Options

You might recall my trouble sleeping the other night. I had some things on my mind. Part of it was to do with work (and my still only working weekends on minimum wage after six years in the place), and part of it was to do with September and its great big Nothingness. There's also a change in the house around then, and that's just one more thing to consider.

So, I re-wrote out my 'solutions' list, neatly, and put it away safely. I've addressed something new and exciting that came up today. And to further address the worries that September brings, I brainstormed my options.

Setting an online timer, I had three minutes to write down as many different things I could do that would affect both my work and September problems at the same time. While there's no direct need to leave the bookshop for most of the options, because most of them aren't instant-return, and don't require complete availability on my part, I did include that.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want to leave the bookshop. I just want to be able to do something more than weekends at such a low wage, and not feel like I need them more than they need me. In six years, the management haven't exactly made me feel as if I'm an essential and valued part of the team, which really sucks. It could just be me, now, at this point in my life, blowing it all out of proportion, but I don't think so. I don't even have keys to the shop, despite it being mentioned two or three times over the past couple of years that I should probably be given a set (which would make arranging hours easier, since I could open and close the shop if need be.)

So, with those niggling doubts over my value to the shop, I have my list. I need to type it up and make it official, but my options are now there in front of me.

I'll break it down for you. A lot of it involves writing in one way or another. One option is crafty. A couple are business-y. One's even a learning thing, just so I'm doing something in September (I was thinking one of those free online courses...in something.)

The value in this exercise is that, while life seems to be at an impasse, I can still make choices to change things. One thing's for certain though: I'll have to start setting an alarm and working every day at regular hours. My motivation has gone way down without structure to the day. Now I have lots of different options I can choose from. I know I'll probably get started on a couple of them sooner rather than later, too, because I can. They don't require me to do much aside from getting myself out of this chair. (Though, inevitably I'll have to return to the chair for the computer parts of these things.)

What I'm saying is, while the post-college blues might be setting in, I have a way out. I have many ways out, in fact, and I think it's about time I followed through on them.

Subscribers, wha'?

On Friday, I launched ParagraVerse, my new prose and poetry blog. With that, came Bed, my horror flash fiction story. Today, the first Tuesday since the launch day, I put up the first poem to the site: The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind.

What I have noticed in each case is that (a) I have gotten a few 'likes' from other Wordpress users, (b) I have gotten at least one comment per post and (c) at least one person has subscribed each time. And just for the record, these aren't bragging rights.

In fact, the only reason I'm highlighting this is because people ask me (rather often, in fact) which blogging platform they should use. While Blogger is fully Google-integrated, it's labels don't do much for helping other Blogger users find your posts. I've also found that it's a slightly longer process to subscribe to someone's blog via Blogger.

Wordpress, on the other hand, while not totally Google-integrated, allows for other Wordpress users to find blog posts more easily. (This is true of Wordpress.com, not of using the .org self-hosting option.) What this means, of course, is that more people you don't know can find your post more easily just by searching a tag, or by seeing your post pop up in the Freshly Pressed section of Wordpress.com. Subscribing is also a much quicker process.

Let's make it clear: I didn't set up ParagraVerse for subscribers. I set it up to share prose and poetry. However, subscribers are a sign to me that people are interested in reading what I've written. I don't, and won't, display my subscriber numbers (unless running a competition when I reach X amount of subscribers - then I'd need to display it to prove it) because the subscribers are, to me, the people who want to read my work, not the number I can show people who come to the site.

The advantage of having subscribers, of course, is that the task of sending your work to people is done for you by their action of subscribing. While I will always post a link on the various social media sites I use to new poems and stories, not everyone who reads them is necessarily following me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

And, while I'm talking about it, I'd like to openly thank everyone who has thus far (a) subscribed, (b) commented on, (c) liked and/or (d) read Bed or The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind. It means a lot to me to receive such positive feedback after so little work has gone up. I hope you'll stick with me as I add to the collection of stories and poems over the coming months.

Creative Block?

Okay, that title might be pushing it. I don't quite have a block on my creativity as much as a severe case of The Lazies. I'm still getting ideas and planning stories, but I'm not doing anything with them.

And that, as you can guess, is a problem.

