I looked at my blog today, as I often do, to see if anyone had commented on anything (sad, I know and not the sort of thing you are supposed to admit to, but I'm sure everyone does it) and I realised it had been a week since I last blogged. I mean, usually I would think, gosh it has been ages, but this time it feels like ages and it has only been a week.
Odd, how our perceptions of time shift according to what we are engaged in. I usually find that if I am busy, time flies. In fact, it seems to fly by most of the time these days. But sometimes something catches me by surprise, and my perception of the time since I last blogged was way way out. Oh well. Probably I was half asleep when I wrote the last entry, then forgot I had done it.
Anyway, the school hols are now more than half done, which is sad, because I love them. Toddler so appreciates having his brother and sisters around all the time. Although he is still hard work, I can fob him off on them occasionally, and when it works, and they all play nicely together, it is lovely. He has been pairing up with his brother recently. At three years younger he is been beneath his brother's notice for a long time, but now Toddler's getting older they are beginning to realise they like doing stuff together. Annoyingly, it is really loud and silly stuff, but it's so good to see them both having so much fun that I don't mind. It drives their sisters crazy though - today, for example, when the boys were wrapping themselves up in my exercise mat together and jumping off the sofa the girls were so worried that they would get hurt that they kept yelling and yelling at them to stop. Which made it even more exciting and fun for the boys. Obviously.
This morning I felt really peaceful and relaxed, which was weird, because I was in the middle of one of those children's adventure places which I usually find really stressful. I felt so placid, as though I was just sailing through life. It was wonderful. It lasted all through the afternoon, until it was time to cook the dinner and make phone calls and loads of other jobs that suddenly needed doing all at once. Then it gradually dissipated. But it was such a great feeling of well-being - I so wish I could be like that all the time. So I am chasing that sense of calm now, trying to work out where it came from and how to maintain it.
I have pinned it down to the completion of a poetry book, or pamphlet really, the accumulation of ten years of writing poetry. I have probably written about a hundred poems in that time, but decided only to print sixteen of them, because the others are nowhere near good enough for publication. I am not even sure if the sixteen I have chosen are good enough, but I am hoping for the best. I am going to self-publish. The pamphlet has been formatted. Last night I sent off an enquiry (well, hubby did on my behalf) to some printers about specificatons, prices and so on. I have the application forms for the ISBN numbers.
So I am nearly there. And it feels like quite a significant step, because even though the poems were written over years and years, and there aren't many of them to show for all those years of work, it is still something. And more importantly, it leaves the way clear to continue - I have accomplished that, so on to the next piece of writing, whether it is another volume of poetry or a book of short stories, or essays or whatever.
I guess that is why I felt on top of the world this morning. So, the next step is the memoir. Again, most of the work is done already - I just have to change the background of the book, to make myself unidentifiable, because I have worked out that the only way I can do this is anonymously. I will have the ISBNs and the printer set up for the poetry book within the next couple of weeks, so I should be ready to publish the memoir quite soon after that.
Wish me luck!
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