Temper
Kai has always had a bit of a temper.
It was one of the first observations made about him actually, at barely a day old, the midwife holding up this tiny, rigid, screaming bundle, him emptying his lungs with a cry that made the metal bed vibrate, the bed I remember banging my shins on over and over as I jumped up to try and get to him before he woke the whole ward. Frustration and rage even then, breastfeeding proving quickly to be problematic as he wanted milk NOW but didn’t have the patience to try and latch, his intense and almost instant frustration lasting what felt like hours until he calmed down enough to try again . Over and over I would try, trying to coax him to calm down and stay still long enough to just OPEN YOUR MOUTH CHILD IT’S RIGHT THERE, just to have a little patience. Just TRY baby, please my darling, please just try.
We got through it. After two hard weeks Kai was latching well, barely coming off at all to be quite honest and there he stayed, thriving, for 18 months. We got there.
But that anger, it’s continued to weave it’s way through the day to day. That unfocused, immature mix of fear and confusion and some instinctual sense of it JUST NO BEING FAIR MUM. It was in the not-wanting-to-be-put-down, in the not-ever-EVER-mummy of sleeping alone, or even sleeping at all at times. No matter how firm or persistent or how many well-meaning books I read, soon disregarded to be used to prop up the cot an angle as suggested by ANOTHER book, and then the un-slept-in cot abandoned altogether in favour of just doing whatever bloody worked.
It was in the absolutely-not-drinking-out-of-that-plastic-thing mummy, or eating-ANYTHING-off-a-spoon mummy. It was in the temperature-must-be-exactly-right mummy.
It was in the it-must-only-ever-be-YOU mummy.
It was in every thing.
And we worked through them. All of them.
You wouldn’t think it. To look at him, to meet him. That’s always been the irony. He is such a calm, serious child. You get it right – and we have for the most part, life carefully arranged to suit what he needed – you get it RIGHT and this boy could win prizes for his exemplar angelic behaviour. With those blue eyes shining, those blond curls sitting pretty on top, that full, if rather hard-won smile, who would doubt he is anything but a model child?
“He’s so GOOD!” they gush at me. And he is, he really is. He is a super star. I am so proud of him. Proud of the way he shines in company and thrives on interaction and different environments, such a change from the problems of a few months back. He is good. Whatever ‘good’ means.
But he is not easy.
Kai started having temper tantrums about eight months ago, just about the time he learnt to walk. Proper temper tantrums, not just crying. Those angry, screaming, fist-pumping, full body kicking, plank-like, spectacular floor and buggy and bed shows. He has stamina this child, half an hour or more, not a hope of distracting him out of them. And never in company of course, oh no, or very rarely. Those everyday, just me, or just me and his dad, days. When you just need to GET STUFF DONE, and aren’t able to give him that constant interaction and variety and amusement he so seems to crave.
“Just you wait!”, people would say, as they so love to do. “Just you wait for the terrible twos!” But honestly? I didn’t believe them. Because it couldn’t get much worse than this, right?
Last night Kai proved to me just how laughingly wrong I was. Ten days after turning two it seems that the Terrible Twos have well and truly arrived. And oh BOY! Don’t you just love the way the universe loves to prove a point!
An hour. Over an hour. Of the most intense, animal, hysterical screaming and flailing and head banging and VOMIT! Oh yes! That was a fun new addition. Screaming until he was hoarse, in fact, until all that came out was husky, muted noise, but still he kicked and fought and NO’d with his whole body.
All because I wouldn’t hold his hand to sleep. A habit I had taken weeks to break some time ago, the last vestiges of the I-won’t-sleep-alone days, only for me to relent one night, one night like last night, and then for it take MORE weeks to break again.
I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going through all that again.
So I didn’t. I stood firm. I sat with him and talked to him but I did not hold his hand. And he screamed until he couldn’t scream any more and passed out in a little exhausted ball of sweat and anger and sadness.
Needless to say I was broken, running from his room and the house the second his head finally hit the pillow. Running and running and just not stopping because I had to get OUT. Away. Two hours of breathing and walking and my heart still raced. My sensitive nerves frazzled with sound and my sensitive heart frazzled with emotion. I never, ever knew how physically stressful dealing with this sort of temper can be.
I know it will pass. I know he is frustrated, that the lack of speech and difficulty expressing himself is a part of it and THAT will pass. He starts nursery soon which I think I will make a huge difference, if only to give me a BREAK! I know that we will get through this just like we got through everything else.
But right now?
