Alfred Hitchcock once said that it’s not the bang that gets you, it’s the anticipation of it.

When we experience something in the workplace, the process is usually fine and we adapt ourselves in the situation to deal with any challenges.

But if we are preempting the challenges themselves in advance, that can create a lot of anxiety, purely in anticipation of the thing itself.

This can manifest itself physically. For me, it’s a sensation in my chest as if my heart is starting to race. Sometimes this is so influential that it defies any logic your brain is trying to present back to you.

So the solution is to either duck from the challenge, and quite or face it. And normally when I face it, it’s okay.

And with that, we gain more experience and a chance to adapt to challenging situations and deal better with them.

And if that doesn’t change or even gets worse, best to walk away from it.

As soon as we start to interact with someone new, we can start to make assumptions, including age, orientation or occupation.

Although, not everyone is quite as they seem. People are nuanced and in some ways incredibly interesting and complicated.

People are also sometimes very surprising, in positive ways for sure.

I try my best to keep my sub conscious in check when meeting new people and be as empathetic and open minded as I can.

There’s too much judgement made by people based on their background or things that are merely circumstantial such as where they come from, or what they look like, as opposed to who they actually are.

It’s better to look up to people as opposed to look down on them.

I’ve never really come across a time when calling someone a moron had a benefit going forward.

And as easy as it is to fall into the default of doing that, especially when something as divisive as Brexit is concerned.

There is an issue of misinformation, false sense of truth and assumptions out in the world but that’s always been the case. It’s called gossip, and the advent of the internet has amplified gossip to an enormous extent.

So we live in a world where people convince themselves that what they conclude in their hard is self-ceiling, self fulfilling and an incontrovertible fact when the actuality is that they are probably not and there is more nuance in all things.

So what’s the solution?

Attempting to teach critical thinking is a start, and encouraging everyone of every age to consider nuance and detail in every heated topic and debate.

Secondly, our interactions, especially those online need to be less hostile, and we need to employ empathy and a curious investigation into why people think the way they think.

Thirdly, media outlets and social networks need to regain trust and not allow falsehoods to be spread and advertised so wildly. They fall short of the mark in the meantime and aside building better interactions from the ground up, the facilitators of our online social media need to own up and step up too.

I’ve spent nearly two weeks dealing with a cold. Conventional viruses decided to come back with a vengeance since more mixing is going on, and I really suffered for it, as is a lot of people I know.

And what didn’t help was that I was rather heavily scheduled with teaching, sessions and meetings and I felt debilitated throughout the entire thing.

I then felt burnt out, because I was trying to push myself when I was feeling rough, and mentally, I was seeing everything through a much more negative lens.

So this weekend, I took a step back (not to be mistaken with admit defeat) and spent time with family, focusing on other things, namely enjoying myself and today I finally felt fit enough to get back on the bike, which always does me good.

I’m a sucker for falling into the trap of trying to continue working when mentally and physically I need rest and leisure.

And this post, serves as a reminder to myself take the time out when I need it, and for anyone else reading this that needs it too.

If you’re cooking a recipe. You need just the right amount of ingredients. Too much of one thing can upset the balance of the whole.

Very often, when we our creating art, the temptation is to fall into the trap of adding layers and layers without letting the work we do breathe. Or on the contrary, we do too little and then don’t consider the levels of detail we can add to bring a level of sophistication to our work.

Depending on the intent, finding the sweet spot matters. Adding harmony shouldn’t be just done because it can be done. It should be done because it feels right to do so.

It’s hard to know when to do this.

If you’re finding it difficult to make decisions, it’s probably the right time. If you can’t see woods for trees and your thought patterns shift towards negativity in the creative process, sometimes the most advisable thing you can do is take a step back to allow yourself to breathe, and come back to it with a fresher perspective.

We can be desperate and full of desire to see things through, but sometimes this requires us letting those things breathe before we go through the final steps to ensure our work is done.

But that’s how the government treats it.

The posters of Fatima still remain a coarse image of the undervalued perception that the Tories have of Ballet dancers, and musicians and all creators.

Art is essential. If you’re looking to contradict that, then ask yourself if you’ve managed a day without visualising something that is artistic let alone spending your time engaging with it. It’s what we do to understand things better, ourselves and the world around us.

And when art is marginalised in education, the wider society suffers for it.

All children and young people should be able to engage and pursue their art further and be given the opportunity to do so with support and a sense of serious ambition.

Unfortunately, I fear that many people continue to be squeezed out because of their lack of money or privilege.

Music, I always hold dear to my heart, and for all the ambitions I hold personally, I know how powerful music can be socially and within community.

Art is much more than a luxury, it’s at the essence of life itself.

And those in power should give opportunities for art, not take them away.

Recently, I’ve doing some teaching to age groups I had never dealt with before. Both younger years and older years.

At times, it has been an initial sense of dread at the prospect of dealing with a situation I’m not used to. What tone do I use? How do I approach the lesson to get the best approach.

What has occurred is the realisation that I’m adapting and learning in these new environments myself and it’s a privilege to see a wider scope, and that is how learning takes place across a wider range and context and in doing so, helps me appreciate and connect everything with that bit more clarity.

Sometimes, the deep end is really uncomfortable, but the reward of learning new things means it’s worth that temporary discomfort.

Tonight, we experienced an outage of Facebook and in turn, Instagram and WhatsApp.

It was a peaceful evening. I did however take to Twitter and was amused by the Bottas meme that Mercedes posted.

What was missing was the ease of connectivity that can exist from group chats and whatsapp.

And that what social media is about, the ability to connect. That’s also how Facebook sells itself.

But Facebook as turned a blind eye for so long to that which divides us and profiteering from misinformation and fuelling hatred.

The disdain expressed for Facebook was apparent this evening but we are not moving away from this world, because we are social beings that seek to find easy ways to connect.

But the people running these need to carefully reflect on what their products are for and how they can make things better not worse.

Imagine being part of a project for the best part of 5 years, pouring your heart and soul into it, and then having it come to an end.

One of my favourite parts of the appendix is watching the actors during their final takes, just because you get to see the emotional release involved with people so personally invested in something for such a long time.

A lot of us spend time working wanting to do the minimum amount in a fixed period of time and that’s part of life. But when we do art, we never want to do less, we always want and strive to do more.

I wish everyone the privilege of finding things you want to give your all too, and would struggle to let go of. That creativity is an essential part of us elevating ourselves