Category: life

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#amwriting, #notwriting – What is the point?

I was quite surprised earlier this week to discover that I was attempting to write 500 words daily as far back as April 2005 – six months before I even started blogging – and possibly even earlier than that (I haven’t gone digging any further back).

Having said that, I just checked the oldest of the clutch of backup CDs that I dug out the other day – dated 2 November 2004 – on which I found a folder called ‘Journal’, containing another folder called ‘October’. I opened the file from 1 October and the first para was as follows:

“Friday, 01 October 2004 There was an interview on Radio 4 last night with Grahame Greene’s biographer, apparently GG used to set himself targets of writing 500 words at a session, don’t suppose what he wrote was drivel, though.”

Somehow the use of the word ‘drivel’ suggests to me that I’d already been writing that journal for some time – I’m not sure any of it’s been preserved for posterity – though there are earlier paper journals lying around. I remember buying A4 lined Pukka Pads from a cheap stationers in Bedford which has long since gone out of business. But I definitely started writing daily at the beginning of 2000.

Well, all that was what I wrote on Saturday, until I got a phone call from a friend asking for help with uploading the current Southsea Storytellers group anthology (‘Flights and Fancies’) to Kindle. As usual, there were a few annoyances where what appeared ok in MS Word didn’t look so good when uploaded, but I went to see him and we managed to sort them out between us (apart from the placing of images on the page, which never works, even in professionally published books). Always another learning opportunity.

When I got back at lunchtime, I didn’t feel like resuming this post, and yesterday I decided to go out for breakfast before going to writing group (which used to be my habit on Sunday mornings). The place where we now meet, by the beach, is different from where we used to, and a cafe en route, which just happens to be one of my favourites, only reopened last week – seemed like a good excuse to skip blogging.

This morning I didn’t want to write about anything at all, but as I’d already got a couple of hundred words from Saturday, I thought I could add to that, and now I’ve done another two hundred justifying why I’ve missed the last two days, I’m on the home straight.

Does this idea of setting a quota every day help at all? I really don’t know. I can feel myself moving towards not writing anything again. Some mornings it just feels so stressful, but it’s not usually so bad once I get started – like everything in life. But once again it raises the perennial question of whether there is any point or value in writing like this, and I honestly just don’t know the answer to that.  

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Tell Me the Old, Old Story

I think I surfaced just about bang on sunrise this morning: 5:40. I went to the window and saw the pink glow creeping over the house roofs, then left the gap in the curtains and went back to bed, watching the colour briefly suffusing the wall. At least it’s sunny – well, it was for most of yesterday too – the rain didn’t last long.

Am I feeling any more sunny this morning? Maybe. Yesterday did not turn out to be a good day. I spent most of the morning digging through old laptops, archived files and a set of data CDs and DVDs which I burnt as part of a back-up system around 2005 and 2006 (amazed myself by finding them, although I knew I’d seen them somewhere recently – well, in the last three years at least). I was looking for photos – a specific photo, in fact – of my cat from October 2005, when we first got her, because yesterday was her fifteenth birthday and I wanted to make a post about it on Facebook, with then-and-now pictures. I did it partly because I suspect she won’t be around to see another birthday, and I am preparing myself for the inevitable letting go, but also because her entry into my life was such a bizarre turning point – and yesterday I not only found the background to her name, which I’d saved in one of those fifteen-year-old files, but my journal entry for the morning of the day we brought her home – before I knew what a shit-storm I was initiating. And that photograph (on one of the back-up CDs), which featured, ten days later, in the first blog post I ever wrote, on a blog called ‘Husband or Cat?’ on a platform which no longer exists.

I could tell that story again. Should I? There are people who know it already – at least one of whom might even be reading this – in essence, at least, even if not in detail. But the details are still there, still documented, still accessible. It’s an odd story, full of drama, and passion, in its way, with a beginning far too implausible for fiction, and an ending… how did it end? Well, I guess – at least, as I’ve said before about all the world-churning choices I’ve made in the last fifteen years, if I hadn’t done what I did, I would never have known how things would turn out if I did, now would I?

I suppose that’s what fiction’s for – to explore the other side of the ‘what if’ – but I don’t have the energy or inspiration for fiction. Maybe that’s why I was compelled to make the choices I did – because it was the only way of finding out? When I think of the dreams and expectations I started with, it’s true that none of them quite worked out as I thought they would, but they shaped my life nonetheless.

