and you can see the damage:

Cat failing to hunt a crow:

A stall at the local farmer’s market:

A stall at the local farmer’s market. You can see the see in the background.

I was supposed to run at a 10k night race on Wednesday, but I wasn’t feeling too good and I was apprehensive about dealing with the crowds so I ran the distance by myself a few hours before the official race start. It was a good decision as I was really struggling during the first 3k – but I did manage to finish, and finish strong.

I finished reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie (a powerful narrative, but not as punchy as “With the Old Breed”), read “Death of a Nurse” by M.C. Beaton as a palate cleanser, and I’ve now started “The Shattering Peace”, John Scalzi’s long awaited sequel to his Old Man’s War series.

I’ve been overwhelmed with the responses to my Pelikan Hubs post. Thank you all for your kindness and for the thought and effort you put into your comments. I read them all, I just wasn’t able to respond to all of them this week.

Speaking of the Hubs, all of my pre-hubs inked pens have been written dry, which means that I currently have a 100% Pelikan rotation, plus some Platinum Preppy’s that I use for sketching.

Have a great week!

Paris London 2025 Part 4

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

Another visit to the Phoenix garden resulted in this sketch in my Etchr lab sketchbook. I love the paper so much – even a super quick sketch pops on it.

I had a coffee at the Monmouth Coffee Company. I love their coffee, but the place was both packed and super hot and stuffy so I made this quick sketch in my Pith Kabosu sketchbook and didn’t bother to add watercolour to it. It’s the first time I tried a POV sketch, and you can see the weird way I oftentimes hold my pen. I got to talk to a super nice young South Korean woman, as I shared the table with her and a young Japanese father and his 4 year old son.

POV sketch of the Monmouth Coffee Company table

Lunch was at Wagamama again. I tried their pho for first time (it’s new on the menu) and really liked it.

In the evening we went to see My Neighbour Totoro. It’s a lovely play, very well considered and beautifully acted and puppeteered.

On Sunday my family went to Greenwich and I went to the Saucony Run Shoreditch 10k race. It was bright and cold, perfect running weather, and the route was pretty flat – but chock full of speed bumps, which really hampered the race flow and caused a few nasty spills.

Here’s the route:

And the starting line:

And some of the entertainment on the way:

We ran a lot of loops, mostly through pretty dull residential streets. Only in the final kilometre or so did we get to see a bit of Shoreditch high street etc.

Overall the race was fairly well organized, and not overly crowded (about 6,000 runners), but I didn’t enjoy the route mostly due to the speed bumps. They seem to have taken the worst out of the local runners, as people pushed, jostled and shoved to avoid running over them (I just started running over them from around the 3rd kilometre or so).

Here’s the medal:

After the race I went for a celebratory meal at Wagamama. I hadn’t had breakfast and I was parched so I had a ton to drink and tried one of their new curries. Jesna, my server, was really curious about the sketches and we got to talk a bit.

On Monday my dad and I went to Tate Modern to see a Picasso and the Theatre exhibition. We arrived early so we sat at Paul’s and sketched.

I also sketched the statue and part of the modern building across the street.

The “Theatre Picasso” exhibition was hands down one of the biggest disappointments of the trip. Never have I felt my intelligence or interest in art more insulted than in this exhibition, and I left after about 20 minutes.

Here’s a Picasso dove to relax for a bit:

I was in a bad mood when I left and I didn’t know what to do with myself so I made my way to Green Park and sat and sketched there for a while:

The final sketch:

Thankfully the best exhibition was still ahead of me – Marie Antoinette Style at Victoria and Alberts. The thought, curation, staging, flow, items – everything about this exhibition was perfection. You saw Marie Antoinette as a style icon, as a woman trapped in a role, as a doomed queen, as a harried and slandered victim, and as a larger than life figure. Her foibles, her eye for fashion, her courage, her very flawed life and her terrible death made her immortal in a way she likely could never have imagined.

We don’t have robins here, so it was nice to get to see a few of them at Hyde park during my morning runs and at the Phoenix garden.

There were surprisingly few Halloween decorations out but the Christmas shops were on full blast in all the big stores. Of course I had to buy this red fountain pen ornament from Liberty:

Pencils, pink pearl erasers, fountain pens and palette ornaments at Liberty London.

