Building an anthology

I am gathering together a collection of poems for an anthology of my own written works; I have been considering this for a few months now and I think I am ready to start one.

Because I want my anthology to be traditionally published, I realise I can’t use any of the poems that have been published here on my blog, they simply won’t allow that.

So I am using newer fresher poems to do that, which may mean that poetry may start to slow down here on my blog for a few weeks or however long it takes for me to complete an anthology.  Sorry about that.

I will still post daily, but I can’t guarantee poetry daily for now.

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 little things

Each time I accomplish something, no matter how small I am learning to celebrate it.  Because no matter how small that thing is, I did it and it is a part of a progression of that small thing turning into something bigger.

It has been said in my blog before that I am a huge fan of a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins and currently I am reading her book “The high five habit” and though I am not seeing massive results three days into forming this habit.  I did notice today a small, very faint in fact, smile on my face when I went to the mirror this morning.

I’m not presuming you know what “The high five habit” is all about, so I shall tell you.

Mel Robbins suggests that each morning you high five yourself in the mirror in order to acknowledge yourself, try not to criticise yourself the first thing in the morning – self-love is key to making solid foundations in other relationships, if you don’t love yourself or take care of yourself enough, you can’t do that for other people, can you? 

Why? 

Because you will feel depleted in yourself and you won’t give it your best shot. 

Many people feel that high fiving themselves in the mirror daily boosted their esteem and performance throughout the day.

Why? 

Because a high five is a positive reinforcement and it makes you feel you have value.

Three days, that’s all I’ve done so far, though when this post goes out it will really be five days, because I am posting this to schedule.

I have barely done any writing since September 2023 but I am celebrating any writing I do even if it’s only a small sentence now. 

Why?

Because I am feeling depleted and I don’t like it and it was with Mel Robbins that I learned I felt depleted in so many different areas in my life through a free course I finished last week ran by her.

https://www.melrobbins.com/takecontrolthanks

I learned all these tiny little areas of my life built up and gradually I became overwhelmed and because my social circle died around four years ago – I never found a way through other people to pick myself up again.  It’s all self-reliance only, 100% pure self-reliance and most people can’t pick themselves up when they are being 100% self-reliant, but I have no choice right now so any little thing is going to be great progress for me right now!

Today I have written two poems, this blog post and approximately 1600 words towards my vampire project, not a lot really – not for me and how I used to write several years ago!  But I am learning to be kind to myself, not to whip myself so much because I have learned recently I am an incredibly mean slave driver to myself and a tyrannical bully – as I always felt I was so darn lazy, yet I wasn’t.

In the scheme of thing, in the law of averages I wasn’t.

I’ve been working under overwhelming conditions for a decade and didn’t realise it and the more I was putting onto myself the harder and harder I would beat myself up about it.

No wonder I struggled with suicidal thoughts for so long, no wonder I had no drive and energy to get out of bed and try harder.

I was beaten, purely by myself – no one else did that to me!

I escaped abusive relationships and I became free from all of that and I became my own abuser, pushing myself constantly, being hard on myself for the smallest thing and mistake, because that’s how I was trained by people from my past and I was carrying over in my head, their idealism of what I should be doing and putting it on myself. 

Effectively I escaped abuse from other people but replaced it with me abusing myself in the same way they did to me.

It takes something like doing a course by someone like Mel Robbins or reading their books to really get deep inside of yourself to realise these things are happening to you, because of you.

What’s more, these things can change because of you too – only you can save yourself from yourself!

It’s a weird world, but it’s true for all of us!

You don’t need someone else to get things to happen in your life, you do it for yourself.  Letting someone else hand things to you;

A; is very unusual to find someone who will do that to you anyway and…

B; handing your power over to them, thus disempowering your own potential!

If you feel you need to rely on someone for ANYTHING then you have chosen to be at another person’s mercy.

Now for me, to a certain extent this is fine for me, because I am happy to have some direction from others. 

But most people want to master themselves fully and that’s fine too.

