Second wind....well 42nd maybe

I've started writing content for a local not for profit community project - Newport City Radio. They do fantastic things as an interactive independent community radio broadcasting online. They also have a stonker of a website which gives volunteers a chance to blog about anything and everything.

I'm hoping that this is a new start, a bit of a catalyst to spur me on to writing regularly. When I have someone else to answer to maybe it will feel more pressing. I'm hoping to get my skills and my confidence back and start writing for myself again.

My first 'toe-dip' can be found here where I briefly speculate over what will happen in tonight's final episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones.

Ta peeps.

Barren Land

Yeah, That garden didn't grow so well did it...?

2 years nearly. 2 years of silence.
2 years of only ever typing 140 characters,
or emails,
or heated comments on Facebook to other heated individuals where neither party has any hope of changing the mind of the other yet they continue to waste time and energy finding grammar errors in order to detract from each others arguments and make someone feel somehow lesser.

2 years of losing myself. of forgetting myself. of existing. shell like.

I've really lost all sense of who I am.

Work has carried on; I got a new job after the threat of redundancy and I am enjoying the new challenges and the new things I'm learning. But I'm tired. 2 kids at home and a husband who works 70 miles away is really taking it's toll. I can't stop working, largely due to the monumental cock up that is our finances. I need to work. But in amongst juggling school drop-offs, nursery, food shopping, cleaning a perpetually dirty house and sleeping I need to find myself again. These things are necessary but I'm drowning.

So, different journey - same destination.
Writing is therapy.
So let's write.....

Planting some seeds......

Yet again...
Start small, plant seeds, grow trees....

Suddenly

Athena

I glanced up and you were just looking at me,
expectant and curious.
Your eyes darted from my lips to my nose, eye-brows,
followed a curve to the side and down my hair.
I realised that I am as much a mystery to you
as you are to me.
All that empty space where I thought the love should be
filled up.

Where's my Map?

Lost my way again.

Getting married and having a baby and moving house all in the space of a year has taken over my life, in a good way.
It's nice to have so many things over with in one go.
We can settle now and actually get on with living, growing, for a change.

I do feel I have lost something in gaining so much.
I think I lost it a while ago.

I've done several of these 'I'm going to get back into it' blog posts and then you haven't heard from me again for a long while. So I'm not sure if I should decide this time to be all determined and make rules for myself or be all casual and whsitle while sneaking past it in the hopes of tricking myself into writing again.

The latter seems to have been the method so far with little result..... so rules it is.

100 words a day.

Start small, plant seeds, grow trees.

Shuffle.... shuffle.... shuffle...

Over the past few days I have been reading through my past ramblings on blogs and I have realised:
a) How much I miss blogging.
b) How it keeps a record of things you had long forgotten.
c) How it changed the way I viewed the world around me.

I used to pay so much more attention to the things that were going on around me.
I don't anymore. I drag my heels through existance, lifting my head every now and then to acknowledge a passer by and then carry on staring at the floor as I shuffle along.

I'm at a point in my personal life where everything I ever wanted is coming true. We are married and I'm just over 6 months pregnant. I have never been this happy at home.

Work, on the other hand, is still a struggle. I still don't feel like I'm doing what I should be doing. I'm taking every opportunity I can to further myself and it still seems to be getting me nowhere. This job ends on the 30th June. My maternity kicks in before then which is wonderful. At least I can have 6 months free of worrying about finding work. I have no idea what I'm going to do come January. I never imagined as a teen, that after getting an education, that finding solid enjoyable work would be so hard. I feel like I've done so much for so little. I nearly killed myself trying to finish my PGCE when Dad was so ill, trying to hold down a job in Sainsbury's and teach. I've been hourly paid since then, scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get as much experience as I can. I feel like, two years later, I'm no closer to getting a perminant job than I was fresh out of Uni.

I'm contemplating a change. This seems to be a time of change. Why not go the whole hog.

The lid of life....

I have just read a very old post.... It read:


Today I licked the lid for the first time - purely on impulse. It was Cherry and fat free and oh so nice.
I've been very stressed about a presentation I have to give on wednesday about Celtic Myths and in that moment of cherry heaven I forgot about it.

Today I also planted a cherry tree in a pot and put it in a sunny sheltered place, I drank ooooodles of luchee juice and watched Heroes.
Today was a good day.

Why can't I have days like these anymore...... ?

Rightful place.

I decided to clean out the cupboard today
the one with the broken handle you never fixed.
The one you threw everything into - never to be seen again.
I grappled with the
spaghetti of indiscriminate wires,
pulled the useful from the now archaic.
I delved into the masses of papers that stuffed a corner
grabbing handfuls and rudely slapping them on the floor
and I saw you
staring up at me from childish eyes.
You looked elated
full of life.

I stuffed everything back in its rightful place
accept you,
you live here now – in my pocket
until further notice.

Spelling List Poem

I teach a Communications lesson on a Tuesday morning and I'm just putting together a spelling list from the students errors from last week.

I read it.

And then I Read it.

Spelling List

around

accident

coller (bone)

grateful

important

pieces

properly

turned

wasted

Amberleaf Angels

Amberleaf Angels

After TS Eliot

‘I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men’

They lean, quietly puffing,

on walls and fences

sporting pac-a-macs and flat caps.

I've seen the smoke that rises,

skims along the street on the light breeze.

It chokes and burns the throat

of the young girl at the bus stop

but the opaque clouds

of dirty lemon

hang and glide through the air

slow, free

and congregate outside the church

in an Amberleaf- Drum protest march

all the way down to the circle.

The girl splutters as it passes

and the haze disperses,
and a wisp of angels

rises into the ether.