I've started taking mushrooms
And am really leaning into the clickbait vibe
Clickbaitey titles and email subject lines have always irritated me.
“The squirrel stole my course notes” when all it did was touch your piece of paper because you put some food on it.
“The time I levitated” and it turns out they just took a lot of acid in the 80s.
But I’m coming round, mainly because I like using them and if done well, with a little tongue-in-cheek, they work.
So no, I haven’t started foraging for high-inducing mushrooms, rather I took myself off to Holland & Barrett when I was south and got myself some multi-mushroom high strength gummies. The main ingredients are sucrose, glucose syrup and water of course, but they also contain Lion’s Mane, Shitake, Reishi, Chaga and Maitake extract.
Why?
For my brain. Specifically to help with my Shiny Object Syndrome where anything remotely interesting and unrelated to the job in hand will grab my attention. I've tried all the usual productivity hacks, I even bang on about them to my clients in my day job but do I follow them, NO. And now peri-menopause is making it so much worse.
So, naturally, when I heard mushrooms might help with focus, I thought, “Why not?” it’s a shiny object after all…
Apparently, Lion’s Mane can boost cognitive function. Reishi and Shiitake might improve brain health and I don’t know what the Chaga and Maitake are about but they sound good, right? At this point, I'm willing to take a chance on a few gummies if it might help me stop spending so much time scrolling through funny dog videos.
Something else that might help is the wonderful gift I received from
- her book. Julia wrote Five Ways to Focus to help people like me, and possibly you, manage their overwhelm and gain clarity and perspective. She also has the excellent publication, In Case of Midlife.On that note, I can’t get over how much free/gifted stuff I have received from Substack writers over the past few months.
Five ways to focus by
(gift)Villager (comp), Notebook (comp) and 1983 (gift) by
Cute polymer clay blue and white earrings from
(gift)The Sparkle on Substack bundle 3 from
(comp) lots of digital goodies plus this beautiful book: Kokora, Japanese wisdom for a life well lived. Now I’m trying to bag myself the retro keyboard Beth is giving away in her own competition, see more here.
A few months ago I signed up for The Orkney News, a local online newspaper…”Bringing you the alternative news in Orkney.” Every Saturday an email lands in my inbox with the week’s top stories, I don’t often check in with it, but I thought you might find it interesting.
The big news this week is that Logan Air are adding two further same-plane routes to their schedule. Kirkwall (KOI) to Heathrow (LHR) is a same-plane route, the plane stops at Dundee to drop folk up and pick others up then journey’s onto Heathrow and vice versa.
These two new routes open up Belfast and Manchester. Technically it’s 4 more routes, but as I understand it, the flights start at Sumburgh (Shetland) then will come to Kirkwall, onwards to Aberdeen and onto Belfast or Manchester. So, if you travel from Sumburgh it’s 2 stops…a further opportunity for a fuck up in my view. Still after a rocky start with the KOI-LHR route last year, this is positive news as that flight remains very useful, not least because the whole journey qualifies for the Air Discount Scheme. Us island and highlanders get 40% off the flights, which is no small amount.
In other news, Sanday Kirk (Sanday is one of Orkney’s larger islands ) has been nominated for a SURF award (Scotland’s Regeneration Forum), the RNLI and coastguard had to rescue a couple who got caught out by the tide on the Brough of Birsay (a tiny island connected to Mainland by a causeway) and The Pomona Inn has reopened after a renovation job. The Pomona was established in 1820 with the original name The Toddy Hole. I could lose days on the site!
There’s lots of big news for the Orkney Outpost too.
After lamenting the lack of progress last week, we now have leccy in Colin and E has moved his office out of the damp chilly outhouse and into the damp chilly caravan. I may also be moving in a week or so, although I do need to sort out all the clothes I abandoned a few weeks ago and give the room a good scrub so it’ll probably be months rather than weeks, unless the mushrooms work 🤔
In case you missed it on Saturday, I’ve started a new segment/category called Roots & Ramblings which will be tracking the goings on in the garden along with other eco/green chatterings.
Crops crops crops. I’ve already made two massive batches of baked beans and still the tomatoes keep coming. Next up is chutney and passata if I can find enough jars for the former and enough room in the freezer for the latter. The aubergines are coming on, I have 4 which is very exciting, and I seem to have chilli’s coming out of my ears 🌶️
I might have done a little (a lot) of shopping - all indie makers so it’s officially OK. Two prints, a necklace (on brand for the outpost) and a pair of earrings (on brand for the business), plus my facial oil supplier is closing their doors and so I bought myself a few bottles. I first came across Mark and Truly Artisan at a makers market in Leyburn, North Yorks and fell in love with his products and him. Sadly like many small businesses, it’s tough out there and so they’re taking time to breathe and think about the next steps.
My social life was off the scale, bookclub Monday; a sea swim with a friend and a PT session on Tuesday; a full day at the new co-working space in town on Wednesday and then a PT session & sea swim on Thursday. I’ve been a recluse since Friday trying to replenish my energy levels. I love seeing people but it don’t half deplete me.
And there we have it, the week. A good one by all accounts and the warm glowy feeling I have right now.
Thanks for being here.
Take care,
Han 🧡
The good reads
My favourite reads from the week.
An Irish Wake from Styled by Una
This hit on a number of levels, the humour to start, the heartbreak of grief and the problem with calling people strong.
The Stay Small Recipe: How to bake a community of readers from SmallStack
As someone who started a business 4 years ago and has ‘downgraded’ themselves to freelancer the constant pressure to grow is tedious. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to grow my freelance business and Substack but I don’t want to be huge, just loaded!
The Weekend Scoop from Diary of a Writer
It was this post from John that made me want to share my own favourites, I also feature which helps. Not so humble brag.
Another great post. I tried Lion’s mane, but I didn’t see any benefits. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
Thank you for the lovely recommendation for my book Five Ways to Focus and my substack!