I’m sorry for the worry

Ugh, I have poetry pushed back for months that I forget about and if I don’t check my prescheduled posts more than three times a week, sometimes the bad stuff gets out there without me noticing and that is what happened in my previous post.

I have bouts of depression where I write things like that and at the time I wrote them, they are genuine emotions at that time for me; but because I want to be more focused on happier things and healing myself I wanted to do away with those poems for times when I am feeling down again – if I ever do and no doubt I will someday.

Today’s poem “When” was written in January approximately, there are twelve other poems written around the same time that are prescheduled in the future, but I push them back so not to upset my readers unless I am actually having those emotions currently.

I’ve been slow and ill in the last three days and I forgot to keep watch of the gloomy stuff.

Please be assured, I am 50/50 right now, neither depressed or happy, just miserably suffering from a thousand sneezes an hour, a scratchy throat, hearing loss, ear infection, chest infection and a cold virus all rolled into one!

I’m physically suffering to the extent I have no time to think about how I emotionally feel right now, lol.

It can kind of be a blessing in disguise, though saying that, if I am ill too long – that can bring dark thoughts back again, because illness lasts too long at times that it makes me just feel like I was just born to suffer!

I did say earlier in the year I’d date the prescheduled poems, but I forgot on several because I have the memory span of a goldfish.

So please don’t go panicking over me, I am in a MEH kind of state right now.

Though if you want to give me any kind of “positive” attention, please do, I am feeling quite needy and sorry for myself right now – rolling around in bed like I’ve got man flu reciting the lyrics of Alice Cooper’s “Nobody likes me”.

Yes, I can be an attention seeker sometimes, I’ll admit it.

If anyone cares enough to donate extra soft tissues and honey and lemons I’d be more than grateful, lol!

When life gives me lemons I make cough syrup!

When life gives me a lottery win when I am sick like this, I buy hot Indian food to burn the MF out! 

I did actually win the lottery this week – £3.40, just £3.40… suppose it’s better than nothing, but it’s not enough for a celebratory Indian take away!

So yeah, thanks for caring, I appreciate it!

Thanks for reading!

Health update & dystopian dinner

I have a bad chest infection again, so it’s back to bed life again until it blows over – oh such fun, you realise of course that was sarcasm?

Another one to three week delay in getting my body into shape, at this rate I won’t be my goal weight until October, it’s more than a little annoying!

What’s frustrating is I was throwing myself into reading and research to try and get me motivated to write again, so that’s been delayed too!

Because when I am sick like this, I can’t read a book and remember what I’ve read, the memory of what I’ve read gets coughed out of me!

The amount of poems I’ve started between Wednesday and today but didn’t finish, because a coughing fit or a sneezing fit literally blew me out of my zone, I tell you it was numerous!

My chest hurts so much, this chest infection actually feels worse than last Easters Covid which is weird, and it’s not Covid though.  I am scared to go to the doctor for two reasons, in recent years when I’ve had chest infections the doctor believes its viral and won’t give me antibiotics unless I literally get so bad it turns into pneumonia or pleurisy and I am in A&E with breathing difficulties – or I will get Covid whilst there on top of it.

I can’t afford to spend £10 taxi fares to see a doctor and get no help, what’ more, if a taxi drive sees me having coughing fits, of course he isn’t going to be happy to take me to the doctor – not after Covid issues in the world! 

Paul is in agreement with me, it’s one of the worst infections I’ve had in nearly 2yrs, he is saving money the best he can, because we’ve been down this road before – it’s likely in a week or two if it carries on, I will be going to hospital in Coventry which is more than just £10 transport fees then!

What’s more is, Paul will have to leave me there in Coventry hospital alone until I need to come home again, because Paul can’t afford to come and visit me every day and no one else will! 

Typing is slower, but it’s getting done.

I need to try and keep to a normal routine, even if my work is my crappiest at this time! 

If I make no sense in this post, you can at least appreciate and understand why?

I have 7 library books to read in just 3 weeks, with this illness, there’s no chance in getting them read in time!

I rarely have more than 4 books out from the library these days; this is how serious I was last week about reading and researching to get my work done!

A massive poetry book; a poetry exercise book, a screenwriting book, a book about the senses, a book against procrastination (lol, the irony), atomic habits and eating to extinction.  Eating to extinction is both environmental research and personal interest combined with contemplating ideas for Project AD.

