Antisocial Media,

 Truth time: I don't remember if I wrote about why I turned my Instagram private, so I'm going to do that here and if I'm repeating myself, well shit, it happens and I'm sure we can all get over it. 

As a volunteer with [I'm not actually going to put the name of the organisation because they would not thank me for swearing] I work with youngsters and the age range we as an organisation work with is vast. I haven't worked across the full span of the age range, but I'm only short by two years and that's youngsters so small I'm not sure I wouldn't trip over them. As these lovely young people grow up, they get social media accounts and they sometimes like to find stuff out about the people they interact with - it's fine, we all do it - but there are photos on my Instagram of university nights out, utter rubbish I posted years ago and never deleted because who scrolls back that far anyway (trust me, they do) and there are photos of me at Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is a photo I'm proud of, do not get me wrong, but it's not something I would share with them, it's not an outfit I would even consider wearing around them and the God's honest truth is I forgot it was there until someone said, oh, they found your Instagram and were sharing screenshots between themselves of different photos on there. And it was like alarm bells going off in my head, and the only thing I could think to do was shut it straight onto private mode. 

In some ways, getting rid of my public profile of Instagram was actually really positive, because I didn't feel the need to post on there, and I wasn't concerned about the idea of 'if you want to be a writer you're going to have to get better at promoting your own books' and I didn't have to think about content production or all of those things that I was starting to think, hey, if you actually want to do this writing thing as more than just a venting to yourself thing, or just a written version of a Sims game, effectively, you're going to have to get better (not even better, get less shit at) using social media. I know the theory of it, but I'm not good at consistency, I don't want to spend hours on it because it's not the bit I'm good at or that I like doing and honestly, although I knew it was going to affect things like readership to the blog I had already kind of fallen out with writing and started the mental health episode that I had (though it was only bubbling under the surface at that stage). 

At present, I have a Facebook page I rarely use, I use my Twitter (and hate it), glance at my Blue Sky (not yet loving it) and that's about it. I had to learn how to embed links into stories on Facebook - post it from Instagram - so that I could get the blog out to my friends lists and hope that made some impact (and it clearly worked, though I'm sure the Google Analytics for the blog are broken given that it recorded a ludicrous number of views from Singapore over a few days this year (though having looked at it, I originally thought it was 2 days, and then it turned out it was over quite a few more days than that, so who knows?) I'm not necessarily thinking I want to try and build the readership of this blog massively, because that would be insane pressure to actually consistently write something worth reading, but I know I will have to go back to having more of a public social media presence, however uncomfortable that might feel, if I'm going to think about publishing anything this year, and I would like that to be the plan, but will have to see how I get on. 

I go through fits and starts of using stories, but I think they're going to have to be a bit more of a feature of my life so that I can actually put the links to these blogs out, and then hopefully, eventually, announce a date for the Fairies sequel and a couple of other things I have been working on, but I will be honest, it's doubtful if either of them will make an appearance this year, let alone both. 

Reasons I Don't Want To Write During Lockdown

 There have been a few reasons why I haven't wanted to write during the current UK lockdown and surprisingly one of them has actually been a lack of time. Juggling life (or dealing with the lack of one), work and assistance of other people as well as socialising with the family I live with and a few other things, it's somehow felt busy despite not actually knowing what I have been doing for the past year, but it's not even that which is currently making me not want to write. Currently, it's my completely scrambled vocabulary. 

I occasionally, in the non-COVID affected normality, make some great gaffs where I use a word and then either think it was the wrong one or completely forget the meaning of the word I just used. I thought it was mainly when I was speaking, but no, it happens regularly when I'm typing as well. Previously they were an odd but amusing occurrence and they were, probably at most, weekly. These days, it is not even weekly, but hourly that I completely lose the word I am trying to get to and can't recall it, or my mind is reaching to recall a word and it kind of does a Groot from the second movie; if it's in the vague vicinity, we'll give it a shot. No prizes for guessing what the last word in that sentence turned into, though I think that was just a bog standard typo.

