Tag: Writing

Thoughts

One Year On

minceandskirlie

It’s been about a year since my last blogpost. And some things have happened since then. When I was last posting I was in the middle of half marathon training and really hyped to be back at a regular running schedule after a few years of back issues. Well, my disc suddenly decided fuck that a few weeks from the race and although I pushed through on the day, that was pretty much the last decent run I went on. That was in July last year.

Since then I’ve had physio, then surgery a few weeks ago, and I’m now hopefully on the way to recovery. If I get back to half marathon distance and beyond? I dunno. It might be that part of my life is done, which I’m starting to come to terms with, but you never know. I’m basically taking all the pressure off myself for that now.

There’s been a load of other stuff going on since last year, both on a personal level and generally in the global news that has been not fun. However, let’s not dwell too much on those. I’d much rather try and focus on things that are positive and take people’s mind off all the horrible things that are going on. The news is important and activism is more important than ever. But you have to also let the pressure off and take care of yourself first.

With that in mind and while I’ve been unable to go running, cycling, climbing or do any of the other things I would do to maintain body and soul I’ve had to look at other ways to relax. I mean, I still had gaming and music, but I was looking for something new, preferably a social sport that was low impact and I could take with me into the next ten or twenty years if my back decides to rebel against me again. I did some research and had a look at what was available locally and eventually signed up for a beginners course in archery.

I’ve been going since October and it’s honestly brilliant. The act of archery itself is very meditative – the draw, hold and release. A motion repeated over and over again across the session. Trying to build consistency and accuracy. I find it really relaxing, plus it uses a lot of back muscles to correctly draw the bow and my physio thought it would be beneficial in the long term for recovery. The social aspect is also really good for me, especially as I’ve been working from home more often lately. Everyone at the club is friendly and encouraging, it’s a small club with a focus on coaching beginners and kids so you’d expect that really.

Archery is also a very nerdy sport, it’s not fashionable, which suits me perfectly. Plus it has a huge variety of equipment to geek out over. I took great pleasure in putting together a wish list of gear, which I then picked off over black Friday sales and christmas. Then you have to set it all up and tune it so it’s as accurate as possible. I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it, despite a long break for my disc surgery. I’m excited to see how I can progress through the year now we’re into the outdoor season.

Another new hobby I’ve picked up (like I needed any more) is chess. I keep installing chess apps on phones, tablets and even my PC but then never play them. Well, I decided to give it a go and now I’m hooked. I can’t get enough. I’m watching YouTube videos, twitch streamers, reading books, doing puzzles and playing loads of games on chess.com to try and improve. I’m still pretty terrible though but I’m enjoying it a lot. I like that there’s a game mode for whatever I can fit in at the time. Quick puzzles and blitz games to pass a few minutes, or rapid games if I have some more time to spare.

I also play games like Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer 40k, but to keep up with them you have to build new decks, new army lists, and the rules are constantly being updated and you have to spend a lot of effort just keeping on top of the logistics of knowing the game, let alone actually playing a few rounds. Chess has a lot of the strategy of other games but chess… chess never changes. The rules are the rules and that’s how the game is played (variants like chess960/freestyle not withstanding). But really, I like that I can just load up a game on my PC, phone or tablet and run through it in 5, 10 or 20 mins. Or just sit and go through some tactics puzzles for a bit.

There’s also a bottomless pit of resources to help you learn and improve in the game. Which for anyone like me who has a strong hyper-fixation reflex when it comes to new things, is an absolutely essential part of the experience.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. In amongst all that, there’s still the day job, still got to spend time with the family and keep the kids entertained, and I’ve still got a uni module to finish for the OU that I use all these hobbies to procrastinate from. Once this latest (and second last) module is out of the way I hope to get back to some Twitch streams myself, pick up some music and model painting again and maybe even do more writing. For now, I’ll go play some chess. No, damnit, I’ll go finish this assignment…

Thoughts

Is blogging back?

minceandskirlie

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot lately. As a certain once popular micro-blogging site descends further into chaos and irrelevancy, I’ve been missing the days when I could just spout my opinions on things into the internet without a care in the world.

Somehow it’s been over two years since I last wrote a blog post here. Why? I still have things I want to say. Words to write. I feel it would be helpful for me to get stuff out of my head and onto the page, at least virtually.

Threads is some kind of replacement for the thing that shall not be named, but let’s be honest, that thing wasn’t a great replacement for blogs either. Short, pithy, posts about what’s happening right NOW in your head don’t really make for nuanced reading. Then there’s the constant barrage of negativity, bigotry and hatred that seems to seep from every pore of that anti-social media machine.

I want to enthuse about stuff I like. I want to write in longform as I wrestle my thoughts into something resembling coherency. I want to go into far too much detail about what’s exciting me and not worry about the reply guys shooting me down for it or shitting on my new obsessions.

I also want to be in control of what I can write and not worry it’s going to disappear in a cloud of chaotic smoke.

Now, I’m not fully in control of this site. I gave up my own hosting a while ago as it wasn’t being used and I needed to save the cash. But I can always move back again if WordPress start being douchebags. I have enough control. So, it’ll do for now.

Is blogging back? I dunno. It might not get back to it’s heyday but I think I need to be writing again so I’m going to give it a try.

