For reasons unknown quite a few of the “self care” podcasts I recently listened to, dealt with how our phones are messing with our brains and lives and everything. I paraphrase here, obviously. But basically it’s true and not really a new discovery. One things that stuck with me though from a chat with Cal Newport about his book “Slow Productivity” was the “phone as distraction” issue. It focused on the phone as means of distraction from thoughts and such Somehow this time it clicked for me, because I know I (too) often use my phone – and other media like TV shows and even books to an extent – as a distraction. But when he talked about how good it can be to really just be with your thought, I figured out why I distracted myself so much. Because for most of my life my mind was a worried and anxious place to be in. Lots of self-loathing, lots of negative self-talk… of course I did not wanted to be there.
I’m trying to be less on my phone and more in the moment, starting with this trip by very consciously not sharing it all each day on Instagram (which is the social media app I’m on the most these days). So, this trip: Scotland! Finally again. The first three days went fine, though not without hiccups, but I managed to deal with all of them so far, so no big deal.
Being behind the wheel in the UK felt familiar very quickly, the weather so far was…. Scottish (lots of rain, but also some nicer times) and my apartment in the depth of rural Perthshire is quite cozy. And when I say rural, I mean it. I see and hear cattle grazing from the window while I type this.
“Sightseeing” so far: The Kelpies (I mean, how can I now, when I fly into Edinburgh and have to drive west), Drummond Castle Gardens and a long drive up (and back) Cairngorms National Park for a guided summit walk (not from the ground, but the Mountain Railway Top Station). There will be more excursions over the next few days, depending on the weather and what I feel like doing and then it’s over to Dundee on the weekend. All in all I’ll try to be in front of screens (phone and computer) a bit less and just watch the amazing, constantly changing Scottish sky a bit more.
The Kelpies at FalkirkDrummond Castle GardensView over the northern Cairgorm Mountains
A friend and I went to an open air “musical gala” last night and we had fun. On the way back we started chatting about how musicals seem to have changed over the years. I think there might be different definitions of the term “musical” for different generations. Once I said it I felt very old for a moment. To me a musical is a piece of art, where the book / plot and the music have originally been created for this piece of art. I know by now there are many different versions of musicals out there, centered around well known music of a band or artist. “We Will Rock You” comes to mind first of all, I guess. I learned the term jukebox musical for these shows last night. Then of course there are the musicals based on well known films: “The Bodyguard”, “Back to the Future”, “Pretty Woman” and so on which may or may not include song from those films. I don’t quite get the appeal of those to be honest. The idea of rewatching a movie from my youth put on a stage with added music? Is it nostalgia? I think there is a whole media psychology field around our desire to go back in time to things we know and love, because the world we live in right now is uncertain and scary and all that. But I still don’t get it in regards to musical theatre and I say that as someone who returns to watch the same old TV shows over and over again as sort of a comfort watch. Also last night I learned that there is a tendency – maybe only in Germany – to create musicals around well known novels (“Rebecca”) or well known artists, like “Mozart”.
Anyway, this morning when I started gathering ideas for this post in my mind, I thought I’d cite “My Fair Lady” from 1956 (proper vintage) or “Cats” from 1981 (not so vintage in my eyes, but still decades old!) as examples for proper original musicals, with an original plot and songs and all. Luckily – before I could make a fool of myself – I remembered that the first one is based on a play – “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, 1913 – and the latter on the poetry collection “Old Possums Books of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot, 1939. So both not quite as original as I had thought for a moment. I know there are still many musicals which might support my argument.
And it’s not even an argument as such, just an observation as to how definitions and views of stuff change over time. Is “The Jungle Book” an animated film? A musical film? A musical as such? For me it’s always been a film first, a musical film second. Semantics, probably, I know. But for that reason I wouldn’t have necessarily expected to hear Disney songs featured in a “musical gala”. To bring my non-sequential rambling back full circle, isn’t it interesting to think that most of the Disney musical films are based on fictional works from others and thus aren’t an original either?
The years rolled by as well, when I started to work out how many times I have been to Scotland before this upcoming trip. When I tell people about where I’m going on vacation I also often mentioned that I’ve been there “loads of times” before, but how many in fact? This right now is the point where I regret to never have been willing enough to go through the hassle of doing a printed photo book of these trips. I do have the photos stored on my computer (time for some backup, maybe?) and I have been documenting some parts of it in blog posts, which are still available to me, even if I have taken lots of stuff down by now.
Even with the digital photos I have kept, I haven’t always kept the travel documentation (places, routes and such) and I regret that a bit by now. Or right this moment anyway. Maybe putting together a proper Scotland travel photo book from the last 16 years is a project for end of the year.
I am not going to share all that here now or ever, but I thought a quick run through the years might be fun. For me anyway.
June 2009 The first trip. I had bought the novel “Outlander” a few years before and decided going to Scotland might be a good time to finally start reading it. I started reading on the first leg of my train journey and hadn’t even left mainland Europe when I was already hooked. I stayed in London for a bit, took a train up and stayed in Glasgow for a few days, before I took a 5 days tour (group, mini bus) around the Highlands (2 nights in Inverness, 2 nights on Skye) and I then ended with a few days in Edinburgh and back home via London again.
Love on first sight 🙂
The group tour took me to Ardvreck Castle for the first time. Instant love and I can’t even say why. It’s just a small crumbled remain of a castle.