An example of what I mean was the quiz I was a part of this evening. The answer was wrong anyway (it was actually Pulp Fiction) but I was trying to think of the name of the film Reservoir Dogs, but what my brain spat at me was Riverside Dogs. It's close. It is body of water-related, has similar letters and is a similar length, but no, the film is not called Riverside Dogs (especially not because we were talking about Pulp Fiction, but even if it was Reservoir Dogs...) 

With this happening a lot, I'm assuming it's because my brain is under stress. There's a global pandemic going on; stress feels like an appropriate response. I have a few 'life goal' things happening, and still, stress feels like the appropriate response. Writing, though often cathartic, is likely to lead to me putting more stress on my poor, fragile, broken little mind and I am worried about what that kind of stress is doing to my body, and to my mind. It's certainly not helping my anxiety levels, but I know stress contributes to other things as well, so when I feel like writing, I write and when I don't, I don't get too up my own butt about it, because there's a lot going on that I need to be stressed over, or I can't help but be stressed over, and I don't need to give myself anything extra. 

I have set myself a goal for this month of around 10,000 words and quite frankly, I'm not too worried if I don't make it. Whilst it would be nice to add to my NaNoWriMo lifetime total, I'm most concerned about keeping myself happy and healthy for the moment and everything else needs to come secondary to that. If it doesn't fit with the goal of being happy and healthy, it has to be less important, or it might have to go.

You Are Not Serious...

 Dear Camp NaNoWriMo, 

You sneaky little thing, where did you come from? How did you get in here? We're still in January, aren't we? 

No, no, we are not and with the world waking up to April the first, and the errors in comedy of April Fools day, writers the world over will be waking up from their hibernation since the end of November - because it takes that long to recover - and starting work on Project [INSERT NAME HERE]. In usual NaNoWriMo style, I have no idea what I am doing but did muse another blog everyday challenge before realising I have attempted these for the last few camps and I have failed to an epic degree because consistency is not one of my strong points. I know this, I appreciate it, it's a part of me and I accept it, even if it is a giant pain in my ass. 

Something that is great though is *it's not NaNoWriMo*. Well, it is, but it's not, but it is, whilst it's also sat there being, well, not. 

Camp NaNoWriMo evolved from a couple of events really and so it's possible to write a novel, but it's equally possible for it to be a short stories month or for it to be like the old Script Frenzy and be the perfect time to write - get this - a script, but it's also a space to edit, finish writing, redraft or whatever you want to do and the goal is set by the participant, which makes it a damn site easier as well. Fifty thousand words is an incredible goal and it is a phenomenal task, but there are pros and cons to that, so the flexibility of goal in Camp can often appeal to those who find the prospect of a full NaNoWriMo a bit daunting. 

Personally, I put myself under a lot of pressure in November and I do stupid things to make sure I have as much time to write as I possibly can, even though I have fallen over myself in recent years to try and finish more and more quickly. Part of me would love to do a dry run now for November of yet another silly challenge for myself, but I'm still residing with my parents due to Coronavirus, and I have work projects that kind of need my attention over the Bank Holiday weekend. (But mainly the parents because my sleeping pattern would be way out of wack, which then interrupts my eating pattern and there are enough issues around mealtimes etc in this house without me starting something for a writing challenge.) 

Camp never feels like the same level of pressure, or at least not to me. I don't know if it's because there are two of them or because they're not the OG competition, but they just don't and that makes life sooo much easier in terms of fitting writing around life. 

Anyway, if you need me, I will be in my bubble. (No, not a social distancing bubble. My writing bubble. AND ONLY I AM ALLOWED IN IT!) 

It's Been 10 Years, But I Just

Over the last few weeks, I have been itching to have another crack at writing the sequel to Fairies, because it's been ten years (almost) since I wrote it, I'm back in the place I wrote it (mostly) and I feel like it's about time. As in, it's about time I wrote it, the novel isn't about time. That would add a whole other level of complicated I can't deal with right now. 