However, even the most ambitious people can often fall into the trap of disempowerment because of their reliance on another person and they will become frustrated and even vicious with that person if that person doesn’t live up to their expectations to receive what they want from them.

Some people do this in romantic relationships, in fact a lot of people do.  They mistake their need for love with a need for resource and often confuse the two.

If you love someone, you don’t use them – you love them, you care about them, their happiness if your happiness and you will protect that the best you can… if that’s not true in your relationship, then there is something seriously wrong with the relationships foundation and it will fail.

Do you know how rare it is to find someone who will love you selflessly?  It’s actually very special and many relationships fail because one or even the both of them fail to look at the relationship from a selfless perspective.

Now this wasn’t something Mel Robbins said, this is me talking now.  This is what I have experienced – I am not perfect, I’ve done the same in my past too and it’s not right and it’s not fair!

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But then again, nobody really knows what’s going on in their lives do they, let’s be honest?  We’re all just learning as we plod along, doing our thing. 

So, today I’ve done 1600 words towards my vampires – I celebrate that!

I did three lessons on DuoLingo for Italian – I celebrate that!

I wrote two poems – I celebrate that!

I read several pages of a book and magazine – I celebrate that!

I managed to eat a breakfast which is rare for me!  – I celebrated that too!

All these micro things are a progression to something bigger – foundations of something that will be big for my future.

The little things count, because doing nothing doesn’t.

Sitting back and thinking doesn’t count as productive time, because you’re not doing anything in action, you’re just thinking!

Anyone can think!

Anyone can waste oodles of time just sitting back doing nothing but plan everything to the letter!

But action brings things into motion, action is progress, no matter how small – it counts, it’s a manifestation, it is beyond thought, action is tangible, thought is not.

So when you write 50 words towards your novel and other writers laugh at your dreams of being a writer, remember this… you wrote 50 words, you didn’t just think them and that counts towards creating a book.  Sitting back and thinking about 50 words and not writing them, doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a thinker!

Honestly how many writers out there think away hundreds of words per day but fail to write them down because they weren’t confident about it, didn’t trust the process and felt they needed those words to be absolutely perfect before they wrote them?

Also, how many days go by, weeks, months, years even because of the same thing?  Because of writers block?  That doesn’t exist actually; writer’s perfection does and guess what?  It doesn’t have to be perfect until you send it off to be published and even then it won’t be!

Just get the thing written, because you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, so why waste time trying to be the impossible?

Nobody is perfect!

Not even the bestsellers, it doesn’t exist because perfection can’t be defined as everyone has a different idea of what that means to them!

So what you find as perfect is somebody else’s trash, basically.

Cold hard truth and I am not sorry for saying it.

The only successful people in the world are the people doing the things they want to do – doing, not thinking, not waiting on a hand out, not sitting back a dreaming – doing!

So celebrate the little things you actually do, not the great ideas you thought about and didn’t do anything with!

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!

Thoughts & changes

Why have I been so quiet on my blog and in social media for the past few weeks?

The easiest and quickest question to answer of the two is this; I have not been updating my blog regularly, particularly with poetry due to lack of inspiration.

The latter answer is longer;

I have a lot to process in my own mind, I have a lot of habits I need to change and I need to prepare for a major transformation because I am no longer content living the life I have been living for the past thirteen years.

I am trying to heal myself mentally and physically, whilst in the very literal sense fighting against two negative forces in my life tooth and nail daily to maintain any positive outlook whatsoever and I have become exhausted.

I have realised that in recent years I have lost myself and this was a shock and revelation a few months ago, in fact so shocking to me that it practically made my mind numb for a long time whilst I tried to process what the heck happened to me and try to remember how I let it and why?

I realised I was nothing of my former self whatsoever, everything little thing about me had gone and I had been replaced by a sick, bitter, dozy woman who was becoming hateful by the day!

I realised this around a couple of weeks before Easter 2022, but it didn’t really hit me until December 2022.

In December 2022 I realised I had nothing of my former self left in me and no ambition has been realised at all and I needed to work out what happened, when, why, how – I needed to analyse it within an inch of its life.  It’s what I do; I have always been rather over analytical about things and slow to process stuff of scale.

