PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

At last I am waking up – the trouble with my long half-sleep during the autumn, however, is that there are now a million things to do.

Domestic; writerly; academic; organdising big stuff; organdising little stuff.

(We always organdise in my family, it’s much less boring than organising.)

Domestic – well, I refuse to describe the state of my kitchen composting caddy before I scrubbed it this morning. Tick.

Little stuff; well, smallish. On 12th Jan my kindly car care company rang to gently suggest I brought it in for an MOT and service, seeing as how the MOT had run out on 11th (blush.) Tick.

Academic; my expert reader has now passed my 514-word introductory text for submission, so yes, I really can grit my teeth and approach a professor. (That sounds a little like a plan for a mugging, but maybe that’s apt.) Tick.

Writerly: still working towards publication of The Dry Well, but progressing for a change. Tick.

Big stuff; starting to realise long-held plans for super once-in-a-life-time family holiday in the autumn. More later. Tick.

Of course this means lots more lists are being written, spin-offs from my master-list, but for the first time for ages things are being ticked off the lists at a rate higher than one per day – or one per week as it was at its worst.

One reason for this, I suspect, is that I have turned the central heating down a notch – yes, in January! It was very slightly too high and was causing sudden naps. At my age it can take an hour to get fully awake after a ten-minute snooze. The cats still seem to be getting cosy nevertheless, so unless the weather plunges to unusually low temperatures for Devon, I’m carrying on.

So nice to be getting re-acquainted with my brain. Hi brain!

What If Writing Was Like An Office Job

Tara Sparling writes

It’s that time of year again: the time when the media tell you to ditch your job and follow your passion. This year, they’re even throwing in the added bonus attraction of several impending apocalypses to get us up off our posteriors to change our lives.

It’s tempting, but I’m not buying it. I know a lot of people hate their day jobs. There are many reasons for this, ranging from idiotic bosses, to boring work, to nasty colleagues, to that weird smell in the break room which started to worry you after you did that marathon horror movie marathon in November.

But regardless of how many articles I see (or even write) about the holy grail of full-time writing, I don’t think that anything will convince me that deriving a living solely from writing can match the comfort and general framework of mental well-being that even the world’s most boring day job…

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Welcome Author, Marlena Smith #RRBC

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Why I got assessed for dyspraxia as an adult

Wish my dear late husband had been diagnosed…

WRITING FOR A CHANGE 20

That tired feeling seems to have sneaked back this afternoon. It apparently lurks around the corner waiting until I’m not looking then casting some sort of net of darkness around me. YAWN.

It’s been getting better though, I wouldn’t say I’m TATT any more. Would be nice to feel energetic for more than 2-3 days at a time though.

Maybe the steps I take today will just have to be tinier ones that those I took yesterday. It’s frustrating tough, especially for those of us like me, who want to have everything done by yesterday, or preferably last year. As soon as I think of a project I want it to be complete. If there’s anything in Astrology that rings a bell with me it’s the idea that Arians are good at having ideas and starting things but not so good at completing them.

Will just have to prove that wrong I suppose. Stretching and starting again – upwards and onwards.

WRITING FOR A CHANGE 19

It’s time to get the creaking machinery of my writing brain into gear.I’m tackling this in two ways, related but distinct.

Firstly I am at last actively taking the first steps towards finding our whether I have any hope of of being accepted to do a PhD at any of the three universities that seem feasible to me (failing them I’ll take anywhere!)

Just the tiny steps first – one of my kind academic advisers is helping me to hone, not an actual proposal as yet but an introductory note to spring upon an unsuspecting academic, or two, or three as the case may be.

Secondly, while my equally kind readers of fiction collate their notes, I am about to apply myself seriously to the matter of ‘How to upload your own textual content.’ Old dogs, new tricks, that sort of stuff. This one frightens me considerably, but I intend to do it.

