Keeping busy

The sun has been shining for what seems like forever, although I can’t believe just how chilly it is when I get up in the mornings, still. At the weekend I restocked the bird feeder in the back garden and the starlings and sparrows have been going mad ever since. It’s a joy to stand at the kitchen window and watch them and I do need to keep a look out, because the fat pigeons have also received word that free food is on the go and they pay frequent visits trying to scoff what they can!

I chose 2015 as the year I would start a 5 year diary – one which I purchased in a local book store and where I have precisely 3 lines to records the events, my thoughts or feelings of the day. A bit like Twitter for the technophobe, I guess! But I like being able to sit in bed and reflect on the day trying to summarise in only a few words, something I will relate to in years to come. I’m not sure I’ll see the changes until we are a couple of years through this thing, but, as it turns out, it’s quite a year to start keeping records. I wonder if I’ll have the will power to see it through to the end.

Adjusting to the change of daily routine has been challenging. More challenging than I ever though it might be – but did I ever really give it that much thought before and with the pace of change, did I ever really have time to think about what it might become?! Writing has kept me busy, to an extent, but there are days (like yesterday) when your thoughts wander off track and you lose the spark to try to be creative, or witty, or even put two sentences together. When my job changed, so did my professional identity and it’s tough creating a new one. A dear friend told me that it’s a bit like grieving, you’re mourning the loss of something very important to you. It might sound melodramatic, but I think they have a point, just because the sun is shining, doesn’t mean we all have permanent smiles. But for some people I know the daily routine won’t have changed, it will have become even more frantic, if anything. And because of that, you just become another passing thought to them. So the writing becomes the important part for me. I’ve heard the comments, the sarcasm, the lack of belief that I can make this work… actually what they’re saying is that they don’t understand the need to write, to communicate, to tell the stories that mill around in your mind… to embrace the power of our language and capture that.

I just re-read this post and almost hit the delete button, I might still do that in time, but for now, I’m staying true to the motivation behind the blog: to chart the journey, to share the highs and lows of this incredibly rewarding process. No one said it would be easy and it would be wrong of me to only record the great bits: ‘Yey, I wrote 3,000 words today’, or ‘Yey, I completed Draft 1’. Sometimes life gets in the way and sometimes life is pretty s**t.

I saw the above quote a little while ago and it’s as true now as it was then. So even though the sun is shining again today and the sparrows are back on the feeding station, I am learning to dance through the puddles. There are a few people who have chosen to learn with me and there are those who are still not sure if they really want to get wet… but the bottom line is, I’m here, it’s been raining and puddle jumping with your friends is much better fun than on your own!!

Sending much love,

MJ xx