It is hard. It is really, really hard.
I just needed to say that.
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Thanks to everyone on Twitter for their support last night. All the stress was tempered with some very, very exciting news today which I will share as soon as I can. Life-changing news. News that make temper tantrums suddenly feel a lot more bearable 
Updates very soon xx
Writing Workshop #31 – Disaster, Remembering, and Filling in the Blank
Welcome back to your weekly Writing Workshop!
For any newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works: I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to enjoy writing your post and get something out of the process.
Prompts each week take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt for a future workshop then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
And remember! We’re not looking for perfection here! Just have a go! The best way to get better at writing is PRACTISE. All the best writers aren’t afraid to write badly. So turn your inner-critic off for a while and just see what words come out.
Here’s this week’s prompts!
1. Disaster! Tell us when a a best laid plan went spectacularly wrong…
- Inspired by my lovely friend Rachael over at Tales from the Village and her cake wrecks.
2. “I have a ……….. and I’m not afraid to use it”. Fill in the blank!
- Inspired by Tara over at Sticky Finger’s latest post about cooking with children.
3. What last made you cry?
- Inspired by Annie over at Incessant Ramblings’ emotional experience at her daughter’s school last week.
4. Share a powerful memory, or memories, from your childhood. Close your eyes and try to conjure it up as vividly as you can and share it descriptively with us. If it’s a painful memory, let the remembering be a healing release for you.
- Inspired by Slummy Single Mummy who has been using writing exercises to remember.
And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Storm
- Inspired by Sandrine’s haunting workshop post last week… Twilight Zone
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please. Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Thursday’s round-up.
Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:
Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason. See you Thursday then!
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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Writing Workshop: My Therapy
Welcome back to your Writing Workshop.
At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to link up your posts. I hope you found a prompt to inspire you this week and help you create something unique, grown out of your own unique experiences and thoughts.
I’ve chosen the first prompt – what’s your therapy? Like Kerry-Ann, for me music is my medicine….
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I feel it building. That sense of panic. It is like a wave that starts down low, twisting my stomach as it rises up into my head, into my ears, filling them with a pressure that feels like being pushed, hard, down under water. I am drowning.
It could have been anything. Jumping out of the middle of a good mood like the very cruellest game of pass the parcel. Or it could have crept on, slowly. A day when time and patience and energy is sucked out of me drop by drop. Just one word, or lack of one. Too much attention. Too little. Who knows. My heart has it’s own mind, that’s all I know. I can control it as well as I can control the weather.
Whatever. I have given up trying to understand it.
Before long it is so strong I can barely see, barely think, barely speak. My hands start to fidget, mouth chewing at my nails, fingers pulling my hair up into ragged clumps, fists clasped and unclasped. My feet feel poised as if on a starting block. The need to run is so overwhelming it is all I can do to stay in one place, instead beginning to pace from room to room. I have to get out. I have to get out NOW.
A mumbled goodbye to Ant and my hand is on the door handle, my bare feet slipped quickly into my shoes, fingers reaching up to plug in my stereo headphones before the door has even closed behind me.
I walk, fast. Striding quickly through the familiar streets as the light fades in the sky above me, my eyes low and full. I flick through the menu on my music player, letting instinct find what I need, one finger pushing the volume control up as loud as it will go.
The beats starts and my stride slows to match, my feet turning down the wooded cycle path that has acted as my therapy couch over and over. There is no one here, not a soul in sight down the long mile track, and, as the piano starts and deep vibrating lull of cello or guitar rises with the melody, I allow my shoulders and my neck to unclench. My body starts to sway, my head gentle nodding and shaking from side to side as my eyes close and I let my feet carry me forward and music drown out all thought, sweeping down every neural pathway, stroking every inch of skin. I feel every note, every rhythm. Behind my half focused eyes I feel washes of colour begin to flood my vision. I am oblivious to everyone, everything, the sideways glances of the occasional dog walker not even breaking my stride.
Lyrics wash over me like waves, somehow always finding the exact line and phrase to illuminate the dark place. Comfort, connection, reassurance. What I feel, what I am going through, it has been felt before. It is heard. It is real. I breathe it deep down, the emotion I am feeling. It is ok. I am ok. Pain and confusion and heartbreak and fear. It is ok. Right now I will give myself to it. I will stop fighting.
My mouth opens and I pour out the sound, words tumbling off my tongue as I sing to the empty night and to the dark trees and the shapes of the swifts as they swoop and dart. As loud as I can, my lungs filling with cool air, releasing with every breath.
