A spontaneous overflow of words ...

Initially I set up this blog with the intention of practicing my writing. After graduating from university and much deliberation I hit upon the ridiculous idea that I wanted to be a writer. Such is life, the school of hard-knocks wasn’t so far around the corner and my forays into the world of writing and bitty journalism has been one with varied degrees of success; two Edinburgh Festival Fringes which left me tired, emotional and paradoxically rejuvenated and one interview with an ex-international model. Still, no matter, I have my blog, a place where I can write what I want. In a world where others suffer infringements on their freedom of speech this is an important thing. But the world of blogging, by its very nature is an organic experience and it doesn't always lend itself well to structure. My flatmate’s father knows this only too well, what with the constraints that were many and varied that prevented him from posting his latest entry on ‘Petherbridge’s Weekly Post’. Being the eloquent poetic writer that he is, the hard and fast ‘post now’ world of the blog must hardly be second nature. I have this trouble but for different reasons. I’m not privy to the over-thinking of what I write but rather an obsessive-compulsive nature to re-read, re-write, edit. In the past it has made me a fantastic proof-reader but equally it has seen me chastised in a creative writing class for bringing journalistic bad-habits into the literary sphere. Sometimes there must be a spontaneous over-flow of words.

Another aspect of the blogsphere is that it draws you into the worlds of fellow bloggers and suddenly there are windows into what others like to eat, do at the weekend or think and feel about the world. Start following a blog and in some small minute way you are invested in their creative blog-lives. I feel a painful tension between my writing and this world, for I wish to write about women’s issues, feminism, equality, politics, art and culture – the place where I feel safe - but I know that sometimes it must get personal, for one cannot be a feminist if one doesn’t take the whole damn thing personally. Indeed it has to be this way, or else however would Virginia Woolf have gotten her room of her own?


So this past week we’ve (my flatmate and I) been moving flat. Earlier this year we received news that the flat we had been renting was being sold, and after quite a few years of respectively making it our home we were out - packing our lives into cardboard boxes stacked and inconsequential- ready to be shipped to pasture’s new. We’re in our new flat now and its lovely. Its different and there are new experiences to be had. But moving home (especially when it isn’t your choice) is an emotional experience. I woke today with the sense that now the bank holiday weekend has passed there are many things that must be put in order in our lives. Administration, bills, changing addresses and getting acquainted with a new part of town. It’s inevitable and ultimately healthy that life is transient, things come to pass and you must move on – to new places, from first loves, from jeans you’ll never fit into again - at the risk of sounding like an annoying American it’s ‘growth’. But as the last of the moving dust clears from my lungs (the Ventolin has taking a pounding over the past few days), I feel the indelible shadow of memory and time passing in life and leaving its mark. Home isn’t merely where you just lay your head, its where life in all its birth, deaths and marriages really happens. Over the Easter weekend as we settled into our new abode, a school friend whom I haven’t seen in years got married. There were pictures of the happy bride, the be-kilted groom and best men on Facebook. Times really are a-changing ...