I was going to write about writing advice – and Taoism. Another time, maybe.

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Morning Walk

I went looking for the sunrise today, but I missed it by ten minutes – only I didn’t realise it at first because it was so cloudy.

I got to the beach at 5:50 and sat on the bench outside the Beach Café, staring at the thin strip above the sea and below the clouds at the horizon, expecting the sun to appear at any moment, till I checked the app on my phone and discovered it was due at 5:39, at which time I was walking towards the sea through the streets, where it’s almost impossible to see the sunrise because of all the houses in the way. I had noticed the clouds, but had told myself that clouds often make for interesting colours, and there probably was a brief flash of brilliance when the sun came up above the sea before it disappeared again behind the clouds, but I wasn’t there to see it.

So I sat and drank coffee from my thermos and watched the hi-vis litter pickers and the odd wild swimmer or dog walker or jogger, and tried to find something – anything – worth photographing. Even the waves were pretty subdued, and the gulls didn’t show up against the clouds.

I finished my coffee and put the flask back in my bag. The first café to open would be the Coffee Cup, fifteen minutes’ walk away down the beach. I could go there and get another coffee and a sausage roll, or maple and pecan plait, or toasted tea cake.

In retrospect (because I didn’t think of this at the time), I could have gone the other way, to the Co-op, which probably also opens at 7, and maybe I could have got a sandwich and even a coffee there and eaten it on the beach – except that I’d forgotten to take a mask or scarf.

I started walking along the beach, but then when I got near to the steps up to the prom, opposite the Rose Garden, I thought I’d go up and just walk home from there. I couldn’t cut through because the gates were still locked, so I turned left and walked past the model village and what I think of as the Mondrian beach huts (flat roofed and square and painted in bright colours, not pastels like the conventional pointy-roofed ones opposite the Coffee Cup). I sat on the wall and checked on my phone for the opening times of the nearest cafes. As I thought, the Coffee Cup would be open at 7, but the Beach Café, Tenth Hole and Tea and Thistle (which only reopened on Tuesday) wouldn’t be until 9. By this time it was 6.45, and a ten minute walk, so I wandered back to the beach and carried on.

I ordered coffee and a toasted teacake and sat outside. I felt some spots of water as I was finishing, so I didn’t hang about. Looking out of my window now, I can see it’s properly raining.

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Bother

Why do I bother? God knows. I haven’t got a clue.

I did another of the five items on the list yesterday – and a bit of another (sorting out my accounts, which is going to be a long job), and had a stab at another (renewing the insurance on my van) but got stymied by the technology, because I thought I could renew it online, but couldn’t see how, so now I don’t know if it will renew automatically or if I have to call them – which reminds me that the van itself is a can of worms, because I need to call the garage – but I don’t want to use it at present anyway.

You’ll notice there are still five items – I haven’t added any more, although I keep thinking of them, but I never remember to write them on the list. However, I did do last night’s washing up when I got up, and tidied and wiped the kitchen counters and sink (again). We’ll see how long that lasts.

I made a plan yesterday evening that if I was awake early enough this morning I would walk to the beach and watch the sunrise, but I slept in till 5.20, so there wasn’t time to get myself sorted and to the beach before the actual sunrise at 5.37.  And although I don’t really like lying in bed when I know I won’t get back to sleep, I still don’t want to get up either, even now, when it’s warm.

This is why I’ve decided that routine is so important, because if I know what I ‘should’ be doing, maybe that will push me (‘motivate’ is too strong a word) into doing things even when I really don’t feel like it (which is about 23 hours and 55 minutes of every day). Given that I’ve got quite good about doing my half hour of exercise and meditation, and writing my 500 words of drivel, over the last few months, I’m hoping that maybe I can squeeze some more useful and positive habits into my days.

