Category: persistence

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Tangled

Every morning (mostly) I sit down with a blank screen and the faint hope that by the end of 500 words I will have said something worthwhile. Admittedly, five hundred words isn’t much, though some days it’s a struggle to fill it. Sometimes something occurs to me just at the end, which is why the title (always written afterwards) often refers to the final paragraph. Maybe I should carry on beyond 500 words? I tried that two years ago, and I don’t recall it being any more productive. I have a file (Word table) containing extracts taken from these posts that I think might be worth expanding, and the dates when they were posted, but I never look at it. Maybe that’s a project for one day, but I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of repetition and few surprises.

I’ve been thinking about the word ‘should’, which is anathema to my therapist, and most other therapists, coaches and others of that ilk I’ve come across. A couple of weeks ago she asked me whose standard I’m trying to emulate – but when I ask: ‘what should I do?’ I’m asking for help, not to be set a goal. There are many things which, if I did them regularly would I’m sure help make my life less chaotic and more satisfying, but, in the phrase she used last week, I ‘can’t be arsed’. But if she, or anybody else, tried to tell me to do them, I would feel patronised and insulted and do anything to avoid it.  

Half way through, and I gave in and looked at what I wrote yesterday. Ah yes, the quest of the Crescent Moon Bear, and what did you learn from the journey? I enjoy reading her analysis of the stories but don’t find her suggestions of how to apply the lessons to your own life very helpful in a practical sense. This is also true of every self-help book I’ve ever read. I remember my PhD supervisor commenting that I have to think things through from first principles – I didn’t know then what he meant, but I think it’s because I can’t understand an argument unless my head can get inside it and see where it’s coming from, but once I can do that, it seems obvious and I don’t know why everybody else can’t see it as well. It’s like the time I spent last night (about two hours) extracting one single thread from the tangle of the border threads for my blanket. I thought I had them all separated only last week, but somehow just by taking it out of the bag each day, attaching a new square and putting it back again, I now have a hopeless mess. I honestly can’t understand how it happens – presumably it’s dyspraxia-related but I don’t see how.

My thoughts and words don’t want to play the game today either. But putting things down and coming back to them later, trite though it sounds, does work sometimes.

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Here We Go Round Again

So far this week: last yoga class before lockdown; last tai chi class before lockdown; last trip out in the van before lockdown. I mentioned last week about my yoga teacher being homeless and having to cancel classes – the next day she sent a text to say that someone had offered her a lift, then came the lockdown announcement, so there was a class on Monday evening, and ditto the tai chi yesterday morning, after which I picked up my camper van from the garage and drove to Queen Elizabeth Country Park on the A3 near Petersfield, and had a walk among the trees and a picnic. I love taking the van there, because there are car parks spread among the trees, often empty (on weekdays when I usually go), so although you can’t actually camp, you can get some of the feeling for a few hours.

The weather has turned dry and sunny but noticeably colder than it was, and today looks to be about the same, with a clear blue sky. I really should get out and do some tidying up in the garden, I tried cutting the hedge on Monday but the trimmer kept cutting out. Because it stopped and later started again, it had to be a loose wire. I took apart the connector that joins it where I cut through the cable in the spring, unscrewed the little screwy things inside, couldn’t see anything obviously loose, then got into a horrible dyspraxic muddle trying to put it back together and gave up for the day.

I read some more of ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’, this time about creative blocks. The author suggests the usual things: keep trying, don’t self-edit, do a little every day, expect to fail, but keep going anyway. This is what I’ve been doing forever. Back to the old question of whether it matters that it never gets me anywhere? Apparently, it doesn’t. Either one day a miracle will happen and I’ll suddenly start writing something worthwhile, or I’ll be gone and someone will come along and wipe my hard drive and that will be that.

Last week I read the poem about the ‘Wild Thing’ to my therapist, and she said I should try to get it published. I haven’t done anything about it. Strictly speaking, I think posting it on here counts as publication, which disqualifies it from most competitions anyway.

I’ve been thinking about Daniel Defoe’s ‘Journal of the Plague Year’. I think this definitely counts as a ‘plague year’, but I don’t think this journal of mine is in the same class.

My current yoga teacher once said that destiny is what has to happen, but fate is what you make happen (or words to that effect). She is not having a great year, even worse than most of us. But she has faith in the fundamental goodness of the world, and I envy her for that. Today, I fear for the fate of us all.

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Order and Chaos

In the last week I have: walked to the beach twice; had breakfast out twice; had a cream tea out once; had a flu jab; walked to the garage to drop off the van keys (for MOT); been to a real live tai chi lesson at the community centre (just restarted after the teacher’s quarantine); resolved the initial issues and produced a reasonable stab at a first attempt on the website, to show to client; ditto the Christmas jumper (except the ‘client’ can’t see it because it’s going to be a surprise); phoned my sister; as well as writing every day (last Thursday’s effort handwritten in a notebook on the beach) and did at least some of my exercise and meditation routine every day (which reminded me to go and look in the spare room and check that I’d blown the candle out, which I had).

Also I notice that I haven’t been moaning about not being ‘motivated’, although I must admit the house is even more chaotic than usual. Earlier I filled the plastic water jug for the coffee pot while I was trying to tidy up around the sink, then moments later knocked it over and half the water went over the counter. I managed to mop that up and make sure it wasn’t too close to any of the electrical stuff, then turned round and knocked it again, with the rest of the water going over the floor. However, this is not to say that that’s in any way unusual, just that my feet and my dressing gown got wet.

