Thoughts on obsession.

I just read a book on writing. Well, it was about writing but was fiction but was actually the authors journey to finishing a novel. So it was writing about writing, while writing. Anyway. It had a part in it about obsession. About what your obsessions are. And if I look not very closely at my obsessions when it comes to writing, it pretty much goes like this: 1. Love (falling in, falling out, being in, dealing with etc etc) 2. The past. 3. Grief 4. Being a mother to Little Cwtchy (although I hold back on this as right now, it is my default topic and frankly, it bores me a bit. Only because I talk about her all day long and think about her all day long and then when it comes to writing, I need to escape that a bit.) 5. Normal stuff in unusual interpretations. (paper cranes, autumn leaves, welshmen) I suppose my main, all encompassing obsession though is writing. Like when you learn another language and start thinking in it, I often think in paragraphs, in verses. I love words. I read about a novel a week. Even when the small one was tiny and I was getting zero sleep, I would read. My house is full of books. I try to give them away to anyone that will take them because when they sit on a shelf like a neglected puppy, it makes me sad. I feel like now is a good time to start pushing some boundaries and challenging myself with my writing. I want new material. I don't want to keep rehashing the same old my-mother-in-law-committed-suicide-my-husband-left-I-met-a-new-husband-then-we-had-a-baby story for the rest of my life. I guess I am ready to reframe the experience of moving to the other side of the world so it does not sit in the context of my divorce, so that it stands on its own as a truely cool thing that i got to do. So I am going to join a group, a class, and be accountable and stretch my self and my experiences.

Sometimes I feel so lucky to be living my life the way I am able to that I get a feeling that is hard to describe. It's louder than gratitude, shinier than contentment. It comes over me when I get home with Cwtch and Welshy rushes in the back door and the baby almost hyperventilates with excitement as he scoops her up and my husband grits his teeth so as not to squeeze her too hard and she is squealing and he is grinning and I just stand back and laugh because of this feeling I get. It's joy! That's what it is. It's joy.

Word.

I've had a few friends email me about that last blog post and it's reminded me again how powerful words are. It's what makes us human. Not just the ability to communicate but the capacity to feel complex emotions and name them with sounds that other people recognise. That empathy, that resonance...that's what makes us human. So this week I got exciting news that a piece I wrote about living in the village is going to be published in an online magazine. I have not had anything published since my angstey poetry appeared in In Press Magazine approximately half my lifetime ago. This is different for me, than say blogging shamelessly about my failed marriage, because this time it will be published under my actual name. This means when I google myself, it will have something more interesting than stuff about my old job and the youtube videos my brother in law posted from my wedding. Wow. My ego desperately wants to link the piece back to this very blog but my common sense and fear of everyone in the whole wide world knowing that this blog belongs to me, overshadows that. i'd have to do an enormous edit and pretend like I am not some crazy lady who uses her running blog to vent about everything except running. By the way, I am so unfit right now, it is not even funny. I've been thinking about entering some short story competitions too. What I write is not really for magazines or newspapers. It's a strange little niche actually...observational, bit offbeat, emotionally reflective. Non fiction. Hmmm. I do like being read though. I like how that connects us and the feeling that people can relate to my own experiences. It's nice.

A month in hiding.

Well hello there strangers! It's been a whole month since my last confession, i mean, blogpost. A whole lots of busyness and change has been occurring in my world. First and foremost we moved house which has been so refreshing for a number of reasons. I have feng shui'ed the hell out of myself by sorting through storage boxes from ten years ago, 5 years ago and the pre-Wales move. I am a bit of a hanger-on-er-er, so there was lots to go through, especially from things I've gone through, as you could imagine. I love our new suburb. It has a museum that is only open on Sundays and a shop that stocks my favourite designer. There is also a book exchange approximately 100m from my front door. Little Cwtch and I have sampled various cafes and of course she already has a few fans in the locals. It's nice here. It's comfortable. We have definitely moved in to phase two of the moving to Australia project. It feels like home here already. It's lovely living with Welshy in this familiar setting and introducing Cwtch to friends and family. I miss Wales though. I do miss the quiet and the green and the peace. I miss being able to walk out of the house without a care about locking the door, doing my hair, grabbing my mobile. It's the trade off I guess. Being around people means being around people. I miss my nieces especially. And the lambs. Ah...the sun is out, the baby is eating grime off the floor. Best get out of the house. x

It's not a war, but i will win this battle.

Hello friends!!! Sorry for my recent absence. The tiny person is quite time consuming and rather accomplished in dominating my attention at the moment. As I type, she is playing on the floor in front of me. When I say "playing" I mean screaming, kicking her legs, chewing a toy panda and making attempts to concuss herself on the coffee table. She is a genius, obviously. So six months in to the gig, and I have rather flatlined in terms of running. I mean really, who am I kidding? I am less fit than I was when I started this blog. BUT. I am making a change readers. I AM going to run in the Melbourne Marathon this year. I just am. So I am starting again. In life, you have to choose your battles and I am choosing this. In my tiny little corner of the world, in between breast feeding and Maisy, I am going to win this one. Yes.

What most people don't know.

What most people don't know is that the night Little Cwtch was made, was never supposed to happen. I was throwing a divorce party for starters. That was never supposed to happen. I was supposed to have found my happily ever after with the man I now call my ex husband. Divorce was really the last thing I ever wanted to have in my life but these things happen so a party it was. And Welsh was not supposed to be in the country. He has left to go home never to be seen again (well...until i visited him in mid april) but he did a U turn in Thailand and arrived the day before the party. My cousin had died in a car accident you see. I was really sad. I went to Queensland and swam with turtles and drank with family and ran barefoot on the beach but I still felt sad. I shared a bedroom with my sister and stayed up late and sunbaked and drank beer for breakfast but I still felt sad. One night I called Welshy in Thailand. The humidity was snaking its way into my brain and the mosquitos were chewing on my ankles. I sat on a step in the garden at my aunty's resort and asked my boyfriend to come home. "Can you come home?" That's all it took. So there we found ourselves on the night Little Cwtch was made. In a place we were not supposed to be, with people we were not supposed to be with and somehow we created the one thing in all the world that I know in my bones we were supposed to have. It's a strange thing to know her life was sewn together with threads of grief. Her eyes are like absolute joy. Her smile is enough to break my heart a thousand times over. Her skin is the sweetest, softest thing I could ever imagine in a million lifetimes. I love her more than love. More than can be possible. More than the chambers of my heart can hold. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in her.

Peace at last.

Phew. What a busy few weeks we have had as we pack our Welsh lives up for the sunnier shores of Aus. Moving house is a pain under normal circumstances but add in shipping, going away parties, a small infant...we are knackered. Little Cwtch is slightly alarmed by the lack of attention we have been paying her...honestly, it is a miracle that we have not accidently packed her in to a box (after her performance last night of being awake every hour, I have been tempted.) BUT the main thing is, it is all happening. I sit here typing at Cwtch sleeps upstairs and Welsh gets a head start on our last, final going away afternoon at the pub. The sun has come out for us. In two more days, we will be on a plane. I'm too busy to be excited. We are leaving so much behind. But have so much to look forward to.