Thoughts

Strange and Scary Times

minceandskirlie

It’s been a year since I posted anything on this blog. It’s probably been more than a year since I finished a piece of creative writing. I started studying with the Open University for a degree in Environmental Science last year and between that, work and my family responsibilities I haven’t had much time for being creative.

But I have really missed that outlet over the last few weeks. I sat watching the COVID-19 pandemic spiral out of control, encompassing Asia, then Italy and now most of the world. At first I felt OK. My thinking was we just have to follow the advice and the rest is out of our hands (personally speaking at least). I was able to detach myself from it and it didn’t affect me.

That’s not the case now.

My day job is in IT and as the department started to move from our normal day to day work towards enabling the business to work remotely in its entirety, a familiar old feeling started to return. I suffered from general anxiety disorder for a prolonged period some years ago but had felt like I was getting a lot of my old confidence back in the last 6-12 months. Then this week, as I was packing up my stuff to take home so I could work from my spare room for the foreseeable future, as I contemplated that my kids wouldn’t be going to nursery for the next few months and my eldest might miss the start of her primary school journey after the summer, as businesses both local and national suffered the sudden loss of most of their custom, I started feeling scared again.

Now to be honest it’s an understandable response and I imagine lots of us are scared at the moment. I’m hopeful that this isn’t a full blown return of my anxiety problems and just a natural reaction to an unprecedented situation, but only time will tell.

But it has highlighted to me that I spent too much time doing things which are unhelpful for my mental health. I can keep informed on the pandemic without constantly monitoring the BBC and Guardian’s live updates pages. I don’t need to sit on twitter all night watching everyone react in horror at the raving inadequacies of our government and Prime Minister. I can do something else instead.

I still need to spend a large chunk of my free time studying, though my current module will finish soon and I’ll be free for the summer. But I don’t have to fill the rest of my time battering my mental health when I’ve got enough on my plate with work, the kids and my degree. So I’m going to try and start switching off the laptop and getting back into some writing and playing music.

Hopefully I can get back into the mindset to write some poetry again, but to start with I think I’ll start keeping this blog updated some more and dig out my to do list of songs and tunes that I was working on before other commitments took hold. If I feel like sharing I’ll post some of it on here.

In the meantime everyone needs to look after themselves, their families and their community.

Stay healthy in body and mind.

Thoughts

Pushing Out The Boat and other updates

minceandskirlie

I keep putting the URL for this blog on my bio when I submit writing to magazines and journals so I should probably start updating it again!

On the subject of submissions, I have a poem – Spikkin – published in the latest edition of Pushing Out The Boat. The magazine is produced in Aberdeen and features writing from all over, but with a focus on the North East of Scotland. As my poem is written in Doric and is about my relationship with the language of North East Scotland I’m particularly pleased that it has found a home in Pushing Out The Boat.

The magazine will be launched on April 7th at an event at Pheonix Community Hall in Newton Dee (near Milltimber, Aberdeen), where a number of contributors (including myself) will be reading their work.

I also had my poem The Haar accepted into issue one of Aberdeen based collective Re:Analogue’s magazine. However it looks like this has been delayed so I’m not sure when that will come out.

That aside it’s been a slow start to 2019 with a very busy personal life (who knew having two kids would be even harder than just having one!?) and a challenging work environment leaving little time or inclination to do any writing. Now I’ve also started an Open University degree in Environmental Science because I thought I should destroy what little free time I had left. At least that might give me something to write about on here when the mood takes me.

News, Thoughts, Writing

I Submit

minceandskirlie

I know and I understand that to be a published writer I need to do two things – I need to write and I need to send work to publishers. I’ve not been great at the former, but I’ve always been terrible at the latter.

Despite this I still spend a lot of time feeling hard done by, that what little I do submit, rarely gets selected. Which is stupid. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it. The feeling of injustice when I see a competition winner announced or a magazine published without seeing a congratulations email appear in my inbox is large.

This isn’t because I think I deserve to win competitions, or that my work is so good it just has to be included in the must have literary journals, it’s just that from the moment I send the submission I start to hope; and as we all know it’s the hope that kills you.

All that negativity adds up and the result is I feel pretty down about the submission process and I submit less. Which, when I was starting from a pretty low submission rate, means I basically stopped submitting work altogether. Whoops.

Two things happened recently to change my attitude. First, I had some success (hooray!). A poem I submitted at the start of the summer, to a new local magazine by a spoken word collective, got accepted for publication (due out in November). For the second time in a row it was one I felt was the weakest in the submission package, but I’m not complaining! It just shows that you can never know what will click with someone.

The second thing was seeing this tweet about Sylvia Plath. That’s nine months of submissions.  Just seeing how hard she was working to get work published, even after her first collection had been released, made me realise that it doesn’t really matter who you are or how good the work is. The sheer volume of submissions editors get means that most people, even Sylvia Plath, will end up with more rejections than submissions. So to get work accepted I have to make the odds work more in my favour and that means I have to submit more and worry about rejection less.

This week I submitted work to three magazines and revamped my submissions spreadsheet to better track what I’ve submitted, to where, and if it was successful. With that and a more positive, but realistic, attitude to the process hopefully I can get some more success with my work. Or is it just more dreadful hope?