August 2012 Friends and I went over with our own (their) car. Ferry to Newcastle, avoiding the big cities with a European car. Up through the highlands, Perth, Inverness, Skye, Fort William…. those kind of places.
Rainbow on Skye
August 2015 Another few days in Edinburgh and Glasgow and then I took the small plane to Stornoway on Lewis (Outer Hebrides), where I stayed for about a week. I picked this remote place, because I wanted to practice driving a rental car in the UK (‘wrong’ side of the road) and thought there this would be a good small place to do so. I was right.
Callanish on Lewis
August 2016 That was my Outlander / North Coast 500 trip. The show had been on for two seasons and there already was quite a lot of information about filming locations and such. Ten years later there is a whole Outlander based tourist industry, which is cool and all, but I’m kind of glad I was there before the big hype.
Craig Na Dun (without the fake stone circle obviously)“North Coast” for real. Still one of my favourite photos
December 2016 Edinburgh for a weekend in December, because Frank Turner was playing and it was my 20th show. What can I say? Fangirl!
Edinburgh Christmas Market
September 2017 The first My Peak Challenge Event (I have left that movement by now, because it was getting kind of expensive, and I didn’t made the friendships / connections through it as others seem to have). Glasgow first, then another trip through the Highlands. I bagged my first Munro: Loch Lomond.
View across Loch Lomond
2019 The 2nd My Peak Challenge Event in Edinburgh followed by another road trip through part of the Highlands. Another Munro.
View from Schiehallion
June 2023 Finally back after the travel-less pandemic years. I took the Caledonian Sleeper up to Inverness and back (won’t do that again). I stayed in Inverness for about a week and then Glamping in the Western Highlands, by the coast. Blissful solitude.
View from Stac Pollaidh
All those photos from up on mountains and such make me look much more outdoors-y than I am. I like to be out in nature and up hills / mountains on my vacation obviously, but don’t do that all that much the rest of the year around. Maybe I should start changing that…
Two third of 2025 already are behind us. How did that happen?I think I mentioned here before that at the start of the year I had planned to take some vacation time off work in June or July. That didn’t quite work out because of work deadlines and such. I spent some days away in Antwerp at the end of April and had the ocassional day off (“long weekend”). But April feels a long time away and I’m soooooo exhausted. From work and local politics. And people! It’s a bit weird, because in general I like those people: family, friends, coworkers. These days on the weekends I already spend quite some time on my own at home not talking to anyone and to be honest I’m quite content with that. Turning into a hermit at 50. Cool! Or not?
I’m only half kidding. I feel like my mind needs that “me time” and therefore I’ll take it, being well aware that I have to make sure that I’m still as sociable and gregarious as I want to be and as I am able to be. All in moderation and most importantly not feeling bad or weird or guilty about not exchanging words with more than the 2-3 people I encounter in at the supermarket check-out.
I am quite looking forward to recharging my mental batteries in kind of solitude in Scotland for about 12 days before I dive into the madness of a 4 days music festival and running into all the lovely people I have gotten to know in the Frank Turner world (at gigs and online) over the years.
Random pics from this week: I’ve bought a new phonecase for my 5 year old phone.
Phone cases in comparison
The old one was still alright, but I’ve also bought a new (smaller) car phone holder, which works with a metal plate glued to the phone’s back and a magnet. That does not work with the old hard shell case, so it was time for a new slim silicon one. Even after a few days I’m still not quite used how differently the phone feels in my hand to be honest.
Isn’t it weird how much we all (I assume) are used to our phone being near us or in our hands almost constantly. It’s not just me, is it? I am less on my phone / social media than I used to even a few months ago, I think, but I still use it so much for all the other stuff. Photos. Quick notes to remind myself. Music. Podcasts. I guess that’s just the way it is these days for most of us.
Not the most elegent segue: I also spent quite a bit of time to put locations I want / need to visit during my first week in Scotland into my phone’s satnav app.
Places to visit
I might visit just half of them, but I don’t know yet what mood I’ll be in on any given day, right? There is also the weather to consider. It’s autumn in the Scottish Highlands. For some perspective: It’s about 200 km and 2.5 hours drive between the ones furthest down south / up north. Scotland is a small country.
Some more time this weekend was needed to check out all the bands / artists that are on the “Lost Evenings VIII” line-up. Frank is good at inviting a variety of new (to me or in general) acts to the stages over these four nights. Lots of Scottish music, which is fitting and kind of cool. More impressive: the line-up is pretty equally made up of female / male artists, or at least bands with one or more female musician. But also also a few all-female bands and across all sort of genres as well. I don’t in general prefer female voices / artists over male ones. But I appreciate the effort to give more women a spotlight for a night as women are still so very much underrepresented in every corner of the music business. As well as in so many other parts of business and politics and everywhere as well.
One last “prepare for the Scotland trip” thing I did this weekend was going on a short hike up and down a hill to test the new boots I bought last week. They are wonderful and I’m so glad I exchanged them now before the trip. Even if I’m not walking up a Munro, I plan to be out and about quite a bit and I need proper boots for that.
Out in the woods
Besides all that I finished reading my latest novel and for some reason Imight keep to non-fiction for the next few weeks. None of the fiction books on my shelf really interest me at the moment and when the plots and characters of the last ones I read (and also quite enjoyed) blur into each other and I forgot names and places from those stories quite quickly, it feels time for a fiction break. For a while anyway. I’ve got more than enough non-fiction across all sorts of genres on my shelf as well….
