From my roller-coaster life I absolutely salute anyone who can hold down an intense job and home life and photo/write every day – it’s a big ask. If you are that person, can you at least not be slim, beautiful, have a great personality, rich in every respect, and love orphan kittens? If so I may have to remove you from the gene pool.

My mind is not entirely made up about what next for Fresh New Day – I want to explore some stories in greater depth, and I have a couple of other projects I’m considering as well, some ideally a little more collaborative. Meanwhile I’m set in my routine of making at least one photo a day, and ideally, writing in the same flow.

Some days I wonder if anybody is even faintly interested in what I’ve seen in the day, much less read my thoughts. And then when you least expect it, you trip over someone who talks about your work – likes it even – and suddenly you can go another day. Thank you all for your contacts, contributions, encouragement, and support.

Manifesto
01. Every day is a fresh new day.
20. Every day say thank you.
25. Every day your light shines for others to see.

Except for the poor guy who was upset at me taking photos of “him” and retaliated by walking up and taking a photo of me with his cellphone. Hey, mate, if you want to do that kind of thing buy the rights.

Manifesto
27. Every day pain is a sign of growing.
28. Every day you will be tested.
32. Every day have a laugh.

We’re so process driven, so determined to get results, do more with less that anybody seen sitting back and just thinking is a worrying if not disastrous sight. So we pitch on madly, lurching from meeting to meeting, crisis to crisis, and rarely, if ever, stop for just a moment and think. There is no substitution for thinking.

Today I travelled to Christchurch, south of here. To get there we flew north (for a while), and then west (for another short time) and then we headed south. Sometimes we have to pause in our actions to be able to act more vigorously. The pause that refreshes. The silences in music that provides the counterpoint for the beauty of the music.

Manifesto
22. Every day refine, clarify and simplify.
36. Every day be still. Connect to your inner being. Listen and be guided by it.
46. Every day you can change your thoughts.

I think that’s how we like it. We didn’t win, but we weren’t beaten either. Not a bad outcome in any activity. Good work to everyone involved – a huge effort and well worth celebrating.

Manifesto
05. Every day is now. The present moment.
11. Every day do something for someone else.
27. Every day pain is a sign of growing.

Sometimes it is better. That’s rewarding. The real reward is that we’ve got enough of the right things and the good things to make a meal at all. I feel so blessed when I sit down to a meal – elegant or simple – perhaps more often when the meal is simple – we have food on the table. Everything else doesn’t matter.

Manifesto
06. Every day you make choices.
09. Every day learn something new.
20. Every day say thank you.

Some of the office buildings in Wellington are beautiful – monuments demonstrating the prosperity found in the head offices of the major companies common in the capital in the early 20th century. I love them – the marble and travertine walls, leadlight windows, with art deco and art nouveau often fused together. The sophisticated colours are so beautiful – warming and comforting after the storm clad days outside. More modern buildings use darker granites, cold black stone – an effort to be modern that really just ends up looking cold and plastic.

Manifesto
06. Every day you make choices.
16. Every day looking at the order of things gives you power.
42. Every day celebrate. Who you are. What you have achieved. Things that matter to you.

A couple of weeks ago I pruned the roses. A blessing, today, I see that somehow, miraculously, the roses have noticed the days are longer. Warmer. Ripe with promise and hinted opportunities. Me – I don’t see the change in the day length (much) and the temperatures don’t seem to have changed all that much. It’s as cold as ever.

Ideally, you prune today for next season’s roses. Experts can probably prune for flowers 3-5 years time. I don’t have the knowledge – I just work on trying to shape the rose bushes into a shape that works better. Try to make a plan, but really it’s about getting through. I’m still hopeful, though, with a bit of fertiliser, and a bit of luck, flowers as beautiful as last year’s will follow.

Manifesto
04. Every day is an opportunity to cultivate the promise of the future.
14. Every day the ordinary can be the extraordinary.
43. Every day accept you will make mistakes. Learn from them. They are opportunities in disguise.

I come a family with a long tradition of preserving food – bottles of jams, jellies, marmalades, sauces, chutneys, and pickles. Bottled sunshine. Essence of labour, and of love. Dad would maintain the fruit trees and the vegetables, and Mum would bottle the harvest surpluses. I didn’t fully understand it at the time – it was all part of the flow – but Dad’s expression of love was in the richness of the crops, Mum’s in the beautiful artistry of the preserves. Together, in winter, making toast on the open fire, enjoying each other’s company and the bottled sunshine.

Manifesto
18. Every day express love. Some people need to hear it. Most people need to see it. Don’t take it for granted.
30. Every day use all your senses. Touch. Smell. Taste. Hear. See.
50. Every day has an ending.

Meanwhile on the way back, back to the car, back to the office, back to the daily grind – I can take a quiet breath or two – a meditation on the moment – sweeping away like a bird in the view of the lights rolling down to the valley floor and up the other side. I love the contrast between the mists and the sharp edges of the immediate foliage. I breath in. I love the fresh air. Some mornings every pure breath feels like you’ve breathed in twice.

Manifesto
01. Every day is a fresh new day.
20. Every day say thank you.
36. Every day be still. Connect to your inner being. Listen and be guided by it.

I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random… — Simon Jeffes

I love that song! I love that Cafe! And there, hiding in the corner of Higher Taste, the Hare Krishna vegetarian restaurant we have lunch in fairly frequently, I found a harmonium – or something similar – equally harmonious.
Isn’t that so often the way? We try something scary and new, and after some misgivings we find ourselves strangely comforted by what has become commonplace. Often our comfort zone isn’t all that comfortable in the first place – it fits too comfortably – squeezes up on our shoulders and itches on our necks. Did you put on weight? No, I don’t think so, but you have expanded beyond the fit of your reality.

I resisted the temptation to take the harmonium down to give it a whirl. I can’t play any musical instruments at all and the results of all the mistakes would be disturbing. At first. Gradually though, if I continued to play, a couple of things might happen. I could get better and music would result. My audience could go deaf, or simply adjust their aesthetic to like my playing. Or just maybe, after a few years mutual practice, we could all come together – my sounds becoming music, and my audience comes to like it. Creative harmony, at last. And we would’ve forgotten all the mistakes.

I get better results when I pay less attention to the mistakes, and more attention to the getting it right.

Manifesto
13. Every day be better than you were the day before.
24. Every day is a journey. Not a destination.
26. Every day take action. Every small step counts.