Use it or lose it. True. Wanted to check exactly when I first picked up the guitar (depressingly find it is a year ago) and could not access this account. Jumped on the password email account carousel, which is Google at its worst, in an abortive attempt to update old defunct email address and was denied denied denied. In a devil may care WTF attitude pipped the plogger icon and lo and behold, it opened.
So here I am in surroundings at once familiar and strange. Have often thought of returning to record random thoughts - like yesterday; walking Mikaela to the gate on our morning constitutional, gazing at the tree trunks, one with a spot just the right size for my bum at its base, and wondering when was the last time I just sat and looked. I miss that healing limbo of Not Doing Anything when in fact I am doing very much as my hard edges, my rational borders soften and I, in some small way, become a part of nature of which I am a part. Of which I am apart. For that's the illusion - that I am apart. Sitting and breathing and being restores a little reality to the unreality of life.
Other random thoughts - while I try not to dwell on the slow but steady disintegration of Richard's cognitive abilities - often it's pretty brutal. Today. Lunch. Him with fork tines turned down onto his stable table asking why it isn't running? 'What isn't running?' This, he says, stabbing the leaf pattern plastic top. A minute before he'd been trying to butter the screw top of the Season All jar. Yesterday afternoon, prior to our towing the wheelie bins to the curb (at least it's all downhill!), he talked about us dragging them up again. 'But they have to be emptied first,' I said. When that didn't make sense, explained in detail how the big trucks would come in the morning to empty the bins and we would pick them up again and put them in the truck after. Something we've been doing for 3 years. I've found soiled underwear hidden in empty drawers, soiled jeans under shelves and he has this thing about socks. Socks on the nightstand, socks on the fireplace, socks on the couch, socks multiplying like rabbits.
We go through periods where toileting issues are not an issue, then a long dismal run where they are. I am getting better at just getting through it and moving on. Sometimes it takes a herculearn effort to let it go when it seems so obvious (to me) that faeces should not be found on the shower wall or shower floor, the outside of the toilet, on hand towels, under nails, on door handles.
I briefly joined a FB group for dementia support but quickly unjoined. Too awful. A technicolour description of where we're headed. I've got enough on my plate now, thanks, without depressing myself further.
Beyond the practicalities of everyday, occasionally, seeing a photograph of Richard before I am overcome with sadness. One thing I did read on that support group, having to grieve for the loss of someone while they're still alive, or words to that effect. Too true.
Saw a woman in the checkout queque, snapping at her obviously demented husband because he was too slow and he didn't 'get it'. And I wanted to say to her, I understand but you must remember, he can't help it. Richard can't help it. Can do nothing about his confusion, his loss of words, his loss of meaning and meaningfulness. So I must help him as best I can; love him, slow down, be patient, support him. Two cards I've drawn have been of help. One said, Trust in the Path. Okay. I can Trust in the Path. The other said, ask and you shall receive. So I have asked for serenity. If I can remain serene - it's gravy! I have everything else. One of the luckiest most blessed people I know so just trust and get through each day with grace and love. That's all.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Post 49 of 92
Tried to be more open today. What I read in Maria Popova's blog was an excerpt from Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own. Milner spent 7 years experimenting with how to live. It became a search for an authentic life. We are so programmed to lead the lives required of us by others, including the ever pervasive media something Milner didn't have to contend with in the 1930's, that we lose sight of who and what we are.
What makes me happy?
I'm not sure. I think the first few steps out of the house in the afternoon or early morning when I leave the ceilings behind and come into (or out of) the great dome of sky. Before I start to think, when the infinity of space first collapses the boundaries, I am free of self. It might be for a nanosecond or long enough to take that obligatory deep clearing breath but it is there. Then I fetter myself small with thoughts and half tos and plans and all the chains which take me away from the infinite now.
I think that's when I'm happiest. Not attaining, not accumulating, not doing, just being.
So yoga class. Hard work. She's a good instructor. Knows her stuff. At first her continuous commenting annoyed me. Now I don't mind. She is sharing what she knows and if she doesn't know it, what she should know she shares. We're all on a journey of some sort or another. Noticed today she conducts most of the class with her eyes closed. I love that. At home I do most of my practice with closed eyes. Today she echoed what Milner wrote about, the opening up to the world, the being in the world, the happiness which comes from that.
