A life less ordinary

I’ve decided to start blogging again. It isn’t because of popular demand, sadly. It isn’t because when I did blog, many people read them, sadly. It isn’t even because I have anything interesting or new to say…! When I wrote my American blog, America was the gift that kept on giving. Everything was so funny to me that the blogs were funny. I found myself hilarious. When I moved, it wasn’t fun any more and I thought that I had to be funny so I stopped writing. Recently I started writing again, every morning – as a cathartic purge really. I write three pages a day into a little notebook. According to my latest self help book it is supposed to aid creativity. It hasn’t. What I write is so bad, even I don’t read it.

My blogs used to pop into my head like a magical visitation. I would regurgitate them onto a page. They were effortless. I didn’t write them, I was just a conduit for the idea that presented itself to me, that day. This happened all the time. If I didn’t write it down, the idea would disperse and I would lose it. It was such a buzz.

The magical visitations stopped, I suspect, because I was closed. I was depressed. Living in Polar winter in Sweden after sunny Texas was depressing, Droitwich even more so! I have been pretty depressed ever since, and it’s been years. I miss my Texan times so much. I miss my life less ordinary. I have been waiting for the magic to return and to feel alive again ever since. It isn’t going to magically happen.

I have decided to start blogging again because I miss the buzz! If I show up to the page, maybe my visitations will start again. I switched from writing to textile art and have loved being practical and making art. I sit in my shed and create. Not just any shed! It’s The Posh Shed at the bottom of the garden. It’s my space, glorious, colourful and messy and I love it. It has kept me occupied for a couple of years and gets me out of the house (albeit only 30 meters away). Over the last month or so I have found it difficult to think of anything to make. I look from the kitchen to the shed and wonder what the fuck I am going to do in there. My artistic visions were never as powerful as my writing ones but I had them. They have stopped visiting me too. I have been deserted again and I’m lonely. The only thing that shows up with any regularity are the big fat pigeons that sit in the tree overhanging my shed and shit all over my roof and patio.

On Saturday I bumped into someone I used to work with, when I was a teacher. I was thrilled to see her. She could barely be arsed to say hello. I have berated myself for not returning to teaching when I returned from my ex-pat life. I am haunted by past lives and what could have been. I was reminded of this:

Truly, though our element is time,

We are not suited to the long perspectives

Open at each instant of our lives,

They link us to our losses: worse,

They show us what we have as it once was,

Blindingly undiminished, just as though

By acting differently, we could have kept it so.

How did Philip Larkin know I would need to read this and reflect on its wisdom. I cannot go back to my teaching career where I left off and nor do I want to. I cannot go back to Texas, and pick up where I left off. I cannot change the losses of the past. On reflection, I am glad the unpleasant encounter happened this weekend because it brought me to this page. I am in the very privileged position of being able to do what I like, every day. I can write, I can craft, I can make art. I have a life less ordinary (wtf is an ordinary life anyway?) and if I let go of the passed (not a mistaken homophone here but feel free to replace with Past – it works too) things I mourn I will be open to ideas and new possibilities. This first tentative return to the page isn’t going to gain any admiration for my capacity for writing nor is it split your sides funny (which I love most when the writing flows) but by publishing it, it is a massive step forward into the new day for me!