Do be brave, Do be happy

I am currently finding myself rather dumbstruck at the magnitude of awesome things that are going on in my life right now. Today seems to have completely gone off the awesomeness scale and is carrying right on up through the stratosphere.

First of all it's payday ... which might not seem all that awesome but it means that I can pay back one of my Do-nators. Paul Carruthers (@paulcarruthers) blew me away when he donated £100 - firstly because we'd only recently met on twitter when he made the donation and secondly because he was doing his own fundraising at the time and training to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats! The doodle I did for Paul is below {well it would be if blogger was uploading the image! in the meantime you can see it here} and will be winging its way to him as soon as possible :-)

Second of all I found out that my application to the Leadership Unleashed programme was successful!!!! It made my day when I saw a tweet from Michele Taylor (@mou5e) to say that she'd found out she was accepted to the programme ... when I checked my email and found out that I was accepted too I burst into tears of joy! You'll see from my recent tweets that I was far from confident about applying:

"writing my application for a leadership programme is tricky when I don’t see myself as a leader :-("

"… my application can be condensed to 5 words: “take a chance on me” … please keep all fingers and toes crossed until further notice"

"in a rare moment of bravery I’ve just submitted an application to the Leadership Unleashed development programme: http://ow.ly/oFhQ … gulp"

The next 12 months look set to be somewhat of an adventure - I'm looking forward to [i.e. feeling mild terror at the thought of] having my preconceptions of who I am and what I'm capable of stretched to their very limits.

Thirdly, I went for my first singing lesson in about a month. I started lessons about 3 months ago and I'm completely loving it. Turns out that I've actually got a pretty good voice - I just need to learn how to control and amplify my instrument :-) If you've ever fancied learning to sing then I insist you find a singing teacher or join your local community choir ... whether I spend the lesson singing scales, humming like an angry bee or singing the 'Tale As Old As Time' (from Beauty and the Beast) I always leave my lesson on a complete high ... and it only costs me £16 for each lesson!

Fourthly, and finally, I had the privilege of spending a transformational 30 minutes chatting with Duke Stump (@skratta) on skype. Duke was one of the Do Lectures speakers who I was lucky enough to connect with ... in an irreverent piss-taking kind of a way ... and he offered to give me a bit of coaching after the Do Lectures dust had settled. Despite *slight* technological difficulties (all at Duke's side of the Atlantic I'm fairly certain ;-) it was a deeply thought provoking and challenging conversation that ended up with quite an extraordinary revelation ... it's a bit early for me to spill the beans but I promise that as soon as I can put it into words I'll share my 'big audacious hairy goal' with you. I'm so grateful to Duke for sneaking up behind me and shoving me over the edge of the clifftop ... I'm sure it won't be a wholly graceful descent but he's certainly got my '100 days of Do' off to a high velocity start ... and hopefully I'll find my Doing wings on the way down :-)

My Do Lectures Notebook

Open my Do Lectures notebook on the Issuu website

This is the notebook I filled with words while I listened to each of the Do Lectures speakers. I'm planning to auction off this notebook to the highest bidder ... 75% of the money I raise will go to good causes, 25% will go towards getting me to the 2010 Do Lectures (arguably also a good cause, albeit a less altruistic one!). I haven't worked out the best way to run the auction yet ... all ideas and/or initial bids very welcome!

Feels Like Home to Me

"Decide who it is you want to hear and let them speak to you" ~ Andrew Huggett

In the weeks that led up to the Do Lectures I went stumbling and crashing through pretty much every possible emotion ... hope, euphoria, relief, gratitude, unworthiness, fear, quiet bravery and loud celebration ... at the root of it all was the worry that I wasn't enough of a 'doer' to deserve a place at the Do Lectures and a fear that I wouldn't fit in. Then suddenly I was there in the middle of Fforest - all the mental noise fell away and then the learning began.

Trying to describe being at the Do Lectures would be like painting the Forth Bridge ... it would take forever to do and as soon as I got to the end there would be new stuff to describe from right at the beginning. All I can tell you is that the deep connectedness, deep learning and deep sense of timelessness I experienced in those four days is threaded and stitched through my soul in a way that makes the ticket price pale into insignificance.


As I unpack, literally and metaphorically, from my trip to 'TED in a Welsh field' I'll try and find the words to share my experiences but in the meantime you can see the Do Lectures through my eyes in my flickr photostream, and read the tweets I made while I was there on my tumblr blog.

Songs that stop me in my tracks: part 1

the journey from Procrastinating to Doing

the journey from Procrastinating to Doing from Helen Harrop on Vimeo.

While I was making this I learnt an awful lot about the very worst way to make an animated video ... next time will be a breeze!

Lots 2, 3 and 4 in my 'book + charity' auction

The Harry Potter first edition triple charity book bonanza was a bit of a flop i.e. I still have all three copies in my possession and raised a grand total of zero pounds for the three charities. Undeterred by this fundraising hiccup I now offer to you the following books:

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks - Paperback, unread

The Hyper-Creative Personality by Blaire Palmer - Paperback, unread, 1st edition

The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel - Paperback, preview copy supplied for a blog interview I did with Eric Maisel, 1st edition (the corner of one page has been folded over on a page that happens to have the word 'sex' on it ... this is a purely unintentional, albeit rather Freudian, coincidence)

This is how it will work ... you have until 9pm on 18th August to make an offer by leaving a comment below or by sending me a message on twitter (@iamhelenharrop). Each book will go to the highest bidder but the second highest bidder will get a chance to increase their bid (in the interests of raising as much money for charity as possible).

You can choose which charity you'd like the money to go to from the list below or nominate your own preferred charity. You can also choose what percentage you want to donate to charity (the remaining percentage will go towards covering my travel expenses etc for the Do Lectures).

• The Royal British Legion - to honour Harry Patch, the very last WW1 vetaran who died last month.
  
• Comic Relief - to support Eddie Izzard's 1000 mile (!!!) run as part of Sport Relief.
• Touchstone Leeds - a charity who support communities, particularly around mental health issues.
• Living Paintings - a free tactile book library who bring stories and artwork to life for partially sighted and blind children, young people and adults.
  

The minimum bid for each book is £20 and I reserve the right to increase the percentage donated to charity depending on the final amount raised (i.e. I'm not looking to make money for myself). Each winning bidder will also get an original doodle which I'll draw while I'm at the Do Lectures.

Harry Patch: A life well lived, a person well loved

Created with the text from Harry Patch's biography [pdf] on the British Legion website (using Wordle)