All this peripheral stuff you have to do as a writer, independent scholar and self-publisher is really tedious to contemplate. What happened to the glamour and excitement you thought there would be in ‘writing’ as you perceived it in that youthful haze of hopefulness?

It fell away, of course, the moment you first began to type and found that Virginia Woolf was right, that first of all it turns out to be very hard indeed to make words do what you want, that they refuse to be pinned down and then ‘when words are pinned down they fold their wings and die.’

Nil desperandum.

CATALOGUE 92

I should have gone out to lunch today.

Cat-servants will understand that when ones cats are old and ill one may find oneself giving things up.

Mystic has been not quite right, on and off, up and down, ever since getting home on Saturday,

On Tuesday I started his eyedrops again as his left eye was plainly in trouble once more, all sore and flared up. This seemed to help, he became generally brighter and started opening that eye more naturally. He even grew strong enough to start resisting the administration of the drops yesterday.

This morning, of course, he was not well again. Apart from lying on his side in a collapsed sort of way, he also bit me twice and had a go at Fluff. This is not like him. He was also very restless, swinging between demanding to be the one on my lap and glaring at anyone else who approached, and flopping miserably down on the floor again.

So I decided it was best to cry off my golden opportunity for some time with two fellow-writers in case Mystic was seriously unwell.

‘We’ve heard all this before,’ I hear you say. So you have indeed. Just about the time it was definitely too late to think of getting to the lunch spot, Mystic perked up and ate a hearty lunch of his own. Well, he’s a cat, I did know that when I adopted him.

Must remember I am a cat-servant first of all. I apologise to my lovely family, and to my dangling writing projects, but that’s the way it is!

 

Rockin’ the Rainbow…

Welcome to the Hall of Rainbows, where Janowyn, High Bard of the River Kingdom, hangs out with fellow elves and bards (who may or may not rhyme, sing, or tell tall tales) and occasionally commits g…

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CATALOGUE 91

When you’ve seen one year you’ve seen them all; hence my determining many many ‘new years’ ago never to make any more new year resolutions – except that last one! I still form intentions and make plans, but I have less reason to beat myself over the head with a wet fish when I change my mind or just don’t make it.

Speaking of wet fish, the cats are home with me after my cruel abandonment of them to the best cattery in the area, with fresh chicken and fish, warm beds and lots of care and attention. I picked them up on 31st December at the end of a fairly awful journey that started in freezing fog on 30th and ended in a little half-hearted sunshine the next day. We were home before dark and all was well if you discount the fact that the boiler (oil-fired; all heating and hot water depends on it) was out and had evidently been so for some time. COLD!

Oh, and the log-burner is in a bad way and needs either drastic repairs or more likely replacing. Lovely. I got the boiler going by simply changing the fuse in the mains electric plug, but it took a good 24 hours to warm the house up. Drying some laundry in the tumble-dryer helped, also a small but fairly efficient fan-heater raised the living-room above freezing. Best of all, for the first time for a couple of months all three cats clustered on my lap on the sofa to watch TV; either they missed me or they seriously disliked their cold, cold house.

All seem well, give or take the few mishaps that always seem to come on return from cattery; ‘O yeah, that’s where the litter-tray is, sorry Mum.’ ‘No I don’t like that food any more, can I have fresh fish like at the cattery?’ Having said that, Mystic has definitely deteriorated a little, and is more or less desperate to be always the one on my lap while the others repose on the now re-warmed carpets. He just needs comfort, I think, and why not. Yesterday when Fluff tried to share my lap, Mystic turned round and bit him, luckily with a weak old jaw and completely blunt teeth. Fluff looked very affronted though.

Mystic is now sitting out on the landing waiting for me to stop hitting the silly thing on the desk and come back downstairs where I belong.

Cats and laundry more or less settled now, by tomorrow I must start to tackle some of those plans I have formed, but not resolved. Assuming the boiler stays on!

 

Let There be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin with Me

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