I’ve given some thought in the past to how to get over the problem I was talking about yesterday, of never knowing where I’ve left things. One solution would be to constantly scan every room for anything which isn’t in its ‘specific place’ and return it so I can find it when I need it again – the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I guess that’s what most non-cahotic (I like that typo, I think I’ll leave it) people do automatically – but the idea fills me with horror and deadens my soul. There wouldn’t be time for anything else, would there? But then if it actually worked, wouldn’t it save the time and stress of constantly searching for things? I think of my spirit animal, Mole from The Wind in the Willows, throwing down his paintbrush and running out into the springtime to cries of ‘Bother!’ and ‘Oh blow!’ and ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’

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Monday Morning

Back here again. Why? Because half the time I swear I’ve given up for good and then one morning I think I might try again. Just this once. On the understanding that it’s the same old nonsense and, basically, a complete waste of my time writing and yours (whoever you are) for reading it.

But we both still have a chance. You can stop right here – or I could, in which case you wouldn’t have the chance either way, because obviously I wouldn’t bother to post this. But I probably won’t – stop, that is. Though with another potential 400 words… Who knows?

It’s nine o’clock now (I went to the Co-op before starting) and it’s Monday. Does that mean I can play music without worrying about disturbing the neighbours? There again, they might work shifts, for all I know.

Okay, now I’m playing Roxy Music’s ‘Flesh and Blood’, that being the first cassette I pulled out of the shoebox at random that I haven’t already transferred to the PC. Still haven’t done anything about replacing the stylus on my turntable.

Reached the second track, ‘Oh Yeah’, and the sound quality is pretty awful. I have the original album somewhere, so if I get my finger out and do something about that stylus, I can play that. But I still feel a bit wary about playing these old albums – they’ve been kept for all these years and moved from place to place, and maybe it’s all been a waste of time because they’re ruined anyway.

Next track, ‘Same Old Scene’, isn’t much better.

How do I manage to do anything? Repetition, routine, and constant self-bullying. I bullied myself into going to the Co-op this morning. I bullied myself into putting the shopping away when I got back, and starting a ‘to-do’ list. The weight of the things I don’t do is always in my head, because I’m always thinking about them, except the times when I let myself off and sit in the sun or listen to the radio and/or crochet. Or else I’m thinking about other things, worse things, that I’ve read or heard or people have said or done to me that make me angry or sad or hopeless.

I think constantly about these things, but never do anything – worse, the thinking itself is completely aimless and futile, it’s not even as if by thinking I ever produce a coherent plan of action which I then proceed to complete. Except – well, I did start making that to-do list. If I completed some of those things, I suppose I’d be happier. But a more reliable way of becoming happier is by quietening the thinking – and the way to do that is by doing things that make me happy directly – like sitting in the sun, listening to the radio, and/or crocheting – all of which I may do later after I’ve had breakfast.

The second side of the album sounds better than the first one did.

Think it’s time for breakfast.

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Surprise Visitor

I had a lovely surprise yesterday afternoon. I was sitting in the garden when there was a knock on the door, which surprised me a little, because although I was expecting my daughter and the grandkids, it was a bit early considering she’d messaged me not long before to say they were in McDonald’s at Petersfield services – and also I’d left the door unlocked, and usually the kids just barge in when they get here. I was even more surprised when I opened the door and saw her brother waiting to be let in. I knew they were trying to meet up here while she was staying (it’s his birthday today), but apparently there was an email and two texts which I’d managed not to see, saying that he was coming, but that his wife was staying home with the two dogs. I must be getting even scattier than I thought I was.

Anyway it was lovely to have the four of them here, it was almost nicer in a way that it was just us without their other halves, (although I get on well with both my daughter-in-law and prospective son-in-law). We sat in the garden drinking prosecco and tea (Simon was driving) while Simon and Flick (whose birthday is next week) opened their presents from me. Then my wonderful offspring managed between them to fix (for the time being, at least) the shower room light switch, the speakers on my kitchen music centre and the strimmer.

There’s another family birthday coming up next week: my little cat will be fifteen on the 6th August. She’s still not eating – it’s been over a month now, and I am preparing myself for the worst.

I may or may not be writing in the mornings while Laura and the children are here. Depends on when everybody gets up. Yesterday I didn’t have time because I’d had a rough night then slept in till 8 and was in a rush to get to a writers’ group meeting for 10.

I feel I should have more to say. Life gets in the way of thought and writing.