Sometimes just one song, played over and over. The message I need to hear. Or an album, played straight through, every word as familiar to me as any word I have ever written. A part of me, integrated into my consciousness after obsessive listening, over and over. Thousands of songs, a library of life and experience and expression, what feels right that night so variable, as variable as my mood. It doesn’t matter: there is always something right, always the right pill for this ache. I just have to keep walking, and keep listening, keep singing if it helps.
Soon my panic has been released out with the sound. My limbs soft again, my muscles unknotted and my mind clear, my heart calm once more.
After half an hour, and hour, maybe even two some nights, the hard frown has been softened and my brow lies smooth again.
I am ok. I will not run this night. I will not break.
I am ok.
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So now it’s your turn. What prompt did you choose?
1. What’s your therapy?
- Inspired by Kerry-Ann at Falling Starlett who has been using music to give her inspiration and peace.
2.Tell us a story of something that happened with a bang.
- Inspired by Emma’s beautiful firework photos over at Me, the Man and the Baby.
3. Who’s your boss? Who (or what!) is in charge of you and your life?
- Inspired by Geeky Mummy’s four year old’s impeccable logic…
4. Share your experience of a difficult transition. A moving ‘from’ to ‘something new’.
- Inspired by the Bubbleboo and her son’s Transition Day at school.
And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Running
- Inspired by World of Walker who has been finding her running feet again
Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here.
If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got till Sunday to enter your link! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.
This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Peace and Freedom
So on Friday I went to Tate Liverpool to view an exhibition of Picasso’s work spanning the entire length of his political and emotional career. And it was, quite simply, astounding.
Picasso was a man that was moved by the world around him, and who responded to the things he saw and felt with intense passion and artistic expression. From the occupation during the Second World War where he lived in Paris, though his alliance with the Communism party, his post-war expressions of death and mortality, through the Cuban Missile Crisis and other conflicts around the world and his dedication to the Peace Movement, Picasso painted to SAY SOMETHING.
I spent the exhibition with my head on fire. I have genuinely rarely been more moved, or more affected by an experience. I danced around the exhibition for three hours, nearly. My nose pressed up to the glass when I could, my fingers tracing the lines of his lines and staring long and hard at the shapes and patterns of each painting and sculpture. Trying to see what he saw, feel what he felt. And I GOT IT, I did see, or at least, it felt like I did. Each image seemed so FULL of meaning and significance and power.
I learnt so much. I learnt that Picasso liked to paint the spaces around things. I learnt that line was always more important than colour to him. I learnt that an owl means death, but not to me. I learnt that conflict and cruelty and suffering and the resulting passion and outrage could result in something beautiful. I learnt that death and darkness can be just as beautiful as flowers and sunsets. I learnt that if you find an image you love that you connect with, you are drawn to paint it over and over. Not to improve the shape of it but just because it feels right under your brush and your pen.
But the one thing that struck me over and over was the functionality of his work. I am such an aesthetic at heart, it is ALL about beauty for me, and yet Picasso’s work was so fundamentally functional. It was art to portray a message. Only in his later years could you begin to see the first inklings of aesthetic indulgence, of his desire to captures things simply because they were beautiful, and even then in a brash, uncompromising style – HIS idea of beauty, no-one else’s.
And the thing that was so intensely inspirational was that, driven by political fervour, by his need to share a view with the world, his art was so devoid of fear. Picasso painted without one moment’s hesitation, not a second’s doubt. Although, I imagine, probably a deeply arrogant man, he would HAVE to be, his sometimes child-like expressions are completely devoid of ego. He cared not one iota what people thought, what things were SUPPOSED to look like, he just DID.
I stood and watched a video of Picasso painting a mural on a chapel wall. Old, bare chested, he moved up and down a step ladder to make big, bold strokes without a pause. I watched the unforgettable image of peace, the dove, come to life in less than five seconds flat. Perfect. Beautiful. Unapologetic. I shook at the power of it, of the power of HIM.
I want to paint like that, not in his style, but in his attitude. I want to live like that.
I want my art to be something joyous, a gift at my fingertips I am not afraid of and not afraid to embrace MY way, without thought for other’s opinion. Free.
I want my writing to be the same. Not pushed in directions I don’t want. Free to flow and evolve in my own voice.
And that is why yesterday I decided to apply to study Fine Art and Sculpture full time at my local art school from September. I never got to go to university, have never had one scrap of artistic training. I am sick of carrying dreams around with me like old, tight chains. I want to stop being afraid and start doing.
