大象传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Harry Baker

Good Morning.

Through a friend of a friend in the army, I recently learnt about the concept of Adventure Leave. Alongside regular holiday they can take paid leave to go kayaking in the mountains for a week, with a view that this develops skills that may come in useful later on in their career. I love this idea, and as a self-employed poet, I have been considering having a word with my boss about implementing a similar policy.

I鈥檓 sure there are many parallels with the army for specific skills I could work on, such as building up my strength for carrying boxes of books between gigs, or going wild camping to perfect sleeping in uncomfortable positions ahead of a post-show overnight Megabus back from Halifax to London. Maybe if I meditate on a mountaintop long enough I could finally discover an answer to the age-old question of 鈥淪o can you actually make a living from this?鈥� The truth is, the most important skill I think I could develop as a poet is my sense of wonder.

Like many writers I naively thought that being locked down for months at a time might be good for creativity. Without any distractions from the outside world the ideas in my head would finally find their way on to the page. But the reality was that all my creative energy was going towards trying to cope with the day to day uncertainty that came with it, and there wasn鈥檛 much left over for big ideas. It is only by being back on the road and meeting incredible people in incredible places that I am feeling that sense of wonder and excitement return, and so I plan to use my adventure leave doing just that.

I just hope I can get my boss to sign off on it. Creator god, thank you for adventure. Thank you that this world is so full of wonder that a lifetime spent exploring it wouldn鈥檛 even begin to scratch the surface. Thank you that whether or not it comes in helpful later in life, taking the time to have excitement is always a worthwhile endeavour.

Amen.