lately

I haven't been that in to blogging, lately. I haven't really felt that much into anything at all.

But I thought I'd do a little re-cap. (Like this!)

Lately.

Wednesday afternoons, between 2 and 3pm, have been my constants. I get to place that big, barrow of worry somewhere tangible. And it's a little ropey, really; it's hurting a little more; frustrating patience I didn't believe I had. And sometimes it feels like it will take years--and sometimes it feels like that big, deep breath will clear it. But it's continuing. And throughout the rest of the week, I've been keeping my fingers crossed; hopeful that this might just be the week of progression.

Lately.

Peppermint hot chocolates are my guilty, guilty pleasures.

Lately.

I spend my reading time between Gothic horror novels and picture books. It's a questionable balance, I have to say.

Lately.

I've been listening to the She and Him Christmas album. But hearing anything faintly 'holiday' brings me to tears if I'm in a shop.

Lately.

My fears are developing; mutating; strengthening. And it's a little sad.

Lately.

It's been wintry, here. So I'm thankful for my duvet and my increasing collection of woolly sweaters.

Lately.

I've had a headache and a stomachache and a tiredness that I just can't seem to shake.

Lately.

I've been avoiding yoga and I shouldn't be. I take a vow to commit to it, next week. (Again).

Lately.

Family has been important and rallying. And I'm grateful--so very, very grateful--that my Dad was secure and safe because of it.

Lately.

There is so much on at the cinema that I just want to see. This week I hope to see The Future. (Quite an apt sentence, if ever I saw one).

What have you been up to, lately?

xx

this week

This past week has been difficult. (And to be honest, so, too, have its predecessors). I've been a little floored by anxiety and lethargy and a poor, poor diet. So now I'm a little sick. And a little tired. And facing the huge, huge mountain of the things I need to (essays, emails, yoga)--and the things I want to (baking, crafting, yoga)--do. I suppose that's simply what this time of year entails, right? (Belated) Fresher's flu and a little bit of stress?

But I'm promising myself that if I get those things done--primarily the necessary things--then I'll have a little reward come Monday. And my reward, this time of year, is a look forward to Christmas. And to a little Halloween party with my love.

The funny thing is--the lethargy and the numbness, aside--that I was really looking forward to heading to the library this morning. Forcing my mind into books and working on something--manipulating words and locating meaning. I guess I'm realising just how precious this time is; how these days of student life--of a beautiful, beautiful opportunity to learn and graze--are limited. Sadly so.

I'm hoping that one day soon I can coerce that appreciation into a way of negating the fear. Because it's paralysing, sometimes. And, all too often, it needs that little push of perspective.

In the mean-time this is, for the most part, what my weekend will look like.

And I'll be listening to this--largely as a pre-emptive step towards their Christmas album next week.

And--finally--I'll be crossing my fingers. Just because.

What are you doing, this weekend?

on catching up

I wrote this last night, awake into the small hours of the morning. I'm not sure how clear it is or what, really, I wanted it to frame. But it is written, and because I am intent on tracking this little life of mine, it is here.

So.

-

My Monday morning meetings are now my Wednesday afternoons. And they are exactly the same, but for the sideways step into the mid-week.

Counselling is a curious thing. A thing so unpredictable. Every week I find myself balled up with a flash of pre-emptive nerves: I am at a complete loss of what to say--of how and where and why I am to begin. But as soon as I step into that little rented office, there is a movement. A tumbling, somersaulting collapse of words I never dared to speak, and thoughts I never knew I had, and images I didn't know I visualised. And within an hour they become palpable; they are words spoken by myself, then reflected back, and they are--perhaps most importantly--to the conscience of another.

