The day after

I was cold this morning, cold and tired despite laying for several hours with my eyes closed and snoring. And no amount of clothes could warm me up. Like an adder in early spring, I sort out the sun to try and soak up the rays so my body could start working again, and my mind function, plus I had to go out and do some shopping, and sitting, staring at the telly was getting me nowhere.
So I wrapped myself up in black and braved the day, and slowly, although my footsteps were my usual fast pace, the sunlight crept in and brought me back to life.
Ok, this is reading like a tale of someone else who is living my life but I suppose that's what happens when you have a couple of good ales the night before, your own life seems far away and far more interesting than it really is. And I need the writing practise anyway.
A friend of mine has gone and got himself published.

Ralph and the Purple Fly by Christopher Brunt is an interesting read. I haven't finished it yet but will let you know what I make of it soon. (Oooh, a blog with a purpose, finally.)
You can find him on twitter @https://twitter.com/CJBWriter or at http://www.christopherbruntauthor.com/ 
Am I jealous? No. Am I envious? Oh yes very. Not so much that he has got published, but that he has pushed himself to get published. He has got his finger out and made someone other than a friend read his work, and that someone found merit in it.
How can I do less than that? A thousand tales linger in this brain of mind but I have never pushed to do anything with them accept occasionally spoil a prefectly crisp white sheet of paper with irratic ink marks I call writing just to make some space in there so I can get on with day to day living.
Now I have been issued a challenge, and one I should have risen to long ago but my stories were just, well, stories that I wrote, and thought about, and occasionally discussed with others who had no choice but to listen to me ramble on about some odd character doing strange things in the safety of my imagination.
Where I go from here I do not know but I have to try. Even if I just end up blogging a tale or two, my work will be out there. Shame my typing is not that fast, and I tend to have difficulty explaining things in type where words just flow from the pen when I write (not always coherently or legible I admit) and the story arrives from brain to hand in one easy ink blot.
I don't write ideas and plans, and I don't usually know what is going on until it happens, but this haphazardness works for me as a creative being. So getting organised for me is a hard thing to do, but I cannot let Chris take the literary world by storm all by himself now can I?
We shall see.

Thank you for reading.. xx

Breath of the Mind

Does the mind breathe?
I know it needs oxygen in order to work efficiently, but do our minds need more than that? Does it inhale time, and exhale thoughts, imagination, relaxation and creativity.
 Do our minds need moments to accept the wonders of the world around us, to process all the information that is bombarding us from our over abused senses, before it can go on being healthy and balanced?
Because we don't stop. There is no culture to take a moment out and let the brain process the world, to let the mind relax and meander from thought to random thought until it is a happy mind again.
 And we make it worse with social media, always checking where we are, who is around, what our favourite people are doing, what our work requires of us even when not at work. Arrgh!!!
Where is the technology that will make us enjoyers of leisure instead of consumers of pointlessness?
I have to hold my hand up and be counted, as the more tech savvy I get, the more I use it, and the harder it is to not spend that spare moment checking up just in case someone has emailed you, or what the weather will be in the next hour, where all I have to do it look up at the clouds and feel the wind to see if it might rain soon. And if I looked up, I might see the wonder of the world around us, the sparkling newness of the early summer greenery, the dancing tide viscously up the river in long, slow rolling humps of water, and the birds singing and darting just over my head as they rush to feed their rapidly growing brood of young.
Don't get me wrong, it is a good tool to use to teach, to keep in touch with those that matter to us, to learn new things, and discover what is going on in the local area, but then we forget to DO things. to go out and join in with those local activities, to engage with them.
But there is no time to just be.
In this ever expanding world of dwindling boundaries, in this time of work hard, and play harder, there is no pause button, no allowance of time to let thoughts trundle through the air, collecting questions and unusual answers as it goes, making us wonder at the marvellousness of the space we exist in. There is only the time to DO!
I know people all work differently and all need varying levels of experience, but if we just do all the time, how do we know what we are? If we cannot spend some time listening to the thoughts in our own heads, then what are we afraid of? That we are not happy with our lot? Not satisfied with our jobs and homes and lives?
That we don't want to be consumers of endless advancement?
I don't know, I have no answers, but I am happy I have the questions, and the time to ask them, even if it is only myself I ask.
For a long delicious moment in the warm sun, with a tickling breeze sending the clouds into paroxysms of bouncing laughter, I let my mind breathe!

(Thought of on a walk to work to place an order 3 hours before I started my job and then home again. Breath of mind indeed!)