New Year. Poem

I will not dwell on the un-achieved
nor forget the trials of past
but give thanks to God that I still breathe
and declare next year will be greater than the last.
Friends have come and some have left
and...some have been laid to rest.
One was born and well met
while others have grown...leaving the nest.
The success I've been lucky with
will help me towards the next
and what I haven't managed this time around
I damn well will...if I hazard a guess
The future, for certain is never quite clear
but I will have conquered, by next new year.

Poem. Blind

"A lost author in thought"

The world is blind, I think today
a plague has ruined my life
If none can see, then who can succeed
in the dreary morning I write?
We are cursed, sightless children we breed...

An epic novel is but a blank piece of paper
to a blind man who cannot read

Poem. Haunting

Most choose not to see me, others pretend
but one day when I'm stable I'll write you to your ends
Don't you know of the power I own?
have you not heard of me?
I am the ghost in the attic
the book that you can't put down
I am that cold cup of tea
you forgot when I came around

New Year

I said I wouldn't stress out until Christmas...well Christmas has come and gone and it's one more day until New Year rings out. So it's safe to say, I am officially on the window ledge of stress. I won't reach summer, not without something. I refuse to let the sun shine on my un-employed face.

   I'm up for another placement soon, which this time I know will be decent, in a clean safe place. Even so another un-paid placement doesn't change much, no one really cares about what you're doing for free, they care that you haven't got a penny to spare from your pocket.

  There's no point in writing on my New Years resolutions that I will 'try harder' to find work, because I know that there is nothing short of taking my clothes off and begging on my naked knees in gravel that I can possibly do more of. I am trying the hardest I can, every week day I approach this search like a job itself and people keep saying 'something will happen soon' but soon is turning into a stretch I can't shrug my shoulders about. I hope once this new reference in on my credentials I'll be noticed a bit more, lately I feel as if I'm a blank piece of paper and no matter how roughly I shove myself in front of someone they don't see anything.

I'd sit in a room eight hours a day and sort knifes from forks and pack them into boxes if it would earn a wage for myself.

Turn me away. Poem

I offer my time, from each precious day

but you scornfully turn me away

I offer my labour with no chance of pay

but again you turn me away

I offer my knowledge, my talent to display

it's not enough, you turn me away

I offer my blood, to my dismay 

you still turn me away

my life,

my soul, 

my faith, 

you don't give way

each one of you in turn, turns me away.

Forgotten. Poem

Drifting, rather than living 

that's what we do 

we drift through day to day

us forgotten few 

You let us go without a hope 

you sent us to our grave 

and I remember how you wished us well

with a happy, deceitful wave. 

Homeless. Poem

Plastic bags caught in a tree
or a broken toy lost in the debris
of the scattered remains of yesterday
a writers last work, taken by the breeze
Or a broken bottle,
it's message has drowned in the sea.
Where do the homeless go
When they are no longer there?
Does anyone know?
...did you spare a moment
to care.

Dissapointment...again

I know disappointment is a part of life, ok I have learnt that lesson, so maybe now it's time to let up and give me a break. I couldn't put more effort into life if I took an elixir of immortality. I throw on my 'make the most of it' smile, I dress myself up, prepare myself with the hope of actually achieving some worth while experience and for what?...a dingy freezing cold room someone has the nerve to call an office, I sit at an age old desktop doing nothing. Even if I had to answer a phone it would class as 'doing something' but staring at an unmoving screen isn't worth the time of day.

This 'office space' is a waste of this so called 'company's' money. A one man team doing nothing he couldn't do in the comfort of his own home. This is pathetic. I'm sent here by our countries flawed system to get more 'experience' for my C.V because three years of uni, a portfolio, an unpaid placement, two part time jobs and several volunteer positions don't qualify me to be worth employing. I'm so frustrated I could scream the whole street into opening their windows and doors.

If I stick at this for four weeks (which I will do, out of a simple drive to finish what's started) I'll come out at the end with nothing more than another signed reference and a name to exaggerate around on my next pointless cover letter...I won't be getting anything real; no new skills, or valuable knowledge or hands on experience. All I get is another possibility for a good embellishment of the barely-there-truth. Worst of all, for the hours of misery and boredom I'll put in here, I won't receive a single tarnished penny. Not one. I feel utterly pointless.

Sometimes I genuinely think I have nothing of substance in this world, nothing you can touch or see, I've often said before there's nothing so important to me in these four walls that I'd have to take with me, and so far the world isn't offering me anything.

I have beautiful things only I know of for certain: an imagination, I have my Mr Jones, a rare few people I care about. Some might say I'm luckier than most to have such things, It's a damn shame love and passion don't buy tins of beans or pay the gas metre.

Grace Christmas

Grace,
     We're both at such a standstill now, we never planned for that. I don't suppose we ever thought we would still be here this far along: Lost and a little low. I don't know which direction to turn now, or what to do, I could really do with your fighting spirit in my pocket especially since there's really nothing else in there. I don't have much else to say, except I wish you were here-I'm certain you'd know what to do. Christmas will be over soon, you know the significance of that. With September gone Spring is all we can set our hopes upon, when the new leaves come I'll write again.
 Yours, Always.
  P.S. The Pond has gone...You won't find me there any longer. I'll wait beneath the tree.

Freezing

It's just so cold. These four walls are like thin sheets of ice, letting the chill inside and cooling it all the more as it circulates. My fingers to touch feel like snow, my legs and shoulders keep twitching and all my muscles are tensed up. I might as well be sat outside. Let me put this into perspective, if you have a conservatory or a green house, in December go out and sit in it with no heating, no source of warmth what so ever. That is the temperature of my bedroom without exaggeration.
Even hugging a hot filled water bottle on my lap against my belly isn't fending off the cold in my hands. It's enough to drive anyone to distraction. I miss you Connie, every moment I'm away I miss you. You've no idea the sanctuary you offer me.