I’ve downloaded a sample of a book that was recommended to me on Amazon. It’s very spooky the way it does that, because it is about a writer who is trying to write a biography of DH Lawrence, and a novel, and is a stream-of-consciousness rant about how he miserably fails to write either (but writes this book instead). The opening section got me hooked, though I can see how it could also be massively irritating to a lot of people. Like this blog, it rambles on and on without ever getting anywhere, although he is obviously doing that deliberately and skilfully, whereas in my case it’s just about incompetence and lack of imagination and talent.  

For a brief moment, it made me determined to stop fart-arsing around (excuse the expression) and actually do something with my writing. A brief moment, until reality set in again.

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Imminent Cahos (accidental typo, but I left it because it seesm appropriate – and there I go again!)

I mentioned that I’ve joined a Facebook group for dyspraxic adults. Yesterday I got involved in a hilarious thread about having to brush your teeth before you get dressed so you don’t get toothpaste down your top. There were 34 likes, loves and laughs (so far) to the original post, and pages of comments. Honestly (I have to keep saying this) I always assumed it was just me. A couple of people said: doesn’t everyone do this? But I know for sure, because the person I’ve lived with longest (my ex) somehow managed to brush his teeth with his mouth closed – I tried it a couple of times, but couldn’t master it. I used to assume it was because I habitually breathe through my mouth, due to all the rhinitis allergies I’ve had down the years (I was always that child with the permanently runny nose).

Someone asked: ‘Does your dyspraxia affect your daily life?’ to which the answer can only be: ‘Yes, massively!’ The most obvious effect is that my main source of exercise is wandering from room to room and up and down stairs because, as my Dad would say: ’you don’t let your head save your legs!’ (as if it was that easy – presumably it was, for him). I know many people see the constant back-and-forth of trying to find things and remember what you’re supposed to be doing and why you’re there as a huge joke, but it can be exhausting and beyond frustrating – after sixty-odd years, the humour has worn mighty thin. More than one person has dropped hints about early onset dementia to which I can only say: extremely early, considering I’ve been like it forever, but at least if it does come I’ll be well-prepared.

The short term memory thing, though very significant is only part of it, of course. Time- and spatial-organisation and management is another, and planning and sequencing activities down to minute detail is related to that. I’ve often felt (before I ever heard of dyspraxia) that I have problems managing boundaries – temporal, spatial, interpersonal, probably loads of other categories my left brain hasn’t yet thought of. It’s most obvious with time, I think – when I start doing something, it takes as long as it takes – it’s why I can’t handle deadlines, or keep appointments – both of which are sources of friction with the external world and other people – and hence sources of shame and self-recrimination, leading to stress and further inability to cope.

But by comparison with many of the younger people in the group I’m so fortunate – I possess the two great blessings of financial security and self sufficiency. Many of the posts are concerned with finding and keeping work, getting help, negotiating relationships and living with other people. One young woman said in a post yesterday: ‘How can I explain … that we don’t KNOW how we adapt our lives because it’s just normal to us?’

We never lose that sense of imminent chaos. But we adapt.

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Musings

Memory plays funny tricks. I’ve been transferring some of my old cassettes onto the PC, via a USB cassette player, bought for me by ex-hubby as a Christmas present, but which has spent most of the last decade stored away in its box. I haven’t been doing it the last few days – since the weekend in fact – because I realised the rooms on either side of my study were probably used as bedrooms and I didn’t want to disturb my neighbours too early in the morning.

But when I sat down this morning I had Joe Jackson’s ‘Breaking Us In Two’ in my head and thought: I don’t want to copy anything this morning, just do what I normally do, which is to shuffle the list and let Windows media player go randomly through my music. But when I opened it, the song which started up was ‘Breaking Us In Two’, so presumably it was the last track played and had stuck at the back of my mind from four or five days ago, or whenever the last time was that I sat here with music playing.

I started writing yesterday but everything I was thinking was so dark that I didn’t really want to go on. Feeling much the same again today. I think I am coming towards the time when this all seems so overwhelmingly futile that I give up altogether. ‘If you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything’. It’s been quite a good run: four months, roughly 120 days (barring those I missed), 60k words.

‘I’m reading a book which puts forward evidence from research in neuroscience to show that what we call the ‘self’ is not single and fixed for any individual but rather plural and malleable, and hence, in a sense, illusory. I don’t find this contentious, in fact I’m rather surprised that anybody would. It’s rather like saying ‘there’s no such thing as society’ – there may be no specific institution or body which bears that name, but the influence of the web of interactions, rules, structures, relationships etc on the actions of people and organisations leads to impacts in the physical world.’