Project AD has a beginning, middle and end planned now, but I am not happy with it and it needs to be fleshed out and needs to be more interesting.  The novel has not been written, but there are several scenes for a graphic novel done, there are in depth bullet points for 40 different scenes, but there is no actual structure yet.  It’s not properly done in my opinion, yet – no dialogue, just action scenes.

I can’t help but have this nagging feeling it needs more.

I know it does need more, I mean, that there should be a sub plot along with it, but I am struggling with this decision.

I tell you how much it’s bothering me, having this chest infection making me slower… I had a dream last night about post-apocalyptic characters from all my favourite movies, especially Mad Max and Tank Girl, I was slow and coughing and serving dinner for people worrying about things as I always do and the biggest Mad Max villain gave me a hug and told me to stop worrying about it all, things will get done in their own time and maybe it’s a sign I should slow down.

There’s those two words I hate again, “slow down”. 

Actually it’s quite common to dream about Mad Max villains, they inspire a lot of my stories – usually stories from their perspective.

Because I’ve learned in my life, those psychopaths in society, those who people cross the road to avoid, the social out casts that scare people because they are dressed like goth with “I love Satan” t-shirts or who are Hells Angel Harley Davidson types, in my experience, they have the highest morals and the biggest hearts and are hugely misunderstood!

Some are mean and twisted purely because it was their survival mechanism to be that way.  But in reality, they can be very protective and generous people by nature.

I am not suggesting that Mad Max villains are lovely people, but I often wondered what made them that way… how horrible was their lives before the world fell down as it were?

This is not something I am putting into Project AD by the way, this is another project – an adult dystopian – Project AD is a child’s dystopian and is a lot cleaner than my other idea.

As I mentioned in other posts in the past, one of the biggest tropes I love writing are the “descent into madness” tropes.

So yeah, last night in dream time, I was cooking dinner for Tank Girl, Cundalini, Toe Cutter, Gabriel Byrne’s Satan and Lola from Run Lola Run, amongst several others I forgot who!

Oh the throes of a writers mind!

Thanks for reading! 

Curious lost lines

Brain hurricane season is still present; I have had more ideas in the past few days than I knew what to do with.

This appears to be a long one and I blame it all down to the “Bluewater technique” I spoke about in a previous post.

I really did try to force myself to write something every day whether it’s going to be published or not, whether it’s more than a sentence or not and I got thinking about some very wacky things!

You’ll see them as posts such as “If I were a fairy” or “life of a mermaid” though the latter is due in the first week of June, so you won’t see that just yet.

Somethings I consider unpublishable or are unfinished poems or plays.

I don’t like to leave poems unfinished but it is a habit I am trying to get out of because a book I’ve been reading called “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy says, it is easy to lose a good line, never delete the line when you don’t know where its taking you, store them in a folder called “lost lines” and come back to them later, a poem doesn’t need to be rushed.

So I’ve done that and have accumulated approximately twenty unfinished and would be deleted poems in just a week!

They don’t even have to be poems actually; they could be good prose lines for a short story or a novel.

Who knows where those lost lines will lead us?

There is a whole paragraph which seems exciting, but I don’t know why yet.  But it’s very intriguing and it’s called “The Masters of Dream”.

I haven’t been able to add more to it yet, because in all honesty I was busy with other things today and working on those things with a raging head and ear ache.

But I could not ignore that paragraph, which started like that.

I hope I have time tomorrow to think about it and see what this is!

Thanks for reading!

First brain hurricane season of 2023

I think its “Brain Hurricane” season again, this week there has been lots of new fresh ideas for things and I have started some new stuff, whilst working on my current projects too!

This hurricane season started around the 13^th May 2023, I never know how long it’s going to last or what will survive the storm, but I hope I get as many of these ideas finished as quickly as possible nonetheless!

So far the storm has given me a dark cabaret play, a children’s series with art ideas for making a new toy brand and some better ideas for old projects such as one of my ghost stories.  It has also reignited my interest in a project I abandoned eighteen years ago about a boy addicted to video games.

But mostly this storm has given me a lot of ideas for art projects to make my art brand more recognisable with its own characters.  One such character is a type of rag doll, based on an old story I gave up years ago – talking of which, this doll’s story is also in revival.

Now I was beginning to panic about how this will affect my current main work, Project AD but it turned out to be assisting me with that, which is highly irregular for brain hurricanes! 