So, I'm going to spend a wee bit of time in the morning trying to get my creative gears going. I may end up doing some crafty stuff, like drawing or Celtic designs, but I'd like to get some poetry written and a flash story written, too. Basically, anything to get myself doing something with my time.

It's been too easy to play Pokémon Yellow all day, and follow it up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's my childhood all over again, except I can do it all day long.

(As it happens, I did something earlier, but it will remain, for a wee while, a secret. It's not done yet, so I don't really want to show it around. I'm calling it a prototype.)

We watched a movie today, though. Myself, my brother and my dad all sat down and watched Jack the Giant Slayer. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Funny, adventurous, and with clever twists on the story we all know. If you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend it. It's especially good as a family movie (and I don't just mean families with young children!)

Anyway, I'm going to keep this short. There's tea to be had, stuff to be read, and if the television is free, Buffy to watch. Tomorrow, I'm going to beat The Lazies to death. Creative block my arse.

Necessitea

Did you know that I liked tea? You know, aside from that blog post in which I showed Instagrammed pictures of cups of tea, and all those times I've mentioned tea here and on Twitter and Facebook and Google+, did you know that I liked tea?

It's an essential part of my day. I think I'd go mad without my tea. I almost did when I was in Taizé a couple of years ago. I survived on hot chocolate and water, and meals that I could only questionably be called food. (Or food that could only questionably be called a meal... a bowl of cold cocoa, two sticks of dark chocolate and an almost-stale loaf of bread smaller than my fist don't really constitute a healthy breakfast.)

The two things I craved most upon returning from Taizé were a cup of tea and a home-cooked meal. (That was both real food, and a meal-sized portion.)

However, tea isn't just necessary for my survival. I write with a cup of tea. In the summer of 2010, when I was writing some novellas, my busiest writing day consisted of a cup of tea for every 1200 words or so. It was a 10,000 word day, so you can imagine I drank a lot of tea.

And, of course, upon completing the writing of a book, the first thing I do is make myself a cup of tea. It's a no-distractions cup of tea, too. I don't bring my tablet with me. I don't carry a notebook. I just sit there and enjoy my tea, and maybe text a couple of people to let them know that I've written another book. Tea isn't just for survival. Tea isn't just for working. Tea is for celebration.

Tea is also a comfort for when life gets too hard, and a drink for watching quirky comedies, or for reading books. Tea is a drink for company, for family and friends.

I couldn't tell you how many cups of tea I have in a day. Once I get started, it usually gets quite difficult to stop. I'll finish one cup and begin making the next. In work, sometimes, I'll have tea left over from my break and it'll do me for while behind the counter. (This is really only when there are only two of us in, and I can't leave the register until the other person is back. Otherwise I wouldn't leave any tea in the cup - I wouldn't have a guarantee that I could finish it if I had to do something else.)

Basically, tea is a fundamental part of my daily life. I drink it when I wake up, when I'm writing, when I'm watching television or a movie, with my lunch, after dinner, when I'm reading, when I'm scheming, and often a cup or two before bed. I drink it all the time, and I'm not sure what I would do if I wasn't drinking it all the time. Tea is a necessity in my life.

Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me!

Last night I had some trouble sleeping. I had an awful lot of my mind, including the sudden realisation that some friends who are leaving the country are doing so very soon. I kind of figured this sort of stuff would creep up on me, before pouncing suddenly.

When I woke up after a less than satisfactory sleep, I knew what I had to do: I made a list.

I wrote down each of the things that had been bothering me the night before, and beside each one I wrote down what, if anything, I could do about. I kept it simple, to a few words so it would be easy to follow, and once it became clear that for some things the solution was simple and for others there was nothing I could do to change what was going to happen, it all became a bit easier.

Part of the problem, I reckon, was that I thought about it all in one go without having time to process it properly. That's not an ideal situation for anyone to be in. Once one little bit of worry gets in, it's like a dam breaking. Suddenly every little niggling doubt about the future came down upon me.

Thankfully I know how to cope with all of this going on. The real trouble was in my head, and once I was able to get out of it - which meant not sleeping for a while - I was able to get some rest.

