It Is A Long Long Time Ago

My difficulty with passwords continues... I almost didn't find this blog because I forgot what it was called and then the search wouldn't accept my password... I have already completely lost my btinternet address and all therein due to a changed password and I KNOW I REMEMBERED IT but it would NOT accept it so that was that! I am getting used to the idea that much of my online life is hanging on by a thread and I am one senior moment away from losing it all.
Today has been unproductive, although some nice things moved forward slightly, and Barry and I have vied for the high ground in who can be legitimately grumpiest with the other. It has not been pretty... or clever. Sitting here typing a blog is the closest I've been to content for a long while. I have a list on Evernote, which includes all the writing I am supposed to be doing and 'A room to write in'. Although the office is more work friendly than the filing cabinet version we had before, I am still not comfortable working on any private (i.e. writing) work whilst Barry is so close. The 'Yurt In My Garden, Please' is still a deep craving. Since I lost my favourite writing cafe I have slowly retreated from the permission I gave myself to write, losing the confidence to sit with pen and notebook, in a bubble of my own creation. Truly frightening is how long, long ago that was and how lost it all seems from here. It is time to turn around and start walking back, word at a time, sentence and story, page and permission, earning the ownership of my work again.
Next week Helen and I have PROMISED that we will write our book. I have a new list that details the things I will do to achieve this. Today, here at my recovered blog, I have begun to do what I said I would.  It feels good. xxx

Not So Fast Nico Tine

I have just tried to link my Blackberry with my blog and failed. I am not so teccy as I hoped. I may have to return and see my o2 Guru.... nice! Most of my writing these days is in my head, a sure sign that all is NOT well and I need to get it onto the page again. It seems the page can be electronic or paper... it doesn't matter. And how do I know this is necessary? Because I am feeling low grade finished and that is a sure sign that I MUST reframe or be lost from everything. Maybe I am just a threatened web page at the moment... you know, when you click on a link and the message comes up 'error... this page cannot be found' and there is a split second of panic 'cos so much seems to be lost even tho' nothing has really changed... or has it?
Obviously I have been holding a space for myself to be grown up in and now my core self is sad. It wants to be let out to play and it is threatening an explosion if it isn't heard. I can see that I am almost perfectly reflecting the MO process and wish I felt less helpless. As does everyone who experiences this process. Hard to breathe, difficult to look after myself (wash, dress, eat), wanting to stay still, asleep, not active. Really scared of moving... a true low grade panic attack. I KNOW THERE IS NOTHING OUT THERE, but I am unable to take the steps without a HUGE effort. Wish I had someone facilitating my return to the flow. I am trudging into mud and the river feels a long way off. Some writing and not thinking may be a useful response. Just now I am feeling my panic, but also a sense of comfortableness as I write and experience it. Deep breath! 5 opportunities to go to the Gym or walk or cycle. Only 1 bike ride achieved. I am pleased I did that, but the resistance to actually going to the gym or riding again is suffocating. This is how I know I am in trouble. Reassuring my friends that this is temporary and I will get through quickly is a true whistle in the wind. I have no idea where this is going.
To Reframe I will need to look at myself in detail. Understand where I have hit my wall and what built it in the first place. Walls, scaffolding, rivers and mud. I am creating a landscape. Perhaps this needs to be written into the book. Restarting the novel may be a good way of travelling this process. If TIME is the issue then I will allow it to fold around me in a way that I stop controlling. Being in control of TIME is more limiting than productive. And is where my biggest fears arise. Lazy.. cowardly.. fraudulent.. unreliable.. pushy.. arrogant.. unfeeling.. selfish.. thoughtless.. dangerous! Ooh! With that resume I am sunk alright! So at least I can see it squirming on the plate now!
My thought processes are a little disconnected today so I do not expect this blog to make much sense at later reading. Not even sure why I posted here. Maybe PENZU would have been more private... although I don't get many hits for my blog ever! The day is stealing away from me and I want to go and catch it before I am plunged into darkness. xxxx

Snow

A little bit of snow, not so much covering the landscape as clinging on with icy fingernails to well-insulated roofs and shadowed corners of the garden. Further inland the airports are shut and the motorways closed; petroleum gas containing tankers rolled over on the ice and stranded holiday makers-in-waiting dozing fitfully on airport carpet. Snowy rain falling, in deference to the warring meteorologists who predict rain OR snow, now both can be correct!! Barry's Mum calls to find out if she can be confident of the coaches running tomorrow when she treks down to Dorset to be with Auntie Barbara, again. The conversation edges around minus degrees and conflicting predictions, underlying opportunity to NOT GO this year! We may all be afforded a reprieve from family Christmas Travel duty. My own family is present-less as our planned trip had to be called off due to 'weather warnings'.This year... I am finding it difficult to locate my christmas spirit. It seems to be frozen on a slip road and the routes may not reopen before New Year. I'm in need of a dose of Jingle Bells, but I'm more likely to win a timely dose of Christmas Flu, courtesy of my congested daughter. Am I just getting too old for this? Or should I be out searching for the meaning of celebration amongst the tinsel and half-price last-minute-gifts cornucopia, preparing to pretend that all is well and all is well and Ho Ho Ho, all is well...