This storm is actually helping me think of art pieces for the characters of that project too and they look more original in my mind – the thing is though, I am not a particularly good artist, so there are a lot of art practises that needs to be done!  But I believe I have found a style I want to work with and that excites me a lot!

So that’s the general work update right now.

Thanks for reading!

A dark cabaret play

Insomnia is something I’ve lived with for a long time; I have always been a night owl.

But recently my brain had decided the best hours to concentrate on anything is between 3am and 6am every morning, which to say the least is unsociable and inconvenient – had I lived in Alaska and working on the British time zone, it would be more bearable but I don’t.

My brain seems to think it lives somewhere in the West of Canada or America for some reason and has since I was a teenager!

I’ve never been there, so I don’t know why it’s clocked for it.

Anyway, last night was the worst because my brain kept me up until 8:45am – why?  Because around 6am it decided now is the perfect time to a turn a poem I’ve been working on into a play and I wrote nearly six hundred words to it before I decided I was starting to hallucinate!

So, yet again, my brain has decided only to have let me sleep for ten hours in the past two days all told, five hours is all I am getting lately in a night on average.

I think I am surviving because as I daydream I zone out and sort of go into a meditative state of stasis throughout the day, if it hadn’t of been for that habit I think I would have cracked by now!

The play is a dark cabaret, mild horror in my opinion, poetic and I am not going to share the plot here – but there are only five characters in the whole thing.  I know the beginning, middle and end and there are songs in my head I will eventually write for it and being as I know nothing about choreography I may have to collaborate with someone for that if anyone is interested in helping it go to stage someday?

It needs to be written first though.

But yes, this is not my first foray into writing a play, I’ve done it a lot in the past but most plays ended up being destroyed as I lost confidence with it.  Though some others did survive but goodness knows where they are now, finding anything in this house is like a quest for The Holy Grail!

I didn’t plan for this to happen, my brain just did it.

I could have done without the extra work, but there you go.

I am going to write it as it calls me, like I do all my things and I am living in the hope that it will be complete within the month, but like always, I won’t hold my breath!

I wasn’t even supposed to be writing anything other than poetry for the blog this morning, so it was a total surprise for me.

Funny old brain of mine!

Thanks for reading!

The irony in procrastination

I learned something today which has helped me feel a little less frustrated about myself and accepting the fact that I am not lazy when I have procrastinated in my work, because of something a motivational speaker on Instagram had said.

“When a person goes into procrastination it is the brains coping mechanism, a response to coping with too much emotional trauma and overload”.  I may not have quoted them correctly, but it made me understand why I have procrastinated so long in my work.

Since September 2022 I’ve hardly written a thing towards any novel, because I have undergone a lot of emotional turmoil in my life.  A grief, followed by a diagnosis in my son, followed by erratic behaviours and arguments and a break in a long term relationship – coupled with the emotions I was already trying to tackle of loneliness, recovering from long-term sickness, trying to start foundations for a new routine, career, every aspect of my life I was trying to concentrate on all at once and I got overloaded and emotionally burned out.

This is why I have procrastinated so long, because I was trying to fix too many problems in my life at once, that I ended up exhausting myself on an emotional level and found I lacked the energy to think creatively, because I’m tired.

I’ve tired myself out by overthinking other problems that I did not have the energy to throw myself into the problem solving of make believe problems.

I understand this now and it has taken a huge weight off my shoulders, the weight was the anger that I had become lazy, when in fact I was the opposite.  I was working myself like a slave to do everything and being hard on myself when I failed my personal creative and career goals and dreams. 

I have also sat back and reflected that some of the things I was angry about because I felt I was lazy about them, I had actually accomplished great things but didn’t notice because I was bogged down in over perfecting them or just simply not noticing the progress I had made.

For example, March 2022 I could barely get out of bed and walk downstairs and up just once without having an asthma attack and shaky legs. 

From Easter 2022 I started to do small exercises, forcing myself to do the little things, until they built up.  Well they did build up over a time and I didn’t notice the physical achievements I was able to do.  Now I can walk up and down the stairs five times before feeling shaky.  I can do 70 reps of side reaches before I feel I need a break and for the past week I have been able to start preparing my own meals and even cooked a meal for the whole family the other day!

Things I haven’t been able to do in almost eight years!

But did I praise myself for doing all that?  No!  Because I didn’t notice until I sat back and reflected on the past year.

