Compulsion

There are a couple of things I simply have to do.

One of them is get fit, the other one is get writing. These things are particularly important given that the thing I've been working towards for the last 20 years has led me, via a very roundabout route and a large amount of graft, back to the place I started.

So I'd better strive at something else, otherwise the overall outcome of my endeavours will have been pointless.

I can't be trusted to get on with things without some sort of external encouragement, targets, goals. Maybe at least I have learned how to understand myself, if nothing else.  Therefore I have set myself two challenges.

The first is a six week poetry course. I've just finished a two week poetry course as a sort of limbering up, and come up with 3 pieces I quite like. This longer stretch should get me back in the writing saddle, so to speak.

The great thing about poetry is that it doesn't require the same amount of sitting down that, say, a novel would dictate.  Most of it happens inside the head while doing other things, and as long as there is the possibility to jot or record a voice memo, it doesn't always interfere fundamentally with the daily timetable. Writing a poem is a bit like waiting for a plant to grow. You can get it started, sow the seed of an idea but then it has to do its own mysterious thing in the dark before it's ready to begin emerging.

Even so, I thought that I should offset the temptation to stay on the sofa drinking comforting red wine while my poems mature in the aged oak barrels of my brain, by also signing up for a fitness challenge. 5 x 50 will commit me to covering 5k a day for 50 days, running, walking, cycling, swimming or a combination of these.

Truth be told, it's not that much of a challenge on the days I'm exercising anyway - 5k is my standard running route. It's a kick start for the sedentary days though, as I will have to go for a walk for an hour or get on the exercise bike in the evening.  It can only do me good.

My brave little hero nephew has just had an operation which will leave him in plaster from hip to ankle on both legs for 7-8 weeks. And even after that, he can't walk anyway. So I thought the least I could do is be grateful for the ability to get about independently, and do a bit of extra walking in his honour.

In between, I need to fit in my work. Less said about that the better.