One More Sleep

Why is it that before a big event, or something exciting, people count down the sleeps... sure its fun for the five, four, three, two but when people say to you "ooooohhh one more sleeeeep!" with that high excitable voice, you say "yeah I know, one more, how exciting?" with that big fake smile plastered on your face but you're really thinking 'please stop talking'.

Honestly who sleeps the night before something big?... No one! Your mind is running a marathon like its a sprint yet never tires. Your body pulses with the jitters and no matter how heavy your lids are, there is no chance of relaxation. Sleep will make the next day come faster. fact. However it's really not an effective tool of falling asleep. So you start to count sheep, which turns into counting beats, which turns into counting steps, then the bars in the music and then soon you have run through the dance four times without realising. Your mind runs away with ideas, things to remember, things you have forgotten to tell someone, something else to organise, truly it's endless.

Question: Do you ever have those moments right as you're about to fall asleep when you have an awesome idea and you are too comfortable to move to get up do something about it and you think of course i'll remember this in the morning it is too full of awesomeness to forget. Let me guess... you sleep... you wake...you forget!

Advice from Spark: Keep a (nice) notebook and a (good) pen ALWAYS on your bedside table. Write it down. You may read it in the morning and think what the .... was I thinking? but you may also think quite the opposite. Give yourself the opportunity to decide. Once it's on paper it's out of your head and you never know, sleep may creep in faster than you think.

Yours in your dreams,

Spark 

Have you ever met a "Perfect Stranger"?

The word stranger is a one of those words that have negative connotations just feasting off every syllable it produces. But have you ever felt that you have met a genuine person that is the epitome of the oxymoronic title "Perfect Stranger". A recent experience has reason for us here at Spark to be considered your perfect stranger if you ever have the chance to be in our presence when we take flight.

An insight into a stranger's soul, a twinkle in their eye, a window of viewing the way they see the world. A stranger that is not only interested in telling you about themselves but is genuinely wanting to know how you see the world so as they ask questions of you as you contemplate how much you tell them and whether you tell them truths, half truths or lies. You begin to open up and relax a little and they see you objectively a complete outsider then pay you the biggest compliment you have ever received and you think "they don't even know me!"

This interaction goes on and lo and behold you figure out that you aren't actually strangers at all. They know your grandmother's sisters nephew, or Godparents daughter's best friend or live in the same town as your uncle the butcher and buy meat off him every week. Maybe there is no need for the term "Perfect Stranger" because maybe the reason they are perfect is because they are not a stranger at all.

Walking away shaking your head at this amazing indescribable something-or-other that just happened you cannot reason this occurrence you just take it as it is and appreciate it, enjoy it and never forget it. You part with the no longer a stranger signing off with a "I hope you have a nice life" and you both believe in and wish the other to have a good life.

Remember it as the unexpected experience that put a smile on your face for the day.

Yours Sincerely,

SPARK (the stranger)

Body Aftershocks

There is that moment when you are comfortably lounged deep into your cinema seat and something you see makes your body react. It may be jumping in a scary movie or your body convulsing with laughter at a Rom Com. These moments are fascinating enough with questions arising about how can something we see on a screen make us move with no hope of trying to control it, however this is not the part we at Spark are interested in. It is the aftershocks of these intial reactions that infect the body and have no other escape than through movement.

Don't you just love it when you finally get to stand up out of your cinema seat, walk out and think that you are the new best break dance on the block after seeing Step Up 2 so much so that with no inhibition you get down on the dirty pop-corned floor and go for it. Or you finish watching the final dance scene in Centre Stage with some friends and you all try to out-fouette each other until your dizzy and giddy. Or simply you try to start a crew thinking you're all 'gansta' to the point of answering a question positively with a "fo shizzle ma nizzle".

These are the aftershocks that have no rictor scale but are as unpredictable as earth tremors.

It is inevitable though, they will come.

Do not try and run away from them or worse try to ignore them. You cannot hide from the rippling energy bubbling and bursting at the seams in your skin.

LET IT OUT! You will feel better for it!

Yours Sincerely.

SPARK

Today is World Smile Day!

The man who designed this iconic image, Harvey Ball, has blessed many people globally with a smile. Today is World Smile Day! 

The smile is an infectious phenomena that has been around since the dawn of ages. It is a powerful disease that effects not only the mouth but the eyes, cheeks and jaw. 

However, a genuine smile is not as common as society may think. 

Ask yourself... when was the last time I smiled so wide for so long that it actually hurt? And who was I with when this happened?.... then find them and expose each other to the one epidemic that the world wants to be spread!

Yours Smilingly,

SPARK 

What does this mean?

DESIGNING SPONTANEITY? ... If anyone could help us in understanding this new phenomena we are trying to tackle that would be greatly appreciated!

Moments in Time

I sit here typing on my Macbook listening to my iTunes Library with my white apple earphones occasionally checking my iPhone for the time or a message and contemplate the sad death of one of the modern worlds greatest artists - Steve Jobs. Sure enough he was in IT but it was his innovative creativity that made him, and all that he represented, one of the most influential icons of popular culture. Personal mortality is not often thought about because basically it is in fact quite well ... depressing... however we all have our own moment in time and "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." Steve Jobs (2005) and this is where you find it, a spark of reassurance that one moment no matter how short that moment is, 56years or 5.6minutes, can have an impact. So do.... "Live in the Moment and make it so Beautiful it will be worth remembering" 

Yours Sincerely,


SPARK