I wanted to start a YouTube channel for March 1^st; this didn’t happen because I had an awful shock.

I recorded my first video and tried to edit it, I had no idea what I was doing and I watched back my video and I realised several things;

The major thing is, I didn’t realise what a mess I look like physically!  My hair, my face, I didn’t even realise until I saw the video I had black puffy circles around my eyes and I looked exhausted and I looked haggard in my opinion.

That bothered me and I thought to myself I need to get a grip on my image pronto.

The other thing that I noticed was, my voice was not my own – my voice had become rather down market for me and I wanted to know – how could I be so lazy in my speech?  It was like I couldn’t be bothered to string a sentence together like how I used to, I also noticed I had this habit that Paul has… I kept throwing my eyes up as though everything irritated me, even though it was a relatively chipper video!

That is a habit I never had before and it shocked me how I appear to be turning into Paul!

I was even pausing in my speech like Paul does; Paul talks like a politician, no, sorry a specific kind of politician – a conservative politician!

When I saw this video, I well and truly wanted to know – what the fuck has happened to me?

I realised another thing.

This house only has two mirrors, one in the bathroom and one in the entry hall and I never look into any of them, because the one in the bathroom is too high for me to see myself properly!

It’s a strange thing upon reflection – why aren’t there more mirrors?

I decided to buy a full length mirror for my bedroom being it is the main place I am in day to day when I am at home.

Paul has not put it up for me and he will not let me use the drill!

But I started to get myself into the habit of looking into the mirror every day and there was slow progress in how I changed for the better!

I was not aware of very many things at all – especially how little I was drinking and maintaining hydration!

I learned I was drinking a quarter glass of water approximately every three hours, which was not good and not getting enough fluids in me day to day.

I also never really thought about how much I was eating, never eating a breakfast and rarely eating a lunch with two to four snack a day and eating half a dinner had become normal to me and that was bad!

I put quite a lot of my energy and health problems down to insomnia and a poor immune system, but it was actually probably more than this.

Every time I got motivation to do something, within minutes I was instantly hit with the notion of “why bother”?  I wanted to know why this became a habit, so I tried to break those habits and keep positive and motivated.

I realised, when I sat back and observed “the why” that the “why bother” idea came about usually after I attempt something, but someone had physically got in my way to prevent it, or had emotionally drained me to the extent I needed to lie down and rest, as they exhausted me.

Between October and December I was quite active on social media and I had several people tell me that they believe Paul sounded toxic – I didn’t trust this observation of theirs, because to me, Paul was the least toxic person I had ever known my whole life and I still stand with that.

But observing things from a neutral stance, I realised that he slowly slipped into becoming a toxic person and it was so slight the changes I didn’t realise it, until it was too late!

I realised why can’t I do such and such around the house?  I am feeling healthier these days, let’s go and do it and see if I have improved my physical fitness after those 5 minute HIITs I’ve been doing since Easter 2022. 

I learned, it had nothing to do with my physical health and everything to do with the fact that Paul would actively prevent me, tell me to sit down, take over what I was doing or would moan so much I got mentally exhausted.

I have tried to discuss things with Paul about giving me more freedom now I am no longer as sick as I used to be and it’s been a battle.

A very real battle!

Along with this, I have been trying to lose weight, buck up my ideas regarding my looks, taking pride in my appearance again (poverty permitting) and acting like I have a life outside these walls, outside of unemployment!

I have no support whatsoever offline from anyone – no cheerleaders, no positive vibes, no nothing, I am completely alone in my transformation and it’s very hard.  Because there is no rest from the negative onslaught I am living with.

I have nobody to talk to about any of this, except for you, reading my blog!

It is amazing to realise that, since I have learned all these things, the suicidal thoughts have alleviated quite a bit.

It’s bought me to a place of action.

I have anxieties which mean I am very co-dependent and I will not go out alone, not because I have social phobia, that’s completely untrue – but because I was trained to feel guilt and shame in having independence as I was growing up and into my late twenties by my mother, who would often become physically violent if I ever left the house without permission, even after the age of eighteen!