That’s how I started yesterday, which I suppose isn’t too grim, but the rest of what I was thinking was. I read some more of the book after that, and found that the author was saying that the ‘self’ is created by contrast with everything which is outside the self. Which surprised me, because there I was thinking the other way round, that it is embedded in a network of influences (nature and nurture) and is the product of those. I’m not a psychologist, and maybe I’m not understanding the terms properly – what’s the difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘personality’, for example?

He went on to say that the left brain operates by looking for patterns and telling stories. Which sounds very like me.

Maybe I will keep writing – at least, when I’ve read some more.

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No Pressure…

Wisdom of a lifetime, accumulated from what I’ve read, been told and learned from experience:

  • I think too much;
  • I never think;
  • I feel too much;
  • I am selfish and don’t have enough consideration for other people;
  • I care too much about other people’s feelings and what they think about me;
  • My expectations of life are ‘through the roof’;
  • I don’t expect enough from life – I should dream more, decide what I want and go for it;
  • I need to get out more and meet people;
  • I am happier on my own and should keep away from other people because being with them makes me stressed and frustrated;
  • I need an occupation that will give purpose to my life and focus my energies;
  • I need to do less and stop running myself ragged all the time;
  • I need to try harder;
  • I shouldn’t have to try at all;
  • I need to write every day – doesn’t matter what about;
  • I need to be focussed in my writing and finish what I’ve started;
  • I need to tidy up after myself, because how can I focus and be comfortable when I’m surrounded by chaos?
  • I need to stop beating myself up about the chaos and learn to be happy as I am;
  • I need to organise myself, make lists, set goals and get some structure into my life;
  • I need to take each day as it comes and be spontaneous;
  • I need to sort myself out;
  • I need to be less self-centred;
  • I need to be more self-disciplined, to stop floundering about and getting nowhere;
  • I need to stop being so hard on myself.
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Every Day is New Again

Today is different. Every day is. Feeling quite good, which is noteworthy because so unusual. Wish I could tell you why, what makes today different from the norm, but I have no idea. I didn’t get any more sleep than usual – fell asleep around 12.20 (according to the app) and awake 4.30, so if anything slightly less. Don’t have to go anywhere today (except possibly yoga this evening if the ground isn’t too wet), so nothing to feel apprehensive about. I had a go at making a birthday card for my granddaughter yesterday, which has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while as something that needed doing – that probably helps.

Remembering the REM song, ‘Every Day is Yours to Win’:

‘Every day is new again
every day is yours to win,
that’s how heroes are made…’

I don’t anticipate being a hero today, or any time soon, but inclined to look for the good bits this morning – maybe I can have breakfast in the garden?

Still no idea what I’m going to write about. Yesterday I wrote about dyspraxia, which I’ve tentatively started on a couple of times before. Yesterday I went into more detail. It’s hard to explain because I’m still trying to get my head around it myself – and quite honestly, it doesn’t seem very well understood scientifically as yet, compared to dyslexia and dyscalculia, which have been studied for much longer. And (naturally), I’m not very good at explaining it to other people. When I try to talk about it, mostly they seem to think it’s snowflakey, self-justificatory nonsense and just an excuse for continuing to be lazy, scatty, disorganised and inconsiderate of others – or alternatively, that I’m being unnecessarily ‘hard’ on myself, and I’m really not any of those things, and I should stop ‘worrying’ about it. This is where writing comes in, because it’s so much easier to explain things when I have time to think and compose what I want to say without being face to face with somebody interrupting and asking questions and throwing me off-track (which usually results in me feeling tongue-tied, stupid and frustrated).

Now I’m staring at the screen wondering if I want to go on, and if so how, and looking again at that Paul Nash postcard, the one of the bird looking into a mirror on a cliff top. What you can’t see from my photo (because of the poor light in here) is that in the mirror there is the reflection of another bird, this one flying away in the distance.

I like art which shows the impossible, or what appears to be impossible, or at least unexpected. I’m not a fan of Dali (possibly coloured by what I know of his politics), but I quite like surrealism in general. I like pictures that get you thinking and seeing things in other ways. The literary equivalent is magical realism – I like that too, set in the ‘real world’ but with impossible bits.