It is undoubtedly that reflection that I find the most helpful. Not just my own isolation of thought and feeling--but the retorts and the comments that they feed. I got lucky with Joan--so, extremely lucky. She is reflective and compassionate in the ways that I need--more than that, though, she is empathic. It seems a little silly, now, having spent a few months with her, but I never expected empathy--never expected someone to care as much, or as understandingly. And today of all days, I was blown away by that. Blown away by her intuition and her--I suppose her sense of nurturing. She is attune, now, to the way I speak and to noticing the precipice: that split-second moment before my cheeks dampen with a little too much emotive cause. What struck me today was this sense of intimacy--this knowledge that this woman knows more about me, now, than most people ever will. She sees more depth and expulsion of thought than I ever understand. It is bewildering, in some ways. Strange and confusing to know that I will one day walk out of her office and that distance that we first had will somehow resume. We will become strangers, again. It sounds strangely romantic, doesn't it? That if I hadn't slotted in that word--that ugly, stigmatic word: counselling--an understanding of this "intimacy" would connote another attachment--an entirely different connection. There is no resolution to me explaining this--not really. It is just an observation of this strangely disorientating process.

And as a process, it is halting. In July I felt a bigger kind of shift. A bigger, easier stretch where the patches of light reached, and the roots uplifted themselves--they grew. Now there is a much greater frustration. A kind of expectation that has been left to fall and really, it has crashed. But Joan reminds me every week that this is what the process is about. It is a kind of convolution: a rise followed by a fall. I haven't felt a rise in a while. But it will come. I know in my heart it will come--a small one, at first. It will become like an opened door that is left ajar, just a crack. And if I didn't believe this--and if I didn't want to welcome this with widely opened arms--I would not go every week. I would not filter up the labyrinthine steps or into the green-housed glass of an office Joan rents. I would not open my mouth to speak or accept tissues or leave, swallowing a breath.

So--and this is just to let you know--I'm ready for that gap. Ready to squint my eyes through the crack of the door and search some more. Ready to see what that little light illuminates, again.

on education and staying in it

Things feel a little different, this year. They feel much more poignant and appreciated--in many ways, much more settled and real.

This walk back into school--this metaphorical walk back into school--is important, and it'll take place next week. (We start late, here. So very, very late). It may very well be my last and that, that thought, is frightening. I don't want to leave education. I feel at my best here. I feel grounded and secure and focused. That back-to-school feeling, for me, is energising and invigorating. It makes me produce with a renewed mentality. It makes me soak up and savour detail. (So it is not a bad security at all.)

For a long, long time, I wanted to teach--and no, not just because it was a way to stay in this educational frame. It was all I really practised as a child. Standing in front of my mirror with a white-board marker, I'd write chunks of text on my reflection. My invisible, quiet class would listen--and sometimes, when they wouldn't, I would shout. This want carried on throughout high-school and college (though the physical practise of acting it out, did not) and, until my first few semesters were over, it was there. But then I realised that it was pretty much every student's response when asked what they wanted to do with an English degree. And it was an arbitrary response, at that. It was something they said to fill a gap in conversation and something they would no doubt pursue because they didn't quite know what they wanted to do. And so a faculty of lacklustre teachers begins. How does a generation teach a following generation without passion? (No, really, how does that work?). If I was to become a teacher, I would have passion. I already do in the conversations I propose with friends and family about just what this system needs. (It needs a lot). I want to teach. Some day, but not this day. Right now--this year and next and, probably, next--I do not want to go into that profession. I do not want to become part of a faculty that does not love its act. I don't know how the teachers that do--the teachers that really, really stimulate and inspire--do it. And for that, for every good teacher that there is, I have my admiration.

So for the last couple of months--perhaps a year--I have known this. And I have mulled it over again and again. I have looked at my career options and I have wondered just where this place I am meant to go, goes. The truth is--I don't have the answers. I don't know where, exactly, I am supposed to go next summer. Where, once this undergraduate degree has released me from its grasp, I turn for the next challenge and pursuit. I have my thoughts--my hopes--my wishes. But I cannot say them, out loud, without a nervousness.

But this year--and a year I count from September to the following September, so ingrained in me it is--there are a few things I want to work on. Like getting that degree--and safely. (There is a benchmark of numbers that I aim for: a framework; a border). Like finding a job and earning enough and stumbling across a space of my own--or rather: ours. A space to breathe and flex and stretch in our own way on our own time. Like falling in love with writing, again. Not the idea of it--not the theory or the planning or the thinking of it--but the doing. (That novel is still sitting on my desktop. It has a breath of potential, perhaps, but it needs flesh. A good meal and a good hydration of beauty). Like learning skills, transferable, life skills--but skills I do enjoy. (I want to make dresses--I want to learn how). Like learning a language--and practising it. Like deciding on whether or not an MA is possible, logistically. (And right now: right now the compulsion to do it is wild and fighting and strong).