There are other kinds of happiness, certainly. The giddy joy of falling in love, the quiet happiness of lives shared in complete trust, the happiness of danger averted (or sickness or loss, etc.). There is also the happiness of creating. Painting/drawing when the signposts are there and it is the bringing into being the complete pix within those hard fought parameters, being lost in that creation. That is also joyful.
And there's the happiness of gratitude. Gratitude which bubbles out from an excess of spirit. Not the gratitude of rote. I must be grateful for this and I must be grateful for that. It's a gratitude of excessive life energy or love.
What makes me happy?
I'm not sure. I think the first few steps out of the house in the afternoon or early morning when I leave the ceilings behind and come into (or out of) the great dome of sky. Before I start to think, when the infinity of space first collapses the boundaries, I am free of self. It might be for a nanosecond or long enough to take that obligatory deep clearing breath but it is there. Then I fetter myself small with thoughts and half tos and plans and all the chains which take me away from the infinite now.
I think that's when I'm happiest. Not attaining, not accumulating, not doing, just being.
So yoga class. Hard work. She's a good instructor. Knows her stuff. At first her continuous commenting annoyed me. Now I don't mind. She is sharing what she knows and if she doesn't know it, what she should know she shares. We're all on a journey of some sort or another. Noticed today she conducts most of the class with her eyes closed. I love that. At home I do most of my practice with closed eyes. Today she echoed what Milner wrote about, the opening up to the world, the being in the world, the happiness which comes from that.
There are other kinds of happiness, certainly. The giddy joy of falling in love, the quiet happiness of lives shared in complete trust, the happiness of danger averted (or sickness or loss, etc.). There is also the happiness of creating. Painting/drawing when the signposts are there and it is the bringing into being the complete pix within those hard fought parameters, being lost in that creation. That is also joyful.
And there's the happiness of gratitude. Gratitude which bubbles out from an excess of spirit. Not the gratitude of rote. I must be grateful for this and I must be grateful for that. It's a gratitude of excessive life energy or love.
Monday, April 8, 2019
Post 48 of 92
There were purple bruises under my eyes this morning. I looked at them with not quite dispassionate interest. I used to look at others with dark circles and feel a fleeting sympathy. How awful, I thought in my youthful arrogance, not to be able to sleep well. Now I know. Strangely, unless it is a night with only 2 or 3 hours sleep, I seem to function all right. Perhaps the dragging sensation of a loss of energy is too familiar now to be noticed.
The strange sensations experienced during the night is part of a whole other world, another existence of which I am now too aware. I would have sworn one of the cats had scratched the inside of my left arm midway between wrist and elbow. It burned and stung for hours. I looked for the telltale marks in the dawn light. My skin was unmarked. How odd.
I used to never notice my hair, past shoulder length, getting tangled around my neck in the night. Now I understand why long haired women pile their hair in a top-of-the-skull ponytail. I seem to spend half the night unwrapping hair, lifting hair, rearranging hair.
I listen to Richard's breathing, his snoring, his conversations, his occasional shouts and laughter. I don't wake him unless he gets too exuberant and talks too loudly for too long. Odd that the soft Parkinson's voice he has during waking hours gives way to his normal speaking voice at night.
The cats are either good company or pains in the arses. Natalia, the tiger cat with the hair trigger purr, is my boon companion. She doesn't seem to mind my constant changes of position, my kicking legs, my pillow gymnastics. She rides the blanket waves with a constant purr and allows my draping hand to find comfort in the softness of her fur. She often rubs my fingers with her whisker pads, over and over again. If I pet her back, knowing just the right places to massage or knuckle rub, she gets overexcited and bites me. It is a sign of affection and a small price to pay for her company.
So, Monday afternoon. Before me are the should do's, a list of cleaning, gardening and vehicle jobs to make even the most assiduous chatelaine depressed. So I don't do them. I'm a piecemeal cleaner. Save for the morning blitz; vacuuming (3 cats, a dog and 2 humans in one house, we'd drown in hair if I didn't), kitty boxes, bed making, laundry doing or folding, I don't do much in the way of projects anymore. I clean one window, vacuum one car, weed one section of a garden, tidy up one corner. One little bit at a time does, barely, keep total chaos at bay.
