Ketchup

This is going to be a very messy post I’m afraid.

I seem to have been all over the place of late, constantly trying to catch up on my life and not at all succeeding. I owe far too many people emails. I have little projects around the house which I’m no nearer to completing than I was over the Christmas break. My novel, although not at all falling by the wayside, is languishing slightly under the cold shoulder of relative neglect... I’m still plugging away at it but my progress has been slow over the last few weeks. I just haven’t been able to spend enough time getting back into it after the New Year hiatus. Not that it’s doing too badly: 102,100 words and counting... just counting extremely slowly.

I can’t deny it; my energy and inspiration levels have dropped significantly since the New Year.

I’m sure it’s just a seasonal thing but I do find under achievement very frustrating... even though the old plate is actually pretty full at the moment. Karen’s mum is still in hospital though Karen hasn’t visited her for a week or two due to illness – she and Tom and myself have all been afflicted with the post-Christmas lurgy that’s been doing the rounds. Plus Tom is having periodic bouts of teething and is currently recovering from the mother of all nappy rashes. None of which is conducive to sticking a baby into a car seat for 4 hours to drive up and down the country to visit someone who doesn’t even appreciate it.

Sorry. I was going to give the anger thing a rest.

University continues well though, even there, I can tell that I’m slowly reaching the end of my tether. Another 12 months and it’ll all be over and I’ll be indescribably glad. The constant outlay of money and energy is wearing me thin. Doing a part-time degree has been great in many respects – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise – but 10 years slogging back and forth is way, way too much. I’m happy to commit to long-hauls but even I have a limit.

The web site business also continues apace. A constant background hum of extra work and toil sloshed onto my plate. It’s time consuming, tiring and frequently tedious but it does bring in much needed extra money. And God knows I need it – I’ve got Karen’s birthday fast approaching this month plus Valentine’s Day on top. My budget is as shot as a suicide bomber in Dimona. Sorry. Bad taste. But topical. And really I’m finding that difficult at the moment.

And TV at the moment – usually my hardy standby in terms of blog-worthy material – is ineffably flat. Sure there’s Torchwood and there’s Lark Rise To Cranford. And Ashes To Ashes starts this week... but it’s not impinging on me like it used to. I have no real enthusiasm for new stuff at the moment and it’s frightening. About the only thing that’s excited Karen and me with regards the telly is working out how to use the Catch Up TV feature on our Virgin box. But this just means we’re watching “old” stuff out of sync with the rest of the country. Lost in our own private TV schedule.

All in all I feel like some kind of weird psychological hibernation process is occurring in my brain. Like I’m not fully engaging with the world around me. Like I’m a record being played at the wrong speed. Mind you as long as it’s not Whitesnake I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Mainly though I’m just annoyed with myself. Annoyed because on the whole I have very little to complain about so why am I so full of moans? Other people are having a much rougher time. I’m just feeling a bit blurgh. And that hardly makes for a decent blog post.