Back Again

This blog hasn't finished yet although I haven't been in the mood for writing for many months. Recently I've realised it is not good enough. My blog is not going to be a settler story, one of those journey journals which peter out just when things get interesting.

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Too much thinking and SHBs but I set something in motion

Virgil (curse him) once told me that people who read self-help books use them to replace real change with reading self-help books. I think I use SHBs in times of crisis to get myself back on the straight and narrow, to tame my violent mind and unruly thoughts. When things start to spiral out of control SHBs can offer some perspective and stop me flying off the handle. I just bought another one. It's by Wayne Dyer. I'll let you know how it goes.

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A self-help hard limit

Now, I'm quite heavily into my self-help just at the moment. Of course I am! What else is there to do when you bump up against the realization that nothing's working in your life and the common factor is you? No one else can do this work for me and there is much work to be done. The truth: I'm finding self-help really helpful! Thanks, in particular, go to Neale Donald Walsch.

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Sunny morning, still crying

It's a glorious May morning. I wake up in my brother's bed. I feel like a prawn, curled in a foetal position, raw and pink and teary with weeping. I think, 'Harlot, remember that on some level you have chosen this.' Then I think: 'All change is for the best,' and that brings on another burst of tears.

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The anger book

Any regular visitor to these pages will know that I have a temper. Check me out on my new tag cloud. Anger is right up there. I am an angry woman and it's not pretty. Recently I decided that getting control of my rage would be a good first step in trying to sort out the mess I'm making.

Things have got worse recently. There was a night where I smashed three glasses in front of Virgil and then tried to pull his laptop out of his hands. I ended up sweeping the bedroom floor in a rage before sleeping (badly) on the sofa. I felt exhilarated and scared and absolutely incandescently but coldly angry. I don't want to be that person. I was desperate for Virgil to come and cuddle me and bring me back down but I had put myself somewhere where he was not going to come and get me. And I don't mean the sofa.

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I'm busy doing nothing

"Are you ok?" asked Virgil earlier. He cornered me outside the bathroom and put his arms around me. "Are you sad? You just seem a bit aimless today."

I had been lying on the sofa reading a book.

I assured him that I was fine. I had, indeed, been enjoying my book, which is of the self-help variety and not just a novel to be read for pleasure. I have been enjoying this book at various moments for the last month and I would like to finish it. I think it might help me work out what to do with my life.

When did finishing a book become something like hard work? As a child I managed one a day. As the books became longer and I more sociable and responsible for feeding, clothing and housing myself, this dropped to several a week. In the lows of depression in my twenties I read intensively and pathologically. When studying I had less time to read for pleasure, but looked forward to the moments when I could jump into a book.

Now I struggle to finish a book every two months. Now it is such a colossal achievement to finish a book that if I am not enjoying one after a couple of chapters I will abandon it. I would never have finished One Hundred Years Of Solitude with this attitude, or Moby Dick, or... well, many other books that I'm very glad to have read.

And why does Virgil think that reading a book equals lolling around? A few weeks ago during a conversation about the self-discipline required for self-employment he said how good it was to see me busy at my laptop rather than reading.

Virgil doesn't understand. I can spend hours wasting time on the internet while looking industrious, looking at things that are none of my business on Facebook and ignoring important chores while kidding myself that I am working. I have decided to have less internet in my life and more books.
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