Left Overs poem

Let the tears commence oh merciless one
let us crumble into the dust,
you push down until our backs break
upon a dusk of a setting amber sun
then with our bones you make
another brick to build upon the rest of us.
Have you no heart oh mericless one?
when tears of sweat and blood we drink
thirst so harsh it scratches us
and then you drag us to the brink,
the brink of eclipse you drag us, one by one
and leave us to rot in the mist.
Ghosts we are, the mist absorbs us it seems
you call us the leftovers, left over from last years dreams.

337

It's coming that time of the month again and I'm blaming the hormonal shifts in my body for the sudden overwhelming wish to have a little cry. I am not shedding tears. I refuse to even well up, but my throat is clogged and I feel that awful constriction of breath when you're trying not to get upset.
I swear I don't know how much longer I can stand this before I have a mental breakdown!

I've applied to 337 jobs now. In the period since finishing university. No one will give me a chance, no one is willing to let me show my potential. I'm not alone and that makes it worse, the graduates out there all scrambling over each other to try and reach a job, any job, it's excruciating.

Just give me a job. Watch how hard I'll work. Just give me a job. Give me a job. Give me a job. Give me a job. My minds deteriorating here. Give me a job.

Please...Please

I'm on my knees.
I'm in a hole and the light at the end is so faint and far away now. I'm begging, I'm sending this out into a wormhole of possibility and I am begging for it to reach out and touch something, someone out of my reality, my control. I guess I'll call him Fate. Please. If you can hear me, if you can feel somehow, then please...
Please.
Please let this be something.


Please.

slave line for book

I'd rather die free immediately, than live a few more moments as a slave.

Drama

I have a lot of unnecessary drama in my life, drama which would be easily forgotten and ignored if I could just get out of these four walls. I've had enough of this a long time ago but for goodness sake its the absurdity that drives me crazy. It's like Wonderland here, and from the new books I am writing I have decided Wonderland is far from wonderful, it's a place of living nightmares.

That time of year

I wonder if I'm coming down with flu, I have that run down feeling today. Perhaps I'm just coming down with the decaying after effects of boredom. I am terribly bored despite writing my newest book. Oh you know, it's that time of year.

 It's the 1st of December tomorrow, I always feel oddly depressed at Christmas, I think that's why I make such a fuss of seeming bright and festive because I don't want the outside world to know I feel rather like one of those dwellers who lingers near the suicide list, it's always more popular this time of year...no of course I don't mean I'm suicidal, not at all, but that depression category I most definitely lean towards. Winter makes me think of all the awfulness of these four walls, it brings out the worst. I remember the Christmases' gone by and even the good memories are tainted a thick gooey black by the bad. Christmas isn't what Christmas should be in these four walls and hasn't been for a very long time.

The cold doesn't help either, my arthritis starts creaking worse than at any other time, the added stress of needing warm dinners and gift giving its all just too much. It is when there are other pressing matters at hand.

I told myself I would give it until Christmas didn't I? I said I wouldn't let myself worry until Christmas. Well I have worried, I've lost sleep, I've felt sick and finally I'm just a few weeks until that deadline and I am feeling pretty damn desperate.

Groundhog Day

I'm usually in bed by now, but I know I'm only going to lie awake so I figured I'd vent a little.
There's nothing I want to say I haven't said before, I suppose I've turned into a broken record like the days of my life right now. I feel as if I'm stuck in Groundhog Day.

It's just not fair, I deserve to be given a chance. I'm a hardworking person, a decent, respectable, nice person. Everything I want in life is simple and achievable for most, I just need a door opened to set me on the path and it's not fair everyone keeps closing every door I come up to.

You know I really was upset that day the Tiger let me down. I walked home up that muddy path which has given me so much inspiration in the past and I almost cried because I really wanted a job. Then the Falcons let me down too. How is it possible for these corporations to raise people up and drop them without a glimmer of conscience? This is the 'real world' we've been thrown into is it?

Since I was 10-11 I've been working to get out of here. Out of these four walls which I'm stuck in right now. I thought I would have at least gotten close by now but I'm still trying. It's sodding freezing. It's missing necessities. I can't stand the people nature has forced me to be with. I hate it here. I have hated it here for years. It's miserable and damp, everything is crusty and crumbling and the house seems to deteriorate anything good as if it wants to push us out. An earth quake happened here years ago, an earthquake! In England! Yes that's right and it ripped a massive crack through out road and the same crack travelled through our house into the back yard. You wouldn't notice it unless you knew but it's there still, monitored every now and then by whoever monitors earthquake effects. They mended the road of course but not our house. And I just thought, there's another sign! Another sign that these four walls are bad news. Nothing good comes from them, nothing good happens here.

It's getting harder to focus on writing my books when I'm constantly thinking about how awful this 'situation' is. If I have to spend another Winter here I think I'll go mad. I need a job, and not a 20 hour a week shop stockroom job but a real decently paid job for a university graduate. I could settle for less than the most miserable positions I've looked at but what would be the point? I'd get neither the experience or the pay rate to advance either my career ambitions or my home situation. I wouldn't even call this a home, it's a hole. Not a hobbit hole, but a dark dirty damp Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole and I'm getting dizzy and tired of falling now.

Ranting again.

Writing my 2nd book, it's going well. When I'm writing I feel as if things are ok, because after all the more I write, the more books I get out there, the more chance I have of becoming someone significant. 

I'm still completely restless, I'm fed up of this situation. One day when my life is where it's supposed to be I'm going to write my autobiography and this chapter I will name The Situation, surely nothing else I come up against will be the same as this. 

I can list everything I need, everything I want...which by the way are not the same things. But getting any of this all depends on one achievement, for gods sake it's just one thing! Someone give me a job. And not a minimum wage lousy position I could have done at sixteen, although I'd consider it now. Give me a real job, one I deserve, one I've earned after all this bastard education. 

So I didn't want to teach! Fuck you if that's all that's out there for people like me. I still deserve a chance. There cannot be only one option, not in this day and age. I'm just angry at life right now. I have a lot, don't start coming the starving people in the third world stuff, yeah I know. I'm luckier than most. But it's not enough, not to survive in this country, this world, this society. I'm still trying my best. But me alone is not enough. 

