As my regular readers will have noticed, I’ve been a little bit lax
in posting of late. So, as I’m finally back on track and ready to
get on with somewhat regular posting again, I thought I’d let you
know something of why.
My posting schedule had become a bit more
infrequent when I started some new work around last November.
Unfortunately, the nature of the work means I can’t talk about what
it is publicly (and if you know, as some of you will, please don’t
you talk about it publicly either). Work that pays solid money is
always going to have to take priority, at least until such time as
this blog somehow earns me something solid towards my living costs
(and slim chance of that, though if you think it deserves it
please
do consider contributing to my Patreon – the more I’m making
there, the more reliable my posting will be). So while that work is
variable, I’m going to take all the days I can of it in order to be
financially not-in-a-crisis. Having this work is good news, it means
my wife and I are a little more secure (though not as secure as we
would be if it were a reliable, set amount of work), and that’s
great. It does mean other things were under a little more pressure
and some things got squeezed out.
Then, in August, we bought a flat (thanks to the
generosity, and perhaps some degree of enlightened self-interest, of
relatives). Then we moved into the flat. Then we had to get
everything sorted in the flat – no actual serious work on it, but
cleaning, furniture, unpacking, rearranging furniture, more furniture
arriving necessitating more rearranging, repacking to move things
between rooms, unpacking again… you get the idea. This has been far
more time than I think I was expecting. Obviously, my work had to
take priority, and then my commitments to my Area Meeting. Those
commitments slipped a little as well, and preparation for AM Trustees
meetings got a little bit haphazard, but we’ve weathered that and
should come out the stronger for it, I think.
The thing is, it’s not just the having less time
to actually sit down and write. It’s not even having less time to
sit down and do research and planning and reading in preparation for
that writing. All my writing for this blog, even the most analytic
and deliberate writing, flows from some degree of thought and
reflection. I think about things and then other things occur to me,
and then I write about them. In terms of time free from other
demands, I could have sat down and bashed out a couple of thousand
words a week, at least, if I had the couple of thousand words to
write.
I find this about
writing generally, except possibly the most academic or functional
writing. If there’s anything creative about it at all, then it
needs a lot going on in my head when I’m not
writing. Ideas circulate, bubble up, intermingle, undergo a sort of
conceptual meiosis sometimes. If
I’m spending so much of my time thinking about urgent things and so
stressed about them that this background fermentation of thoughts
doesn’t happen, or gets arrested before it can reach the stage
where I have a solid idea to put in storage and work on later.
Having the flat
is also a good thing, by the way. It’s a nice flat. Here’s some
photos, selected so as to not give away – even to someone with
local knowledge – where precisely it is. I like to be kind of
careful about that.
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| Shortly after the movers moved most of our stuff. |
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| Things a little more sorted - look, desks, and a dining table (and my wife)! |
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| Bookcases are very important, as will become clear. |
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| See. Books. |
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| Also games. This is with a tiny fraction of the collection shelved. |
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| More books. |
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| Oh yeah, we're naming the bookcases. |
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This dresser came from a charity shop. The biggest ones are cheap, because not many people want
them and they're hard to move. I can certainly testify as to the latter point, even with delivery. |
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| There, that's most of the game collection shelved... there's more on top of the bookcase, too. |
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Finally making use of the single biggest purchase we made as part of the move - an
electric double recliner sofa with separate motorised headrests. It's wonderful. |
More sadly, this has also led to me missing Meeting for Worship a lot. I'm further from the meeting house now, so it takes less of an illness to keep me from making the journey, and I've just been so busy (and frequently overtired) that I can't afford to lose the half-day from productive things (or occasionally sleep). New years, new beginnings, and I intend to make it far more reliably in 2020 than I have in the back half of 2019.
So, you’ll see
a post soon about birthright Quakers, and then there’s one coming
soon about simplifying our Meeting structures. There’s a bit of
written ministry bubbling away about purity, and there’s lots more
ideas for me to write about deliberately. Plus I can get back to my
series of reflections on my ‘Maxims
and Aphorisms’. I hope to be sharing a lot more with you again
soon, and the new year seems an apt time to be getting on with it.