We then got to see Penn and Teller’s 50th anniversary show (and first West End tour). They were funny, surprising, and wonderful, and it was an overall delightful and very memorable evening. I even got a signed poster of their show!

On one of the last days of the trip I went to see the new Victoria and Albert East Storehouse museum. It’s a unique experience, and it’s worth the visit – but I recommend planning to go there well ahead of time and ordering items to interact with. It’s not a standard museum by any stretch of the imagination – it’s more of a museum about museums and how they handle their collections.

While I found many of the explanations to be overly politicized, it nevertheless is a place that I’d return to – provided I manage to book a “meeting” with an item (Order and Object at the study centre). It’s also interesting to see what other people ordered and how they interact with their chosen objects.

I had lunch at the nearby Wagamama for the last time, and sketched my lunch for the last time:

And then went for my last coffee at Monmouth Coffee Company:

In the evening we went to see “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Stephen Fry was excellent as Lady Bracknell, but I didn’t like the director’s interpretation of the play (Algernon is gay, Jack is gay, Cecily is gay, Gwendolen is gay), and the two main actors weren’t very good. For the life of me I don’t understand the director’s need to try and outsmart Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s work is polished to a mirror finish – there really is no need to be clever with it. It packs enough punch as it is.

Stephen Fry and the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest

On the last day of the trip I went to the Phoenix garden for a last sketch:

I got to talk to a lady that works in the garden, and it was nice showing her all of my various sketches of the place.

And we went to The Parlour at Fortnum and Mason for celebratory Sundaes before the flight.

Tres Leches sundae – Coffee, Bickfield Milk and Fior de Leche & Chocolate
Biscuit Ice Cream and Pumpkin Seed Praline

Overall it was a great trip even though I was sick during its first leg. I’ve never sketched so much during a trip before, largely thanks to some recently acquired sketchbooks and watercolour palettes, and some skills I learned during USK Poznan. I got a ton of watercolours, pens, pencils, inks and art supplies that I can’t wait to try out, and I got a nice stack of books to peruse over the coming months. Hopefully this was fun to read, and perhaps you got some inspiration for your next trip to Paris or London.

Paris London 2025 Part 3

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here and part 2 here.

I met up with a dear friend for a pre-theatre tasting meal at Chotto-Matte, a trendy restaurant that combines Mexican and Japanese cuisines. I am not a foodie, and I will now confess that this was the first time that I’ve had sushi (I hate the smell and taste of fish and seaweed and everything that comes from the sea and so I’ve avoided it), and I really enjoyed it. It was the best meal that I had in London, and the company, the weird design and the very attentive service added to it.

I had the vegetarian pre-theatre menu, which meant that mine had no fish, seafood, meat or chicken in it. It was phenomenal.

On the right is the Edamame, which we shared and was good, and in the centre is Truffled Avocado Roll – Cucumber, sesame seeds, yuzu truffle soy. It was light and refreshing.

Lychee Ceviche – Leche de tigre, chive oil, sweet potato, Peruvian corn, coriander. One of the biggest surprises of the meal. Delicious, zingy and the textures were phenomenal.

Yasai Miso Crispy Sushi – Picante miso vegetables, takuan, shiso cress. Sticky but very good.

Nasu Miso – Aubergine miso, apricot, puffed soba, sesame seeds. Aubergine like I’ve never tasted it before. Again, a lot of great textures here and a ton of deep flavours.

King Oyster Mushroom Tostada – Pulled mushroom, smoked aji panca chilli, guacamole, lime, coriander. I’m not normally a mushroom fan, but this was smoky, “meaty” and satisfying.

Truffled Mushroom Rice – Sweet corn & queso fresco dip, jalapeño, coriander, corn tostadas. This was a rice heavy meal, and at this point I could eat no longer. I had about three spoonfuls and no more. It was a good dish, but it lacked the depth of flavour and the uniqueness of the rest of the dishes.

Milk Soft Serve Ice Cream with toasted almonds, chocolate sauce. It’s ice cream, it was good, but we had to rush to the theatre so we didn’t get to finish it. It wasn’t a particularly interesting desert though.

This is definitely a place that I’d return to for a special occasion.

We then went to see the classic musical, “The Producers”, and it was excellent. The cast was brilliant, and it’s a very good musical with some great (if disturbing) songs. Mel Brooks is a comedy genius, and this musical still packs a punch.

