^{(Source) South Pole Documentation 2015 for Black Flag by Santiago Sierra at Dundee Contemporary Arts September-November 2018 in The Guardian, 25 September 2018}

Black Flag takes the form of an immersive photographic and sound installation documenting the process and performance of planting the universal symbol of the anarchist movement - the black flag - at the two most extreme points on earth: the North and South Poles. (Source)

‘I travel a lot,” says Santiago Sierra. “But entering a country is like going to jail. Borders disgust me – as an idea and as a personal experience. This work denies all of that.” (Source)

The thing that I truly loved about the recent #hiveadvent experiment was watching HIVE traverse the world near instantly without borders, customs declarations or fees. What a world that would be.

Yesterday, I wrote about my HIVE plans for 2025 and today I woke up to HIVE jumping all over the place. It was propitious as I set about putting my swap plans into action, the kitty already set aside.

I had some comments yesterday about how organised I was with my investments, but today I felt a wrench as I hit 140,000 HP and 137 rank on HiveBuzz. It felt extraordinary when I remembered how long I had hovered around the 200 mark, scrabbling to maintain a toe-hold, slipping in and out of the top 200 HP holders.

As I start to put my plans into action, 137 is probably the highest I am going to get this time round. I can't believe how much I have grown the account this year either: 40,000 HP. The plan was for 15,000 HP to play with in 2025 and recover my fiat investment.

I am torn, the desire is to keep adding and it almost hurts to put the first power down into action and watch that 140,000 HP gradually diminish as the weeks pass, even though I know I've got longer term bigger plans.

House

The major construction on the house has been completed, in budget, I'm delighted to say, although that took some doing. Architects and builders, between them, seem to run through money in £5,000 units.

It makes sense to do a couple of other things while the house is almost empty: update the electrical wiring on the first floor, underfloor insulation in one of the bedrooms, replace the large front window to match the design in the rest of the ground floor and bring in more light.

I would love to have it done in the early spring, ready for decorating and replacing the flooring after that and, almost too much to imagine, having the whole thing finished and furnished by the summer holidays.

I have written about the house construction at the design stage and I have two more posts to write. One is about some of the technical aspects (steels and drains) and the other is about the work in progress. There should then be a final one when everything has been completed.

I do have another project for the house after that which is updating the lean-to garden room at the back of the house and renovating the balcony at the front. I'm wondering whether to upgrade one of the bedrooms by adding another window on a different aspect and, possibly, having an Oriel window with a Juliet balcony, as part of that project.

There are also the gardens front and back. I will be doing some work in both of those this year, limited in the front because of the collapsing retaining wall which is the responsibility of next door and will probably need the whole of my garden out of action to replace. It should be fun when we get to that.

Creating

I had a five year plan to go to art college in September 2025 to complete a two year postgraduate course, with this year spent doing a foundation course. The previous two years were to build a portfolio through a long-term project.

The long-term project didn't work out and came to a sticky end in July. I've not been thinking about it since then, although I have written about my knitting going awry. Someone asked me about my plans yesterday, which was really helpful, because it set me thinking about why I hadn't been knitting.

I think the results of the sticky end need sorting out. At the time I just abandoned everything I had been working on, packed it away into boxes, and the boxes into cupboards and then built a (virtual) brick wall.

I've recently started following a new vlogger who, among other things, will be creating a journal through the whole of next year. She uses a different medium (cloth and threads) and has a particular purpose for her journal.

I thought about following along with her and I have looked out several sketchbooks that I could adapt. I wasn't really feeling it, though. It wasn't quite right. However, my helpful interlocutor yesterday (that's you, Hive account@tengolotodo) set me on the right track.

This is to rescue the pieces of my abandoned project and to re-purpose them into a journal that sets them in context and brings together all my learning of the past two years to create the portfolio I had hoped for. This is going to be a bit more of a healing process and reconciliation, though, after the fracture created last summer.

The fracture itself wasn't all bad: it was a situation that wasn't working. The problem (or maybe not a problem, only that time needed to pass) was allowing my creativity to be foreclosed.

I do have a special savings goal for the next eighteen months related to creating, but I'll talk about that in another post.