Category: Guest blogs

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Look north for winter wellness

An article about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) If the sun is needed for life to exist, then that explains why so many of us currently struggle to even get out of bed in the morning. Winter brings us many things: fluttering snowflakes, carol singers, and the warming scent of cocoa. It also limits our sun exposure so much that they had to give the soul-crushing negative impact its own name. Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, occurs when winter hits and the sun only lights the UK sky for as little as six hours per day. If you work in an office, you’ll know this means travelling there and back in dreary darkness, during a season that feels more like a never-ending night.  When the gloom of SAD descends, symptoms include depression, low energy and a lack of creativity. But the glow at the end of the tunnel may actually be a northern light.  Arctic sections of Finland, Norway, Greenland and other freezing Polar territories have literally no sunlight – at all – for up to three months in winter. Due to their geographical position, this also means a corresponding season of uninterrupted daylight in the summer (I can’t recommend visiting the Lapland region in July – when you can sunbathe at 3am – highly enough!). The culture in these far-north lands is largely a response to extreme solar shifts. Inhabitants fortify themselves against the lights going out, with traditions and a hardy mindset we can all learn from.  In Scandinavia, people live with some of the darkest, longest winters, yet are consistently ranked as the happiest people in the world. Scientist Kari Leibowitz, of Stamford University, moved to the Norwegian town of Tromsø, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to study this. She described the mindset as: “People view winter as something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured.” In what seems like an inversion of the way most of us view the year, a dark winter can actually be the happiest of all seasons. The coldest months are when Scandinavia dazzles, with the vibrant aurora borealis colouring the sky above silent, stretching snowscapes. And while that may not sound anything like the drab December scene outside your front door, there are seasonal Scandi secrets you can adopt to stave off the winter blues.  Embrace the dying light by becoming as “outdoorsy” as possible. While northern folk get active with long-distance skiing and sleds pulled by huskies, you can hop on your bike for a brisk ride round your local park. It’s all about getting the most out of the precious light. And once the sun goes down, those in proximity to the pole have more creative ideas. “Hygge” (pronounced “Hoo-ga”) is a Danish or Norwegian word for an ideal mood of cosiness, comfort and contentment, created by a snug atmosphere when sheltering from sub-zero weather. There’s no direct English translation, as we don’t have the same extreme blackouts to fight back against, but Brits can channel it to shut out the darkest UK days. Knitted, chunky throw blankets and candles should adorn your living space, to achieve this nourishing atmosphere of wellness. Add oversized sweaters, thick socks and a flickering fireplace and hygge will be achieved. Yes, there are those with winters much harsher than ours, so it makes sense to borrow their soul-warming answers. Then, when you emerge in spring, you’ll be stronger for surviving the season and ready for a rebirth of creativity.  This post was written by Declan Harte. Declan is a journalist and author, and is driven by his passion for creating a safe and healthy platform for those with mental health conditions and disabilities. In his spare time, Declan is a wonderfully committed volunteer on Be Extra’s Marketing Team.

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Reading in 2020: Evasion or Reflection?