We also went to Spitalfields market, which meant that I could sketch this guy:

Sketch of a statue of a goat in Spitalfields market.

This was my very first sketch in the new Pith Kabosu sketchbook that I purchased at Cass Art. I debated whether to buy this sketchbook or not, as it had smooth, 200gsm paper and it opened flat, but I wasn’t sure it would work with watercolours. The great sellers at Cass Art told me it would, as they use it themselves, and they were right. It’s now my “daily driver” having replaced the Stillman and Birn pocket beta. The beta has thicker and more textured paper but the Pith Kabosu is slightly larger, has a more durable cover, and opens flat much better than the Stillman and Birn does. I later returned and purchased two more of these sketchbooks, they were so good.

I later sketched this seller in his stall, after purchasing an old set of folding rulers from his stall. I decided to paint him and the flag but left the rest of the stall as line drawings.

The Pith Kabosu is also cheaper than the Stillman and Birn and as it has smoother paper, works better for ink sketches and dry medium (pencils of various kinds, for example). It means that I’m more inclined to bring it out and make quick sketches in it, even if I don’t get to adding watercolour to them.

We then went to the second play at The Globe – Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. We arrived early so I sat in the Starbucks across the entrance and sketched the place:

I originally didn’t have time to add colour to this. I just bashed out this 5 minute sketch and then added watercolour later, from reference photos.

I later added colour to the sketch. In hindsight I would have gone for a looser sketch, but I was still unsure what this paper could and couldn’t do. The answer is – practically everything. Only very heavy washes make the page buckle.

This was a regular Shakespeare play, and so there was some set design. this is the stage:

And in the yard where the groundlings are you can see another bit of the stage that isn’t normally there, but was used to represent the beach and other locales in the play.

I enjoyed the play a lot, and would recommend seeing plays at the Globe if you can tolerate the extremely uncomfortable seats (yes, even with the cushions).

We went to the Cartier exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. The exhibition is sold out, and it’s well considered, but we found it a bit dull compared to the Marie Antoinette exhibition at the same museum.

This is the Patiala necklace that was part of the exhibition. It was made by Jacques Cartier for the Maharaja of Nawanagar in 1928. He also made the Maharaja of Nawanagar’s necklace, later named the Jeanne Toussaint in the “Ocean’s 8” movie (it was a recreation made by Cartier for the movie).

My favourite parts were the film where they showed how a Cartier leopard is made, and the famous mystery clocks. There was a whole room dedicated to them, and it was fabulous.

Next post will be the last in the series. You can read it here.

Paris London 2025 Part 2

In September I traveled to Paris and London. See part 1 of my travelogue here.

I went to see two plays in The Globe theatre in London. The first was a one night only performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream that was a reenactment of how the actors in Shakespeare’s time would have performed a play. The actors didn’t rehearse the play beforehand, and they didn’t have the full text of the play to work with, just their lines and their cues and staging directions. They practiced the dances alone, and they had no idea what their fellow actors would do during the performance. Now this is Midsummer Night’s Dream so all the actors and everyone in the audience knew exactly how the story unfolds, but the lack of rehearsals made this a very live performance.

The play was sold out in minutes and I’m glad that I managed to get tickets at all. It was an amazing experience. As this was a one night performance the stage was the bare Globe stage – nowhere to hide as the audience surrounds the actors practically from all sides. There was a lady on stage in period costume, sitting with the full text and helping actors in the very few times that they fumbled. The energy was beyond description. It was the most electric staging of Shakespeare that I have ever seen. Everybody was “on” all the time because they weren’t entirely sure what would come next.

It was a raw performance – I later saw another, standard Shakespeare play there and it was much more polished because it was clearly rehearsed and performed several times before we saw it. Yet that was what made this performance so special – the actors’ reaction to their fellow actors was genuine and unvarnished. They were having fun, improvising, owning the text in a way they normally never do. The highlight was the play within the play at the end – seeing the actors laugh to the point where they had trouble saying their lines because Bottom was so very, very hilariously over the top was amazing.

One of my favourite places in London is the Phoenix community garden. I spent a lot of time there, and sketched it several times. This was my first and longest sketch of the garden, done on the wonderful Etchr Lab cold pressed watercolour sketchbook:

Fineliner sketch – no pencil underdrawing.

