What motivates you?

When I was little I used to get very bored on a Sunday. We would go to Sunday school in the morning but afternoons were interminable, nothing much on the TV, with only one channel to start off with, or the old radio on in the background. My parents didn’t like pop music so it was either religious programming or comedy or documentaries.

The boredom pushed me to do art, I was experimenting with oil paint on cardboard when I was about 12. Or playing in the garden, climbing up to the top bar of the swings and hanging upside down… My parents had finally been able to afford a bike so I would cycle up and down the street and practice tricks on it. Getting as close to trees as possible without hitting them. We had water fights with other kids in the street. Throwing plastic bags full of water at each other and getting soaked. I also made hurdles using my dad’s saw benches and running as fast as I could over them. I remember climbing an old gnarled Laburnum tree as high as I could get, and climb up the outside of the big slide using it’s steel frame to get up and over the top instead of the steps..

Those games and playing made me adventurous. I wanted to learn everything. It motivated me in other ways too. Because I got bored easily I would get lots of books out of the library. Not just adventure stories, but ones about atoms, and galaxies, and art, and volcanoes. I loved finding out about things. So I stopped being bored because I was motivated to keep myself occupied. And I’ve stayed motivated to do things all my life. I try not to get bored anymore.