The pandemic has had many of us turning to new and familiar past times, as we consider what to do with all the time that we have spare- the time that we’d usually spend going out, seeing friends or travelling. While it sometimes seems that we’re just filling the gaps until the madness is all over, I wonder if there is anything we can learn from these changes. I myself have turned to reading. I was a massive bookworm as a teenager and my University degree mostly revolved around literature, so reading novels wasn’t exactly new to me. However, it was an activity that I’d lost since leaving University because I had been tied down by a fresh career and by the need to be sociable with friends and go out as much as possible. But there I was in Spring 2020: off work, bored and looking to make the most of my tiny but sunny garden. Being cooped up inside wasn’t something that I enjoyed, and I couldn’t always amass the energy to go walking all day. On my book shelf I saw I had Du Maurier’s Rebecca and the latter half of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair to complete- books I’d been given for previous birthdays and Christmases but had tossed aside during my busy life. Sitting tranquilly outside and enjoying the quiet felt very unfamiliar; but once I got used to it, it gave me a feeling of peace and harmony that I had been lacking. I wondered how many other people must be sat silently reading like me or regaining a hobby that they’d lost before lockdown. I wondered if reading fiction was only a temporary sanctuary; but I hoped that it would continue past the pandemic. The whirlwind suspense of Rebecca and the comical and satirical tone of Vanity Fair’s narrator were great sources of distraction to me and I felt transported somewhere else. But it was when I read Gale’s work that I realised that reading fiction in a pandemic isn’t a mere evasion. Take Nothing with You is about a young cellist entering the music world and discovering himself through his artistic experiences. I am a cellist myself and used to play in all kinds of ensembles, so this book brought back a lot of memories for me. Reading about the orchestra residentials, master classes and instrument shopping made me think of many moments in my past that I’d enjoyed but forgotten over the years. At first, I felt a sad kind of nostalgia but then it made me consider what was important to me, what really made me happy and what I wanted to get out of life once the pandemic was over. As the weather takes a turn, you may find me wrapped up by the fire reading a Christmas novel as I try to get my myself in the mood for the festive season. I am hoping to broaden my horizons beyond the novel and take a look at some poetry or theatre. There remains a heap of discarded books in my bedroom and, now that I am glad to have regained a lost hobby, I look forward to opening these up. I used to think of literature as a creative depiction of the outside world and a revelation of who people really are and how they behave. At the start of lockdown, I saw it as a means of escape. At present, I understand literature to be an opportunity for self-reflection. I suppose not just literature, but the act of reading itself and as artists, I think it is a pleasure to discover books that make us think about our experiences within the arts. The interlocutor of Rebecca finishes the novel by telling us that she will learn from her negative experiences as a shy young person to become a more confident and resilient person. Like many of us, I had a difficult 2020 and, when I think about this book, it gives me a feeling of hope. Patrick studied French at Oxford, having graduated last year, and is a big supporter of the Arts. He is a keen cellist, theatre goer, and volunteers at a museum in his spare time. He is one of our amazing team of volunteers, working as an Arts Administrator and PA to the CTO .

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Working as a creative freelancer in lockdown

You don’t need me to tell you that the period we are living in right now is pretty unusual.  No matter what industry you’re coming from or the job that you do (whether it’s creative or not), the job market is a stressful place to be wading through.  Throughout lockdown, I have been working as a freelance writer and content creator. I’m very lucky in that, although I am a creative freelancer, I work as a writer – so the cancellations that have impacted countless other creative industries have not restricted my work.  However, I do have some sense of the difficulties that lockdown has imposed on my age group generally, and any other individuals who are working in the same field as me. It is my hope that this piece will resonate with other freelancers out there, who might be facing the same stresses and challenges as I have been.  Just as a little bit of background info for you, I graduated back in 2019. I technically still class myself as a post-grad (don’t think I’ll be able to get away with saying that for much longer though). I got a job as an in-house writer for a creative agency, and I was there for almost a year before I moved back home to write on a freelance basis. This, completely coincidentally, came hand in hand with the start of lockdown. So, during the pandemic, I’ve been building my freelancing career. The surreal thing about freelancing during the lockdown is the fact that, not to be too unprofessional in admitting this, but you’re essentially sat typing away in your joggers all day. In some senses, that’s the brilliant thing about it. Plus, I love to be kept busy (but I can’t sew, so I’m not really made for lockdown’s conventional hobbies). For me, it’s been great to be able to throw myself into my work during this period.  On a day-to-day basis, I find the job’s successes, new contracts coming in and receiving praise from employers to all be fantastic plus points of the job. I’m incredibly lucky to be in a position where I can pick and choose the types of work that I take on, and I’m so grateful to be able to say that I truly love what I do.  However, the negative side of working completely on your own is the isolation of it all. Sometimes, you can be left with the unnerving feeling that your work doesn’t really exist. It’s a hard sensation to explain. But, with a lot of the ‘ghost writing’ projects that I do, you essentially write a thing, send it off and then never see it again. Working on a screen all day, then sending quickly-written work to people that you’ve never met and then it’s gone forever – it’s rather surreal at times.  If you are self-employed, self-motivation, organization and self-management are always tricky matters. But (at the risk of sounding like I’m sitting on my high horse), these skills can be especially tricky to master if the work that you’re doing is creative. You’re bound to have an off day here and there, and sometimes, there’s nothing that you can do about that.  When you’re working on creative pieces, an off spell might mean that the work that you do on that entire day is pretty rubbish. And that’s part and parcel of the deal. But over lockdown (where, let’s face it, we’ve got nothing else going on), that can really get to you. It’s all too easy to start really beating yourself up about your skills.  One of the other most common problems with working as a creative freelancer is being underpaid. All too often, potential clients undervalue our skill set, because it’s seen to be something that ‘anyone can do’. There are so, so many writers out there, and businesses looking for someone to hire know that.  I worked with an American client for about a month, and they were paying me $6 per 500 words of my writing, and I would write as much as 20,000 words for them a week. It was hard being paid very little for a lot of work, and then churning out so many words can leave you feeling very demoralising at times. This can certainly lead to self-confidence knocks.  With hindsight on my side, if I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be that it is so important to stick to a fair rate and that, if it means losing the odd job here and there, so be it. In order to break this cycle of underpayments, we need to respect each other as a creative community and stick to our rates, so that no one else is being inadvertently undercut, or forced to drop their rates to compete with ours.  I want to end by absolutely stressing that, all things considered, working as a creative is incredibly rewarding. Being able to write all day long is the most wonderful, fullfilling job.  As with any creative career, managing your mental health is a routine that you need to spend a bit of time learning to perfect. It is a skill in-and-of-itself, and one that it is absolutely imperative that we take seriously.  The support that BE-EXTRA provides as a community has been invaluable to me. Time and time again, Katherine has pulled me out of a little rut, or provided me with fantastic advice (particualry guidance r.e. Twitter!). I cannot overstate the importance of feeling as though you’re part of a creative community. Independent work can feel so isolating at times, and it’s been fantastic to feel as though I am within of a hub of like-minded creatives, going through exactly the same things.  Overall, if you take one thing from me and my little ramble, it would be that one of the main areas of growth that you will face when you start out on a self-governed creative career is working to bolster

