December Advent Challenges

Inspiration

Where do I find my inspiration?

I suppose the thing that inspires me the most is traveling and going abroad on holiday. I guess I find my everyday life pretty UNinspiring , sitting in an office with people who are all very similar (to each other, not to me ), undertaking the same tedious tasks, walking around the grey streets of the City I live in, under a grey sky.....not inspiring at all!

But when I travel, I find that I forget about all that, as there are so many new things to see and do all the time, right from getting to the airport. I love airports. I like to sit in "The Beehive" with a glass of wine at London Gatwick before I travel and watch all the people come and go, and wonder where they are going or where they have been, making up their lives. I like looking at people's outfits and their luggage. Airports to me are happy places; everyone is going somewhere.

And when I arrive at my destination there are even more new things to see - the hotel, new home for a week! The view, the other guests, different food, different cultures, different languages. I can go outside and explore my surroundings and everything will be completely new - nothing is boring and empty, because I have never seen any of it before, and so as I see it, invariably I write it, in my head.

I will write:

"I pushed open the balcony door and stepped out in to the dazzling sunshine - it must have been 25 degrees already. The sky was azure, cloudless. I watched an aeroplane arc high over the ocean, stretching out before me like an infinate blue blanket."

Or something like that!

And of course, that isn't even taking account of some of the amazing things you see when you go abroad - beautiful landscapes and colours, buildings, churches, wildlife, islands, markets selling giant fruit and vegetables. The way the World looks from the tiny window of a plane. I remember the first time I saw oranges growing on trees, just in the street! I thought this was amazing. You don't get orange trees in perpetually wintery England.

When I'm away on holiday, I feel inspired to do things and believe I can do things - even desire to do them, perhaps.

Then I come home and it's work, and City, and greyness and often I don't feel inspired to do anything at all.