4thewords is continuing to be a helpful beastie, because it makes me write at least 444 words a day, and sometimes the hurdle is just starting and putting pen to paper... well, fingers to keys. Once I get going, I'm not anywhere near NaNoWriMo personal bests of 20k days or writing 100k in a month, but I can crack through between 1.5-5k words a day without it interrupting my day too much, so where is the problem? 

Part of the problem is the characters. **If you haven't read Fairies, this is going to contain spoilers, so please consider this your alert.**

Fairies finished with Nate, Adamson, Louie, and, I want to say Felix, but who knows at this point!, returning to the fairy world because an eternal life as a fairy was better than a limited human life. They could make an impact on the lives of humans and they were important there. Seemingly simple? 

It's really not simple. 

Following on from their return to the fairy world, things change around quite a bit, so there's some of the sequel which is about them, some which is about Frank as my favourite person who was left behind in the human world (and someone who crops up into another novel I've been writing for just next to forever but needs a bit of character development in between the two!) and two new characters. One of the new characters is 'evil' and in league with the imps and the other is the one causing me the most problems, as she's Felix's (he's definitely called Felix - I checked) daughter. Originally I intended the story to be just about her, but every time I start writing about her, she seems to find some sort of tangent to go on and finding the way to make the actual storyline (and the reason I'm writing the book in the first place) to happen seems to be beyond me at the moment. 

Ah well - I've had a moan about it, and now I can get back to writing it, even though it's been at least five years since I read Fairies over again (only cringing most of the way through it) so the details are a little hazy and I have no idea where either the .pdf file or the proof copies are, but that's just a bit tough, isn't it?

Prepping for Pantsing,

Every year, during NaNoWriMo, I proudly pronounce myself Team Pantser, and that's still the case. I am so proud to wear my knickers like Superman and fly by the seat of my pants through NaNo (metaphorically, of course), but that is only with respect to planning the novel. When it comes to Preptober - trust me, I am a prepper. 

When I finished NaNoWriMo as a winner for the first time, it was my second attempt. I wrote at college, I wrote on the bus, I wrote at home and for the first three days I had no idea what I was writing. Some of it was utter garbage, it was a stream of consciousness, but I was writing, and I was doing it at speed. The novel that was born in that competition was eventually dedicated to my toaster, my kettle, and my mum. I've proved since then that I don't need to be living with my mum (and relying on her for cooking dinners and making brews) to finish as a winner, but right at that point, I needed her as much as I needed to win. 

Over the next few years, I have gotten faster and faster with writing and I've also gotten better and better at preparing myself. October 31st tends to be a day where I nap after work and I get myself a pizza and from midnight, I eat pizza and write a couple of thousand words, but I know it's not just that. I have an idea of the number of events I will be going to, I have an idea of what I'm going to be writing with - typewriter, pen, and paper, something electrical... - and I have a plan for keeping myself healthy for at least the first week. I shop cook and freeze what I can and make sure I have bananas. There's plenty that I think about and make decisions on practical planning for NaNoWriMo. 

As such, the @londonnano Instagram page is running a #preptober series of practical things to think about ahead of 31st October. Feel free to follow us, like, comment or message. I'll be writing some blogs on the subjects that are posted up there, too! 

It's That Time of Year Again,

Ah, October. How have you come around so fast? I would swear it was only a small number of weeks ago that we were ushering in 2018 and now we're almost putting on it's coat ready for it to leave. Whilst I will, probably in December, be writing a 'where did the year go' post, this is not it. 