We went to see Disney’s Hercules – a new musical in West End. I wasn’t expecting much as I’m not a fan of the movie, but the musical was one of the best that we saw in the London. The production is stunning, the music is great, the actors were talented – particularly Megara – and the only minus is that Hades was a bit over the top even by the movie standards. They would do better to cut down on the amount of his jokes because they lose their impact otherwise. The Disney merch machine was out in full force that night, and I was one of only a handful that didn’t leave with something from their store.

We spent a day in York, and I started it with a sketch of the York Museum grounds, also in my Etchr Labs watercolour sketchbook:

York is full of wonderful bits of history that are just layered freely on each other:

I did a very quick sketch of this scene later on, on an Exacompta Bristol card:

I also bought a decent amount of watercolour paints – enough to build out two new palettes that I want to try.

This post is getting long and photo heavy, so I will be completing this trip journal in two additional posts.

Edit: you can read part 3 here.

Paris London 2025 Trip Part 1

I recently returned from a pretty long trip to Paris and London with my family. I ended up sketching a lot more than I normally do during trips, largely thanks to things that I learned during the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan (more on that in a later post). Here is part 1 of some highlights from my trip.

Quick sketch in a Stillman & Birn pocket beta while I was waiting for my flight

Centre Pompidou, my favourite museum in the world, was closing down until 2030 (!) so I went to pay it a last visit. Already parts of the colourful outside facade have been repainted white, and I’ve never seen the area around the museum so deserted.

The library was the only area still accessible, and it had been turned into a giant project playground for German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans to work with. It was something that only Pompidou could do, and it was breathtaking, thought provoking, fun, interesting, and unique. I wish I could have spent hours there, but at this point in my trip I became badly ill and for the entire Paris leg of the trip I was struggling.

I ended up largely not eating in Paris, but this was my first meal there – in the fantastic Patisserie Viennoise in the Latin Quarter.

Stillman and Birn pocket alpha watercolour sketch

We also went to a new museum, the Bourse de Commerce and I saw this great artwork on the way there:

The museum was in between putting up exhibitions, so while a large part of it was closed we managed to view some great and moving art pieces with relatively few crowds and at a discounted price. I did a VERY quick sketch while I was there:

This is the artwork that I was sketching.

And this little fellow is also part of the art exhibits there:

We then took the Eurostar to London. This is where I switched sketchbooks – this sketch of a boy and his father having lunch at a table across from me at Wagamama is the last sketch I created in my Stillman and Birn pocket beta. The beta has decent watercolour paper but it’s not half as good as the paper in my Etchr labs watercolour sketchbook, and the glued in pages make it a struggle to create full page spread sketches, as you can see here:

Last trip sketch in the Stillman and Birn pocket beta.

I created my first sketch in an Etchr lab cold pressed watercolour notebook while in the Greenwich Park herb garden and the paper is astonishingly good. Here’s the ink sketch (my tree sketches have gotten so much better thanks to a workshop I took in Poznan):

And here is the watercolour:

The paper not only makes the colours pop, it actually allowed me ample time and space to work with the washes, adding layers of well blended colours that gave depth and life to the scene. Never have I ever seen the importance of good quality watercolour paper demonstrated so well. I have about half a dozen sketches of this garden throughout the years and this is by far the best one.

That’s it for part 1, I’ll try and upload part 2 later this week.

Edit: part 2 can be found here.

Big Celebratory Birthday Update Part 4

The final post of this series, you can find part one here, part two here, and part three here. Grab a cup of tea or coffee and settle in – this one is long but there’s a lot going on here that’s worth your time.

32. I have been tracking my memory recall issues (a chemotherapy side effect) using the Tally app, which I’m hesitant to recommend. On the one hand it does work as a quick tracking app for a handful of things, but on the other hand it has a scammy pricing model – a fair price for the first year (and free if you just track up to three things, like I do), but then the subscription jumps to about $5 a month. That may be justified for apps that have a lot of features and utility, but Tally is not one of those apps. Day One, a magnificent journaling app for those who prefer to digitally journal, does much more and costs much less.

