PLERKING - a combination of pleasure and work
On connection, energy, and learning that woo-woo isn't so boo-boo after all!
My feet have barely touched the ground over the last couple of weeks, and it’s been a fantastic mix of work and play. Is there a term for that? Plerking maybe?
I’ve had lunch in Paris, dinner on a rooftop looking across the London skyline, and champagne in Browns. I saw (and spoke to!) Minnie Driver, was back on BBC late-night radio, and in between it all, have been visiting my mum, who’s stuck in hospital again.
It’s impossible to choose a highlight, but what really stuck with me, yet again, is just how life-giving connection is. So when I saw it was the theme of the latest edition of New Philosopher, I grabbed a copy to read on the Eurostar to Paris.
The editor wrote on the first page:
Connection is not merely emotional or social, it is the cornerstone of how we understand ourselves and the world around us. It is through relationships that meaning, value and identity emerges; we become whole through our connection with others.
Here’s the whole piece:
And a perfect example is this: After seeing Minnie Driver in Every Brilliant Thing, I received an impromptu invitation for an evening of champagne and jazz with people I’ve never met before. I was tired and not sure I had the energy, but as soon as we started talking, I came alive. It was like our conversations were literally charging my battery.
Among the many conversations that evening, I met Jennie from Singapore who was delighted to hear that my grandfather once owned a department store there and wanted to know all about it - which made me realise how little I know about him, too!! And then there was Roger, who worked for the same marketing company as me back in the nineties. Both of these unexpected crossovers sparked instant connection and fabulously animated conversation. If I’d been tired and gone home, or if I’d just stayed talking to those I already knew, I’d have missed out.
When we find common ground, whatever it is, we share a little bit of magic that buoys us up and gives us life. I used to think ‘energy’ was a bit woo-woo. But I’m realising more and more that it isn’t a magical, mystical ‘new-age’ concept, it’s a very real part of being human. Not just physical energy, but a current that flows between us and creates even more of itself. Ever expanding - isn’t that what the universe does?
Like two sides of a coin, though, there’s negative energy too; we can spiral up or we can spiral down. Life gives us exactly what we’re looking for, which takes us right back to my previous post on manifestation.
Life is a twisting, turning journey that brings us a kaleidoscope of experiences. We can coast and go with the flow, do what our parents did, follow the person in front of us, or someone else we see who seems to have it all together. Or we can dare to step out and make our own path.
But what does that actually look like?
It first means not conforming, not giving in to fear, and not doubting ourselves. It also means not being persuaded or influenced to be someone we are not, but being brave enough to follow our hearts, to live and find meaning ourselves.
I was talking at an event recently, and someone asked me how I learned to be myself. It doesn’t come easy to everyone, particularly when someone has been raised feeling as though they were never good enough for their parents, so it was a good question. I thought for a moment and then realised - it was when I stopped thinking that I needed to be like someone/everyone else. That’s when I begun to find myself.
And that’s what this dinner was about, too. It was a celebration of the self, under the Taurus moon - a full moon, I might add!! It was another wonderful occasion, which, twenty years ago, I may have questioned, or perhaps even avoided. Chakras? Celebration under a Taurus moon? And yet it was an evening which was filled with meaning. We don’t always realise it, but our upbringings, presumptions, and sometimes even our ignorance can hold us back from experiencing beautiful, life-changing moments.
PLERK ON!
So here’s to Plerking - combining work with pleasure and play, finding joy in meeting new people and going to new places - or even in the boring every day ones. Because meaning exists everywhere when we slow down and pay attention. Even in the smallest exchanges and the everyday acts of talking to someone through a screen or in the supermarket, everything has meaning and purpose, even if we don’t see it in the moment.
Wherever this week takes you, planned or not, remember to connect and be recharged by the life-giving and life-affirming current between us. Plerk on!