Being a Writer

When you're a writer, you are not just a writer. In the art of writing you become Everything.
You're an architect
A researcher
A historian
A student of human psychology
A fashion designer
An artist
A poet
An expert on dialect and language
You're a crazy person with a hundred voices in your head
You're capable of holding down detailed and lengthy conversations with yourself
You're a weather man
You're a time traveller
You can build the future and argue with the past
You hold the secrets of magic and fantasy
You're a hero and a villain
You're God
You're the Devil
You give life and you take it away with the scribble of a pen

When you're a writer you are more than a writer, you hold the power to create anything within the capability of your imagination.

I am not a builder, or a designer, I don't have any qualifications in engineering or construction, but today I built a building, I designed it and it's perfect. It might cost multi millions to build, it might be a considered as a bad job, but I have built it and over 32 characters are going to work here and I have given life to everyone of them. Today I am an architect and tomorrow who knows what, but I know for certain, being a writer is no small thing. Because I can be whatever I want to be and frankly no matter what happens in life, I wont lose this and I love it.

Pencil Skirt day No 7?

Another Pencil Skirt day, at this rate I'll have had more of these than I have sleepless nights. If just one wouldn't result in being a waste of time. So far this one sounds as if it has the potential to be ok, but then again, so did a handful of the others and they ended up in proving only that the world has too many liars and cheats in it. That sounds a little over dramatic but I'm standing by it. False advertising is as good as lying. Offering a person something and then not delivering is cheating someone. These combined is damn right evil.

I might be holding the particulars in confidence at the present but only because I fully intend to expose these wrong-doers in the biographical novel I intend to write.

So lets hope as I hope each time that this is not going to be a waste of time.

I just want something tolerable, something that means a foot in a door, something that pays just enough for me to live on and save up a little. Just something that's not so bad I want drown myself in my bowl of Kellogg's each morning...not that I eat cereal, but you get the idea.

Leftovers. Post grad.

Something happened that devastated me and I thought nothing would ever be so painful or difficult to get through as that chapter of my life, now I can say that something has eclipsed that.
This here, right now, this moment in my life is so far the hardest thing I have had to go through. Those with parents who have cancer, or have gotten accidently pregnant or some such will obviously look at my 'hardest experience' as trivial, but the truth is none of those sorts of things have ever happened to me. What has happened to me is I've graduated and I'm unemployed. And that right there is the hardest thing I have had to deal with in my twenty one years.

I've read so many posts and articles online of people in exactly the same situation, stats on top of stats and so I know it's not just me. I'm not the only one sat in my bedroom staring at a computer screen and wishing someone would give me a chance. I read today about a young woman whose dream on leaving university was to become a journalist, finding this near to impossible she had settled to find a job as a receptionist or some such but was finding that was just as difficult. I completely related.

The point is, we went to university, we now do not qualify for the training or the apprenticeships or the courses that are thrown at 16-19 year olds. We also don't have the 'Two years minimum experience' in the jobs that are available on every jobsite known to man. At the same time we're now over-qualified for the jobs that don't ask for any requirements at all. So, if the jobs that are available for university educated individuals insist on refusing employment to those of us who have spent three years studying and therefore don't have the minimum of two years experience in this role....
and we're now overqualified for anything else....
and we don't want to work in SALES knocking doors and nagging people who have finished their day at work to hand over their hard earned money....
Then what's left? Where are we supposed to go?

Granted I give you that there are a selection of us who have found a foot on a path...
The few lucky ones who managed to land a job on their chosen career path, or the people who have friends or relatives to give them a leg up over the wall, ANY wall into employment. Or for those who opted for teaching, because the country is screaming for teachers....

Well what about the rest of us? We are the leftovers, we are lost names drifting in last years computer system and no one seems to be thinking about us. Every job that seems within reach we reach out for as desperately as a soul reaches out for it's body, only to be told we are without appropriate experience. Are we expected to spend the next three years post graduate working for free in unpaid internships and voluntary roles until we have the experience we're without? What do you think we live on? It's a myth that students live on super noodles, no one can survive on super noodles!
What is the benefit of having gone to university if those three years mean nothing in the system? If no one regards the education we earned there to be enough to trust us and give out a chance? Are you giving out chances but there's just too many of us clutching at the same ones?

I refer to us humanities students , but I am certain this branches out further.

Perhaps what we didn't consider when we filled out our UCAS applications was that when we finished our degree, the jobs they listed at the bottom of the subject description, you know the bit: "Where this subject can lead you" those areas of work would, by the time we qualified, be replaced by machines!
Who needs reporters when news is spread before it's half happened via social networks?
Who needs librarians when you check your own books in and out with a machine?
Who needs informants in a museum or an art gallery when Google is a click away on our phones?

This list goes on and on when you start to wonder what you used to aspire to and what you're now reduced to.

Where is our place? I say it again, we are the leftovers, where do you expect us to go?

Bit of a rant about knobs

I can't shake this so I'm going to say it...some people (of course I'm thinking of some in particular, but I am just going to get this out in an ambiguous way, and that will make me feel better and be the end of it with no further damage because there's no way you've picked up on this so you wont know its you, that's how selfish you've become.) ...some people are just god damn arseholes.

It amazes me how someone can change from being a nice friendly person of one sort, to being a complete and utter ignorant, spiteful, rude, arsehole. It's not my problem if areas of your life aren't matching your standards! If perhaps I have certain areas of my own life that are working out well, maybe you envy those and wish you had the same? Well that's no excuse to be a knob. There are things you have I envy and wish I had a variation of, but I don't glare at you from the corner of my eyes because of that. I don't begrudge you what you have. And besides just because you have certain things, doesn't make you above me and the others you're looking down on, it doesn't give you the right to be so damn rude! It's very Un-English. Your ignorance is what's really pissed me off but I'm going to throw that over my shoulder and just label you as a rude person. However, I cannot throw out the fact that you've changed and in a negative way. I can't like you anymore. I don't expect you to change back to who you used to be for my benefit but I hope I'm not expected to dish out my time and friendship like free candy anymore, it's not happening. It's just not happening.

