Priorities,

Christmas and family make you think about your priorities a lot, and with the new year looming people begin to think about New Year's Resolutions. 

I might have mentioned previously that I am taking part in Veganuary. I want to do it to prove to myself that I can, and to explore the different culinary options available. Part of the idea is going to be seeing if I can actually drop the amount of meat products I have in my diet as a long term plan, though the success of that is to be measured later. 

My other "resolution" is to aim, as thoroughly as humanly possible, at getting my own place. 

I don't do overly well living with other humans because I like things to be a certain way. I like to know that when I am planning, on the train home, to cook a meal in a certain way that the knives for cutting things and the board I like are there and ready to be used. I also like to know that no one has eaten any of my ingredients, though that has happened before now. 

As much as I remember the solitude which can be created, because I felt that plenty of times in my little studio flat, it can also be wonderful to be able to come home after a really shitty day and be able to shut the door on everything else. You can shut the door and leave it outside along with anyone that you don't want to invite to cross your threshold. There is a stability and a sense of home which I don't really get from living in a shared house. Granted, I'm going to have to deal with that in case of a significant other, or kids or whatever, but still, it would be nice to have some time and space to myself and it is something I can't wait to create. 

The idea of a home is something really important to me and a lot of the things which are left at my mother's house are actually things I want for my future flat. I would probably have chosen the wall colours by now if I didn't know that it was going to be at least a few years before I was actually able to put paint on my own walls. 

Ah well, onwards and upwards...

A Day Late and a Dollar Short,

My priorities recently have been very much about work (my job work, not novel work) and I have been quite comfortable with that. It hasn't been because I have fallen out of love with writing or that I have changed my mind about it being something I really want to do with my life, but because I know it can be all consuming.

The other issue is that what I have been writing is nothing in comparison to what I want to do. Don't get me wrong, I love a cheeky little romance novel, I love writing about human relationships, and I don't write anything just for the hell of it if I think it is going to be awful. 

Still, everything I have been writing has been very contained. It was something that I chose to do, and I have put several projects which I knew had the potential to get me away from that, but the problem has always been that there have been other things I needed to focus on, and so I did. I focused on other things. 

I keep hoping that something will feel like a pivotal moment, but it never really does feel like a fireworks moment until it is already nearly done with. Self publishing my first novel was thing long and arduous process and I nearly gave up a couple of times, but when the proof copy finally arrived through my front door I could barely contain the excitement. Until then, it was nothing but a concept, a virtual file made of key strokes and binary and computer nonsense, but then suddenly it was there in Amazon packaging, a physical thing made of paper and ink, all black and white and beautiful, having come off a printing press in America and then being shipped across the Atlantic to me. 

I know that there is only me that can make it happen again - I am well aware of that, but the last thing I want to do is to put something out into the world that is not a patch on Fairies. Maybe that is me being far too picky, but I would rather do that. 

I may also be off the blog next weekend, again due to work commitments, but I'll catch you later...