Recent notes

• Got my hair done at Aveda in Holborn. There were alot of other women there with Saturday 9am appointments - must all be mums of young children!
• Bought Dead Sea bath salts from Ahava on Monmouth Street but haven't yet had a chance to use them.
• Saw Hirokazu Koreeda's Still Walking - a delightful and emotional homage to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story that explores the tensions between siblings and their parents gathering together to commemorate the death of a family member.
• Viewed Magnum photographer Raghu Rai's gritty, black and white photographs of street scenes in India at the Aicon gallery - very much in the documentary form associated with Cartier-Bresson and Magnum (photo above)
  
• At Hauser & Wirth, viewed Zhang Enli delicate paintings of everyday things such as a staircase, a detail of embroidery, the branches of a leafy tree (photo below). I was struck by how different the paintings were from other contemporary Chinese painters who tend to focus on politicised subjects or kitsch pop culture. Very Luc Tuymans.
• Little Planet's recent loves: dancing wildly to Bollywood tunes on DVD, making animals and faces with Play Doh, and painting.
• We've all got colds. We kept Little Planet home today - M looked after her this morning then I came home from work at lunch time and took over as he went into work.
  

10% more

In my last post, I described how I had struggled to set any New Year resolutions this year because, give or take several detours, I am living the life I had always dreamed for myself since childhood. I said that it's time to envision a new life for myself, or at least set myself some new goals.

Aside from my usual, "Get fit", "Read more current affairs", "Eat less", "Work harder" goals I half-heartedly set for myself every so often, I've been struggling to think about much that would make my existing life better...

...Except the concept of living the life I already live, but living it better.

It came to me one morning as I was walking to work: "What if I lived the life I live now, the life that I already love, but with 10% more effort?"

Every aspect of my existing life would improve, and it could start with the little things: Walking with 10% more energy, injecting 10% more oomph into my work presentations and meetings, giving 10% more attention to detail in how I dress and present myself, putting 10% more rigour into understanding the news articles I read and the art shows I view, having 10% more appreciation of the food I prepare and consume, investing 10% more focus on making my home more beautiful, being tender and kind towards my husband 10% more of the time, making 10% more attempts at making my little daughter laugh hysterically...

The thought that I need inject just 10% more effort into every aspect of my life feels achievable, not daunting.

So let's see how it goes... I already have an extra spring in my step.