It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

S02 EP03 – week ending 9 December 2018

The week started with a business coaching session focussing in on strategic direction and lots of talk about funnels. These calls are always great – they help me work out where my focus should be, what’s I need to do more work on in myself, and what I need to stop procrastinating over and JFDI.

This led to shaping my work over the course of the week and some great conversations with people as I test concepts. Alongside I also had a great catch up with James Machin (Grawl!x) and made some exciting plans for his music in 2019, as well as some short term actions for the rest of this year. Big thanks to Dani, Jay and Dubrek for ongoing support and letting me use the cafe as a drop-in office.

At Reckless Yes we’ve been reflecting back on the year – and what a year it has been for us. Six releases in total (four albums, one EP and a novel) and our artists have been streamed nearly 60,000 times (this number goes up every time we dod a post about it so expecting increasingly high numbers!) as well as selling a ton of physical, playing some sweet gigs, and finding themselves on a number of Albums of the Year lists. We love that people seem to love what we’re doing and we’re deep in planning for a big 2019.

I ended the week with a fantastic Friday – beginning my day at this year’s Comms2Point0 UnAwards. This recognises the brilliant work being done by public sector communicators across the UK and has the added bonus of a Christmas film in the ace Everyman Cinema in Birmingham.

Returning this year it was lovely to catch up with friends and colleagues, and be so welcomed into a community I’ve been away from while working elsewhere. It was emotional and impressive to see such commitment and creativity taking place across the sector. And it was thrilling to see Die Hard on the big screen – to my mind the second best Christmas film.

via GIPHY

A huge well done for Darren Caveney and crew for organising (and to Ben Capper for a great playlist) and an even bigger round of applause for those nominated and who won. I loved getting up and standing alongside my fellow Lifetime Achievement winner Phil Jewitt to read out the nominees in the category this year and to welcome Jayne Surman to our number – a huge well done to her for the work which got her recognised by her peers and made her the winner in an impressive and strong list of nominees.

I was a bit sad to race away without having more time to catch up with people but Doncaster called and a chance to catch up with musical pals. As well as getting to see Chris Helme, Mark Morriss and Nigel Clark play great sets it was lovely to hang out after not seeing them for a while. What’s really lovely is to feel so supported and encouraged by them – and fortunately lots of others too – as I start working more in the music industry. And it’s always great to talk music and come away with a playlist of stuff I want to delve into as a result of our chats – Nick Cave has had a good old play this weekend.

What’s next?

There’s a lot of Christmas stuff to pack into this week alongside a lot more business set up – mainly around event planning, content creation, and concept proofing something new. There’s also a birthday for my youngest son, and a need for me to commit harder to my wellbeing goals too.

And there’s the small matter of LIINES playing their biggest stage yet when they open for Slow Readers Club at the O2 Manchester Apollo on Friday 14 December. Before then – and following on from the Sleaford Mods tour support news (some dates selling out so get in fast) – there’s some other big announcements from them due.

Day to day I’ll be continuing with The Self Love Summit / Mel Wells Advent Challenge over on Instagram as part of my commitment to 24 days of joy this advent. Follow me over there – I also post loads of music, loads of pictures from around my way, and the occasional indulgent selfie.

As I’m working on a couple of end of year bits for publications too I’m also adding more tracks to this playlist – it already features 50 tracks I’ve loved this year and I’m not even close to done. Give it a follow if you’re looking to get into some new stuff – plenty of indiepop, dreampop, punk, post-punk, electropop, and a bit of experimental and math rocky type tracks too.

Original source – Sarah Lay

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