(As for the title of this post... it's a quote from The Simpsons, when a young Bart is terrified of the clown bed Homer made him. The same sort of fear and worry kept me awake last night, though my focus wasn't on my bed. After yesterday's story, that's probably hard to believe...)

Anyway, today, after coping with last night's worries, and after a shift in work, I did what every sane person who couldn't sleep well the night before does: I went to see a horror film. Specifically, The Conjuring. It's probably the creepiest film of the past few years, though Sinister still holds the title belt for scariest. There were less jumpy frights in The Conjuring and more spooky atmosphere building.

All in all, I'd recommend it.

I'm a big fan of horror films, though I don't get to watch as many as I'd like to. This is by and large down to the fact that when it's dark enough to make an atmosphere out of a horror film, I'm in my room writing a blog post at the last minute, but also because I don't have a huge collection of horror.

Anyway, it's getting late, I feel a hankering for a cup of tea, and I need to post this before midnight. Hopefully tonight I'll have less worries on my mind!

I Launched a Thing!

Today was the official launch of my new prose and poetry blog: ParagraVerse! It's a weird name, I know, but it's oddly difficult to find a name on Wordpress that isn't taken already. It's annoying when the ones you want are used up by dead blogs, but not to worry. At least I have one no one can complain about not getting, that's a little bit odd (like me) but still vaguely describes what the blog is about: paragraphs and verses, the stuff of prose and poetry.

I launched with a new FridayFlash story, entitled Bed. When I told my brother about it, he said I should write Goosebumps. I took it as a compliment. I was especially delighted to see (a) that someone tweeted about it and called it creepy, and (b) that people had subscribed to the site after just one story. I have a few others in mind, which I'll be writing over the next few days and posting every Friday for a while.

I'll also be including poetry into the mix, with video readings of them. I'll have videos for the flash stories, too, in the future, but I found myself oddly pushed for time today when I was launching, and ill-clothed for the recording. I'll add to the site early next week when I'm wearing a t-shirt that wasn't stuffed into a drawer.

Anyway, you can check out ParagraVerse here: http://paragraverse.wordpress.com

I need to plan a few poems to add to the site over the coming weeks. There'll be a mix of things, anyway. I might go through with an idea I've had for a themed set of poems, just to start, and have that little collection go up for a while. It's only four or five poems, but that's enough to get me started.

In the meantime, I can focus on getting lots of other material written to diversify the selection of prose and poetry available for reading. I'm incredibly excited about this new blog. I think it could be a lot of fun, and it lets me write across a range of different genres, rather than focusing entirely on the Modern Irish Myth stories. While I enjoy writing them, I would eventually run out of myths to use. At least this way I can work off a number of different ideas for short stories I've had, which makes releasing something new every week that little bit easier!

It feels good to have finally launched a new long-term site!

Getting Ready for Launch Day!

Tomorrow, I'm launching my new blog. I have a list of things I need to do before then, including writing the first story for it, but I have a feeling it'll be a fun one to keep up to date. I have a list of story ideas, and I'll be adding to that particular brand of story-ideas as time goes on.

If you remember a poll I did on my website a while back, you might know what sort of stories are in the works. If not, and you're not bothered looking, well...you can wait to find out tomorrow.

Thankfully, most of the prep-work is very basic code and re-organising in Wordpress. It's the same sort of stuff I've done with blogs in the past, and with my website and the Modern Irish Myth site, so it won't take long to actually get it done. And once it's out of the way, I'll have a brand new site up and running.

Literally, it's a case of: adding a subscriber widget, setting up a navigation menu, writing an About page, and grabbing links to social media sites and the like. It's all simple jobs, and it'll have the site up and running and easy to use.

Once I get it started and have a few stories written to keep it going for a few weeks consistently, I can get to work on a couple of other major projects that have been calling for my attention for a while now. With the Big Break coming to an end, I figure it's about time I actually started following through on my plans.

Of course, I won't be giving up things like reading comic books, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, or re-discovering my joy of Pokémon Yellow. That would be ridiculous. But I'll be assigning more time in the day to do "work". (Which, to be honest, is just what I'll have to call it to get people to leave me alone while I do it!)

I have high hopes for the next few months. These are the ones that'll matter, I reckon. These are the ones that will define how I spend my days while not in full-time employment.