No more than had I noticed last week that I’ve lost 14 inches around my waist in 2yrs!  14 inches!

I’ve been on a high protein diet and I have cut out a lot of the unhealthy snacks and caffeine I used to drown myself in, not all of them, but most – to the extent my diet is almost unrecognisable from last year! 

Certain aspects of my health have improved immensely, though I still have two major problems which will never go away completely because it’s part of the auto-immunity problem I have. 

I’m reading emails daily, whereas this time last year I used to go three weeks without checking them! 

I’m spending a lot less time on social media too, I spent my whole day on social media last year! 

I’m starting to read more books.

I’ve finished an art class online.

I am halfway through two more free courses, one ran by Mel Robbins. 

I’m posting on my blog more often than not, whereas early last year I could only really post about once a week. 

I’m cutting my nails instead of biting them. 

I am replying to friends and family as soon as they message me instead of taking weeks to get back to them! 

I’ve accomplished more milestones in the past year than I have my whole life and I didn’t notice them!

I was beating myself up for being lazy and yet I was doing so much – the irony!

I also noticed another thing – I felt I didn’t have the energy to write towards my novels and I was journaling my life pretty hard in private for the past two months and guess what?  I noticed all my journal entries about my life amounted to 350k words, 350k in just two months!

I was writing approximately 2k in private journals and 4k on another one which I sometimes share with selected people a day, I say was, I still am.  This is not including the word counts for my blog posts and poetry by the way, I never counted those up! 

I told a friend online about this and I said why can’t I write like that towards my novels?  She asked the same question back at me too!

Yes, why can’t you?  Why can’t you implement changes in your style of writing so that you can do that just to get the first drafts down quickly?  Maybe you are overthinking your first drafts way too much?  You are trying to perfect first drafts immediately because you feel it’s urgent to write your novel, yet you are not writing your novel because of it. 

Irony again!

Once again I may not have quoted her 100% but that was the gist of the conversation.

Using the same method I do for journal writing to write down first drafts would mean that I would get the first drafts of four or six novels down per month that would be amazing if it is as affective as my journal writing is!

However a novel is more than just a first draft, so that was just over optimistic thinking!  But you get me, right? 

I haven’t started implementing this yet, I am talking about it today, because it is today I am trying to start with that, today is the day I am going to change my first draft method.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

My creative process

Since 2017 the idea of me getting out of bed and being eager to write anything towards a novel first thing has been a laughable notion; I used to be like that every day, but not since then.

Before September 2022 I would write approximately 1500 to 3k words a time, approximately 3 times a week sometimes more, but since September that too has been a laughable notion.

Yet there it is, several times this week I have done some creative work almost daily, though mostly drawing, but today was different.

I woke up with the enthusiasm to write and I wrote for nearly two hours and although it was only just under 2k words in that time, painfully slow in comparison to past efforts – it made me feel accomplished in some way and that perhaps I am getting my mojo back again?

Though the story I wrote towards was a project known here as Steampunk 2, I haven’t thought about this story for a long time, in fact it was last mentioned in a post here dated 3^rd July 2022 and that was probably the last time I did any thinking about it!

I have no idea why I woke up and immediately thought about that project, usually ideas stew in my mind for days before I get around writing things down, but not today – this was an instant!

I am still unsure why, but it doesn’t matter – the thing is, I did it!  I wrote like how I used to years ago, woke up with energy and enthusiasm to do so and I did it!

I think the idea of forcing myself to concentrate on a particular project just because, could be the reason why I may not want to write it.  I have pressurised myself and before I moved out of my parents’ house, I never did that.  I never pressured myself into saying oh well; I have written five chapters to project such and such I must do so again tomorrow!  I never did that, I skipped from one thing to another quite merrily and was very productive back then!

I think I’ve been too influenced by the scientific and orderly mind of Paul in this regard, because he has been the one to convince me to only concentrate on one maybe three projects a time, not all seventy odd!

So I kind of developed an element of guilt behind it wanting to write outside my planned five main projects.

I decided three wasn’t enough for me, I needed five.  That didn’t make me anymore productive either.

So, now I am going back to the idea that any work on any day is good work as it is towards something – no work in one day because  I don’t want to focus on one of five ideas is unacceptable to me.

You know what?  Last week I wanted to start writing towards a horror story that’s been in my head for two years and I didn’t knuckle down to do it, because it wasn’t my main five projects.  I had this guilt complex of writing towards that story, because I should be working on ABCD or E – you get the idea?