So September means a little more to me, this year. And I am trying to relish every single one of its little falling leaves--the real ones and, I suppose, the ones of opportunity: the ones of thought.

insight

Yesterday I wallowed, a little--I felt a sadness creep up on me; then overwhelm. I was shocked and stunned and bewildered, really, by the expanse of time. How quickly and how resolutely this year seems to have paced on--how I've been unable to catch or savour it or, more than that, accomplish it. Because that's right: back in January, I had a list. A mental one, then an actual one that, by hand I had prepared. This, I vowed, was to be a big and important year.

So at first I wallowed about the things I haven't quite accomplished this year and then, the mechanics of my brain retreated; backwards. They chronicled the things I was meant to do years ago--or the ways I was meant to have changed: the independence and the courage and the the competence I was to have yielded. How these things were meant to prosper, most, as university grew and nurtured me. And then--then I remembered something, something Meg wrote, a--a small, (at the time) seemingly insignificant line about a music festival, and about the fact she was "doing what I couldn't have done a year ago". That's it, I thought, and it--everything, actually--suddenly, happily, had so much more significance.

It's about pace, isn't it? About what we can do when we can--when certain situations exert their power and what others take away. Perhaps I was too ambitious in my list of things--too confident in quick-fixes or the breadth of time and energy. But those things I've left out, thus far, I've filled with more. Not actions, so much, as thought.

I'm feeling what I couldn't have done a year ago.

And by that I mean that things--certain things, mostly talked about here, then here--are getting better. They are widening, a little, with the smallest of stretches. Yes, there is such a way to go--a colossal breadth of space of amble--but I'm feeling better--saner--more tuned in. So if I haven't crossed too many things off my list--I've started. That, right now (though, not always) speaks volumes--tomes, in fact.

I look to Meg, a lot, for insight and wisdom and, I suppose, methodologies on life. She is one of the wisest women I know (or feel I know) and she never, ever fails to surprise me with a new, challenging perspective. Yesterday, she posted about her own sadness in a beautifully raw and beautifully honest account, in the ways she, repeatedly, does best. Amongst it, though, was a vow to chronicle the things that lead her happiness. And again--again, I thought: that's it, that is exactly what I have needed to read. So I want to start doing the same--and where I already do, I want more of it. More of the things that raise smiles and lift eyes--more, especially, going into a time that might very well be my final year of school (in my favourite seasons possible).

So--today--happiness is this:

It's the concentration back to school brings, whatever age I reach; mugs of tea, minus the sugar; stormy weather and the music it creates; pomegranate, mango and strawberries in a savoury salad; and the urge I get, every so often, to load Diana with film.

I'm curious, now. What brings you happiness today?

*Please, please, please check out Meg's blog. You won't regret meeting her, or her beautiful, insightful prose.

little thoughts

The weather today spoke to me.

It told me to stay inside.

...

So I did.

And I read.

And I sewed.

And I exercised (badly*).

And then--then I thought and I thought and I thought.

And it's been a combination of contentment (did I mention I love autumn?) and absolute frustration (nothing to do with the weather).

Where has this year gone to, I ask?