This is the new reality. Richard tries to help, wants to help but usually makes a project more complicated and more time consuming than it would be if he didn't. He washed dishes without water the other night. I feel like an overzealous employer having to double check his work. The work ethic is still there, the work know how has long fled.
It's a big change for me, Miss Anal Retentive, Everything Has to be Perfectly In Order. Now I know time is worth more than having a super clean house. If I want to write, yoga and learn guitar than I have to forego Miss House Perfect.
So far so good. As time goes on and Richard requires more than...well, we'll see. People say there's home help for bathing and feeding. God damn it.
The strange sensations experienced during the night is part of a whole other world, another existence of which I am now too aware. I would have sworn one of the cats had scratched the inside of my left arm midway between wrist and elbow. It burned and stung for hours. I looked for the telltale marks in the dawn light. My skin was unmarked. How odd.
I used to never notice my hair, past shoulder length, getting tangled around my neck in the night. Now I understand why long haired women pile their hair in a top-of-the-skull ponytail. I seem to spend half the night unwrapping hair, lifting hair, rearranging hair.
I listen to Richard's breathing, his snoring, his conversations, his occasional shouts and laughter. I don't wake him unless he gets too exuberant and talks too loudly for too long. Odd that the soft Parkinson's voice he has during waking hours gives way to his normal speaking voice at night.
The cats are either good company or pains in the arses. Natalia, the tiger cat with the hair trigger purr, is my boon companion. She doesn't seem to mind my constant changes of position, my kicking legs, my pillow gymnastics. She rides the blanket waves with a constant purr and allows my draping hand to find comfort in the softness of her fur. She often rubs my fingers with her whisker pads, over and over again. If I pet her back, knowing just the right places to massage or knuckle rub, she gets overexcited and bites me. It is a sign of affection and a small price to pay for her company.
So, Monday afternoon. Before me are the should do's, a list of cleaning, gardening and vehicle jobs to make even the most assiduous chatelaine depressed. So I don't do them. I'm a piecemeal cleaner. Save for the morning blitz; vacuuming (3 cats, a dog and 2 humans in one house, we'd drown in hair if I didn't), kitty boxes, bed making, laundry doing or folding, I don't do much in the way of projects anymore. I clean one window, vacuum one car, weed one section of a garden, tidy up one corner. One little bit at a time does, barely, keep total chaos at bay.
This is the new reality. Richard tries to help, wants to help but usually makes a project more complicated and more time consuming than it would be if he didn't. He washed dishes without water the other night. I feel like an overzealous employer having to double check his work. The work ethic is still there, the work know how has long fled.
It's a big change for me, Miss Anal Retentive, Everything Has to be Perfectly In Order. Now I know time is worth more than having a super clean house. If I want to write, yoga and learn guitar than I have to forego Miss House Perfect.
So far so good. As time goes on and Richard requires more than...well, we'll see. People say there's home help for bathing and feeding. God damn it.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Post 47 of 92
Sky is just beginning to lighten. It's not that early but we're still on daylight saving which makes 6:30 look like 4:30. There's a push to change back March 1 rather than Easter. I heartily agree.
Have been writing and painting and reading and practicing guitar and yoga-ing in addition to the usual stuff. Had a pretty bad day last week. Not sleeping, overly sensitive, depressed but other thatnthat 2 day blip I'm staying afloat pretty well. What else is there to do? The deterioration in Richard seems to be more pronounced or happening faster than before. He was doing the dishes (I cook, he washes up) without water in the sink. His verbal skills often fail and we spend more time than usual uncovering what he wants to say. Sometimes he can just show me. Have made a dentist appointment for next week as his teeth are in a dire need of a clean. He brushes them twice a day but I didn't know he wasn't brushing them well. The Parkinsons interferes with manual dexterity so that he isn't getting the brush around his teeth as he should. Which accounts for his terrible breath. Maybe that will help. That and getting him on an electric toothbrush.
Dental hygiene isn't the sort of thing I considered would be an issue.
But we're ok.
