Well, this is a pleasure...

I have a week off.

Nothing planned for it, not going away, not even going away for the weekend.  Nothing.  Yet there is so much to do!  I feel as though I may finally catch up with myself.  Work has been hectic lately (far, far better than being bored, I remind myself hastily - I have had jobs in the past that were really boring, and it's a seriously grim experience).  Life has felt like one long session of chase-my-own-tail, only without the fun that cats and dogs seem to get out of it, and I'm tired.

I've almost completely given up watching the tele lately, in order to get some more writing done.  I had read that it was a very effective trick, and I can now vouch for that.  I gave myself a long holiday from "Gold Hawk", and wrote a lot of other bits and bobs, and gave my brain a proper rest before facing up to the painful task of killing off my heroine's family.  The bits and bobs were fun to do - a few of them are on ICW and there are some others on a tumblr-writers' blog called jrfrustration, if you're interested (though be warned, the two letters at the beginning of that blog address are indicative)...  But now it's back to the real thing again, i.e. hurting poor Anna, and making Thorn feel bad.  I'm such a lovely mama to my characters.

Besides the writing, which I hope to do some of every day this week, I'm planning on taking in a couple of exhibitions and perhaps doing a bike ride along the Thames towpath.  I have some needlework (there are two blouses I want to let out and some trousers to take in, not to mention a pair of summer baggy trews that have been half-finished for about two years).  It's my week this week to clean the flat; bleah, but it has to be done.  I want to bake bread and make some dried-apricot jam and a couple of batches of proper crumbly fudge (I'm thinking one lot classic vanilla, one lot honey-walnut...).  I want to turn out my summer clothes, since out of the blue the weather has turned warm and bright and one can finally believe the spring is here.  I want to catch up with some of the weird bits of shopping that get postponed week after week because one simply doesn't have the effing time to go trailing around looking for odd things like expanding compost.  I want to de-mealy-bug my phalaenopsis again.  And I'd to try and catch up with the Dipterist, who I haven't seen for ages and who could probably do with a break (maybe I can bribe her with fudge?).  

Of course, that is a huge wish-list and I probably won't do the half of it.

I also aim to catch up on some sleep.  Did some of that this morning, which is why I'm now more than halfway through Monday already and haven't achieved very much.  I know it looks like sheer laziness!  But, oh, the bliss - having Monday off, and not having to leap from my bed and rush about! 

Okay, enough of this; I've got things to do.  Starting with lunch, and that cleaning.  Get the cleaning out of the way, and the rest of this week is mine to with as I please.  Mine, all mine!

End of the week already...

It's Friday again. Good grief.

Last night I did no writing. I ate pizza. I drank rum and apple juice. I watched tv. In short, instead of feeding my soul and unleashing my creativity I took time out to do s*d all. Is this the same as procrastination? I don't think so - but then, I wouldn't, would I?. Seriously, there is, I am sure, a big difference between taking a break and never doing anything in the first place. One has to let the cistern refill, if you'll pardon the metaphor (note to self: must see if I can think of a more poetic phrase than that).

It's a sticky issue - on the one hand, one must make that total, Calaf-like comittment, but on the other hand one must stay alive, and although "man does not live by bread alone", man does not live by paint alone, either; nor by words, nor by sitting in the lab staring into the electron microscope until one's eyes bug out... (Please don't shriek at me for putting "man"; I'm just continuing the phraseology of the quotation for tidyness' sake. I have noticed I'm not a man [even if some men haven't!]).

There's a wonderful line in one of Ursula Le Guin's essays; I don't think I can remember the exact wording, but it is something like this.

"Apollo, god of the sun, of light, reason, music and the arts, blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't stare at the sun. Go into a dark bar with Dionysos occasionally."

The ancient Greeks understood this; they wouldn't have had a god of reason, light, music and the arts and a god of excess, of letting your hair down, festive release and drink, and the theatre, if they hadn't seen that these are not opposed but complementary forces. One cannot have order without chaos, or light without darkness. Or work without rest. Complexity is all; only connect.

On a totally different note, here's a funny news item;
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090123/ten-italian-job-cliffhanger-conundrum-so-a56114e.html

Have a good weekend.