So that was it, that's all I had to get out of my system. Be who you like, do what you want to do, but don't expect to keep certain friends because some of us have just had enough.

Weight lifted

If I didn't have that man in my life my happiness scale would be covered in dust pushed to the back of an unopened cupboard and would only tick miniscule fractions now and again. I love my family and the kids and I adore my friends but it's not the same.

Until yesterday evening I was wound up so tightly I thought I might snap in half if someone brushed past me. I was stressed out to the point I was overwhelmed and reduced to tears in the middle of the day. I'd barely slept lying in bed tossing and turning and fretting about my life. Then he walks into the coffee shop, looking like some gorgeous mob boss from Boardwalk Empire, there's something about that hat that really makes me notice his brown eyes...anyway, he walks in and I can feel this horrible coil of misery and confusion that's been building up inside for the last three days of being absent from him and having these pencil skirt days during that time has balanced me on the edge of a cliff.

I tell him. He's ripped the idea to shreds before I've even finished and is 100% on.my.side. I don't have to do anything I don't want to. He's not going to join those judgemental eyes or rattle any keys. He's the voice of reason, the voice I actually care to listen to. It helps to have the support of my friends and family, whose motto seems to be, 'do what's best for you' but it's his opinion that makes the final decision in my mind. I'm so utterly grateful that he's supportive.
Love, Respect, Mutual interests, Sex, everything else that is necessary to make a relationship a good one, is all rolled in there, but mainly... and I feel like this tops my list, is Support. He supports who I am, who I want to be, and the decisions I make.

I felt as if a massive whale of weight was lifted off my shoulders. I felt this choke in my throat as if I was breathing again for the first time in days, and I know that it's going to be ok. It's very childish of me, but I'm the kind of person who needs that reassurance now and then, I know it will be because things work out alright in the end, but I still like to have that reassurance. "Everything's going to be ok." "I'm going to be ok." The way I can describe it, which isn't particularly creative, is when you're holding a box, a heavy box and you hold it for some minutes until that ache is in the crook of your elbows, and then you let it down and ahhhhhh, the relief as your arms turn to jelly in relaxation. That's the feeling I got when I was able to get it all out and have the support I needed.

(I didn't get the bus that came along, that's my decision, I'll stand out in the rain for however long it takes)

The bus.

So the bus came. I'm really in no position not to board. Tears are wretched bloody things. The silent type. The worst type. Big fat quiet tears rolling down cheeks that ache with the effort of holding in a sob. Getting upset is really not going to solve any of this so just pull yourself together and get composed. I don't want anyone to know I'm upset, reduced to tears by this because I know what they'll all say, they'll be supportive and tell me what I think is best but it's not. What I think doesn't really count anymore, not in the real life. By the time anyone in my inner circle reads this it will be too late and these stupid wretched tears wont matter. It's not the most awful thing in the world, but I don't want to do it all the same. It feels wrong, it doesn't feel like me. I wanted them to say no and turn me away. I have to pull myself together. I hate crying. Crying solves absolutely nothing.

'Strict Diet' Hmm.

Considering that I was eating alone tonight I made a conscious effort to keep up my new 'strict diet' and took an obscene amount of time making a chicken salad. Half way through eating the salad (I was not much enjoying it) ended up giving left overs away and proceeded to have a large helping of chocolate cheesecake with strawberries and double cream...which was exceedingly better. I am including the strawberries in my 5 a day so with the lettuce and tomatoes consumed today that makes 3/5 so...I'm still counting today as progress.

A lot Like Buses

Another Pencil Skirt Day booked in for tomorrow. They seem to keep coming in but never lead anywhere, usually because it's not what it should have been, or I've had my time wasted in a cruel way. It's the same as putting food just out of reach of a starving animal.

...it's now the day after, there's another Pencil Skirt day booked in for tomorrow as a follow up. Another one for a different place on Friday too. As I said...they keep coming.

Sometimes though...how can I put this? You feel that you wait a long time for a bus to arrive, and then 2 come at once, but what about once you're on the bus, or perhaps just on the step...

You notice the bus is awfully full, terribly over crowded and a vile gone off sort of smell is radiating from the woman at the front who is...oh it had to be didn't it... occupying the seat next to the only other seat available. Clearly everyone else got on the bus, knew, (they all know who it is) and chose to sit elsewhere until this moment when you get on and there's no other seat. You could stand, but that looks obvious that you're deliberately not sitting by her, and you don't want to hurt her feelings.

So then it's a lot of jolting and jostling backwards and forwards until you feel sick and that horrid smell is perhaps sticking to you like chewing gum and now you can hear the angry noise of current music issuing from some youths phone at the back...it's a nightmare and you think:
"Maybe I should have just waited longer for a different bus, maybe I should have walked."

Well there's my point you see. Jobs are very much like buses. You hate standing at the stop, in the cold and likely rain too. People are looking at you from their car windows pityingly or worse with accusing annoyed faces ..."why aren't you like them?" Their evil eyes seem to say, "Ha!" they seem to say.  Finally when a bus or even two come along you're relieved, you jump up into it but you're not long on there before you start feeling regret. What you're getting out of this hellish journey doesn't match up to what you're putting yourself through. Is it worth it?

I'm rattling on but seriously the buses haven't reached the stop for me yet anyway, they're sort of in view but still down the road, they might turn down a different street and not come this way. If they do come this way then I really have no choice but to board. No matter how disheartening. After all no one can stand at a bus stop forever, another bus might not arrive for much, much longer and might not be any better anyway.

I'm not happy about it though. I keep thinking it's just not fair, why is it the only buses that come down this road either sail on past without stopping, or are in such poor condition I'd rather throw myself in front of it than board?

Another Pencil Skirt day

Another Pencil Skirt day...another waste of time. What is the lesson to be learnt here?! Someone, somewhere throw me a life line please.

Post-Grad, Sense of Purpose

It's not about the money. I mean...Yes the money is a big thing, it's practically 85% of it, but it's not the money I keep thinking about. It's the feeling of being without purpose. If life should have anything in it at all above all else it should be a sense of purpose. A reason to get out of bed in the mornings. That might be your three year old daughter, or your ailing relative, the goal to earn that promotion, the hunger to find The One. A sense of purpose directs our lives, our choices and shapes who we are. That's what I am missing at the moment.