I've always loved October. It's my brother's birthday, which was amazing when I was little because my parents called it my un-Birthday (and the same for my brother on my birthday) so we got a present on each other's birthdays. It was kind of cool. After that my favourite holiday was always Halloween. I loved dressing up as "something scary" and I loved the chocolate and the sweets. I still love Halloween. I still love dressing up. I never really hit the Americanised "slutty animal" costume phase, but my costumes tend to be comical in a different way these days, such as the university Pikachu, because a friend was dressed as Ash and it gave my an excuse to jump on his back and scream Pikachu all evening. I stopped short of getting those zapper rings and giving people electric shocks, though deeply regretted it later because that would have been awesome. 

Several years ago though, when I was about 16, I met my soulmate in competition form and started a long term relationship with National Novel Writing Month. It takes over my life in November and has been responsible for some of the very best (and one of the very worst) times in my life. The best advice I can ever give anyone - BACK UP YOUR NOVEL!! CONSTANTLY!! Since that day, October 31st is terrifying and exciting for a whole other reason. As soon as midnight strikes, the witches and wizards and aliens and heart throbs and everything else come out and the literary abandon begins. We do crazy things like eating pizza for breakfast and staying up all night writing. We forsake our communications with friends, family and other loved ones for a single goal - write the novel.

I've started thinking of October now as NaNoAdvent. It is the time where I stock up on pizzas and snacks that will hopefully tide me through at least the first week (though normally I tear through them in a mad panic in the first few hours...)

So this is it - Nano2018 is nearly upon us. It's time to brace yourself!

Really Crappy Decisions,

Surprisingly, this is not about the myriad of really crappy decisions I make on a weekly basis because I hate making decisions sometimes. I have a couple of very crappy deicisions to make at the moment about the future of "the" book. Thee is in ""s because, as I think I have either stated or eluded to before, I work on a few at once. The one I am talking about was supposed to be around 31000 words by the end of Camp NaNo and to say that that did not happen is an understatement. 

This is another of these things that I've been trying to write for what feels like something close to forever. It is something that I love, have tried out before and then either gotten annoyed with a character or took a stab out, the middle came out gooey and I figured it needed another few minutes (well, months) to stew and take shape. The first iteration of this thing was started in tiny notebooks bought from a giftshop because it was the only thing available and I was bored with time to spare. The characters are sweet, the storyline feels beautiful and half of it is set in Manchester reliving some of my favourite parts of childhood. And writing it hurts. 

People that don't really write (and some people who do write, but are built differently) don't understand how much it hurts if you feel every emoition of the characters. I would hate to think of them as flat,, emotionless pawns which are used to narrate and navigate a story, but the problem is that I draw on experiences I've been through to fuel the characters feelings and going back over some of that can hurt like hell. I've already been struggling with my mental health for the last couple of weeks, and last week was just heinous and I know that I just, if I put myself through too much of it at the moment, I will suffer and those around me will, too, and I've leaned on them a lot these last few weeks. 

Here in lies the problem though. Even when I am as close to okay as I ever get, this novel hurts. I'm not sure I can count on only one hand the amount of times that this novel, in it's several forms, has had me in tears already. Granted I wasn't always sober, but that's not the point. It seems ridicuolous to try and write it whilst knowing that parts of it will hurt, and they have the potential to make me struggle and I find it hard to knowingly do that to myself. That being said, it is really hard not to write. No matter how uncomfortable, one day I will have to come to a decision as to whether to just do it, or just drop it and it feels pretty crappy. 

On that note, I should probably go to sleep, but I think the writing bug might have paid a visit. God, he's an inconvenient git! Catch you later. 

To Mourn a Loss of Something Most Wholly, (Lost for Words)

I didn't think I was going to write this, but now I realize I need to.

I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say I need to write it for anyone who may need to read it - if I can be the cautionary wail, great, but that is not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is what most of my writing is; it is my catharsis.

Before NaNoWriMo started this year, I was excited. I'm a bit of a geek, so I always am, and I mean geek in the traditional sense of the word - not the it's emblazoned on the front of a sweat shop produced t-shirt and mass sold as fashion to people who would have used it as an insult kind of sense.

