Explaining the Absence

I've been absent from the Internet, by and large, for over a week now. The explanation is simple in some ways: I needed a break, and then I went on one. I was tired, to put it simply. Tired, busy, and trying to manage too many projects. The reason it's taken this long to say it is because of the second part of the explanation: I went on a break, and this made me even more tired. But it was worth it.

See, I went to London. It was my first time in Britain, and so my first time doing many of the things that can only be done in Britain. I plan on writing a few posts about my London experience, but this post is simply to say that I'm back in action...ish. I've put together a plan to catch up on my schedule, but I have to see how life affects it. It's easy to say, now, that I'll be posting every day again, but that's not always how things turn out.

My plans for the next month or so are simple: write as much as possible. Once the work on the play is done, I'll have a couple more evenings to myself per week, too, which should make a difference on the writing front. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Drama. It's the travel that I don't like. I don't get to do much on journey, but it's a long enough journey to make. There's about an equal amount of time walking as there is spent on the bus, and often I'm left waiting, and that's time wasted.

Aside from the writing, I have a couple of things I want to do. These include a Zom-B marathon, catching up on The Walking Dead, and reading through my collection of graphic novels. It's the simple things, really. I do also have Game of Thrones coming back, soon, so that's something. Otherwise, though, I'm just going to keep things calm, and let myself have a bit of fun for a while.

It's one of the things I realised while in London: I need to do more things that I enjoy that aren't writing. I need to get out more, and do more, and if money allows, travel more. I've already set my heart upon going to Edinburgh this year if the events at the festival are to my liking, so that's something. And, of course, I'll be returning to London. I have to. As you'll see over the next few blog posts, there's an awful lot of ways one can fill one's time when in London, and it's still possible to have so much left to do.

Time always seems to be the problem, eh?

A Wee Holiday

I don't dare to look at the date on the last published post on this blog: I gave myself a wee holiday from the Internet, and forgot to come back. So, here I am, in the cyber flesh, somewhat overworked as the change-over in work continues to baffle me with builders and deliveries and my transfiguration from man to newspaper ink as we put the little pieces of the Sunday Times together.

Evidently, I don't holiday well. Holidaying should imply rest, or at least doing something that isn't work, for a period of time. Instead, I was just away from my laptop, barely tweeting, not telling Facebook the ins-and-outs of my life, not blogging or vlogging or Google Plussing. I haven't done much by way of social media interaction since sometime in August, and I suppose I should apologise for that. Except apologies are over-rated when they don't have an explanation behind them, so here's how things happened.

The week following my last blog post - if I'm remembering when that was, exactly - was all a massive setting-up process for a weekend of Shenanigans and Buffoonery at my house. We had a Family Thing. That's about as much detail as you'll get on that. Needless to say, though, that the prep-work and everything else involved and the fact that I had all of this going on and a complete lack of willingness to talk about it online pretty much left me with nothing to blog about without pulling a random topic out of my...notebook. Let's say notebook. It's more family friendly.

Following the Weekend of Madness, which included some time off work, I ended up with a lot of hours in the bookshop as we went through with a major aspect of our change-over. I was also walking to and from work every day, which meant that from around eight until seven I was out of the house or getting in/out of my uniform. Somehow, I managed to maintain a weak semblance of a social life while doing all of this, going to the cinema a couple of times and having dinner out (the joys of KFC...which I can't see myself wanting to eat for a long, long time now) and actually talking to people.

At one point, I had some fun putting together a list of things I'm actually good at. I have a little portfolio in my room, now, which I want to keep adding to. It felt good to put it together, to make things seem a little bit less crap and a little bit more...possible? I suppose that's how it feels. Like things are possible. The big bad scary world of post-college life is a little less terrifying with a good idea of what I'm actually capable of now sitting in my bedroom.

During my time away from the Internet, I also managed to get myself back reading. I've even made the executive decision to make videos about the books I'm reading, since I don't make videos often enough.

And, of course, I've picked up The Sims 3 again. Something about living vicariously through digital minions is oddly fulfilling. At the moment, I'm playing using a married couple of a fairy and a wizard, just for the fun of it. It does mean that they share different beds (she sleeps in a fairy house outside...) but they're also capable of running a house rather efficiently. She can use her fairy magic to repair broken objects without fear of death, and he can magically upgrade objects without...well, fear of death, again. I lost a Sim in an earlier game to an electric shock. Thankfully, it's just a game...

While I've been contemplating many ideas for stories in my time away from the Internet, I've been keeping the writing to a minimum. It hasn't exactly been fun, not writing, but from this blog post on I'm getting things going again. I'm back from my wee little holiday, and it's time to get to business.

Changes

Well, I'm back. I reckon I'll be back until about Christmas time, at which point Social Oopmh, my auto-tweet companion, will be taking over my Twitter. It's not that I don't love you guys, I'll just have an awful lot of work to do around then. More on that in the future.

Okay, so here I am, anyway.My holiday is over from the moment I post this, though I'll tell you now for free that I won't be on Twitter or blogging tomorrow, because it'll be a very busy day. I'll be in the college helping Ferris revise for a poetry exam. Or procrastinate. It's up to him, really. Then I'll be off to Westmeath for Giddimon's birthday bash, staying overnight. I know. Westmeath. Ferris warned I might not come back. We'll see. I have Photographic Memory to post on Tuesday when I eventually get back home. And a lot of reviews. Seriously, changes are coming to this blog.

I'd hoped to implement them before I left, but it wasn't until a few days in that I got the ideas. If you're here enough you might notice them straight away. I'll make them more apparent as they actually happen. Basically I'm making this thing a little less about one specific subject, and more about the specific subjects I most enjoy.