Was pushed and cajoled and asked to apply for Art Post Uki, which I did - and was knocked back. S in a terrible position as she had to tell me when she was the one who nagged, and I mean nagged, in the nicest sort of way, to apply. Now I have been asked to re-apply. But I won't. All my adult life I have sketched and drawn for my own pleasure. Last year I sold a few pieces, before that I'd given some away, bartered some, had one in a raffle - but there was never any pressure to please any one other than myself. So I was happy. Of course some days (many days) I couldn't draw worth crap or was bereft of ideas or just generally uninspired, so although I could be frustrated about my work, I was never sad. Creating art never made me sad.
When I was refused I was sad. Thin skinned, ego deflated, too proud, yes all those things but also really sad. Someone had a say about my work that meant something. One auditor liked it, another didn't (awkward composition, doesn't know anatomy). I've always created stuff for me. If another liked it, or loved it, wonderful, but it was always for me. Now I'd let someone else's opinion matter.
So I've made a decision. No more. I'll show in the locals, I've got 2 in a raffle next month, but I will never put myself in a position where I'm chasing 'success'. I was told if I had a 'theme' or made this item my signature in every work or told a story.... This is a different version but the same thing Mal Camin said to me 40 years ago, 'if you change your colour palette your work will sell' and he'd sold out to Worth Avenue and Martha's Vineyard to do family portraits of the wealthy. He was a talented artist but he was sad.
Have been writing and painting and reading and practicing guitar and yoga-ing in addition to the usual stuff. Had a pretty bad day last week. Not sleeping, overly sensitive, depressed but other thatnthat 2 day blip I'm staying afloat pretty well. What else is there to do? The deterioration in Richard seems to be more pronounced or happening faster than before. He was doing the dishes (I cook, he washes up) without water in the sink. His verbal skills often fail and we spend more time than usual uncovering what he wants to say. Sometimes he can just show me. Have made a dentist appointment for next week as his teeth are in a dire need of a clean. He brushes them twice a day but I didn't know he wasn't brushing them well. The Parkinsons interferes with manual dexterity so that he isn't getting the brush around his teeth as he should. Which accounts for his terrible breath. Maybe that will help. That and getting him on an electric toothbrush.
Dental hygiene isn't the sort of thing I considered would be an issue.
But we're ok.
Was pushed and cajoled and asked to apply for Art Post Uki, which I did - and was knocked back. S in a terrible position as she had to tell me when she was the one who nagged, and I mean nagged, in the nicest sort of way, to apply. Now I have been asked to re-apply. But I won't. All my adult life I have sketched and drawn for my own pleasure. Last year I sold a few pieces, before that I'd given some away, bartered some, had one in a raffle - but there was never any pressure to please any one other than myself. So I was happy. Of course some days (many days) I couldn't draw worth crap or was bereft of ideas or just generally uninspired, so although I could be frustrated about my work, I was never sad. Creating art never made me sad.
When I was refused I was sad. Thin skinned, ego deflated, too proud, yes all those things but also really sad. Someone had a say about my work that meant something. One auditor liked it, another didn't (awkward composition, doesn't know anatomy). I've always created stuff for me. If another liked it, or loved it, wonderful, but it was always for me. Now I'd let someone else's opinion matter.
So I've made a decision. No more. I'll show in the locals, I've got 2 in a raffle next month, but I will never put myself in a position where I'm chasing 'success'. I was told if I had a 'theme' or made this item my signature in every work or told a story.... This is a different version but the same thing Mal Camin said to me 40 years ago, 'if you change your colour palette your work will sell' and he'd sold out to Worth Avenue and Martha's Vineyard to do family portraits of the wealthy. He was a talented artist but he was sad.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Post 46 of 92
Strange lights in the sky that weren't fireworks.
I took Mikaela out for her piddle break last night at 11:30. The sky was clear and cloudless. Stars bright all the way to the horizon. While she was doing her business I saw a flash with my peripheral vision, rather like weak heat lightning. I looked up and saw thin illuminated cloud like shapes: round, oval, losenge - traversing the night sky. The 'clouds' came from the north. They sailed or jiggled, hovered, swung side to side or wobbled then disappeared to be replaced by another. Mostly they were visible one at a time but sometimes there were two, one 'coming' one 'leaving'. They didn't seem to move in a 'natural' way which made me think a new gadget has been invented which makes shapes in a clear night sky. And that was another odd thing. If there had been clouds then the explanation would be that lights were being reflected off the bottom of them - but there were no clouds. The illuminated clouds appeared then disappeared seemingly from thin air.