33. If you haven’t heard of KT tape and you’re a runner or athlete of any kind (or just injury prone) I highly recommend it (and no, I’m not getting paid for this). It’s a roll of pre-cut elastic fabric tape strips that you use in various configurations and levels of tension to relieve the pain and take some of the load off of injured muscles, tendons or joints. It eases recovery and it’s worth having a roll of it in your house and travelling with a few strips when you go abroad. There are YouTube videos that show you how to apply the tape- just search for the area or injury you want to address and “KT tape” and you’ll find official videos and ones made by physical therapists that will guide you. I recommend going for the Pro or Pro Extreme – they cost a bit more but last longer as their adhesive is stronger so you can keep them on for a few days. The tape leaves no residue and is easy to apply by yourself, although there are areas where another pair of hands does help. If you don’t want to buy the tape online, you can find it at your friendly local running store or in certain sporting goods stores.

34. If you are planning on travelling abroad with older relatives or people with a mobility disability, here are some tips that may help:

Ask for special assistance when you book the flights (there’s an option there). It helps with the long distances and long lines in the airport. Arrive early and wait patiently for the assistance – it’s worth it.
Book hotels and not Airbnbs. You want a place, preferably a well established chain, that you can rely on in terms of catering for your accessibility needs. I can’t tell you how many times we arrived at an Airbnb only to discover that the promised elevator has been broken for weeks, or the place has stairs to the elevator, stairs in the apartment and a bath instead of the promised shower. You want a hotel and not a boutique one because they’ll have an elevator bank, accessible rooms, and someone you can talk to if you run into issues. Chains are good because if there’s an issue with your room there’s a possibility of being catered in another hotel in the network. Contact the hotel ahead of time in writing and reconfirm your needs – elevator, shower with no lip or step, mini-fridge for medication, etc.
Use taxis (or rideshares) and buses, not the metro/underground/subway. There’s less walking involved, there’s less stairs involved, and it’s worth the additional time and money.
Check the parks you plan to visit – some have motorized tours for disabled patrons.
Talk to the staff at museums and exhibitions, preferably ahead of time. There may be an accessible route in that Dior special exhibition that isn’t advertised (there is), or they may tell you that it’s better to arrive at a certain entrance.
Theatres oftentimes have special accommodation and pricing for disabled people and their companions. If it’s not on their official site, email or call them and they will likely be able to help.
Don’t pack your days full, but rather plan or returning to the hotel for an afternoon nap before the evening’s activities.
Plan ahead as much as possible. You are less flexible in your needs so this is not the time to be spontaneous.
I can’t stress this enough: spend time, effort and money when selecting travel insurance. Don’t go for the cheapest option because it’s likely to leave you hanging when you need it. Pay a premium for insurance that pays back upfront and doesn’t have you chasing after it if possible. Take the time to read the small print and talk to them if possible.

35. I have gotten several questions about rucking, so here’s a good article describing what it is and the benefits and risks involved. I will add that you need a good pair of shoes with decent ankle support, you need moisture wicking socks to help avoid blisters (I just use my running socks), and you don’t need to buy a GoRuck bag. In fact I don’t recommend them – they’re heavy, overpriced and don’t provide the back support you want. Instead buy a good hiking day pack (I use the Osprey Manta 24) for about half the price and twice the support. My Osprey Manta comes with a hydration system (2.5 litres, which is a good chunk of the weight in my bag), wide padded straps, load lifters, a great hip belt and sternum strap, plus a mesh that is fantastic for the hot climates I ruck in. Also weigh your bag with useful things – water, food, first aid, extra layers, flashlights, sunscreen, etc. – and not with useless weight plates. Put the heaviest things on top, as close as possible to your shoulder blades and upper back. I use a waterproof Rumpl travel blanket at the bottom of my bag, and 80% of my weight is water. The rest is books, which I don’t mind using as weights as I’m rucking in a city park really close to home. If I was hiking in the great outdoors, I wouldn’t carry anything that wasn’t useful if I somehow got stuck on the way.

36. Do you have to generate QR codes and are tired of the spammy, ad filled sites that provide the service when you Google for it? As Cory Doctorow puts it:

“Just a QR Code” is a new site that generates QR codes, operating entirely in your browser, without transmitting any data to a server or trying to cram ads into your eyeballs. The fact that it runs entirely in-browser means you can save this webpage and work with an offline copy to generate QR codes forever – even if the site goes down:

https://justaqrcode.com/

37. My journal is at that delicious phase where it’s passed the 3/4 full mark but hasn’t reached the “only a handful of pages left” mark. I recommend making it a goal to reach that phase in every notebook you use – it’s the best.