On the writing front, I got no more editing done. It's been an emotional couple of weeks. Not all the time, but some of the time. I started a new book, as I have a habit of doing, and I'm posting it up on Facebook. So far no one has said anything good, bad or indifferent about it, so I'm assuming it's gone unnoticed. If you're a friend on Facebook, look in the notes section. Oh, and I discovered a whole second half to Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch, my novella with the less-than-subtle title. I won't tell you how the second half came about, but I only really figured out all the details this morning, and immediately told Ferris that I had an ending to it.

What else... oh, I've started to play my ukulele. I can play a few chords, and I'm getting the hang of strumming. Still rubbish, but everyone but Bill Bailey's character in Black Books is terrible at an instrument when they start. The important thing is I'm trying and I'm loving it.

Hmm... I had a list of things I was going to do. Didn't do my little day trip. Might say I chickened out of it, I guess. Long story that I won't be telling anyone. It's was all in my head, anyway. Didn't do any work on the submission that I mentioned... not that there's much to do but read over my own stuff. Um... yeah, there's some more stuff done regarding music. Not as much as I hoped to get done, because of the aforementioned "emotional couple of weeks" but a few. A start. Didn't do as much reading as I wanted to, but I have a few more reviews to post up. Actually, a lot of reviews to post up, if I write them for all the books I read for Story Time at work... Sleeping habits are alright. The real test will be to see if I can stay asleep over then next couple of weeks, now that my brother has gone on holiday (actual holiday... lucky bugger). Photo book didn't happen, and the discussions with friends have been limited to entirely textual things. No bother. I have three and a half hours to annoy Ferris with every thought that escapes my lips tomorrow.

So, I think that's it. Um, a big thank you to Rebecca Woodhead for her lovely concern, despite the fact that I was a royal pain in the ass. I do hope her book publication is coming along well. Thanks also to all those that kept thinking of me enough to mention me in tweets, and to everyone who's been looking at the blog over the past couple of weeks. And a thanks to anyone who actually buys anything through the links in the reviews. That one kind of goes on forever. Thanks to my friends who kept me sane all through the summer - I have four weeks to go as of tomorrow before I'm back in college! Special mention to Ferris Bueller, Miley Cyrus and Hyper McHen, because they're pretty much very awesome individuals and time spent with them is always fun. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to post a couple of reviews tonight!

Holiday

I've thought long and hard about this, because I'd been thinking about weird adventures (read as I'd been thinking about running away, but in the sense that I planned to come back), and after a few too many messages last night, I've decided to take a small holiday. I won't be going anywhere, I just won't be blogging, and I won't be on Twitter. Tonight, I'll be leaving for destination Me.

I have to do a couple of things before I can go, and one of them is this: I have to get my goodbye written. That's important, since I'd only started with a couple of features on my blog. They'll continue when I come back from being nowhere. I already have a couple of posts prepared for both Photographic Memory and Friday Friend, and I'll be putting them up in their own time.

Another thing I have to do is get a couple of videos up on YouTube, because they're a bit overdue. Particularly one of them that was meant to go up at the latest yesterday - the video for The New Book Club. Thankfully, I've already announced the August book, so people won't be waiting for that. The other video... well, I can't remember what it's about, only that it's for my own channel.

I have to set up an auto-tweet thing, too, to keep my reviews circulating for a bit. Two links a day, I think. I'll let you know when I'm back, don't worry. As if you would: I'm just a stranger on the Internet who shares too much information. I'll still be using Facebook, so my friends won't have anything to find worry in. My holiday isn't from them, it's from this, and from Twitter and YouTube and anything else that means I have to be someone else because I'm not allowed be myself; apparently the fact that I like talking about friends isn't good. I'll still be keeping on top of the Literary Den's Summer of Writing 2010, and if I'm not back in a couple of weeks I'll still be blogging for the Den, or finding someone else to do a guest post for me - and I know someone who might - and that'll be that.

I also have to send an email, before I no longer have to represent a visage. Or, you know, wear a mask. The email is important to me, but not specific to me.

While I'm gone, I hope to do a couple of things:
1. I plan on going on a solo day-trip to discover something about myself.
2. I want to get the second draft of Meet Sam finally done.
3. I want to get a submission ready to send off.
4. I want to write a few articles/blog posts about music, because music is this ultimately life-changing experience for me, as weird as that sounds.
5. I want to reclaim the threads of sanity I once told people I still had - read into that what you will, but you're probably wrong, because you don't know me well enough to make assumptions about my mental health, you only get what I give you.
6. I hope to do a lot of reading and write but not publish reviews for the books - I have many books that I need/want to read.
7. I want learn a thing or two about a thing or two.
8. I want to get my sleeping back into line without having the added worry about what people I've never actually met think about me.
9. I want to work on a photo book to maybe print for myself.
10. I want to see a few friends and have a good long talk with them, because there are things that haven't yet been said.

I don't know how long I'll be gone. I hope I'll come back, anyway, because, like I told Ferris, my blog is important to me. But if I don't come back - if I don't resurface to tell you all of all the wonderful things I've done while I was away - then I want to thank you for joining me on this wonderful journey, for being there for me, for talking to me on those long nights these past months, so innumerable. If I'm gone for more than a month, if I don't reappear by September, consider me gone from this blog until I can something worth saying that isn't an invasion of my friends' privacy - which I've been told is a very bad thing that I've done, despite not really revealing all that much about my friends.

So, without further delay, because the night is running out, I say farewell, dear reader. And remember, the pen is mightier than the sword.