The only other explanation I can think of is that through some weird atmospheric refraction these were reflections of fireworks going off - before midnight - somewhere else. Except. Fireworks tend to shoot up and then dissolve slowly downwards. These clouds - translucent, not opaque, defined but fuzzy around the edges, sometimes striated along their length - did not move consistently in one direction.
I took Mikaela out for her piddle break last night at 11:30. The sky was clear and cloudless. Stars bright all the way to the horizon. While she was doing her business I saw a flash with my peripheral vision, rather like weak heat lightning. I looked up and saw thin illuminated cloud like shapes: round, oval, losenge - traversing the night sky. The 'clouds' came from the north. They sailed or jiggled, hovered, swung side to side or wobbled then disappeared to be replaced by another. Mostly they were visible one at a time but sometimes there were two, one 'coming' one 'leaving'. They didn't seem to move in a 'natural' way which made me think a new gadget has been invented which makes shapes in a clear night sky. And that was another odd thing. If there had been clouds then the explanation would be that lights were being reflected off the bottom of them - but there were no clouds. The illuminated clouds appeared then disappeared seemingly from thin air.
The only other explanation I can think of is that through some weird atmospheric refraction these were reflections of fireworks going off - before midnight - somewhere else. Except. Fireworks tend to shoot up and then dissolve slowly downwards. These clouds - translucent, not opaque, defined but fuzzy around the edges, sometimes striated along their length - did not move consistently in one direction.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Post 45 of 92
Have just found a way to back up the work. I'm not motivated or switched on enough to truly get the hang of computers. And I have a short fuse. So it's only taken about a two weeks to find a writing software that I like and can actually use and another week to find a way to back up the writing - not trusting that computers won't crash at some point - as they have in the past.
Bought a USB thingy and can't figure out how to use it - every file on my computer already seems to be there which is unhelpful because I can never find what I'm looking for amongst all these random files. Often I try and look at a file which has a name which is redundant and there's nothing there. Or it won't open. Other files I don't dare delete because no doubt they are necessary to the smooth running of the computer. Makes me crazy as it's like having a desk piled chin high with scraps of paper. I'm one of those anal retentive types that has to have a clean workspace to get anything done.
And it all gives me the shits really. I would rather just do what I want to do, look at some sites, write and read emails and not spend hours cracking on with stuff I don't give a fig about.
So I've started another blog and each blog will be a chapter. Simple really. Couldn't figure out how to start another separate blog on this site so have found another free blogging site and downloaded that. Have all this stuff on the blog I don't need and can't seem to get rid of but that's okay. Seems I do have to publish, ie make public, in order for the work to be saved but as the blog is not being promoted in any way I very much doubt, with all the millions of blogs out there, that anyone will stumble upon mine. Even if they did, why steal the work? To be tempted to steal something that something has to have value and this is a first draft of something that I would like to make good but surely isn't now - nor may it ever be.
So it's a bit of a celebration.
I am putting off doing anything of note because ABC Classical is on with the harpist, Marshall Maguire ( http://www.marshallmcguire.com/about ). The guitar is fun and frustrating and quite beautiful but truly my first love has always been and will ever be, The Harp.
Today has been a good day. I climbed WAY up on the roof, happily not a steep pitched roof like our former house, to saw off overhanging branches. As the house is built atop a hill with cantilevered decks overhanging the side, I was quite a way up. I wasn't 'pulled' downward by looking down but I sure did plant my foot while sawing away. Especially while pruning the last branch which was quite heavy. Didn't want to let them drop onto the steep ground below as they would be difficult to retrieve - and I wanted to save them for the birds who get so few branches now. But I really didn't want to be pulled over the edge by trying to hang on to them either.
