Expectations. That kind of sums up the whole New Year’s thing for me.
Expectations that even if you’re more than happy curling up on the sofa waiting for the New Year to tick over, you SHOULD be out somewhere having EXTRAORDINARY fun. Camping. At a festival. A concert at an exclusive bar (as opposed to that seedy one with terrible music that you doggedly stick it out in because damn it it’s nearly midnight and you queued for 40 minutes just to get in). Continue reading “New Year’s dilemmas and expectations and what I do about them.”
The first page of results for images of reality was people looking through virtual reality glasses. I find it fascinating that, to a large extent, our concept of reality is filtered through what we think is better, or conversely what we think is worse. Is what they’re seeing through the glasses the true reality? The people exist, in these images, without a context, without a grounding reality.
There’s one of those little sayings ‘You know you’re a writer when….’ And sometimes that feels exclusionary, like “Well, I don’t always look up murder sites in crowded cafes but I think I’m still a real writer Susan”, but I think everyone who writes ends up putting parts of their daily life into their work. You can’t help it sometimes. Those little moments or feelings sneak into your creative mind like friendly ninjas and go “Oh hey! have you seen me? I’d look pretty good in your WIP don’t you think?”. And they do say to write what you know, so…
A couple of years ago I was walking around school when I bumped into a colleague who also happened to have been my old English teacher. He asked how I was, and I replied by telling him all about my concerns over one of my students and what I was doing to try and help him on the right path, and how hard it was for him. He nodded and smiled and then said, “But I asked how are you. How are you doing?”. I thought for a moment and then answered pretty honestly about my stress levels and tried to smile through my list of wider school commitments. He smiled and said the following, proving to be just as wise now as when he taught me at 15: