Tunnel

Oh there is still such a long way to go, to get to the end of this thing. I remind myself that I had a number of options, thought about it all very carefully, made a choice and am following it through. 

It's all part of plan, a conscious decision. I am not trapped in this part of my life - I have chosen it. Just keep reminding me though, because I feel at the moment that I can't walk another step on this path, cannot stay on this course a moment longer. 

Friends are few and far between on this journey, and close contact rarely to be found at all. It's dark in here. 

Unresolved

Do  you know what? I'm not even going to start with the whole Resolutions thing this year. Just another set of things to fail at. And all my Januaries are all the same - you know the drill. Write a novel. Publish a poetry collection. Fit into size 12 jeans. Learn to play Lullaby of Birdland. Blah blah blah.

This year I'm not going there. I'm just going to take it as it comes, see how it goes. All these plans and goals are just ways to beat myself up - and I clearly don't give a crap about them really, deep down, otherwise I'd have done them all by now. 

I am going to think smaller. Not a poverty of aspiration but more like a miniaturist. Do little things properly. Drink good coffee slowly out of a good cup. Brush my daughter's hair. Look out the window of the train. 

I am going to get stronger. I need to support my daughters, and to do that I need to stand firm myself. That means be healthy, eat right, get fresh air, try to sleep. 

I am going to write. I'm not even going to say what. Anything. Everything. I do know that writing makes me feel better. 

I am going to reconnect with myself. This is homework from my counsellor. Who the heck am I? Actually I think I already know the answer to that. I am my Collected Works. I am here. in these blog posts over the last 5 years. In my poems. In all the words I have churned and cranked out for work.  I am write here.

Measuring Up

Coffee spoons are not the only the way to measure out a life. I find that hopping from one nice thing to the next, and trying to ignore the boring or bad stuff in between seems to work out ok for much of the time. The lily pads of life, perhaps. 

It's harder to make this strategy work when you know it's a hell of a jump coming up from one nice thing to the next, and a long and perilous leap in between. I expect this is why I burst into tears this morning, sitting in France and knowing I was about to head back to the grim, grimy grind of the drear dark days. 

Leaving the holiday from life, with the golds and rusts of the trees, the smell and the tread of soft wet leaves underfoot, the last low rays of the sun before it disappears for months - oh it was hard. Who would want to come back to all of  -  this?

I have been dropped off from the ferry and have already done 5 hours of work on the journey. Now I am in a Travelodge, alone (of course) and contemplating a week where I won't have a moment to get my head up. 

I sometimes doubt that I will be able to see through my plan.  But you know what? I've had a little rest and so I'm not ready to quit just yet. Look out world, I'm still kicking.

Reboot

So I am all out of excuses now, about not having time to write.  I have every Saturday, and long evenings stretching into night in the spare room.  It is time to do this properly.

I have started by sorting out all my files, the bits and pieces of poems and prose, the seeds and germs of stories. The two novels that are nothing more than ideas and a few thousand words. 

Why now, you wonder? Well it's all part of a wider plan.  More on that in the weeks to come.  Suffice to say for now that an end is in sight. Still quite far away right now, but close enough to start making an actual, concrete plan. With a couple of key milestones to break the journey. 

One of the parts of the plan is writing. This is the only thing I've every really, really wanted to do. For all the success I've had in the day-job, it's not the same as fulfilment. Writing is something I need to do, I have to do. 

It'll be a shame if I'm crap at it, won't it?  But at least it gives me an excuse to do absolutely anything I damn well please, all in the name of research.  A poetry friend of mine once said when I was going through a desperately dark time - "think of all this as raw material".  That immediately made it better, if only because it started to place a distance between me and the stuff, as I thought about how to write it, and started to get a sense of proportion and a more clinical viewpoint. 

I'm aiming to write my postcards two or three times a week (at least) so if you're interested in updates from my tour around the inner landscapes, do drop by.