At school I will have the perfect supportive environment to explore my artistic identity. I will have the indulgence of time and financial support to see where this takes me. And with only 16 hours on campus and Kai in nursery I will have the freedom of evenings and weekends to still pursue my writing, work on my book, do whatever I want really.
So that’s that.
I will never be Picasso. But I will live a life unafraid, one of inner peace and freedom. To that I pledge.
Writing Workshop #30 – Transitions, bangs and being in charge
Welcome back to your weekly Writing Workshop. Thanks for your patience last week. I was recovering from a bad Fibro flare-up and then there was Kai’s birthday and an AMAZING day to go and see the Picasso exhibition at Tate Liverpool (a whole other blog post) And, it seems, it wasn’t just me feeling a bit weary last week so no bad thing to have a breather perhaps. We’re back to normal this week though, so I hope a week off has given you a renewed energy to get writing.
For any newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works: I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to enjoy writing your post and get something out of the process.
Prompts each week take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt for a future workshop then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
And remember! We’re not looking for perfection here! Just have a go! The best way to get better at writing is PRACTISE. All the best writers aren’t afraid to write badly. So turn your inner-critic off for a while and just see what words come out.
Here’s this week’s prompts!
1. What’s your therapy?
- Inspired by Kerry-Ann at Falling Starlett who has been using music to give her inspiration and peace.
2.Tell us a story of something that happened with a bang.
- Inspired by Emma’s beautiful firework photos over at Me, the Man and the Baby.
3. Who’s your boss? Who (or what!) is in charge of you and your life?
- Inspired by Geeky Mummy’s four year old’s impeccable logic…
4. Share your experience of a difficult transition. A moving ‘from’ to ‘something new’.
- Inspired by the Bubbleboo and her son’s Transition Day at school.
And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Running
- Inspired by World of Walker who has been finding her running feet again
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please. Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Thursday’s round-up.
Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:
Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason. See you Thursday then!
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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Two
Dear Kai,
Today we sat by the marshes and talked about the wind. The sky was low and heavy and your blonde curls blew about your face like white light as you stood above me, blocking out the sun as you took in the world around you. With your nonsense words and your expressive hands you told me about the ducks on the pond and that they were hungry; that there was a train and that mummy rides on the train; that the wind on your face felt funny and that you thought it might rain and that playing football makes you happy. And I listened and smiled that smile at you that only you know. And we talked some more with no words, just by being together and connected, which we are.
I am so proud of you, my son. I am proud of the way you hold a pencil and think about the marks you are going to make before you make them. I am proud that you have learnt colours but not numbers, because let’s face it in our world colours are far more important. I am proud of the way you dance and move and use your shoulders when you make tunes on the piano or on your little guitar. I am proud of the way you kick a ball and run and run. I am proud of the way you use your hands to describe the things you see, just like your mama, and that you use words that make sense to you, though not always to us.
I am amazed and delighted by everything you are. I could sit and watch your frowny face for hours and hours, waiting for the thing that makes it break and smile. I want to crawl into your head and watch your thoughts, because I know you have so many and I know that they are yours and they are beautiful. I love to watch you play, so absorbed, watching your imagination and your creativity grow and grow every time you do so. I love to hear you laugh. Your laughter is like mine and bubbles up from your toes, moving your whole body. I hope you will always laugh like that.
I love the way you say my name. I am so glad to be your mama.
I know that I am not always as perfect as you deserve. I get cross and tired and frustrated so easily. She feels things, your mama, just like you do. They push her to want to do many, many things. Sometimes she finds it hard to get the balance right, to make the right amount of space for you and everything else. She is like a kite pulled about by lots of strings right now, some of them are a bit tangled and it hurts. But she is trying and she will be ok. Because we trust the wind, we do. That’s what people like us do, and it will take us where we need to go eventually.
I love you. More than paint and words and sunshine. More than anything. I have so much to show you. There is a world of beautiful things out there. And I am going to show you as much of it as I possibly can. I promise. I can’t promise you an easy ride, but I promise you one filled with wonder and discovery.
Thank you for being you, and being mine, if only for a little while.
Happy 2nd Birthday my darling.
Things to do with CyberMummy Swag
What DO you do with 40 breastpads? Well, I gave mine to passing lactator but I was NOT missing out on the chance to do something creative with the rest of my Cybermummy swag as suggested by my very lovely new friend, drinking partner and waiter oggler, Claire from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
And so
I bring you
Cotton-wool art.
Thank you people at ASDA.
