Trying for the END

I'm still in the process or organising my thoughts for the current Wip.

I've now pushed the whole 50,000 NANOWRIMO pile from December into the pc's deepest cellar.
I'm still using a big chunk of the research I did for that but the female MC has disappeared to be replaced by a young male. I've not tried to write a story about a bloke before, so that gives me a buzz.

I realise that his active lifestyle will either need a quick rush through if I'm covering his life or a more detailed and hopefully more gripping short passage through some of the high and low points.

There is now a sketchy outline and some characters are penciled in but I need a lot more................

I've spent the last week or so thrashing about trying to construct an ending with no success. But now I think I'm close to sorting it.I'm going to limit the time frame and write an ending that leaves his story incomplete. It will tie up everything that he's done in his still young life but leave the reader aware that not everything is resolved. I hope that will be satisfying but stimulating as well.

Feeling excited now and approaching it with optimism.

Haven't got a title yet, but that's a problem for another day.

Early morning

I got up around 04.30 and now I'm here with a rapidly cooling cup of tea. Something happened yesterday that made me think about the future.
I hate thinking about the future nowadays...........it feels like a nasty alien entity sucking the life out of me slowly.
Now that's not a pleasant thought in the early morning, but it's accurate.
I never thought that old age might feel this way when I was younger. Good job too!

When I was very young I didn't believe in death, despite, or maybe because it had already intruded on my world and old age was never going to happen either. I knew no old people and the few I saw didn't interest me at all.
By my teenage years I was thinking death might happen to other people but it couldn't happen to me. I couldn't imagine Me not existing so there was nothing to worry about. I was going to live forever and I was going to save the World too! This must be a commonly held fallacy otherwise adolescence would be incredibly boring and safe instead of tingly with anticipation of great times ahead.

I haven't saved the World and I feel bad about that, sorry World. If I had my time over I'd do better; my efforts in that area have been little use. On the personal side I'm not afraid of death but the future scares the Hell out of me. I can't do much about saving the future either; that's probably why I couldn't sleep, my brain was working itself into a tizz while I slept.
I feel good now I'm fully awake despite the darkness and the rain outside. Fears and anxieties only have power when you're vulnerable, being tired makes me vulnerable. I did get some sleep and the tea is giving me a boost so I just have to wait for the Dawn now.
I'll go read some Rumi.

It's strange....

It's strange, odd behaviour on my part.
I really think so...here I've sat since Christmas, warm and dry, while outside the weather has been appalling for weeks and what have I done while largely confined to my well-feathered nest?
Nothing..Nada...Zilch. I could have written thousands of words, but have only managed a few hundred.I could have read a slew of books to improve my understanding of matters nautical but I haven't.

I am ashamed now that I realise how the time slipped through my fingers. I've mostly spent my days knitting; while that saves me from complete reproach it's not so great because I've always knitted to keep occupied.

I knitted a baby cardigan for a little girl's first birthday.

I almost completed another design based on a jacket worn by Jennifer Lawrence's character in the first 'Hunger Games' film. It was to be a birthday present for my granddaughter, but when I gave her a first fitting of the jacket I could see she was not captivated by it, nor was she enthusiastic about having such an item in er wardrobe. It was a fair point because Katniss Everdeen wears her jacket when hunting small animals for food, my granddaughter has never hunted anything and would baulk at the idea..... so the unfinished project has gone into the discard pile.

I am halfway through a cardigan for myself now which will please me ....hopefully when complete. But writing it ain't.

Rain....Wind.....Rain....Sun.....Rain....Wind....Wind....Rain..... ad infinitum

I think one of the reasons I'm not sunk in deep depression is because I have to keep the dog happy. Left alone he veers between cross, scared then depressed by the current weather.He lays with head on paws and sighs, lots. I can usually cheer him up by tickling him or coaxing him into a game and I talk to him to keep his spirits up.
Another reason I'm staying cheerful is that when I feel the chill gloom of depression trying to pull me close I make a big effort to go and do something. I write or I cook or I clean something. I don't enjoy the cleaning trick ,but it does work, so my place is not too bad dirt-wise.
The main reason I keep going is because I want to be happy and purposeful and make my life mean something.


I found this pic recently and I think the words apply to freedom of mind in my case. If I'm depressed I'm not free.I cultivate my freedom by constant practice and I'm able to do that because of the Friend.

Rumi talks a lot about the Friend. I think he saw God as a friend who encouraged him when things went wrong; of course Rumi talks incessantly of the Divine as Lover, but you can only expect a lover to arrive if you're in a fit state to be loved. I'm not a Sufi mystic and don't expect to be caught up in that whirling ecstasy, but I feel that if friendship with the Divine was good enough for Rumi it'll do for me too.God does not solve my problems, but he gives me the desire to overcome them.