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One musician’s story | Suicide awareness week

Trigger warning: sensitive content discussing suicide. Return to news & features here. The creator of both the artwork and text in this post has asked to remain anonymous. “I’ve struggled with my mental heath for a lot of my life, and it got really bad when I went to uni. I started to struggle with suicidal thoughts as well as the other symptoms of anxiety and depression and felt completely alone. For me, one of the hardest things was feeling like I wasn’t actually worthy of help – I thought about how lucky I was so have an amazing family, fabulous friends, and was able to study my favourite subject (music) at a fancy university. It made me feel like my mental health struggles weren’t valid and that I shouldn’t go to get help and take someone else’s place- anyone who’s tried to access mental health services will know the ludicrously long wait time to get seen. When I finally got the courage to apply, the years of hiding my feelings and putting on a happy face meant that I wasn’t taken seriously, and GPs thought I was just sad from moving across the country (which, regardless, depression from a particular event is also entirely valid). It wasn’t until my first suicide attempt in third year that I was referred for CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and put on medication (in my case we landed on sertraline after a period of trial and error with other meds). I attempted suicide again about two years later during my master’s, after ‘failing’ an extra-curricular project that I’d spent months on. What really got me about this was that I felt like I’d wasted other people’s time and had nothing to show for it. My mind spiralled and I ended up thinking that everyone else would be better off without me and if I couldn’t succeed at this project, how am I going to market myself and build a successful career as an opera singer? The difficulty of building a career in the arts is a constant source of worry for me. There is no security, no guarantee of ‘success’, and for me, I find it hard to separate my own self-worth from what I produce. If I fail at an audition, I feel completely worthless and that I will never succeed at any audition, entirely ignoring any other factors that could have played into the panel’s choices. I started the year hopeful and ready to blast off CVs to companies around the UK for auditions, something I still did, only to receive either no responses, or companies apologising that they’re not holding auditions for the foreseeable because of the pandemic. For me, I’ve had to work incredibly hard on blurring the lines between what I deem to be a failure and what I think a success is to try and make my supposed ‘losses’ hit less hard. As I said earlier, I’m incredibly fortunate to have a wonderful support network in my partner, friends, and family, but there are also loads of other resources and support you can access. Here are some links I’ve found useful or have heard about from others that are helpful to them:” https://www.papyrus-uk.org/hopelineuk/• https://www.supportline.org.uk/problems/suicide/• https://youngminds.org.uk/…/feelings…/suicidal-feelings/• https://www.themix.org.uk/get…/speak-to-our-team/email-us• https://www.samaritans.org/• https://www.thecalmzone.net/

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On the benefits of being naked in public