University as awful an ordeal that I felt it to be at least offered a sense of belonging to a community, a home for opinions and a sense of purpose. While there, I could tell myself that I was working towards a better future. I was involving myself in something bigger and greater than the person I was yesterday because tomorrow I'll have a little more experience and education.

Now, Post-Grad...what does that mean? That I had my time for 'thinking' and now the decisions should have already have been made? That by now I should have settled into life and shouldn't be feeling so lost? That's what I feel like I can hear when people look at me.

Those three years were supposed to tell me who I am meant to be, they were supposed to turn me into somebody. Instead I feel like I'm nobody and nothing has changed except I've gained, perhaps unjustly so, a feeling that I am worth more than this.

My opinions now lie unspoken in a room in my head labelled "Should have said in lecture" or the ones that slip under the door are on social networks or this blog heard by likely no one.
My dreams that once felt like achievable goals now feel like out of date milk.
The education in my head feels like a hindrance because it's made me feel out of place in certain situations.

I am trying so hard. Everyday I am trying to find something, anything no matter how 'only tolerable' that might be just so that I can restore in myself a sense of purpose. It seems that the longer you're down on the ground the more people walk out of their way to come and deliver a kick. Disappointment's are expected in life but I was rather led to believe that hope and opportunity would outweigh Disappointment. Is that Disney? Is that where that ill placed belief has come from? Or did it come from the last ten years of education which has told you over and over again that you have such potential and you'll do so well. Well I'm trying. No one can accuse me rightly of not trying my best. But so far the definition of Post-Grad to me has been: 'disappointment' and I'm really, really forcing myself to keep that British Stiff up a Lip, but I'm not sure how much longer I can keep fooling myself because I already know I'm not fooling much of anyone else.

Halloween Night answers

I have it!
Ten minutes quiet solitude in the backyard, not on my wall which has this year been destroyed but on a new stone that is to become home to my writers troubles, there is near the bottom of the garden a few stone steps that are well hidden by a bush when one is sat down on the step concealed from the house, almost not there at all if you don't move which is how I like it. Under our largest tree which offers a good deal of coverage from the elements. I am surprised actually that I never thought to take up this spot as my own before now.

Sat in the not yet darkness of Halloween night, with my black cat 'Dust' curling himself artfully around my leg-most appropriate I thought, I have reached an answer to my new book series. It only took ten minutes. A few rattling leaves, one which fell from a branch above and landed in my hair which was inspiring in itself, unusually warm, wonderfully warm with a cool breeze. For a moment I trailed from one thought to another of: Why wasn't it this warm at that damn party I gave, it's been two Halloweens since then and both have mocked the year I tried to throw a party. I decided quickly I did not want to think too long about that night or that time of life at all really and threw myself back into the moment of here and now. The leaves on the steps around me, gorgeously golden, I've always entertained thoughts of magical fairies invisible to our eyes touching every one and painting the trees those colours. Tinkerbell was always a favourite of mine. So there it is...Autumn, magic, seasons. More than one. A season for each girl, and when everything goes to pot they are the chosen four. That's how they're connected. There's where the link lies.

Excellent. I have my answer. I always get my answer out here. I stand up lifting the cat with me in one arm and brushing off the dust from my jeans with the other and I carry the cat into the house with me feeling much happier than when I walked out.

Things will turn out alright in the end. Because I still have ideas, and answers and that means I'm fine.

Halloween Poem

So it's Halloween again
Can only mean one thing
Little buggers at your door
and Christmas will soon begin
Scary movies on ITV
ghosts rattling within
Teens in graveyards drinking WKD
While Asda has half price on Mr Kipling!
So wrap up warm, lock your door.
Don't mix the dead with the living.

Are we more than we are? Thoughts about God.

It's at times like this that I feel that God is testing me, testing my strengths and watching how I cope with trials of life. Then I remind myself that I am not inclined to believe in God. I like the idea of the Lord but I am much more a Darwinist than a creationist. Then I think, it's hard not to believe in God in the moments, hours and weeks when you doubt yourself and your situation because suddenly you find that the faith you are losing in everything around yourself has to go somewhere. It cannot just linger around like a ghost, so it aims for that mythical Once Upon a Childhood when you used to kneel on your bed and pray to a brass cross holding Jesus Christ. -Perhaps this doesn't relate to anyone else but this is me. (Sometimes, like now, for an inexplicable reason I wish I hadn't sold that cross at the car-boot sale, telling my mother I had 'outgrown' it.)

I am not a worthy subject of any faith, I don't claim to be anything other than 'undecided' but in my own head, at times of personal strife, I still think about God, and right now I am wondering: Am I simply looking for someone to blame for the trials I am enduring, looking for a reason as to why I am in this situation, just not accepting that bad luck happens for no damn reason?
OR am I truly more a believer than I like to admit and a voice inside me, either the voice of God or my own soul which is somehow connected to a bigger picture, is reminding me to stay strong because this is not for nothing. It is for a bigger purpose.

That's what I'm sure we all wonder at some point isn't it?
Are we more than we are?
Were we ever more than we are? Can we just not remember? Or have we not realised yet?

Common Cold poem

For years my sworn enemy, The Common Cold and I have been waging a terrible war with each other each year when the leaves turn golden and the wind becomes chilly. Usually I keep myself well guarded and put up a damn good defence but this year the bastard has taken me off guard.


So you've conquered me again have you?
crept up upon me in the night
I never saw you coming
Couldn't put up a fight.
Usually such a good defence
each year when the leaves turn brown
but suddenly you've taken me off guard
run me down into the ground
Headache and runny nose
you laugh at my blotchy face
red nosed and germ infested
you jeer at my disgrace
so early in the year, before the leaves are properly gold
You Bastard how you've overrun me.
Damn you...The Common Cold.

Song draft: Who You Are

'Who You Are' or 'Bright Light'
Song draft.
I'm not much of a song writer and god help me I can't hold a note, but I gave this a go.
I can see it being made right by Georgia Florida Line.