I'm not sure any of that explains anything, but I'm not a theologian either.

Excuses, Excuses.

Hesitant efforts at writing this week.

I'm finding it hard to get in a routine.

The weather is dire and my social life consists of coffee with a neighbour once a week so I have no excuses.
I have been keeping on top of housework, but not cooking and I'm knitting a project for someone's Birthday when my hands don't hurt too much.

I need more sleep. I'm not getting enough sleep because I haven't usually had sufficient time outdoors most days so I ache lots and this makes me restless and can't sleep. I tend to wake up hurting and this is not a great way to start the day.

I took paracetamol before bed last night and that helped. The aches are down to the weather which just gets worserer and worserer and the resultant lack of exercise, so s'not really my fault that I'm not writing it's actually due to Climate Change.

See I found a valid excuse after all!

In the bleak mid-winter

Although the writing as languished for a bit I have been thinking about my new opus. I've jotted down some thoughts and have ideas of the experiences my hero will have to endure, but need to read more on early 17C life at sea to get all the sweaty details.

Aside from the lack of writing I've kept occupied with knitting; the first spell of knitting for months and I'm enjoying it. It'll feel like a slog again when my hands start hurting, I see there's a bit of swelling between the knuckles already, but for now it's good to do.


I feel cheerful and quite at peace with the world despite the rain and the cold, I'm counting my blessings. The dog conversely is getting to be a total grouch. He grumbles and sulks a LOT. I guess it's partly due to aching joints, which I believe aren't as painful as they are annoying to him, but more to do with the limited trips outside. We did venture out to one of his favourite places yesterday, but the ferocious wind and sleety rain made for a short trip. He can and does sleep much of the time. We don't have that in common at present, I seem to stay awake late every night then struggle to function in the afternoons. It's due to the lack of fresh air and insufficient exercise I'm sure.

Roll on SPRING!!

Metamorphosis????

I think I'm going through a phase.

I seem to have too much essential stuff to do, I want to be doing other stuff but can't seem to manage it and as a result I've spent a couple of weeks chasing my tail.

I need to organise myself more efficiently, but that in itself seems hard to do, just the effort required to think up a system of time management seems to be beyond me.
For years I've followed the Peg Bracken school of housekeeping; her philosophy was "If you have loads to do and you don't think you can finish everything by doing one thing at a time, you should make a start on each thing at the same time".
Her argument lies in you being compelled to finish all your tasks if for example: you've already sifted the flour into a bowl to make a cake AND you've got the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the floor AND you've already threaded up the sewing machine and put the material ready beside it. That system has stood me in good stead ever since a friend bought me her 'I Hate to House-keep' and 'I Hate to Cook' books as a wedding present nearly 50 years ago.
Now it fails me. I find I either just step around the unfinished tasks and stop seeing them or I cancel the whole day and go out because I don't give a damn.
So here I am surrounded by incomplete tasks that are driving me up the wall and I can't go out to escape because the weather is awful. Instead of knuckling down I start doing something irrelevant and unnecessary like on-line shopping.

In the past when everything has gotten on top of me I've usually ended up throwing heaps of stuff away, getting a new job or moving house. Most of those options are no longer available and it's only about 4 months since I had my last clear-out. Oh and 'clearing out' makes me uncomfortable because it creates empty space that I feel the need to fill as soon as possible with more stuff. I made the interesting discovery yesterday that I'd thrown away the power transformer for the volume control on my ultra basic hi-fi. It's just cost me £20 to replace it.

My hi-fi system is a joke; I have a cd player which ought to be part of a proper big set up; after buying it I discovered that I couldn't control the volume of the music without buying a separate little box with a volume control knob on it. How daft is that?????. Anyway I got one and instead of buying speakers, with all the fuss about which type and whether they should be wall-mounted or floor standing, I bought headphones that plug into the box and which I can also use with the tv and the pc. My late Beloved must be constantly amused by my ignorance of music playback technology after his efforts to educate me over long years.

Yesterday I started going through the collection looking for one particular cd. It took me nearly an hour to find it due to the sudden realisation about the power supply transformer; I've been playing music via my pc for several months and had unplugged everything else when I last re-arranged the furniture and threw out 'junk'.

So I hope I'm going through a phase rather than losing the remaining shreds of my intelligence; perhaps this is a transitional period and I may metamorphose into a new bright and shiny creature. One should never lose hope!