38. These little fans are a lifesaver. I’ve used them on trips, on buses with fault ACs, when I’m outdoors waiting in the sweltering heat, etc. Again, not an affiliate link and this isn’t a paid anything – it’s purely a recommendation of a product that I’ve been using and enjoying for a few years.

39. Journaling Tip #4: Did you have weird, overblown reaction to something or someone recently? Take the time to journal about the experience. Write down what happened (facts only), what was your reaction/feeling (be honest), why it’s surprising under the circumstances and finally why do you think that you reacted the way that you did? Does it reveal something about how you view yourself, your insecurities or fears?

40. Lightening Book Review #7: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver. This is a collection of 17 short stories set in rural American in the 70’s first published in 1981 and it hasn’t aged well. The protagonists drink a LOT, they are violent, sexist, despairing and desperate. It’s like watching a series of car crashes – you become numb to the experience after the third or fourth. Carver can write, and there are a few gems here, but it’s all so very miserable and depressing – like hosting an alcoholic for a week. Their stories may be intriguing, but they’re also all so very terrible and tragic that there’s only so much of it that you can take.

41. I opened a new Moleskine notebook – after not having opened a new one in over a year. This is the one will be used for some writing projects, and it’s one of my favourite limited editions, the Blue Note Hub Tones edition. I’ll maybe post a review of it later, but for now, this is a reminder to use the good china.

42. Journaling Tip #5: look at someone close to you, someone you admire for having a skill or approach to life that you don’t have, and write down what you can do over the next few days, week, month to be more like what you like them. That’s what got me to go to more plays, concerts, shows and exhibitions now instead of just waiting until I’m on holiday abroad.

43. Great advice from Adam Savage’s latest Tested livestream – Q-Tip: Quit Taking It Personally. More often than not other people’s behaviour and choices has nothing do with you and everything to do with them.

That’s it – 43 points for 43 years. Have a great week!

Shana Tova and Quick Update

Shana Tova to all who celebrate the Jewish New Year. The passing year has been an extremely tough one on a personal and national level. I sincerely hope that the coming year will be better in every possible way, that the hostages will return and we will have some much needed peace in our region.
I’ve had a lot of the worst kind of upheaval at work during the past two weeks and so I haven’t been keeping up with all the comings and goings in the stationery-sphere. There has been drama of the ugly kind, which I don’t intend to get into. I will just say that this blog is LGBTQIA+ friendly (I am a member of the community myself), and anyone equating homosexuality to murder is both extremely wrong and very hateful person.
I have had to take a break in the SketchingNow Travel Sketching course but am now returning to it and will be making a post about the second week of classes (Shapes).
I will not be participating in Inktober this year. I just don’t have the time for it, and I want to focus on working through the Travel Sketching course instead, as I have some travel planned for later this month and I’m hoping to incorporate what I learned into my travels.

Journaling Series: Travel Journaling

The intro post to this series is here, journaling for mental clarity is here, journaling through fear is here. Journaling to clear your mind is here. Journaling to work out choices is here. The 5 year diary is here.

I recently got back from a trip, and later this year I have another trip planned so I thought that I’d dedicate a post to travel journaling.

My travel journaling differs pretty significantly from my normal, daily journaling in a few key ways:

1. I move to digital journaling.

2. I journal to share and not just for myself.

3. I oftentimes backlog journal.

Here’s a breakdown of what I do when it comes to travel journaling and why:

Digital Journaling

While my daily journal is always analog, when I’m traveling I switch to using Day One. There are several reasons for this:

1. The entry point to my travel journaling entries is the photos I take, and journaling makes me take more thoughtful photos. I used photos to capture a moment or tell the story of where I was, when and why. The entries in Day One then expound on that.

2. I compile my daily entries to share them with my family back home. It’s a way for us all to participate in the adventure, in a way.

3. I tend to return to the same places, and it’s easier to search what I liked or didn’t like about a place, or a place name using Day One than it is digging through notebook pages.