Wind and Rain

The ribbon of writing I keep in my life has been wrapped around Penzu for the past few weeks. But not as much as I had come to expect. The tension between keeping a reflective journal and writing creatively has thrown up blocks again. Also, I am juggling many threads of work and that makes for an uncomfortable metaphor!! So, what with this and that and ups and downs, I'm more or less tied in knots and now the Winter offers wind and rain to blow the mixture around and, as I hope you can se from my graphic description... I am a mess!
Today I look out of the window and sigh. There doesn't seem to be any more I can say. Angela x

Returning To Place

I am sitting at my desk, looking out at the roofs and tree tops in my back garden (well, the roofs are on the houses in other peoples gardens, but from here they all look like mine) and thinking again of how different it would be if I went to my yurt to write. A commonly told secret of 'good writing' is that you should engage all the senses and capture qualities associated with each one. Sitting here I am aware of the snickerty-snick of my husband typing into the Daily Beast (a forum he frequents) and the muffled sound of electrical humming from beneath my desk, as lead after lead sucks energy from the grid. I feel the squished faux leather of my chair meet my bum and thighs and the course, worn carpet irritating my toes. 
Many hours, days, weeks, months later, I find this unpublished Blog! I am intrigued by its 'almost' and 'unfinished' nature and recall precisely what it felt like when I was writing it the first time round! This time the sensations are different. My bare toes rest on a cold metal frame that sits beneath my desk; everything is the other way round for me since we cleared out the office, so no roof tops or sky or trees for me... It makes me think that some wall decorations are essential.. I will become dispirited from blank-wall-itis. Other people are in the house and talking to themselves, each other, their computers and mobile phones and, sometimes, me. It doesn't get any easier to concentrate and/or find space in this house. An anomaly of sensory overload is that it produces shut down and the result is creative paralysis. Only a Yurt-shaped bubble formed around my consciousness will help me now!
So this new/old blog is finished/goes on and symbolises the this/that of how things are changing. Utterly. And as they take shape, recognisable and true to what they've always been. 
Here is the secret: I will write and the rest will take care of itself.

I Am Still Here

Strangely enough, I have been writing quite a lot, just not here. Inside my head I have so much writing to do that there isn't time for any of it. Also, I am enjoying the complete secrecy of Penzu and find my nervousness about writing finding its way into the public domain is growing. I have always resisted writing letters, or if I have written them, it's a bugger to actual get myself to post them. Something about writing feels so powerful and 'final' as if I will be held to account for any trivial thing I commit to the page. Hence, my eternal writer's block. As long as I am not actually 'doing' anything, I can sneak up on writing and get some 'unattached' stuff out there. But as soon as serious intent enters the picture, I am frozen. Parts of me stop listening to other parts of me. I lose control and most of my personal credibility with it. It's worse than finding your knicker elastic has stopped working. Humiliating, but in a very personal way. No one else can feel it like you do. Anyway, I am beginning to feel a little exposed so that's it for today. I need to think about why writing makes me so nervous. Angels x

Being Unfaithful

I have been away from my blog for a while (not as long as the last time, but a few days, nonetheless), but I have been writing and would like to talk about where I have been writing, as I have really enjoyed the experience. A link on another writer's blog led me to Penzu (now I realise I have to learn how to put links in here... another 10 hours out of my life!!!!) but I'm sure you can google them as well. They offer a great 'notepad' for journaling or writing without posting. It can be completely secure and 'locked' like one of those diaries with a padlock and key that I lusted after when I was a little girl. The freedom it gave me to write whatever came up was wonderful. At times it felt like a walk on the dark side, but such fun. I have been using it to do my Morning Pages (sometimes known as ooops, it's evening already - will they still count?) and speed up my typing. The latter has not really happened, but I am gaining in typing stamina, so a page is nothing for me now!!! I fear that my typing style is never going to achieve speed, but I now know I can expect to do a page within 20 minutes (half an hour on a sticky day). This is a source of simple pride to me, I am a simple girl! So thanks to Alex, who introduced me to the other writer's blogs through her blog and to Penzu for giving me free virtual notepads for life!! Angels x