*I'm trying Zumba. And, trust me and my uncoordinated limbs, there's a reason I'm doing it in private.

a little update on some things (the ongoing)

There's a certain path I must take to my Monday morning meetings: a concrete walkway suspended over a fading campus. And for the past seven weeks, I have noticed its symbolism: its hinted allusions to the way I see this process. It is the glimpse of the fear of falling--the risk and height and chance--the careful steps I need just in case I trip. Surrounding one side of this pathway is a (similarly) concrete wall. The bricks are thick and heavy, weighted by a greying shroud of cement. But within this very stiff enclosure--like this rigid, clouded judgement I have set myself--there are gaps and patches and tracts of light. It is only in this seven weeks that I have seen them--seen them and the beautiful view they allow of the lake and fields and geese below. Of the serenity and stillness and lushness of another, new perspective. Thus I think of my mind--of the way it is piecing together new associations, now. Of the little gaps in what has been perpetuating tension. I relish that. The new greens that come into view as summer progresses, just as I relish the new things I am doing, the new experiences I surround myself with. (And trust me, they sometimes feel so tiny but so minuscule all at the same time). Because with them there are these glorious, glorious branches of sunshine--of contentment--which rest a little easier on my stomach--and my head--and, oh!, my heart.

little boxes

I sometimes think I have a problem holding onto things. Lately I am battered by memories of things I just wish I had appreciated at the time. The typewriter my Dad gave me (which I traded in for a Word Processor--I wish I was kidding). The bicycle I never quite rode. The phone I have had for a few years and am now, so desperate, to trade up. I know my memories do not exist in these things. They do not exist in the plastic exteriors or in the little, tiny machines that turn them so seamlessly. Rather, these memories exist in my heart--a heart I will (hopefully) never (need to) trade in. But losing these things--well, it worries me. They act as staples to moments I will never get back.

And that, right there, is a pausing thought.

a two-week recap

My Monday morning meetings--you know, where I talk and talk and talk about these sorts of things--often feel a lot like this.

And as comforting and empathic and understanding as those rocks may be--they offer a lot of height to climb (and to fall from).

This week, though, felt better than the last. There were a few more realisations--and with them, a little progression. I am understanding, more and more, the cycle of my thoughts: the emotions I pin to words and the words I (often incorrectly) couple. It's a slow process but it is a process. It is not the stagnation I was once feeling. And that, right now, is enough for me.

(The image is a print found in this Etsy shop. I am increasingly fond of watercolours).

*The blog is looking a little altered today--and I do not think for the better. That love of mine is working on a new layout for me. It'll be here soon!

on honesty*

I am not too sure how to sum up today--not too sure how to phrase or frame myself, how to twist today's key in this closed lock. The debate of whether or not I should talk about it has been toyed with, mulled over, weighed up, but I vowed early on that this space, here, would be a place to mark the progression, flourish and beauty of life--my life. I can't help feeling that today was a point of the former, of progression and development and growth--even though my words for it aren't quite there yet.

Before, I have alluded frequently--perhaps a touch too frequently--to me being a bit of a worrier. People who know me away from this space--and, for that matter, from this computer-- know that about me. It's in my facial expression, my body language, my (somewhat) obsessive sarcasm. But they don't know the severity of it--the way my mind curls in and over on itself, the way worries and fears are stretched out into absolute "certainties"--and then the way these "certainties" play out their paralleled lives against my own reality. My mind has become a container for knots and ravels--but a container that is pressurised and forced. It spins these cycles--cycles that compromise the knots, then worsen them--every day, around the clock. And I suppose the worst thing--the thing that really, really gets me--is the irrationality. It is the way the fears don't make sense or add up, yet build with such conviction, arrogance and belief.

People worry. I get it--really, I do. But the last few months have illuminated (much more than I expected) the services of these worries. People worry about the things they need to--then discard the rest. And in that very act of discarding, of eradicating and throwing away, people do the things they want and behave in the ways most natural. They don't lose the things--time, relationships, happiness--that this mind, my mind, forces me to (and oh, "force" has never been more correctly used). I am a shell, now, and not so much a person--not so much a person committed to their hopes, though she has them, but one who buries any progress towards them: one who fears and dreads and twists the happiest event into a closure of claustrophobic anxiety. Realising these things was a turning point. A prominent and (often) unrelenting one. (And yet, still, one which required nudging--a fair, fair bit of nudging).