4. Writing quick entries on my phone while waiting in line for stuff is both convenient and helps the time go by faster, and my phone is always on me.

Journaling to Share

I normally write only for myself in my journal, but when I travel journal, I write with sharing in mind. While I don’t share my entries to social media or this blog, I do share them with my family.

Backlog Journaling (or Giving Myself a Break)

It’s often the case that I’m too busy to journal as things are happening, or during the day that they occur. In that case I just take pictures, sometimes supplementing them with a note on the list of activities done and places visited. When I have more time (for example on the flight back home) I can backlog these entries – with the added bonus that I get to live through them again.

Phoenix Community Garden

The Phoenix Community Garden at the heart of Soho, London is one of my favourite places on earth. How much do I love this place, that was brought to greenery out of the ashes of a parking lot? I visualised it while I was going through my first and very painful biopsy. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice to say that it took a very powerful positive memory to help me keep my body still during the intense pain of the procedure.

The garden is a haven for plants, people and wildlife in the heart of a busy city, and it is full of character. You get to see how bits of masonry and bobs of donations are recycled into a joyful mishmash of urban gardening.

No two benches here are alike, every pot and container has something weird or unique going on (from smurfs to little signs).

There’s a pond surrounded by broken paving that even has some goldfish moseying along in it.

And the place is cleverly built to be full of books, crannies, corners and elevation shifts, making it look much larger than it is.

I managed to get a quick sketch in before the rain started, nothing too fancy as my neuropathy was terrible today.

Find yourself a bit of green to find joy in today. We could all use a bit more of that.

Long Time No See: Orlando Update

I recently returned from a three week trip to Orlando, Florida, which is why there have been no posts in a while now here.
The trip was one that my brother and I planned in 2019, and was originally meant to take place in April 2020. Walt Disney World had a Star Wars themed running race weekend in April, and in those heady days of fast passes you could (and should) have booked things 6 months in advance. We had everything planned to the day and to the hour: hotels, restaurants, tours, parties, and rides.

And then there was Covid.

The world, and the parks, shutdown, the races were cancelled, and we went into lockdown.

The Disney World parks eventually reopened, and even started gradually to return to their former glory. In November 2021 the races returned to Disney, with a tearful group of runners standing on the starting line after missing an entire season of races.

I was in the last, and hardest, parts of my chemo treatment at the time.

When I finished treatments my brother insisted on re-booking our planned Disney World trip. We didn’t plan on including a race weekend in it at first, as I didn’t even know if I could run, let alone run 5k and 10k in the Florida heat. We selected a date mostly based on the hurricane season and when the parks would be less busy. Then we realised that it fell on the Halloween season, and potentially a race. After that we expanded the trip to include both the Halloween and the Christmas season, and the Wine and Dine 5k and 10k races. We’d be in the parks in their 50th anniversary. We’d take a few days to see Universal Studios. It was going to be expensive, but a once in a lifetime trip, one that was three years in the making.

It was. It was exhilarating, joyous and intense. We covered all the parks, ran in the races, swam with dolphins, petted a rhino, ate a lot of good food, went to a lot of parties, and had a ton of fun. We walked 25,000 steps a day on average, with some days reaching 35-39,000 steps. We also had a hurricane hit the parks, in a season that is supposed to be hurricane free. But that was also part of the experience.

I returned home to jet lag and some family and personal health issues. My dad will need to have an aorta valve replacement surgery in the very near future, and my lungs are only up to 74% capacity. I’m seeing a lung specialist tomorrow, to see if there’s anything that can be done to improve their recovery.

I have the Diamine Inkvent 2022 green advent calendar, and I intend to use it. My original plan was to post reviews of each colour on each day, filling a fountain pen and writing and drawing with it, as I have done in the past. That is still my intention, but as I don’t know what the future will bring, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that.

This is the time of year when a lot of people feel a lot of things about their family. Whatever kind of family you have, please take the time to consider that they may not always be there, and you may not always be here for each other. Life has a tendency to be shorter than you planned, and it’s oftentimes more dicey. Try to be gentle, kind, open, and understanding if you can. Most people go through a certain amount of trauma in their lives, and that leaves scars, usually of the kind you can’t see.
Be gentle with each other. We are all there is in the end.

Writing at Large

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Tag: Travel