So I spent just 45 minutes half-heartedly writing towards project AD and the quality in my work was terrible!  In fact I feel like deleting last week’s work!

But if I had of written towards that horror I know I would have got 2 or even 3k done that day, because there were a few things I wanted to write about in that story and I was in the mood for it. 

Guilt stopped me.

I am being disloyal to my main five projects I felt!

Pah!

I am not going to do this anymore!

I believe the universe was talking to me directly tonight because I was reading a book called “Tate – brief lessons in creativity” and they reckon that every creative has their own process and when they deviate from it, they become naff or blocked.  It’s not 100% quoted accurately, but the gist is there!

Today I decided to do whatever I feel like from now onwards and today has been the most productive writing day I’ve had since 2017 in my opinion!

I noticed my poetry is becoming difficult for me, because I am trying to push myself to create at least one poem a day to keep the blog alive.  But that’s not working anymore for me!

I am putting myself into a poetry block mind-set and my creative brain is rebelling by thinking about other things – like art where I don’t restrict myself and I have even caught myself dancing and moving my body more and doing wacky things (which is normal for me anyway) only I think about random lyrical lines I am making up as I go along but it’s all freestyle and unrecorded.  Then I realised, it’s a kind of performance art this! 

Once again I felt the universe was talking to me, because it was at this time I saw an advertisement for a performance art show being performed at The Belgrade theatre called “Drive your plow over the bones of the dead”; where it is apparently dance, poetry, acting and all sorts of things in one show.  I don’t know much about it, but it kind of spoke to me and I would like to see the show some day – though I probably won’t get the opportunity to! 

My brain doesn’t like limitations, so it’s removing me from what it sees as harmful creative pursuits and setting me free in others I don’t overthink too much!

When I start overthinking and when I start making rules, I block those pursuits too… I think I am learning a lot about myself lately!

There are many things I would like to write for my blog but I worry about how chaotic it may appear to my readers.

Abstract thoughts, descriptions, no real story, no real poetry either;  just words thrown together almost lyrically with descriptions of random acts and I sit back and wonder – what am I doing?  What is this called?  Overthinking again… then I block myself and I delete what I have done because I become embarrassed.

It’s odd, nobody will get it, I think to myself.

This is the true reason behind my procrastination – the reality is, I am doing things but I am destroying them no soon as I have done them, because I think the world will find it strange or unfathomable.

Like I have lost my mind and lost in thought and dribbling on with different words, to the extent I appear to be talking gobbledygook and as though I’ve lost the plot entirely… men in white coats will be coming for you soon – echoes Paul, who also doesn’t really grasp what I do at times!  But then again, he doesn’t grasp creative people as a whole, does he?  Being a scientist and all that!

Then I think – what the heck… should I take a risk and publish it?

I never really know for sure… but I think I will risk it soon!

Thanks for reading!

Struggling inner poet

The strange thing about poetry is that it comes easily when one is depressed or feeling awkward or has some sort of intense emotion or overwhelm; it does not however, come easily without those emotions or states of mind.

This is what I have been struggling with lately. 

Perhaps my apathy has gone so far, that I have become emotionally dense somewhat.  Though personally I disagree, I have been having better days – though it’s rife with worry for my son.

I am struggling with my inner poet.

Something has happened where the poet in me has become stunted.

Until this shifts, as it must and someday might – I can’t write poetry day to day.

I don’t know how long this will last, but I hope not for long.

In the meantime, I have been thinking about flash fiction, that will probably come easier these days or my old snippet attempts, they may make a comeback!

For now, I have been sitting here on and off for days, trying to force poetry to no avail – I believe it is time to surrender!

Thanks for reading!

Bad Joke

Sometimes I wonder if my paintings have the same warped sense of humour as I do.

Water coloured art always needs ironing!

Lame joke, I know, but there it is.

Thanks for reading!

Nearly two days…

No posts for nearly two days? 

Why?

I had poetry up for scheduling, I wrote them six weeks ago, but they would make some readers feels I am in a bad place again emotionally and so I didn’t post them after all.

I did that because some readers care deeply about me and they would genuinely worry about me if they had seen those poems, thinking that the feelings were current and they are not.

Sorry about that, I have been trying to get around writing new things for the blog but I am a little preoccupied lately and I also have a bad cold and ear infection.

Thanks for reading!