So today I walked up some concrete steps and I opened a door and I sat down in a seat that, before now, I didn't think was meant for me. And in the first few moments in which I was asked to explain, I did all I could: I cried. Then I let words replace feeling and courage replace fear--and my sentences--well, my sentences were correctly finished for me by someone I had never, ever met before. It lasted for thirty minutes--thirty minutes that had at first seemed monumental--but later, thirty minutes that paled in comparison to the fear--the length and breadth and depth of it. So for the next eight weeks I will sit back in that chair--or another one: nobody has quite decided yet--and I will talk and I will strategise and I will seek and seek and seek a little bit of solace--of the professional, and not personal, type. And maybe, just maybe, I'll talk about it here. My belief in shying away from it has ceased, you see. (That doesn't mean talking about it doesn't scare me a little--it does; very much so).

*There's so much more to express already--and more eloquently and more descriptively and more actively. Maybe it will come, maybe it will not. Right now, this is as honestly as I can put it. And whilst every word is absolute truth, I sure do feel the worrying thread of melodrama--of disbelief, perhaps, or the assumption that this is how others may view it.

for the week or so...

...I guess you could say I have few words, only crossed fingers and time with these.

They worked when I was a little girl--my hope is that they will again.

Please.

(Picture credit).

the next step---to the next stage

There's something in the air this week that is causing me, over and over again, to think about mortality. Perhaps it is my immersion in Shakespeare's voluminous texts---or perhaps, the (crossed-fingers) hope of a new job---or perhaps, the declining weeks of this year's academia. I'm not sure what it is---I'm not sure where it places me---but it's there, a pushing thought. I had a realisation, today, about all those hopes---you know, the things we hope one day to achieve and the people we hope one day to meet---either as fresh, new acquaintances or a reunion of souls. And I was thinking that as these things fall into place, as they get crossed off and cheered by a smile, that they're just another step. So what happens when those things start falling into place? When we start achieving what we have wanted to achieve---when we reach a certain stage of contentment---when we see that person we wished one day we would, just so we could reassure them, once, that things are okay? Does it mean the end is nigh---that they are just consolatory and preparatory moments?

It's a tilting question.

But the answer, too, is there. Because in that realisation, there is another, better realisation. There is the reminder that yes, everything is preparatory---for the next thing and for the thing after that---and that yes, everything is intended as an ascension to the field of the content. Because otherwise, why would we try? Why would we want those endeavours if they weren't, ultimately, for that happiness? But the biggest realisation is that those thoughts---those questions of doubt---are the wall that surrounds that happiness? Because they leave us feeling perpetually on edge, balancing a rope of life too lax above the ground. Because thoughts like that---well, thoughts like that don't allow us to be---or to enjoy or to savour. And with them, with them built up so tightly around our minds, we forget to live in the first place.

And I am trying, so hard, to teach myself this. I'm trying, so hard, to let those worries slide, melt and pool around my feet---and to not, absolutely not, carry them as a weight.

But it's a long, sporadic journey. I can tell you that.

monday madness---or is that sadness?

I'm feeling a little out of sorts, today. With worries for the week and for the future weeks and for not quite knowing what to do. But I am taking solace, again, in the little things---in the simple pleasures in this thing called life.

And right now---right this very moment---they are things like...

...seeing children picnic on the pavement (sun-hats and teddy bears galore)...

...bumping into an old (and very beautiful, and very talented) friend two days in a row...

...sunny days in the city---and then by the sea...

...walking in the country---with fields on every side...

...having both a wise head and young, youthful shoulders (or so I'm told)...

...mini movie-marathons...

...good hair-days, when those curls flick under the chin just so...

...surprising vintage purchases...

...and party planning, with all its possibilities...

And, well, right now that's it.

But I am keeping my fingers crossed---so very tightly, so very purposefully---for the next couple of weeks.

I hope you are having a nice start to the week!

dreaming to distraction

Today I am trying hard to let go of my fears---and it is funny that, isn't it? that following the day hailed to make us safer I am feeling just as unsettled and unnerved by the world around us. So attention has turned to the future---to the dreams I keep stacked up in my head and in my heart---to the visions of growth, prosperity and contentment. Yet I find in these things fears themselves: they are reminders of all that there is to be lost---reminders of lost loves and scattered dreams. I don't want to put too much faith in these things---too much love---(for fear and fear itself) but I don't want to stop feeling or living or being. That, I know, would be the greater destructor.