You can see what else people have been creating from their left-over goodies here. Oh, except I seem to be first. Fancy that.
And that, my friends, is my last post about CyberMummy. Tomorrow is Kai’s birthday! So I shall probably be talking about that.
P.S. Thank you for all my get well wishes. I crashed rather spectacularly after the weekend but I’m feeling MUCH better today. That boinging sound is me bouncing right back…
A Blogging Manifesto – thoughts on Cybermummy
Yes. This is another post about Cybermummy. But before those of you that didn’t go instantly pull a face and click away I would ask you stay and listen a while. Because this isn’t JUST a post about Cybermummy. And it’s kind of important. Well, it’s kind of important to me.
This weekend, as most of you know, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the UK’s first Parent Blogging convention. I’m not going to talk too much about the conference itself, other bloggers have done that far better than I and you can find a great long list of all their wonderful posts here. There’s some fab photos too, most of which seem to involve me eating but that’s no great surprise to anyone that knows me.
Two things though.
The first is a thank you. To Sian, Susanna and to Jen for the immense work that went into pulling the whole thing off. It was an extraordinary success, and they should be very, very proud.
Secondly, those of you that read the accounts above there, and who followed the days events on Twitter will have noticed one over-riding message. And that was that everyone had a bloody brilliant time. It wasn’t a lot of sanctimonious spiel about “follow this magic formula for instant blogging success”, it was, over and over, words like community, atmosphere, respect, friendship, support. I know it sounds very self-important, and no doubt at least one of you reading this will be already rolling your eyes at all the talk of authenticity and emotional connection and getting back to the heart of blogging.
But you know what? Tough.
Because that’s what it WAS about.
It was about remembering why we blog. It was about being proud of our own stories and what we had to say. It was about not being ashamed to say “blogging is important to me”. And yes, there was the other stuff. Talk of how to make the most of opportunities that might present themselves to you as a blogger, but they were firmly secondary to the more important matter of this community of an inspirational and extraordinary people, and celebrating who we are and what we stand for.
(It was also about laughing till my sides ached and drinking far too much and making some wonderful new friends. And the best pub quiz IN THE WORLD).
I came home so proud to know that people that I had met that day. And sad for the people that couldn’t come. And excited about all the great bloggers and friends I hadn’t yet met but WOULD, and are a part of this community, whether they were there or not.
But then. Because yes, there is a but to this post…
Within twenty four hours? We had lost it somehow. There started to sneak back little strands of negativity and bitterness, or lost confidence, or feeling left out. It was quiet, mostly drowned out by a lot of excited, happy people, but it was there. And it made me sad.
It is so easy, behind our computer screens, to fall back in old patterns. Old reflexes.I guess it showed me how pervasive all this can be.
So I am writing this post as a reminder. And on those days I find myself falling sway to those negative feelings I am going to come back and read it.
Here it is. My manifesto of blogging, as learned from Cybermummy and the women I met there (and Tim, love you too). It doesn’t have to be yours, but this is what I stand by and I would love for you to read it and think about it, at least for a minute:
- People behind blogs are real, and almost without exception they are interesting, complex, unique people with valid, often inspirational stories to tell. Without fail they deserve to be heard and treated with respect.
- The blogging community should be empowering people to tell those stories. It should be making people feel like it is ok to be them.
- Blogging is about writing AND connection. It is about finding ways to express yourself, in whatever ways that feel right, and about finding ways to share that with others. This means not just writing and sitting back to let the world come to you. It is about seeking out people that you connect with, it is about not being afraid to make friends. Because there are PLENTY of friends to be made and people that will support you. It is about giving out, but not just to receive. It is about karmic blogging.
- Good writing, good content comes with practice and with authenticity. Yes, that word. It is about writing from where you are at. It is about writing honestly about the things that matter to YOU. That means not being afraid to write about pain. It is not about being perfect. If you don’t feel like blogging, don’t blog.
- Your blog is your space, no-one else’s. You have permission to make it anything you want it to be, without guilt or without obligation. Equally, though, understand, though, that people are under no obligation to READ your blog, and should be able to, or not, also without guilt or obligation. Welcome the people that DO connect with it, don’t worry about the others. And, as a reader, if you don’t like it? Politely go elsewhere.
- If you haven’t met someone in real-life, I would probably hold off making too firm a judgement on them. Words are no substitute for face to face conversation, probably over a bottle of wine or six. You will probably find, like I have, that people are exactly who they say they are. But it’s worth getting to know the person behind the words.