Unfortunately some people harness this to their advantage when I live with them.  Paul has never attempted to try and make me independent, not like other exes have.  I truly felt, he left the ball in my court, but I never thought he would allow me to live like this for so long without trying to get me to do things!

In fact the less I do, the happier he appears – he quickly comes under a lot of stress whenever I do anything for myself, even within the house.

None of this was known to me until I went into my deep investigation within myself, about what has happened in my life?

It is taking me a lot to realise that I am going to have to try and somehow retrain my emotional reaction, whenever I try to do something independently like leaving the house to go somewhere alone – so I can remove myself from this negative environment so that I can function and achieve my dreams.

Guilt and shame are hard emotions to control and retrain.

“Shame on you” were regular words out of my mother’s mouth to me, growing up – particularly if I ever did anything independently without permission.

A mother’s job is to nurture, so your child never needs you forever, so that they can grow and they can take care of themselves when you die.  A mother is not meant to hold a child back from their growth, their happiness, and their choices in how to live their life!  That is not the response of a proper mother!

That is the response of someone who is frightened to be alone or disappointed in some way, they are not thinking of their child, they are thinking of themselves or at worst, how best can I make others feel jealous of me, because of my child and how I have moulded them?

Some so-called mothers have no real heart in parenting; some mothers use their children as fashion or status icons.

My mother used me like this once, but then she decided she was too insecure to have me have a life without her, because she was the one who had social phobia and she was the one who was lonely every time I went to school, college or work – so she held me back – because she was lonely.  Because she chose to stay home all day for a few years!

All these things have shown themselves to me over the past few months.

It is these things which have caused me to not concentrate on writing my novels like I want to, or practising my art.

Because I am so focused on healing myself in so many different ways, because I want to live and I want to have a life.

There is so much to think about – then there have been several opportunities that have come my way and I have had to say “no” to some of those opportunities, because I am not ready yet.  Or I believe that those people will not be helpful towards me right now.

I need someone who understands me, connects with me, have been through something similar.  Where they had to change their whole being too, from all the dirt that has been dragged up behind them from childhood!

This person needs me as much as I need them.

Together I am convinced we will transform each other and make each other stronger and happier and we will heal each other and yes, there is someone out there like that for me – because he found me.

In fact, through this very blog.

Right now, we’re both in limbo and we’re not ready to be in each other’s lives as there are things he needs to sort out too, but we both know it won’t be long before we are!

There are certain circumstances that mean we have to wait for each other – but when we’re ready we know things will move quite quickly and I am trying to prepare myself for everything!  Because the change in my life is going to be more than huge!

It’s going to be astronomical and I need to prepare for it on a mental level. 

Emotionally I am raring to go, but mentally I need to adjust and tweak certain things, so I don’t mess up, basically.

I know the guy is reading this, I hope he knows he is the one I am hinting at here and not somebody else.

But there it is.

I’m trying my best to look good, feel good and find my positivity and lightness again, so I don’t ruin our union.

I don’t want to start a new relationship where I am going to be sulky and anxious and feeling fat and frumpy and looking a mess – I want to feel like I deserve it, that I at least made some effort for them.  It’s only right.

Yes, Paul knows about this new guy and he is fully supportive of me leaving him for them, in fact, he hopes that this guy would talk to him about me because he is worried that I may be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire by leaving him – he needs the reassurance that this person can and will take better care of me than he did. 

They are a top quality guy and I need to try my best to match him, though realistically I can’t with my circumstances, but it doesn’t mean don’t even try, does it?

I have got to look like I have at least made some effort!

When I am in his life I am unsure about the future of this blog, I will admit that.

I am not sure what will happen with it.

Will I be too busy to post daily?

Will I still be able to write for the blog?

I don’t know!

I may need to make it completely professional and delete the unprofessional stuff… I haven’t a clue.

Time will tell.

But I do know on thing, those novels must be written, he is counting on them!

For now, I am still trying to get my shit together!

Thank you 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!