To dream, I think, might be the only answer.

(Picture source).

on fearing unexpectedly

Most of the time, the things I am the most scared of are the things I really, really want to do.

And for no real, tangible reason: I am really feeling that today.

repetition---and so it goes

I've said it before (and I say it a little too often)---but this over-spill from uni is really getting to me. Countless hours a day are spent not doing what I should be---instead dreaming about all the things I will do---all the things I will make and create and write about, all the places I will go and the things I will, hopefully, see. But dreaming about them means dreaming about the exams and the coursework and the preparation left to do. And then dreaming about that means dreaming about the former---a distraction of whimsy and of inspiration and of love. So it's a cycle, a cycle I am stuck in in the endless, summery days. A cycle that broke, last week, when I finally cleaned. (And wow, I spent hours re-living my childhood---pooling over the so-many trinkets I had stuffed away in drawers). But it's back again, drawing me in---worsened by a few nights' nightmares (and I mean of the running kind, you know, the ones when you try, so desperately, to make it away but find yourself stuck time and time again?) and a kind of ache.

But right now---right now as I apply for jobs and then look for more---I am going to try and get back into the mindset. The mindset that got me here, this far.

apathy?

There are a lot of things coming up that I need to do. Exams I need so desperately to prepare for; a living space I need to organise and tidy; jobs I need to search then apply for---and projects, projects I am just itching to start. (There is a lot on my list I want to accomplish over the summer---that list becomes more and more important every day).

I guess you could say I am feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. And that sense of being overwhelmed makes me a little lazy---mostly because I am a little too scared to start.

At the same time, I am doing things. I spent all of yesterday baking a few birthday treats for Arnold.

But it isn't enough. I need to work on those other things.

Maybe a cup of tea will help.

Maybe.

on planning

This week I feel a little overwhelmed about the lists of things I am making---the things I want someday to do but put off and off and off. Because when the time comes to actually do them, I have rendered them impossible: put too much hope into the wrong thing or simply doubted it too much. See, right now I am willing the end of term---willing the lines to be written for me and the few, final words listened to. But in a months' time I will wish it back again, wanting to be swept under a tide of prescribed reading and the growth of inspiration. It is an awkward place, this. This not quite knowing what you are doing or quite where you want to go---this not knowing who to ask for advice about the future, or which path you want to make the first tentative steps towards. There is some opportunity at every avenue---you can see that. Sometimes it is a lack of courage that pushes you towards one and pulls you from another---other times it is misplaced certainty where the passion ought to be.

Some days I want to teach---but most days, most days I really want to write (and bake---I have dreams for that one, too). It is getting there that is a little harder---and getting to any of it, I mean. Last week I attempted it---sent off for an opportunity that I tried so desperately to kid myself out of wanting, but I did, you know, I did---and it was to no avail. Maybe that is the reason for my crisis of confidence, this week. But d'you know what? I'll wait. I'll wait until I am thirsty for it again, and the opportunity is back---and then, then I'll keep on trying.

Because that's all anyone can do, isn't it?

we call it hope

I am trying, desperately, to get used to this thing called change---trying, desperately, to understand that a little change, in opportunities and habits and even, sometimes, in friends---might even be the better thing. So it might mean not seeing a good friend for a long time---or it might mean facing a fear. But throughout every change there is the same, vibrant strand running through, stitched so hard you can't quite pull it out---there is hope. These changes, every one of them, are all shrouded in it. And what is better than that? The understanding that these changes, these hopeful changes, all happen in the pursuit of something else---happiness.

summing up (how other people do)

I like quotations.

I like them a lot.

Especially when I come across one which is absolute perfection in summing up my thoughts on the stage I am at in life.

And Anais Nin has done it. (And one day I will read it contextually, not just find it online).

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

I guess you could say that this has been my story for the last six months or so. But I don't want it to be my story for the rest of my life---the one where I take the more painful risk; the one where I shelter or brace myself against the safety of only the things I know.

I am glad I have found the words for it---soon I will formulate them into my own.

Happy Saturday!