Have also attached more thick styrofoam panels to the aviaries. The difference between bare metal exposed to the sun and the insulated metal is profound. Nearly burned my hand on the bare metal - and of course the birds are feeling that radiated heat. But the insulated metal, although not cool to the touch, was barely warm. Have more to do but not much more gluing, mostly painting although there are still some narrow strips needing styrofoam. Although the current colour of penis pink is not attractive (that's the colour you get when mixing together all the free leftover paint given by a friend) it is much neater than the brothel mess of fraying carpet attached to shiny insulation paper. The last of that has gone in the bin.
Looked up when R was first diagnosed with Parkinsons. May 22, 2013. The Parkinsons hasn't progressed all that much in 5 1/2 years. The dementia has. Know it pains him that I am on the roof sawing off branches, that I am the one that manhandles the extension ladder into place, that I am the one that does the measuring and cutting of the styrofoam (not that I did a stellar job there!). His ability to communicate his thoughts grows more difficult. Words are being taken away from him. Oh, he still has words just not the right words. Sometimes we are truly at a loss. Mostly I can guess what he's trying to say but sometimes not...frustrating for both of us. I prattle on about things but have accepted that a) he mostly doesn't hear me (I no longer nag about the hearing aids) and b) even if he does hear me, he doesn't understand. But I have to talk still. Maybe that's why I've started writing a book.
Bought a USB thingy and can't figure out how to use it - every file on my computer already seems to be there which is unhelpful because I can never find what I'm looking for amongst all these random files. Often I try and look at a file which has a name which is redundant and there's nothing there. Or it won't open. Other files I don't dare delete because no doubt they are necessary to the smooth running of the computer. Makes me crazy as it's like having a desk piled chin high with scraps of paper. I'm one of those anal retentive types that has to have a clean workspace to get anything done.
And it all gives me the shits really. I would rather just do what I want to do, look at some sites, write and read emails and not spend hours cracking on with stuff I don't give a fig about.
So I've started another blog and each blog will be a chapter. Simple really. Couldn't figure out how to start another separate blog on this site so have found another free blogging site and downloaded that. Have all this stuff on the blog I don't need and can't seem to get rid of but that's okay. Seems I do have to publish, ie make public, in order for the work to be saved but as the blog is not being promoted in any way I very much doubt, with all the millions of blogs out there, that anyone will stumble upon mine. Even if they did, why steal the work? To be tempted to steal something that something has to have value and this is a first draft of something that I would like to make good but surely isn't now - nor may it ever be.
So it's a bit of a celebration.
I am putting off doing anything of note because ABC Classical is on with the harpist, Marshall Maguire ( http://www.marshallmcguire.com/about ). The guitar is fun and frustrating and quite beautiful but truly my first love has always been and will ever be, The Harp.
Today has been a good day. I climbed WAY up on the roof, happily not a steep pitched roof like our former house, to saw off overhanging branches. As the house is built atop a hill with cantilevered decks overhanging the side, I was quite a way up. I wasn't 'pulled' downward by looking down but I sure did plant my foot while sawing away. Especially while pruning the last branch which was quite heavy. Didn't want to let them drop onto the steep ground below as they would be difficult to retrieve - and I wanted to save them for the birds who get so few branches now. But I really didn't want to be pulled over the edge by trying to hang on to them either.
Have also attached more thick styrofoam panels to the aviaries. The difference between bare metal exposed to the sun and the insulated metal is profound. Nearly burned my hand on the bare metal - and of course the birds are feeling that radiated heat. But the insulated metal, although not cool to the touch, was barely warm. Have more to do but not much more gluing, mostly painting although there are still some narrow strips needing styrofoam. Although the current colour of penis pink is not attractive (that's the colour you get when mixing together all the free leftover paint given by a friend) it is much neater than the brothel mess of fraying carpet attached to shiny insulation paper. The last of that has gone in the bin.