- If what you have to say someone is something you couldn’t say to their face, then you probably shouldn’t be saying it all. the people behind blogs are real and have feelings. They have busy and complicated lives. They do not need your hate. Veiled passive aggressiveness is cowardly and creates bad feeling. Don’t do it.
- Indexes and metrics don’t define a blog’s worth. Only you do that, through the connections you make through it and the stories you have to tell. No metric should define how you feel about your blog. If it is spoiling your enjoyment of blogging or making you question your self-worth, you should withdraw from them. It is not worth it.
- Blogging should be fun. It should make you feel good. It should be therapeutic and make you laugh and make you cry and make you feel. If it doesn’t, you need to change something cause you’re doing it wrong.
- And, which is what I said in my talk and I’ll say it again here: blogging is ABOUT your life, it is NOT your life. Your blog will be soulless and boring if you are not getting out there and living. So switch off you computers and go and do something different and fun.
And that’s that. Thank you for an amazing weekend. Here’s to you lot, all of you, and a thank you for letting me walk this amazing journey with you.
Writing Workshop/Gallery: Joy
Welcome back to this week’s special Gallery/Writing Workshop. This week we challenged you to combine words AND pictures to create something different. Something unique. Just one prompt: Emotions.
Don’t forget to link up your post below and/or over at Sticky Fingers, so as many people as possible have a chance to read your post.
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A couple of months ago I wrote a Gallery post about pride. It was about feeling stuck, paralysed. It was a very grey picture – I was in a very grey place.
Today I am re-writing the words of that post, for a new me.
Life is hard just now, very hard. But in between the things that make me sad there are increasingly bright flashes of a deep joy that take my breath.
Things are changing. I am changing. And I love the way it is making me feel. I love the colours it is opening up to me.
I am not being held back now, not ever again. It is joy and it freedom and just a touch of fear that feels a little like taking a running jump off a cliff, and just keeping going. The pure belief in it making you fly.
These are my emotions right now.
And it feels pretty good.
She opened up her hands
and there sat joy,
daubed onto every line and crease.
Like sunshine rich
it drenched the pores,
feeding potential underneath.
Hands that DO write
beauty out
in free uncensored streams
and paint many a masterpiece
no stroke begrudged,
and no need to wash them clean.
YES, she says, and spreads-out wide her joy to show:
rainbow skin, with widest grin
as finally she lets go.
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Now it’s your turn. As always try and visit as many as you can, to offer words of support, or encouragement, or just to say hello. Let’s make something special happen today.
Alchemy
There is something
so
delicious
so
sensual
about
mixing paint.
It happens slowly, and so describing it happens slowly too.
Just seven or eight colours in tubes. But from them the potential for infinite richness and variety.
It is a way of looking. Looking to work out the exact shade you need, to catch the shadow of the cloud or the depth of the sea.
An internal squinting.
Eyebrows, furrowed.
Fingers, poised.
Waiting. SEEING.
And then, hesitant splodges from tube to pallet. Varying amounts, instinctively sensing the hints of red or blue or yellow in a specific shade, teasing them out, to add them to your mix. Something never taught, never learned. Just FELT.
It is like alchemy. From the basest of bases creating richest hues, the subtlest shades, never again to be replicated, unique in its moment of creation. One mix breeding another, transferred to a new pot and lightened, darkened, tiny specks of white and black dripped in, to create the whole spectrum of light and shade.
Until
THERE
you have it.
And internal ‘snap’. And then the careful daubing, the hesitant first stroke as brush meets canvas. Building up layer after layer, drawn in to the extraordinary living rainbow you are creating.
My brushes soon forgotten. My fingers working the blends, dipped and dabbed. My fingerprints creating texture and movement as the colours swirl and meld together. Energy building, buzzing in my ears and crackling on my skin.
Lost to it. Pulled in. Riding every line and soft crease. Every pocket of light and dark.
Only periodically pulling back
to watch
as something beautiful
takes shape
and is given life.
Image Credit: Palette by Lolo
P.S. I know I have been a bit of a ‘bad’ blogger lately in terms of all that ‘engagement’ business. I do apologise. Mostly I’m enjoying being out in the sunshine, creating beautiful things, falling back in love with the process I describe here, and spending time chatting with my wonderful friends who help make my days shine brighter and brighter. But if you can catch hold of me long enough, then PLEASE do so. Send me a post you love, that you’d like for me to read. Say hi. You have my full permission to demand my attention a little bit, before I run off back to lie in the grass x