When you're kicked down in the dirt
and they kick you again for good measure
don't stay down on the ground
though I know it hurts
take another strike,
because at least then when you die
you'll know what it is to feel alive

[chorus]
You know you're a light
a bright light inside
Something that feels right
You've come so far
but one day soon, everyone's gonna know who you are
(who you are, who you are)

The days gonna come when you have to fight
might as well be today
so stand up this time
when they kick you down
when they hurt your pride
remember you're a bright light
stand yourself up this time

[chorus x1]

Having a bit of a rant

Getting awfully fed up of checking my emails twice, three times...eight times daily and seeing the same blank screen staring back at me like the Magic Mirror declaring silently "You are clearly not the fairest of them all"
I do not want to face Christmas which is crawling out from under the bed like an old sock I'd rather throw away than consider wearing again. -Check out the similes I'm busting out here, I guess the more downtrodden you feel in the real world the more the creative energy in the land of imagination flows.
Days like today I wonder if I didn't have the imagination I am gifted with and the urge to write would I go half mad, then I admit that I pretty much am half mad as I feel more inclined to speak through ink to a piece of paper than to strike up a conversation with most people in the world around me. Then I think I'm not mad, the people around me with noses stuck in glass screens but boasting that they have brilliant lives are mad. I canter off point....if I didn't have this desperation inside to write, days like today would eat me alive.

When someone makes you feel pointless, it's crucial in order to keep your very core alive that you take those moments, chew them up and spit them out before telling yourself what you are worth. It's the people that can't remember, or can't see who they are that end up falling into the pit of darkness made up of the words of others. I say it so often to myself I guess because I rarely, if ever hear anyone else say it...I have a bright light inside of me, and I know I am meant for a greater existence.
 I know everyone carries psychological hang-ups from childhood and school but so often I feel myself slipping back into that dirty damp place full of self esteem issues and I can see that young girl, confidence worn down by everyone even my closest friends who I am delighted to say don't feature in my life anymore, when the only thing that made me feel good was to sit alone and write. As I have always done. As I do now. I have to force myself to keep from tumbling over the edge of that line, to feeling like I am still that girl. I. Am. Not.

I am a bright light. I know who I am.

Urghh. Arthritis.

With still no news on a steady job I have started writing my Fairytale Series. The least I can do in the current situation is put more faith and dedication into my books and hope for the best. I've got a hot water bottle pressed behind me cushioning my aching back where Arthritis is threatening to curl up in the little joints of my spine and stay there. I'm dosed up on tablets trying to bring swelling down and so far the pain relief has not kicked in, so the hot water bottle is at work slowly reducing the pain. if I don't move too much it's not so bad. I can use my fingers to type at least, but if this pain doesn't ease up by tonight my plans to do some painting will be put on hold.

Raindrops in a Cold Cup of Tea

Raindrops in a cold cup of tea

A few spiteful raindrops slip down

and spit into a cold cup of tea.

The china: thin and pretty

Chinks like a glass slipper on a marble step

Disrupting the week long silence

 

The party is long over.

 

No one’s collected in the plates

The table still laid

Is laden with uneaten cake.

 A snail crawls up a table leg

As if he might see where they’ve gone

And unseen, creeping in, is a setting green mould

About to be washed away by rain

That dribbles into half-drunk cups of tea,

Now gone cold.

Poem about Connie

It's too cold in these four walls to concentrate on my book. It's pissing me off because I have ideas I need to get down but I keep getting distracted by the chill. It's harder to concentrate here anyway, I feel like I'm sat here awkwardly in a room that is frozen in the past while I have moved forwards. The simple truth of the matter is I just don't belong here anymore. I could light candles and cast an attractive illusion of comfort over the place but it will be a lie.

Nights like this I just miss Connie.


Never before has there been such a place
so wonderfully simple
with it's welcome embrace
Four walls unlike those of my cage
it's almost, nearly, sort of Home
With all it's faults and creaking ghost
the closest thing to it that I've ever known
As if some inner heart beats within
and when away, only half of me seems to live
I miss you most on nights like this
because Connie is where my heart is.

The Mad Hatter

Weekend art work: Came up with my version of the Mad Hatter who will be a character featuring in my new book series, Steampunk Inspired with the freaky goggles and robotic animals including The March Hare. Had some great ideas for the character I'm going to write so I hope everyone likes the illustration of him.

(Pencil)

(In progress)

(Painted)

(Close up of robotic Steampunk inspired animals including The March Hare)

The Christmas Boots

It's happened again, that moment of utter overwhelming brilliance. They're red, and they look like Santa's coat cut and sewn into the most beautiful perfect pair of boots. The elves of the workshop could have made these. They were practically designed for the Spirit of Christmas. Medium height, tight, the lining wrapped in cream fur and the exterior made from suede. They have a heel I could manage, and I can already see them matched against twenty autumn/winter outfits. I'd need a red jumper, and a red coat or a red poncho, and a ribbon, and creamy wooly knits, or snowwhite fleece. I NEED these boots!

Some time later...


I hate my feet. People who are shorter than 5.9 and wish they were tall and talk about it often...I hate you. Ok bit strong, but you cannot find nice shoes in your size, you end up bulldozing innocent people in Primark when new stock arrives because they only ever have 2 pairs of size 8's available EVER! You're always conscious that if you wear heels people think you're abnormal, you hear this phrase often: "Blimey, you're tall ay ya?", men don't find you attractive or they d...o but they say phrases like this "I'd fancy you if you weren't so tall" OR "This girl you're setting me up with...is she errr as tall as you?" (insert awkward face), your feet always look overly big to you no matter what, you buy shoes you don't even like just because "they fit, omg they fit!" AND the beautiful Red Christmas boots that are on special offer that are murder worthy, must have ARE NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR SIZE! Urghhhh! ...Rant over. I feel slightly less angry, I am going to play my tiny violin now.

