January

Year’s End

I see I last posted in October. Hmm. And now it’s the last day of the year.

It’s been a year of challenges for me; some good, some less so; but they will all make it a year that stands out in the fog of my life.

I’ve been dwelling on humanity and its extremes. I visited a relative with Alzheimer’s this week. There he lay, as he has for the past four years, unable to communicate, helpless as an infant; yet he is cared for, fed, washed and shaved, spoken to every day, kept alive, really, and with dignity, by the people who look after him.

Hard to believe that in the same species there are those who will storm into a school and kill children. Children.

This morning, I saw it again. On the BBC news app there are two headlines next to each other:

“Children ‘groomed in every town'” reads the first. Sadly, that speaks for itself.

“MBE for volunteer maths teacher” reads the second. This refers to Gbolahan Bright, a teacher for 36 years who runs free after school maths clubs. “We view every child as gifted. It is our job to motivate them,” he says. “It is beyond mathematics. The aim is to bring the best out of each child. It gives us joy.”

There it is again; one end of the human spectrum abusing vulnerable people, turning them into victims; Mr Bright at the other end, helping them to become heroes.

I’ve got my usual New Year’s resolutions, I suppose, but I want next year to be less about giving up things, less about hanging around in the middle of the spectrum of humanity through idleness, and more about doing something positive and in whatever small way I can being on the same side as the people making the world better.

Is it still January?

How long is this month?

I have discovered that the very day I last posted on here is described as ‘Blue Monday’ due to Christmas-heavy credit card bills arriving and the firmness of New Year’s resolutions wilting.

Unable to do what those well-to-do teenagers did – run off to a Caribbean 5 star Paradise – I have leapt (crawled) into action (slow motion movement) since then. I’ve signed up for an online writing course (Children and YA) to motivate myself, and have sent off a couple of small pieces of writing.

Am now over thinking and under writing, but as they say, things can only get better…the only way is up …anything is possible.

January is not going to plan. Usually, it is a great writing month but this year I am in a heightened state of procrastination so epic that house cleaning has actually occurred. It’s not good. Not good at all.

Of course, there is still all the cat stuff going on, not to mention parenting through the teen angst, which is hard as I feel like a thirteen year old myself a lot of the time. I still cannot type the without typing teh. Why did I think 2014 was going to be any different? It’s not like all the crap wipes itself out on 31st December and life resets itself to a perfect state at 12.01 a.m. on January 1st.

My procrastinatory tendencies are driving me madder than usual because I have the perfect motivation to write. I have a load of half finished stuff courtesy of NaNoWriMo and Writing Events Bath workshops, plus I have been placed first in a short story competition! Details to follow.