I had it in my head that I wanted to smash what I consider to be my record, my PB if you will (or if you won't, it's my blog) of 19 days. 19 days hurt. I got ill after those 19 days, but it was an adrenaline rush that most people wouldn't associate with writing a novel; I'm glad I get to be one of the people that knows better.

Anyway, tenacious is definitely an adjective people would use about me, and tenacious I was. I scrapped a whole 11 days off of my PB and "won" on the evening of day 9 in the café of Foyles book store. It was beautiful. It was perfect. I enjoyed it immensely.

Now, this was not an easy feat. I am still an ML so I was attending a huge string of events, I hadn't taken leave from work, so was still working my normal day job, though not my usual hours as my managers are incredible and let me have some flexibility, but I fit writing 50000 words into 9 days of my life. I felt like the steamiest pile of animal droppings you can imagine - I was wrung out, but God, I was happy. I kept having these little panics where I woke up in the middle of the night and thought "I need to back this novel up" then would decide to do it in the morning as bed was warm and comfortable and laptop was in living room and that far. Yes, words dropped out of my thought process so you can almost tell how tired I was. Each time I had picked up or touched the laptop in that 9 days the goal was simple and attainable only with remarkable focus. Unfortunately that meant that I was so engrossed in writing and remembering to save that I forgot to save a back up...

This is the point where I wish this were a horror story I was writing. I wish I could skip back a couple of chapters and scrawl THE MC THREW BACK HER BED CLOTHES, CLAMBERED DISCOORDINATELY OUT OF THE BED AND SAVED BACK UPS OF THAT FILE ON EVERY USB DEVICE SHE OWNED but she didn't. I didn't.

In the afternoon/evening of the eleventh day of NaNo, I closed the laptop lid, put it into my bag and thought nothing of it. I went home and I didn't plug it in. It lost power over the weekend and when II came to loading it up on the Tuesday night for a writing session, it was already gone, and so were any hopes of retrieving it. 

Now, I have a magnificient army of friends who rallied like I have never seen anyone rally to try and revive this file. They weren't going to let it go down without a fight, but it was too late. It kind of felt like simultaneously watching a car crash in slow moyion and super speed and reverse. It was nothng short of a shit show and I had no clue how to react. 

That's not wholly true. There was only one reaction, and I wish I could say that I wasn't in public when the crying started and I was on the phone to my mum wailing about how it was gone. I probably sounded like a four year old who had lost their bear, but in that moment, there was no greater loss to me than this novel. There are still very few things which I feel more of a sense of the loss of. 

The worst thing, to me, because I can be a bit odd about these things, is that this loss is undescribable. Devastated does not cut it. Heartbroken, nowhere near. Even to state that I feel heartshattered and inconsolable does not convey the gravity of how I felt, and the problem with that was it made me doubt myself. I sincerely thought, though have since brought myself to reason, sincerely believed that if I were unable to convey something of that immensity, something which was so inherently a part of me, what that loss meant, to my mother, what good could this novel have been anyway? If I couldn't ensure that she understood my helplessness, my need to change the unchangeable, move the unmoveable, my need to face a different reality than the one which I was presented with (though the only reality I really wanted was the one I had been writing on my laptop) how on earth could I convey a made up idea to a reader? My only conclusion then was that I couldn't. My conclusion now is that I was hysterical, and not in my usual haha sense. Hysteria had overtaken and no one can understand a hysterical person, much less take them seriously when they are professing that they shall never write again. Granted, had anyone told me I was hysterical and it would all be better in the morning, I would have been highly likely to throw something heavier than one of my shoes at them.

I probably still couldn't put that loss into words. I'm trying, but this is more like, these are the events, rather than a this is how it felt. I am mourning the loss. No one died, but it felt like someone did. It still does. I don't trust my laptop right at this moment - mature, I know. I wake up and am excited that it's still NaNo and I won already, and then I remember, my novel is gone. I had a few moments, no, hours, of not really even feeling like a writer anymore. I have picked up the pen to go back to it, but I'm writing around it. Part of me cannot bring myself to jump back in and re-write the parts I had already done. This wasn't some half baked first draft - one of these ideas has been forming for the past year, and the other. The other is what I would imagine a somwehat life long stutter feels like. It is that sentence I have always wanted to say, but it doesn't come out right; it has never quite fit. This was the first time that I didn't think the character was periodically being a petulant child. This was the first time I didn't think her partner was an arsehole of epic proportions that she should ditch almost immediately and find someone who, if not intelligent, at least looking a bit Godly so she can just admire them even if they never say anything remotely worth listening to. I was excited to start editing. I was excited about this entire project and I have to admit that for the past almost a week, lukewarm would have been a gross over estimation of my feeling towards it. But as Freddie said, the show must go on. 

Nothing can change that I won this year. Nothinng can change that I did it in 9 days. Nothing can change the fact that I knocked out a 20k day and it barely even hurt. The novel is gone, but it will not be forgotten, only revised. It's not okay, but I will be. 

It still greatly winds me up though that one of the novels in this project is called All is Not Lost, but actually, most of it is.

And on that note, I will catch you later.

A Message from Under the Bed,

I'm not literally under my bed - it's one of those divan type ones with no storage under it so I would have to be a literal wafer to get under there, and, well, I'm not. It's a shame really because I find that hanging out with the imaginary monsters under there not only helps with my writing periodically, it's also a nice space to go when the world outside is, put nicely, being a bit rubbish. 

Without going into too much detail because some of it is work and I'm not allowed to - today has been pretty crappy. In fact, no, it's this week. This week has been pretty crappy. 

However, the good news is that, after a case of the tantrums (throwing my toys out of the pram and deciding I have had quite enough of this novel right now, tah very much love) I have finally picked back up on the novel I started for last NaNoWriMo and no, it is not almost finished, and yes, I do realise it is almost November again, could everyone please stop reminding me? 

It's hard though, because whilst that novel helps me work through difficult things from life, work and all that sort of thing, there are some things that happen and they just feel too raw for me to be able to write anything close to it right then and then, so the novel gets put down. Also, with NaNo being such a frantic rush towards a word count and my ever more ambitious marathon sprints and everything else going on, my novel is still in a few dozen pieces and the idea of having to remedy that at any point soon; quite frankly the thought of it makes me feel quite sick. 

I know it will get there, and it will get finished and then it will very possibly end up like several others and be banished to the dark corners of my hard drive where I can think about doing something with it but not in concrete enough terms to actually, well, do anything about it, because the idea of that is terrifying, but I don't want that this time, so I'm trying to leave less in there for "The Edit" that is never, ever just one edit. 

Christ, Fairies had been out about three years before I realised there were words missing and apparently the ending was Just. Too. Subtle. for some people to understand what I was getting at, and if there is ever going to be a sequel to it - not ruling it in, not ruling it out - the ending can't really have that level of ambiguity to it, can it>? 

/Tangent...

Where were we? Yes, trying to leave less in there for the edit, but the problem with that is that there is a limit to how much forward progress you can make when you obsess over EVERY SINGLE WORD! 

I'm going to go search for my sanity. Catch you later.

Final Countdown,

I know it is not quite the final countdown for NaNoWriMo just yet, but I am acutely aware of that countdown because I am going to be starting a new job soon. Actually, on the 31st October. What was I thinking?!

Yes, so I will be leaving a job I have loved for the last three months ready to start something new and whilst I am really excited about it, I am also bloody terrified, because I don't necessarily deal well with change and it's a whole lot of change all at once. I am changing jobs, then at midnight it's my first NaNoWriMo as an ML. I have both of those things to deal with and I need to be writing a new novel, too. Understandably I'm a little bit nervous. 

