Lots of grateful things today.I managed to feel some interest in the work I was doing today. It's taken this long for me to muster it. Maybe not quite - I'd started to enjoy it yesterday. Not salivation-making, but quite good. It's done now, and sent. I'm both relieved and grateful for that.
I was grateful not to be out in that storm this morning, but it was very nice to see it. Water was chugging off the gutter in bucketloads. The air was thick with it. I looked out of every window to see where was most exciting. I think mostly the back, looking up to the garden. Which is where I was at first. Ooh, there's surely a lesson there. But will I listen? Will I? No.
So I did my work. That was most of the day. And I've started looking for flats. The dog-search does work... and there are all sorts of places out there. I'm struck with the pure abundance of it. Everywhere you look, there are rooms. I'm seeing one at the arse-end of Finchley tomorrow. It looks massive, though. There's one in Wood Green too.
By rights, I should wait for the dog. I know it'll be there. Only I can't assume. It might be next door's dog. And I don't want to live in a shit-hole for the sake of a dog. Find the flat and the dog will come. Or something.
Very grateful for a mention on two blogs over the last two days. Super-creative, cup-headed artist Emily Wilkinson (http://septembersunjournal.mindfulmaps.com/kickstarting-2012-3-some-wk-and-more-play/). Emily likes play. And writing. And making stuff. She is full of surprises.
(www.danfoxcopywriting.com/news.php). I have always liked his style. He's a clever writer who likes language and likes to play with it. Thank you for linking me, Dan, and for still being funny.
[Ooh, that's just made me remember, I saw a MASSIVE fox in the garden today, not during the rain. He/she was running and slipped out at the bottom of the garden before I could have a proper gaze, but it was very exciting. Healthy. If I only had one word for that particular fox, that's what I'd pick. And then 'a bit scared'].
It's funny, isn't it, who you know. I didn't think I would still know Dan. We crossed over at Hasbro (he employed me) but only for a matter of months. Three, I think, at most. And here we still are, in touch. That's good.
I could get all philosophical about how the people you love the most in the world were given to you purely through situation. It wouldn't be the first time. Oh bugger it, why not. Treat myself. So: Esther Lilley (we spoke today, so that was nice). We met in a farmhouse in Inverness, doing writing with Carol Ann Duffy. I had a throne. Lilley laughed a lot. We kept in touch, and then we didn't. Two years later, in a farmhouse in Hebden Bridge, we met again. Or rather, I heard her laugh in the garden while I was up in my atticky room and I stuck out
my head, all full of glee, and called down.
That's not so much philosophy as nostalgia, is it? There followed a string of ridiculous texts and talking, huge amounts of laughing into phones and then visiting and calls and all sorts of toings and froings (ah ha... so much better without the hyphens), and now I am so very proud and blessed and happy to have her as a proper friend. To sister proportions. She's the business, that one. A keeper.
It's true, though. The people we know, love, even marry - we had to find them somewhere. We had to cross paths with them. Another reason to get out of the house and not spend any more days holed up in front of a computer screen when I could be out there, playing. There are times and places. Both are very nice.
Another blog post - this is yesterday's, but I found it particularly wonderful. (http://reasonstokeeponbreathing.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-fifty-eight-split-peasonality.html). I never tire of it. I read it every day. Another writer I admire.
Thank you for the text I got from Victoria Sandison. So very unsolicited and lovely. It made me laugh and soften and forget the things I would otherwise have been fretting about. And it made me think of security guard/voiceover artist/famous poet Basit Ali, whose Christmas card was probably among the top communications I've ever had. It read:
I'm sorry I didn't write earlier, but due to laziness, I was unable to reply.
Made me howl. Ali is such a polite, gentle, well-spoken man. And he made Victoria cry with laughter today. Can't wait to find out how. Oh god!
I feel very lucky, and quite happy. Which is surprising. I missed my swim (it was planned, but I had hoped to go later - didn't finish in time). I left the house only once, this morning, to buy nectarines. It was a ploy, really. I just wanted to get fresh air. I was deeply frustrated that my rationale for not swimming was that I needed to work, but I didn't actually start work until after 9 - so I really could have gone.
However, I wasted little to no time beating myself up about that... that's a first. It's hugely significant. The odds were stacked against me today - not moving physically - not achieving quite any of the targets I'd set. But how nice, how nice, all of this. How very, very nice. How different to my mood this time last year, when the fear of the situation I am now in, and many other things, were weighing me down so heavily, I nearly drowned.
When will I learn that the universe provides? Especially when I do what I love. Whatever quote it was that said we are not grateful because we are joyful, we are joyful because we are grateful. It was somebody. It reads like a clumsy platitude, but it really is so true.
And from today's Reasons To Keep On Breathing blog came this: extraordinary depth in the smallest detail. It was about Sherlock Holmes and Mark Gatiss. And gratitude, for me, is the same thing. A huge thing seems too much to eat. A small thing fills me with the joys of savouring just how much juice is in it.
Thank you for money paid, and some spent, and for the adventures both will bring. Thank you for texts that made me smile, for potential in bags, for cats in bags (always funny, if not relevant) and for the next dog I shall foster. For synchronicities and things not understood, and their revelations later. And thank you for things I never thought I'd really feel, but do.
No comments:
Post a Comment