Checking In ...

Hello to the two people who still read here :)

I miss blogging.  I haven't done it for a whole month.

I struggle with time management.  I like spending an hour or two just rolling around doing not a whole lot.  That smells like chocolate.  I can do it all day, no problems.  I like getting about in first gear.

It would sound cooler if I could say I do it with a total "up yours" to the system.  But it doesn't feel quite like that.  I feel like I'm being naughty, like I'm wasting time.  Because while I love gearing back and spending seemingly fruitless time wandering around, I don't feel entirely comfortable with it.  There are nagging bits in my head while I do it sometimes.  And, although I hate the word efficiency and think it is overrated, there's something to be said for being disciplined with your time.  And when it comes to work, I just haven't been.  And I think if I was more efficient when I'm working, I would feel better about wandering about for hours doing not much at all.  But the inefficient work practices are seeping into everything else, and I need to find a way to dam it up better.

So I'm 40 years old and I've uncovered a little girl cowering in the corner who feels  naughty and scared about everything.  I may look it, but I ain't childless :)

I have been working more hours recently, in my little ole at-home transcription deal.  I have to, to start paying the tax bill that I ... aherm ... haven't been paying as I go.  I'm not so great at some things.  Managing money is one of them.  Doing this job is another.  It is so boring but can I find anything else?  Nope.  Sending lots of CVs out to jobs, but no fish are biting.  I think I'm going to have to have a go at starting something up myself, in an area where I have no prior experience and a welter of voices will be waiting to tell me why I can't do it (while this welter lives inside my head, in the land of the great tall poppy, you can guarantee that they will be living outside my head).

This layer of myself where everything I do I feel like I'm going to get into trouble, it's always been there, I think.  How weird discovery is.  It's like lifting up a rock and layers of centipedes are milling around.  It is so strange to find this layer, and to find along with it that every time I say, "No, sorry, I don't buy that fear," that the centipedes scurry and a few of them go away.  That's pretty cool.  But it's damn hard work.

I have just finished writing another short story.  I don't know how good it is.  It's so scary writing things and then finishing them and they're out there.  And then you send them to a competition and you don't win.  The last time I finished a story my toes scrunched up while Anthony was reading it and I don't think I even gave him an hour to mull over it before I was asking him what he thought of it.  How tiresome a place to be, with a terrified writer waiting for your feedback :)

Because I'm such a scaredy cat, and because I'm 40, now I can feel the centipedes scurry whenever change is in the air.  And it is.  Moving from one suburb to the other, both beginning with B, but both completely different, an hour away from each other.  One suburb, in a small house (or a large flat?) living alone for four years.  How did that four years happen?  A landlocked house in the backyard of another, facing a garage.  A house where I cracked open and cried more than I have cried in my entire life.

I shall miss that house, though.  But it is with great excitement that I move to another B suburb, but this one so different.  A suburb where if I dare to wear my ugg boots outside I pay for it, but not by the fashion police.  My ugg boots have NO traction whatsoever.  I wore them outside last winter to the shops (oh, the shame) and fell over on the stairs on the way back.  I wore them outside to the veggie patch the other day and fell over twice on my way there.

I am moving to a house in the side of a hill.  I am so much more level than when I lived in the house facing the garage where the ground was flat but I was topsy turvy.

This is a much better way.

This house has a man in it.  That's very scary.  I love him so much.  We are both old and decrepit and wise now, and have learned from the past.  I am so happy to be doing this but oh, it is scary.

Scary also is writing short stories, facing yourself and holding onto what you see, seeing how easily things come out of the clay, toying with ideas about venturing into areas you know nothing about.  Scary is going your own way when everyone else thinks you should go theirs.  Scary is opening your mouth and seeing what comes out, all good and bad jumbled, and owning it, even if other people may not like what you are saying or think they can tell you differently (because wow, what a generic and boring fucked-up unit this society is).  Scary is worrying about what other people think, because you will dilute your own colours to try to please them.  Scary is cleaning up the kitchen after you've been cooking in it.  Scary is feeling happy, because scary is the feeling of wanting to hang on to something.  Everything moves and flows; holding onto it lightly stops life bunching up while it flows into your hands.