The Cartographer's Notebook
Updated: Jul 31
The Making of Chapter Two
Off The Map: Saturday 15 August
Every Gathering begins long before the doors open.
Before there's a stage.
Before there's a script.
Before there are performances, conversations or shared meals...
there's a notebook.
This is the working notebook for Chapter Two: Off the Map. Every few days, as the Gathering takes shape, a new Coordinate will appear here. Some will be questions I can't stop thinking about. Others will be conversations, sketches, discoveries or ideas that emerge along the way.
Some Coordinates will become part of the evening.
Some won't.
Some simply belong to the journey of making it.
Whether you joined us at the Winter Gathering or have only just stumbled across this little corner of the map...
welcome.
Check back every few days.
The map is still being drawn.
Coordinate 01
Who Drew Your Map?
I've been wondering lately whether many of us spend our lives navigating with maps we never consciously chose.
Not road maps, of course, but the invisible ones. The ones that tell us what success looks like, what a good life should be, who we ought to become, what matters, what doesn't, when we're "on track" and when we've somehow lost our way.
Most of us inherit those maps long before we're old enough to question them. They're handed to us by our families, our schools, our workplaces, our communities, our culture and, sometimes, our faith. They become so familiar that we stop seeing them as maps at all. We mistake them for reality.
For a while, they often serve us well. They help us make sense of the world. They offer direction and certainty. They give us somewhere to aim.
Until one day the landscape changes.
Sometimes it happens suddenly. A diagnosis. A redundancy. The end of a relationship. An unexpected opportunity. A move. Grief. A child. A dream that refuses to stay where we left it.
Sometimes nothing dramatic happens at all. We simply wake up one morning with the growing realisation that the life we've been building no longer fits the person we're becoming.
The map still says one thing.
The landscape says another.
Perhaps that's why so many of us feel lost from time to time. Not because we've failed to follow the map, but because we're still trying to navigate a landscape that has already changed.
What if feeling "off the map" isn't a sign that you've taken a wrong turn?
What if it's simply the moment you realise the old map can no longer take you where you need to go?
That question has been sitting with me for weeks now. It has slowly become the starting point for Off the Map, our next Gathering on Saturday 15 August. Together we'll explore the maps we've inherited, the ones we've drawn for ourselves, and what it means to keep travelling when certainty disappears.
I'm not sure we'll leave with better maps.
But perhaps we'll leave as better travellers.
A question to carry this week
If you were asked to draw a map of your life as it is today, what would you include?
Not streets or suburbs, but the landmarks that have shaped you. The unexpected detours. The places you've lingered. The roads you've abandoned. The companions who've walked beside you. The blank spaces. The places you know by heart, and the ones you've avoided for years.
I'd love to know what your map would look like.
Continue the Journey
The Cartographer's Notebook is only one small part of the map.
On Saturday 15 August, these ideas come to life through live performance, conversation, music, creativity and shared exploration. We'd love to have you with us.
Book before midnight on Sunday 9 August and you'll receive an exclusive creative prompt before the Gathering, inviting you to contribute a sentence to a collaborative artwork that will become part of the evening itself. You'll also receive a small original artwork to take home as a thank you for becoming part of the map before the journey begins.
Comments