 

http://www.dresslily.com/button-and-solid-color-design-short-boots-for-women-product527234.html

Standby

Writing one of my new books and I'm bored of it already. I told myself I'd only do ONE chick lit because I had that idea in my head but now I've started another because 1.) It appeals to a certain audience that I can reach, and 2.) I have developed a few new ideas. But I just don't find this sort of thing that interesting myself. I have another idea for a series that I'm really excited about, it will take longer to write and I want it illustrated and perfect, it's right up my street and I think until I have it out of my system I won't be able to focus on these other stories.

I'm going to postpone these chick lit's I've started and make a solid attempt at getting my teeth into the Fantasy genre. That's where my own interest and passion lies. Yes I've decided. I'm going to take myself down this route. For now everything else is on standby.

Arthritis hurting.

It's bloody freezing in here. Not so cold yet as to see my breath crystallising in front of my lips (which I assure you this room has been in the past) but freezing none the less. Freezing so I am hunched over my hot water bottle wrapped in a thick jumper and jeans. I got drenched in the rain the last few days and now I'm paying the price for the wretched weather. My arthritis hasn't just creaked it's full on crunched and cramped itself into a ball of pain. My toes, knees, shoulders, ankles my wrists and my fingers. It's the fingers that bothers me the most. I'm used to everything else.

My knees were the first thing to give way when I was little, my shoulders were much later when I was in high school, but my hands have only been for the last few years. The first time I cried, clasping one crunched up hand in the other unable to deal with the sudden pain and afterwards the insistent ache. I remember the first time my hands curled up into a frozen state of agony as if it happened just minutes ago, I'm still not used to it. They're not screaming now, just aching, I can still type. Not so much for holding a pen or pencil for very long but I can type.

I suppose I ought to start a course of tablets tomorrow. Take a couple of weeks before they work their way into my system and take the swelling and pain down anyway. Winter's not even started. This is lousy. All I want to do is curl up in the warm and eat.

Pencil Skirt day-continued

Nothing to boil the kettle for. A bit of a waste of time if I'm perfectly honest. Let's just leave it there.
Something is going to happen. I keep telling myself it's going to work out soon.
I think I'm getting chubby. I'm too down about this Pencil Skirt shit to really focus on my weight right now. Maybe I'll just get fat over Christmas and sort it out afterwards.
Wish I wasn't so hungry, but my god I'm starving. I eat when I'm sad, that's the worst way to be.

I have yet another Pencil Skirt day scheduled for tomorrow, hoisting myself up on that lifeline I mentioned earlier. Coffee with Two Sugars. Maybe that will work out. Perhaps I'll manage to climb up onto that life line after all and I'll be a Falcon. A Falcon not flying anywhere but with the beginnings of wings none the less. That would be something at least.

Another Pencil Skirt day

  I have another pencil skirt day...I'm so certain of my cards and what they read that I'm clinging to the hope that they are right and something will come of this month. If this new pencil skirt opportunity is the triumph I predicted for after the disappointment then please let me know soon. Disappointment is better than waiting at any rate.

Coffee with Two sugars

Because I’m that sort of person I have been making a round of tea every morning, because making tea when the weathers cold is sort of my kind of thing. Well Coffee with Two Sugars turns out to be someone important and seeing my situation he might be throwing me a lifeline. I can’t blag my way through this, this all depends on an ability to demonstrate dedication and quick learning, I need to be competent I can’t just pretend to be.

 Its generous and considerate of Coffee with Two Sugars to throw me this life line, the only question is...Will I be able to catch it and drag myself up? and if so, how long will I stay aboard the ship? It’s not unlikely I’ll end up overboard again, but let’s not pretend that attempting to catch and climb that lifeline doesn’t fill me with nerves. I am nervous. Because I damn well need this.

Lost. Poem.

Lost, lost a long way from home?
lost in the uncertainty, the blackout of the unknown
the lights have turned off,
the curtains have closed
and now you stand in the dark
They'd say you're lost I suppose
and you're alone.

Imagination.

I mentioned a few days ago that I would appreciate knowing if I had my foot in the door or not...turns out I don't. So that's that I suppose. I shall finish the week and put it down as another experience. That's all I seem to have so far: experiences, which are all well and good but experiencing something is not the same as living it. I need to live.

I knew in myself this 'opportunity' wouldn't go where I needed it to because I just had one of those feelings, I drew my Tarot cards and read that dissapointment was enevitable and I believe the cards, they prepare me and now it's come to pass. I can't pretend I'm not slightly crushed because I am, but I know I was excellent, I know I put 100% in and I excelled. If they had the finances to open the door I would have been accepted, IF they intended on opening the door at all in the first place. It's a difficult one to judge.

I walked home and it rained lightly most of the way. Typical.
I headed through the lane that runs alongside my four walls and had forgotten in my depressed reverie that rain makes this little road very muddy and littered with huge puddles some so deep that you can't see through the dusty water to the bottom. I was reminded of Grace, I was reminded of that time some years ago I tried it; I jumped into a puddle in a childish attempt at escape. I didn't jump into a puddle this time, but all the slow walk between those puddles I thought about Grace and how many trials I might face in my life when already they're mounting up and kicking me down every chance they get. I wasn't in the best of moods.

I pictured Grace standing there at the other end of the lane, in all her fiery glory and I thought: "how long is it going to take before I get there?" I was so utterly miserable and I felt that thickness on the back of my tongue and the threat of tears, just the threat, just the sting. I watched Grace look back over her shoulder at me, as if to ask if I were going to linger in the rain much longer feeling sorry for myself? I took a breath, I composed myself, and I caught up with Grace at the end of the lane, rounded the corner and into those four walls thinking:
My imagination is the only wonderful thing about me, and it's all I truly have.

Cheese Toastie

There are a lot of things I hate and dislike, I'd say falling into the hate list has got to be that I don't have a cheese toastie maker anymore. :-( I really like cheese toasties, and I miss having them often. I wish I could afford a new machine, when I become financially secure I'm going to buy a new toastie machine. And a years supply of good quality razors...because I also hate cutting my legs with the cheap ones.