Years ago, I remember a friend telling me that her cat disapproved of her standards of house-keeping, and kept giving her disapproving looks. I laughed at the time, and thought ‘crazy cat lady!’, but now understand exactly what she means. I feel so guilty sometimes watching my cat trying to pick her way around piles of junk on the floor – often knitting yarn, or books (or clothes – mostly in the bedroom) but also random other things which have fallen or been dropped or knocked off the furniture and not picked up, whereas I just step over it without even noticing it’s there. Also she is terrified of sudden movements and loud noises, which must make living with me a nightmare, as I blunder my way around the place.

All thoughts of trying to impose any kind of order on my life and my living space seem to have gone out of the (smeary, blurry, fly-specked) window. Having ‘projects’ to do somehow gives me licence to ignore that stuff – and go to the beach, or eat scones in a quiet café.

And yet… in the mornings, I feed my cat, do my exercises and meditation, write my blog. Every day (mostly) – and have done consistently for months. Yet making ‘to do’ lists and sticking with them is beyond me – I keep trying, but it all falls apart.

Sun shining this morning. Skype therapy at 2.00. That’s today.  

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Failing Better?

I just inserted the date at the top of my Word document – as I aways do – and noticed that today is my Mum’s birthday – she would have been 108 now, but she died before the old century did, at the age of 86. I might call my sister later.

I can’t seem to get started today. Realised yesterday that it’s only a couple of weeks till NaNoWriMo. I did the 50k words challenge in 2018, and last November I tried reading it through just in case there was anything in it. Basically, it’s just as if I’d been writing three of these blog posts a day for a month, not even a sniff of a novel, just same old same old. So this year I’m not going to bother. Am I going to set myself any kind of writing challenge at all? After all I managed the poems for NaPoWriMo. Some days I think I should – maybe read through what I’ve got of ‘The Long Way Back’, I don’t know.

There are a few issues over ‘The Long Way Back’ (the follow-up to ‘Single to Sirkeci’). Partly it’s because I stopped in the middle of the journey, and didn’t include the return, in order to make it a more manageable size – but that part of the book is already written, so I could just combine that with the first part and maybe release the whole thing just to Kindle. Because the second part on its own would make quite a short book (about 40k words), I had the idea of writing about what happened after I came back and tagging that on the end – but when I started editing the blogs from that time it all seemed too downbeat, then there was the Prague bit, and I wondered if it would make two additional books, then there’s the question of: where do I stop, because life is still going on (even if it isn’t quite so interesting these days). But the longer I put off starting on it the more pointless it all seems, especially given that the original book hasn’t exactly sold very well.

It all becomes a long circular argument about – what and whom am I writing for? what other things could I be doing with my time? will I ever get back to my 30 year old lapsed novel, will I ever get an idea for another novel? will I ever have any ideas for short stories to contribute to the anthologies of my writers’ group? (who have stopped meeting again since the weather has turned and the Covid restrictions have tightened up).

Maybe these 500 word missives are as much as I can cope with these days. I said yesterday (I think it was) that I keep trying, keep trying to ‘fail better’. But how can I tell whether the voice in my head that stops me from setting off down that particular road is aiming to sabotage me or to save me from myself?

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Do It Again

I move something off the desk, balance it on top of another box of stuff, there’s a crash and the whole lot scatters on the floor. I moan, don’t I? I go on about how hopeless I am, but I never bloody do anything about it. Mea maxima culpa. What else can I say?

I’ve now made a start on both the projects I was talking about the other day: the website and the jumper. I had to give up the idea of using WordPress for the website because the client doesn’t like the free domain (appended with a nine digit number), but equally doesn’t want to have to pay for hosting for just a couple of pages. The websites I used to manage I hung off my own hosting, but I don’t want to commit to doing that long term, and anyway, it’s so long ago that I’m not sure how I did it, and it has undoubtedly all changed since then, and I don’t want to have to go there. But I bought the domain name she wanted for five years in advance, and then discovered that I still couldn’t attach it to a free WordPress site. So now I’m trying to do what she wants using Blogger, which I haven’t used for over ten years, and never liked very much, and I’m still not sure I’ll be able to use this domain I’ve paid for.

And this was all supposed to be something very quick and simple, just a couple of pages and a contact form, that I could knock up quickly for her on the cheap, a Blue Peter website made with cornflake packets and loo roll middles and stuck together with sticky-backed plastic, I can do it for you, no probs, couple of hundred quid. Should have told her to do it on Facebook.

So I’m learning how to use Blogger on the hoof (or ‘winging’ it, depending on which anatomical metaphor seems more appropriate, horse or bird related). Which reminds me why I started using WordPress in the first place.

But I have to have something to do – otherwise, I could be walking on the beach, or crocheting and listening to the radio, or untangling yarn, or weeding the garden, or mopping the kitchen floor, or tidying the study. ( Or even writing a book? Get real!)

On the dyspraxia forum, people talk about ‘super powers’ (I think that must be a life-coaching thing), and one that often comes up is persistence, sticking at things, not giving up – apparently that’s something dyspraxics are good at, like original thinking, creativity and sense of humour. But I’m always giving up, like Mark Twain giving up smoking – it’s easy, I’ve done it thousands of times. Everything is a disaster, I give up in despair, get up the next morning and try again, with a kind of brute doggedness, again and again and again. ‘Try again, fail again, fail better’ (Samuel Beckett). Beat yourself up about it, and do it again.

‘Do It Again’, Steely Dan