Looked up when R was first diagnosed with Parkinsons. May 22, 2013. The Parkinsons hasn't progressed all that much in 5 1/2 years. The dementia has. Know it pains him that I am on the roof sawing off branches, that I am the one that manhandles the extension ladder into place, that I am the one that does the measuring and cutting of the styrofoam (not that I did a stellar job there!). His ability to communicate his thoughts grows more difficult. Words are being taken away from him. Oh, he still has words just not the right words. Sometimes we are truly at a loss. Mostly I can guess what he's trying to say but sometimes not...frustrating for both of us. I prattle on about things but have accepted that a) he mostly doesn't hear me (I no longer nag about the hearing aids) and b) even if he does hear me, he doesn't understand. But I have to talk still. Maybe that's why I've started writing a book.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Post 44 of 92
What's changed? It seems I'm having another crack at writing a book. That writers group has tickled something into life again. I used to want to be a writer and for years I wrote and wrote and wrote so that it was as much a part of me as breathing - but always, save for the two book attempts, only and forever journaling. Keeping a daily journal kept me sane at times when I made a lot of bad choices. Not sure how I would've coped if I hadn't been writing things out every day.
As for writing? When I was with the writer, that particularly disastrous relationship, I tried to write for publication. Old dried stick writing. Bloody awful. Yet my love for making things that weren't there before never died - still do that with art but writing? I'm not original or intelligent enough to do more than cover the same ground, awkwardly, that others have done. I used to be able to think about things more deeply than I do now. I don't read my old journals for that reason (and for the fact that they stink like mildew -shut away in that trunk as they are).
Yet here I am again several thousand words into another world that started with the words, 'the buildings were tall'. Not a very prepossessing phrase to start a book with but there you go.
Have spent an inordinate amount of time trying and discarding writing software. Notepad doesn't cut it. Used yWriter before and remember why I hated it. After trying it again thought I might check out the reviews. One reviewer called it 'intutive'. His intuition must be very well developed! Write Monkey was another that I used before. Know I'm not IT savvy but surely directions followed should elicit a successful outcome. Used Office Libre for awhile but it's really not for novels. Discovered I couldn't (easily) find a way to start another chapter which started me on the quest for the near perfect FREE writing software.
Now have Freewriter and save for a couple of niggly bits it works well. It's straightforward and not too weighed down with, for me, unnecessary bells and whistles. Now if I can only get the backing up onto USB sticks sorted. Keep getting error messages. Have bought a brand new one today so here's hoping. Having lost one and a half books to dead and dying computers I am a Backing Up Convert.
Making no promises to myself about the book. If I don't finish it, fine. If I do, wonderful!
Realize part of this is trying to make a life for myself for the future when I won't have the freedoms I enjoy now. There will come a time when zipping around the place like I do today won't be possible. I don't give the job Full Time Carer as much thought as perhaps I should. I'm too busy and it will come soon enough. Bugger.
As for writing? When I was with the writer, that particularly disastrous relationship, I tried to write for publication. Old dried stick writing. Bloody awful. Yet my love for making things that weren't there before never died - still do that with art but writing? I'm not original or intelligent enough to do more than cover the same ground, awkwardly, that others have done. I used to be able to think about things more deeply than I do now. I don't read my old journals for that reason (and for the fact that they stink like mildew -shut away in that trunk as they are).
Yet here I am again several thousand words into another world that started with the words, 'the buildings were tall'. Not a very prepossessing phrase to start a book with but there you go.
Have spent an inordinate amount of time trying and discarding writing software. Notepad doesn't cut it. Used yWriter before and remember why I hated it. After trying it again thought I might check out the reviews. One reviewer called it 'intutive'. His intuition must be very well developed! Write Monkey was another that I used before. Know I'm not IT savvy but surely directions followed should elicit a successful outcome. Used Office Libre for awhile but it's really not for novels. Discovered I couldn't (easily) find a way to start another chapter which started me on the quest for the near perfect FREE writing software.
Now have Freewriter and save for a couple of niggly bits it works well. It's straightforward and not too weighed down with, for me, unnecessary bells and whistles. Now if I can only get the backing up onto USB sticks sorted. Keep getting error messages. Have bought a brand new one today so here's hoping. Having lost one and a half books to dead and dying computers I am a Backing Up Convert.
Making no promises to myself about the book. If I don't finish it, fine. If I do, wonderful!
Realize part of this is trying to make a life for myself for the future when I won't have the freedoms I enjoy now. There will come a time when zipping around the place like I do today won't be possible. I don't give the job Full Time Carer as much thought as perhaps I should. I'm too busy and it will come soon enough. Bugger.
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