Never too old to learn ...

Driftwood Construction by Margaret Mellis, 1997

Do you enjoy courses and learning new things?

I certainly do and like to think it’s due to my open mind and thirst for knowledge. (I shan’t go into less positive reasons.)

Thanks to pandemic lockdowns, the availability and quality of online courses has increased, along with an awareness of how some things work very well online. It’s nice to work with a group of people who are dotted around the world, and even when all participants are based in your home country, an online course is accessible to more people.

An artist date

I’m just coming to the end of a course on blogging. This may seem a strange choice as I already run two blogs, the one you’re reading right now and the other on chairs. A recent task was to go (alone) and do something vaguely artistic to ‘refill my consciousness’. Coincidentally I’d already planned a trip to the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne to see an exhibition of work by Margaret Mellis. I must admit I hadn’t heard of her, even though she was a contemporary of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, and was working in St Ives at the birth of British Modernism.

The Towner is a special place for me. It reminds me of a dear, late friend while at the same time giving me a huge boost of joy thanks to the colourful ‘Dance Diagonal’ painting of the exterior by Lothar Götz. I’d been attracted to the driftwood artworks forming part of the Mellis exhibition and particularly liked the one pictured, made when Mellis was in her eighties. Not only do you have proof that age is no bar to creativity, but you can appreciate the beauty of worn objects and the possibility of renewal in a different form. Whoever chucked out the little blue chair never dreamed it would end up on display in an art gallery!

 Linking my blogging course to AT

·      Anyone who has had AT lessons realises it can be applied to many aspects of life.

·      Don’t be stuck in your habits. Be open to experimentation, just like Margaret Mellis.

·      Inhibit your reactions. Do you hunch your shoulders as a deadline approaches? Does this help you work faster? Stop and take a look at what you’re about to do. This is so important online. Once it’s out there you can’t get it back.

·      Be kind and non-judgmental to yourself and others. We don’t know what has led to someone moving or behaving the way they do.

·      Notice and maintain your connections. You want good communication between head and feet so you can walk efficiently and safely. You also need to keep in contact with your friends and colleagues, listening to them in the way you hope they will listen to you. One of our tasks was to make a diagram showing the groups we are connected to. I was concerned to see very little overlap between the groups until I realised I’m the link.

·      Respond appropriately to your environment: you walk differently on ice compared to sand; you greet a close friend differently from a colleague.

·      Ensure your whole self is working in harmony. Balanced sitting may encourage balanced thinking. You don’t need a fancy chair to sit with ease and poise.

·      When you’re writing you tend to keep still. Add movement! Likewise when you’re writing you don’t want too many long and complicated sentences. Mix things up!

·      AT isn’t a quick fix. You need to keep working at it and developing your skills. Writing is the same. Just as my clients tend to love their table turns and be less enthusiastic when bringing their attention to standing still, so I’d rather choose photos than dig into the mysteries of SEO (search engine optimisation).

So what HAVE I learned from my blogging course?

·      The importance of authenticity. Blogging is not academic writing. The people on my course have diverse interests but I enjoy reading their pieces because they come from the heart and tell me something about the writer.

·      The importance of ‘inhibition’ as understood in the context of Alexander Technique. My tutor gave me this interesting piece of advice: ‘Take that conscious and deliberate pause’ … to decide how to connect with what you’re writing … ‘before you begin to write, and you’ll be in the right place’.

·      You’re never too old to learn. The successful creators are those who go on experimenting, trying things out, seeing if a ‘mistake’ opens the way to something new. At the same time you’ve got to be interested. I once signed up to learn Bridge because it seemed a good thing to do socially.  I hated it so much I gave up. It felt wrong to abandon a course midway but I felt huge relief afterwards.

It’s good to get out of your comfort zone, but within reason. Rather than enrolling on a course to, say, learn how to plaster, I need to consolidate my recent learning. I really must pay more attention to image labelling and slugs (not the squishy kind – I know what to do with them). The joys of SEO await.