Sometimes sitting down and writing can be really easy, I just sit there and the words all fall out. Other times it can be as if I had to physically pull thoughts and words from my head. Often it’s not helped at all by distractions – I’m not referring to the internet but to those distractions in the real world like the carpenter coming to hang new doors or my mother deciding she’d like an in depth conversation with me about the proposed colour of her wallpaper….None of it major stuff, but sometimes I’m a bit like a hamster – I need a warm little nest in which to cocoon myself (bit of a mixed metaphor but I’m sure you get the picture).

I think writers are by nature insular or at the very least introspective – I’m always examining not just what I’ve said, but what others have said to me. Almost every conversation I have is turned over in my mind, examined from every angle – Did she mean that when she said it? What does he want? Why have they said that to me? And perhaps most importantly – I wonder what will happen next?

After yesterday’s rather down post things took something of an upturn in my life and I spent the remainder of the day with a smile on my face….Why? Ah…now that would be telling….But it’s good when things you thought had gone forever make a welcome reappearance in your life, and it’s only then perhaps that you realise just how much you missed them…..

Anyway, I went off last night and attended the launch of Patricia Debney’s novel, Losing You . Patricia read from the book and ended on a cliff-hanger, so of course we all bought copies in order to find out what happens next. Jo and Eve met for the first time and of course they got on really well so a girls’ night out is definitely in order in the near future!

This post is a bit of a mishmash of ideas, nothing fully explored or really explained. A bit like my current mental state….unexplored and unconsidered – despite my remarks above that I consider everything…Which I do, I just haven’t had time yet to think all the recent events through….

I was supposed to be going to another Speed Dating event next Tuesday, for the 30-40 age group, I’ve cancelled it. As amusing as they’ve been, as a chaperone, as a participant I felt uncomfortable and sadly I didn’t really enjoy the enforced conversation with people I wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise….hmmm, that sounds terrible, but I think what I’m saying is that I’d rather meet people who have something in common with me. Whether it’s a fellow writer, or a climber, or perhaps something a little more obscure, but someone with whom I have some common ground. The only thing I had in common with the men at the Speed Dating Event was that we were all in the same bar at the same time. I can do that any weekend and not have to pay for the benefit. Sadly it also had an air of desperation about it and I’m not in any way desperate…but I think many of the men were.

I guess getting out into the world again and regaining ones social life is no simple task when your life has altered so radically. And that thing of considering every conversation you have – maybe it holds you back, I don’t know, but I do constantly wonder about other people and why they act in certain ways….That’s not very clear, I know. I suppose what I’m getting at is that rightly or wrongly, and actually now thinking this through and writing it down I can see that I’m perhaps getting this wrong….Is that I constantly think – Why did they do that? Is it because they really like me or are they just using me? And I realise that some of my reaction is caused by an occasional dip in self-esteem (hard to believe of me, I know!) and what I should really do is to just accept things at face value – the easiest answer is often the correct one.


Sorry for the general crapness of this post – maybe I’m not entirely out of the low that I hit yesterday….