The first time I was naked in public, it was April. The sky was clear and blue, but there was a crisp wind. Everything stood on end.  I was living in Linz, the town on the Danube where Bruckner was born. I lived close to the river, where there was an old steamer from the GDR that had turned into a bar that sold cake and beer and where people went to swing dance on Thursdays. Just along from the boat was a technology museum covered in LED lights that glowed a different colour each night, and on the opposite bank was a thousand-seater concert hall. When I had told one of my colleagues in Vienna that I was moving to Linz, she made a face. In the 80s, it was a large industrial town known for its smog and its steel. Since then, it has built up a reputation as a place of art, culture and work. Now, it bustles with music and colour. It is also home to a beautiful bathing lake. Only a couple of miles from the centre, and reachable by a riverside path, it is an enjoyable place for a quick afternoon swim. What’s more, it has a large, leafy nudist section. My flatmate suggested we go, and I agreed. I am not sure what I expected. Certainly for it not to be so normal. It was cool and green, less busy than the crowded areas on the opposite side of the lake. Two men were playing ping pong. I could hear the sonorous pop of the ball as it bounced and bounced across the table. One man walked past energetically, clad only in a pair of running trainers. We found a space and sat down. Off came the shorts, the tops, the underwear. I looked surreptitiously around. Nobody was interested. A woman sat, cross legged reading a book. A man lay in a camping hammock, his hat over his face, leg lolling out of the side. A family of four was busying itself blowing up an enormous inflatable mattress and unpacking a picnic basket. The water was shockingly cold. It rippled over me and I plunged my head down. I felt my curls unfurl and float strangely around my head. I swam down to the bottom and back up again. I could feel water on every inch of my skin, cool and lovely. Free from the restraints of a swimming costume, my breasts felt light. Being naked in public is a lot like performing or sharing a piece of art or writing. We even use the same words to describe it. When we share something emotional, we talk about being laid bare, exposed. To walk out on stage, to publish a piece of work, to show an artwork, is to take a leap. It is to take off our clothes and reveal all. It is to make ourselves vulnerable to criticism – negative and positive. But to be naked in public – to perform – is also to be free and unapologetic. By unapologetic, I do not mean to be callous and careless. I simply mean that we should not shrink from sharing our art with others. We should not sit, our legs drawn up to cover our nipples with our buttocks clenched. I heard an episode of The Guilty Feminist once, where the weekly challenge was not to apologise. It wasn’t about failing to be polite when walking into somebody in the street or stepping on a stranger’s toe in a lift. It simply meant not apologising in emails, not apologising for not having the time to do something right away, not apologising for self-promotion. For me, and perhaps for many people, it is an uncomfortable thought, because I like saying sorry. It trips out on my tongue like a magic key that will fix a potentially difficult conversation. The first visit to the nudist area was not the last. It became a habit. I would cycle down from my building along the riverside path to the place where the fence is tall around the lake and a sign warns unwary visitors about the nakedness within. Every time, I would take off my clothes and walk to the lake and dive underwater. Every time, I felt unapologetic. I felt no awkwardness, there was no uncomfortable wriggling in a swimsuit that did not quite fit. It was natural and comfortable. Of course, it was not a performance. I am not an exhibitionist – at least not that kind. But it always left me with a sense of exhilaration. Afterwards, I was always reluctant to replace my clothes and return to my bike. Lately, as I stay at home unable to visit the place where I lived for a short while, and the friends that I made there, I have been thinking a lot about not saying sorry. It is a way of life we should all try to live by. One that is slightly less drastic than full-blown nudism. So, over the past weeks, I have been on a mission to be unapologetic. I have not used ‘sorry’ as a crutch in emails. I haven’t put off the awkwardness of sending invoices, and I have stopped myself apologising for asking to be paid the right amount. I have not apologised in situations where I knew I had no reason to. And something extraordinary has happened. I feel more confident. I get clearer, swifter replies. Not only that, I feel more creative. I have read more, written more. And, by only saying sorry when I mean it, I somehow feel I’ve recaptured the feeling of Linz and the lull of the chilly sunshine, and the loll of the man’s leg in his hammock. This blog is a guest piece written by Ilona Bushell. Ilona is a writer, translator, and producer. She was the winner of the 2019 Rothery German Prize for highest BA classification for her undergraduate degree from King’s College London. Ilona is