The flights are booked and I’m off in about three months’ time. But given how quickly this year is flying by, it will be upon me before I know it I’m sure.

So what brings me to the US? Well I was fortunate enough to receive a student scholarship to attend the Visitor Studies Association conference in Raleigh, NC from July 24-28. And it seemed like a long way to go for just a few days, so I thought it would be a good idea to stay a bit longer and see some of the sights – museum-related sights in particular of course!

So between the end of the VSA conference and August 10, I will be making my way up to New York where I’m meeting my return flight back to Australia. So 12 days to cover some 500 miles, according to Google maps:

So far I have no fixed plans for this study tour besides the start and finish of my journey. Rather than the hassle of short-hop flights, I’m hoping to travel by train, making it feasible to stop at a few places along the way. I’ve been to Washington D.C. before, but it was only a short visit and I only had time to visit one museum (the Air and Space museum as it turns out). So much more to see there. And it will be my first time to New York City – so excited!

So over to you – what are the must-see museums in Washington, New York or elsewhere that I should try to fit in my itinerary? Are there any hidden treasures en route I should know about? Please add your suggestions in the comments below.

Also, any hints and tips for travelling on a budget in these parts would be most welcome too . . .

If I had to rate my artistic ability on a scale of 1 to 10 (and I’ll extend this rating to my craft skills), I’d give myself a 4. On a day I was feeling particularly generous.

I never advanced much past stick men in the drawing stakes, and I’ve always lacked the manual precision (or patience, or both) to excel at anything that involves making something: school woodwork and sewing projects were equally disastrous.

Given this track record, my involvement with the Adelaide Reef project was a radical departure from the script. This is a satellite of the worldwide Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef and links art, science and environmentalism. In a nutshell, the project has brought hundreds of people together to crochet a coral reef to display at the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus) as part of the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) festival.

The reef is on display at RiAus Future Space Gallery until 7th September.

Some examples of the Adelaide Reef corals (from the RiAus website)

It is very unlikely I would have even considered getting involved were it not for the fact that I know some of the staff at RiAus who have been responsible for bringing the Adelaide Reef into being.

So about three months ago – having never crocheted before in my life – I turned up to one of the RiAus’ crochet workshops. At first it was just as I expected – I was pretty useless. I just couldn’t co-ordinate my fingers, hook and yarn in any way even vaguely resembling the effortless work of the experienced crocheters. But I wasn’t the only beginner and I pressed on, gradually gaining confidence, dexterity and an understanding of what I was supposed to be doing.

I continued to practice and soon I was experimenting with different techniques to create different kinds of shapes. In the end I made about eight pieces, with the biggest (not shown here) about the size of a lettuce (albeit floppier).

Some of my earlier coral crochet efforts

As my confidence and skills improved, I found crochet very satisfying and I could happily dedicate whole evenings to working on my pieces. I think it was a good example of a ‘flow experience‘ as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, tasks where you are able to get completely absorbed in the moment. Such levels of engagement are considered to be optimal for psychological health and wellbeing. It’s very meditative (hence the Zen reference in the title).

My supervisor, Jan Packer, has written about ‘flow’ in museum visits, which is how I first came to be aware of the concept. Flow experiences are those that a offer challenge that stretches your ability without over-stretching it, as this diagram illustrates:

A diagram showing the 'flow' state (http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/spring03/G22.2280-001/csikszentmihalyi.htm)

Other hallmarks of the flow experience which I think my crochet experience had:

1. Clear goals – the task had a defined scope and end point
2. It required a level of concentration, but not taxingly so
3. Direct and immediate feedback (once you got going, the corals started to take shape fairly quickly)
4. A sense of control, but at the same time losing yourself in the activity

I’m glad that such an event gave me an opportunity to try something that I wouldn’t otherwise have tried, and I plan to continue crocheting and expanding upon my (admittedly basic) skills.

Now that my services are no longer required for making coral, I’ll need to find other things to learn how to make!

Do you fail to fit into neat little boxes?

You know it’s never going to be good when the tax man rings.

By the time I’d fished my phone out of the bottom of my handbag (d’oh!), the call had gone to voicemail. So at 9am this morning I had an ominous message to the effect of “Could the authorised contact for the ABN xxx call the Tax Office within seven days.” Gulp.

So I dutifully called the number given and patiently waited on hold for several minutes, all the while wondering what it could be – did I win the lucky draw for an audit? Did they find out about that Grade 5 assignment that I didn’t hand in? Exactly what was I in for and how deep was I in it?

So it was a bit of a relief when they said that the reason for their call was to confirm what business category I was in. On my business registration form I’d written what I thought was a reasonable description of what I do: consultancy to museums and cultural sector; interpretive writing; so on. Problem is, that doesn’t mean nada in tax land. The subsequent discussion went something like this:

What do you do most of the time?

Well, at the moment, it’s writing.

So are you an author?

Er, no. Not in any way you’d be thinking anyway. (I was pretty careful about saying I was a creative in any way, as being in an ‘artistic’ category apparently puts you into a scary tax-related No Man’s Land which I didn’t want to get into.)

What else do you do?

Well, I’ve just been trawling through historical archives getting images and footage for a client.

So what would you call that then?

I don’t know, you tell me!

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Because what I do is such a mixed bag of things, I don’t fit neatly into pre-defined categories which are worked out by – let’s face it – Bean Counters. “Specialist Generalist” is not something they can wrap their heads around.

We ended up settling on some anodyne-sounding ‘professional services’ category. Whatever. I asked what they needed a category for, and it seemed to be mostly for statistical purposes. Fine, but if I don’t fit properly into any of the categories, I’m hardly going to help any statistical analysis am I?

So what, you ask? It’s not going to make any difference in the general scheme of things. If I keep my receipts and pay my taxes on time, no men-in-white-pinstripes are going to come and get me.

But it does get me thinking – how many of us don’t neatly fit into these boxes? My experience says – LOTS. So how useful are they? Are all these neat little categories making some people’s life a lot harder, just so it can make some other people’s lives a little easier?

And what about if those boxes were on a grant application, for something really innovative and new? Would it never get past the first round-file-filter, just because no-one could find a neat ‘box’ to put it in?

Now that would be a real shame.