That is not to say in any way that I don't think I can do it - I know I can. I do well when I push myself. Pushing myself gets me to do more than I thought possible. I was hoping to make another attempt at a 15k day this year, but I think I am going to have to let that go. Particularly as I'm learning to drive also, and my instructor is anticipating I will be ready for a test in November. Once I am ready, I'm going to book in and just do it. I am sure I will probably fail once, but if I could get it out of the way before Christmas, that would be marvelous. 

I expect that this year will be intense. I've had a few ideas of things I might want to write, and I've also, as usual, got a few things that I'm doing at the moment that I am not going to want to put down, but the problem with that is that I can't rush them. I have a feeling that they need time to happen organically and I would rather do that than force them and then ruin them. 

See, this is an advantage of Team Planner. You can have done a lot of the thinking through everything so you know what you are writing and then it is a simple (no, not simple, but simpler) case of writing it down and progressing through your meticulous plans. The disadvantage of that for me is that if I plan too far ahead with writing, I get really, really bored. I like to essentially sit in the backseat and let my imagination take over and I can't really do that if I plan. 

I'm going to have to stop writing this about now because my head has suddenly decided it wants to ache and this is possibly going to turn into a migraine. I'm sat in a Pret in Central London with my sun glasses on just trying to make sure it doesn't get any more agitated. 

Catch you later. 

If It Weren't For...,

I really wanted to get back on top of blogging and writing nearly 2 weeks ago, but the fact is that the list of things that I have to do before I can get to that is forever getting longer, and I am never really sure when I will have both time and energy to work on editing and noveling. 

It is an equation - time + energy + motivation = work done 

Missing any of those things means that it is either going to be difficult, nigh on impossible, or actually impossible. 

I am still saying that I love my job. I do, I really enjoy it, and I have committed to it, which means I am spending an awful lot of time either taking my desk with me or thinking about being at my desk. 

As much as I love my writing, I do not want to do it the injustice of being half arsed. When I go to writing group, I am able to do just that, but in the office, or when I am trying to think about anything work related, I just cannot do it. 

I am really hoping that the Bank Holiday gives me a little bit more time, though I doubt that it will. 

I guess I will just have to wait and see, I guess.

Decision Not Yet Made,

Last week I was writing about the possibility of making what could be major life decision, then I had another one pretty much dropped on me, so it has been bumped down the list like a few of my literary priorities. 

I have been having a long think about it, though, and that has brought me to the conclusion that several of my friends are correct and that going at this like a bull at a gate like I did with becoming a vegetarian, because otherwise I'm going to make myself ill like I did by not keeping an eye on my iron levels. 

What I am doing is stopping drinking actual milk, which is harder than I had thought it would be because tea does not taste the same with any other form of milk (and soy milk, which is most widely available, is most definitely not beautiful) and tea is a big deal to me, but it's important.

I'm not going to go on a big rant about why milk is bad and why it sucks that it's going to take time for Quorn to move their ranges away from using something from eggs that's considered as an industry byproduct, to a more expensive vegan ingredient, but I do feel the need to argue against something I recently read on Facebook. 

A lot of people who make a lot of noise about "preachy" vegetarians/vegans are actually pretty "preachy" about eating meat. The latest thing I have read from any of them was an article which essentially argued that vegetarians and vegans are responsible for animal deaths, too, because of the way we farm in this country and the wildlife which it affects. One of my friends describes it as a sliding scale - yes, we have an impact on the lives of other species, but we're significantly reducing that impact. 

Personally, I think it's more like living as closely to your ideas as humanly possible. In order to live in London, I have to accept that I can only afford to do a certain amount of things. I can't have a compost bin because I don't have a garden, I can't have a pet because of my contract, and I can't sleep because there are starlings nesting in my loft, and when I was looking at humane ways to persuade them to move out I found that they are losing a lot of their nesting space and obviously that is leading to declining populations, so I'm just going to have to get used to the chirping bastards. 

So I've turned into a packet reader, making sure I know exactly what I'm actually eating, instead of just blindly following what I think I should be going for because apparently putting that something is suitable for vegans on packaging can actually put other audiences off. 

Catch you later.