Missing Pidgin

I miss Pidgin. It's been less than a month but right now things are happening, or not happening I'm not sure yet. It's that uncertainty that's making me want a catch up with a hot refill drink in the Lakeside. There's not exactly anything you can't write down in an email but its not the same, I can hear our voices through the words and I can laugh and enjoy the conversation as if we really are in the same room but the presence isn't there and I wish it was. Just because big things are either going to happen or I'm going to be thoroughly let down and in either case Pidgins not here to see me through them. I'm sure I'll feel back to normal in the morning. But right now I miss my friend.

Opportunity. Thinking

Feeling hormonal, there's no reason for this! Perhaps it's just because a lot is going on right now, there's a lot of uncertainty in the air and I'm doing such a brilliant job of not letting it overwhelm me before I know where I stand.

I'd appreciate knowing where my near future lies, I'd appreciate a paycheque...I'd love to feel a little bit of money in my hand, I'd love to know I could buy a washing machine because needless to say that issue still hasn't been resolved and lugging bags of laundry to my brothers houses is growing terribly tedious and humiliating. It's going to be a little over two more weeks before I know whether my foot is in the door or not. The thing is no matter what else I might think or say, genuinely and rooted deep down where I am trying to keep a door closed...I really want this. I want to win, to achieve this because it's one of the only things that's come my way in a while.

The main reason I want this is because if I do succeed I will know for the rest of my life that my first foot in the doorway of life was achieved on my own, by my own means, and I did it all by myself. I didn't have a finger pointed for me in the right direction, no connections, no help. I had no relative holding out a helping hand, no one opened the door for me, or helped me through. I did it all by myself.
I searched, found, pursued, pushed, excelled, excelled again, worked, proved myself and then came out with a winning hand. If I succeed. I don't want to think about it too much, I'm putting it on here and then walking away from these thoughts because I admit I do want this, and I am only admitting it here. Now I am going to bed and I shall say no more on the subject until there is something to say.

Friday dreaming

Here in this room it's become awfully lonely. This isn't my room anymore, it's not my space. Over time this room has become nothing but a room in which to go to sleep and wake up in during week days. I feel no attachment anymore. Every evening I have to spend here, though its infrequent just depresses me, and I miss Connie. I can't wait until Friday, Friday has become my most favourite day. My favourite day used to be a Thursday, but now its Friday :-)

Credit

I've been reading the cards much more lately, they told me about the opportunity, they also said a date when something would happen, Tuesday, in October, which I'm waiting for. They also told me the other night that I may well be in for a disappointment before a triumph, a very confusing read.

I really don't know what to expect right now, my funny-feelings are all over the place, I suppose you can't lose what you never had so there's no point getting too worked up about it. What will be will be won't it?
I am in the mean time updating my credentials and putting together a portfolio, I don't think I've gained new skills, more I've realised I already had skills I simply hadn't used before. I am not an idiot, I am not so weak. I believe I am capable of more than I was at first considering taking on. Chrissie's right...I should give myself more credit.

Week One.

I've done one week and yes a part of me feels fulfilled and proud and worth while, but I also feel a little uncertain. This uncertainty is rooted at a disbelief in myself I suppose but mainly my thoughts have staggered in regards to my latest couple of books, I'm slamming into a brick wall when in recent months I've been spinning almost out of control on a racetrack of inspiration. I hope it's just a combination of new nerves and tiredness, I can't let myself lose the flow I've gotten back. It's taken me such a long time to get back here.

I'm facing a crossroads in terms of where I put my energies and unfortunately I know which road is expected, necessary, sensible.
The other road is dangerous, potentially foolhardy, poverty riddled but its that road that's right. Simple. I know which way I should be walking but I'm going to do what I'm good at doing...ignoring myself and pleasing others. I'm not turning my back on Grace, I'm just putting the real world first and I hate myself a little for it.

It's only been a week, and I haven't spoken about this out loud to anyone, but I feel as if I've already lost part of myself. Don't judge me on that. It's just how I feel.

Taboo

You know girls don't talk about it...even the ones who claim to be 'naughty' or with high sex drives, they just don't talk about what happens behind closed doors when you're on your own sometimes. I'm not saying we should have a sign on the door that says 'Self-love in progress' but the ability to normalise the ermmm 'act' of ermm 'self-satsifaction' well it would be another tick in the box of modernism. It happens! Its healthy! Sometimes there is no useful male around and it's just got to get done. So dirty scenes on Youtube from favourite past movies...it happens, dirty passages from 'erotic fiction'...it happens, just your own vivid imagination of something wild and never going to happen or a juicy memory of last time the useful male was around!

It was the fireman again, I don't know what it is! but there's this ridiculous 2 part scenario I have in my head that will never happen, I don't even own a tea trolley! and this fireman comes up, all in uniform and he's grey haired and crinkly eyes (he's almost but not quite someone I sort of know, that's irrelevant! he's not a fireman anyway so it doesn't count) it's the uniform that does it, and the stubbly beard and then after a bit of chit chat...chit chat for Christ's sake and pouring tea the scene cuts to a store cupboard or something and I'm bent over backwards around some table or other and fireman is well... you know! In that yellow, red coat they wear, and white t-shirt.

So I had a fireman moment today, it was necessary and because it's unacceptable to talk about such things and I can't have a girly giggle with anyone because its taboo I'm writing it out on here! Because who else am I going to talk to about it?

September

As I've been saying, something always happens in September. There's no point in worrying too much until September has come and gone. 16th September marked a change, an uncertain change but nevertheless progress at least. It may not lead anywhere but we shall see, at least I have accomplished some sort of unsteady step in the direction of my future. If I make it through this and gain some sort of certainty at the end I'll then be proud of myself, until then, I'm still a little lost and unsure.

RIP Scumbag

My first book, published and available on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=sian%20siviter&sprefix=sian+%2Cdigital-text

First book

I've published my first finished book online. In about twelve hours it should be available for purchase around the world on what is probably the best thing that's come from the internet next to advertising...Self publishing through kindle. It's not my masterpiece, it's not my best, it's not Grace but this is my first and it has my name on it. A simple chick flick that has gotten that particular genre out of my system. My second will be a drama, more intense, more serious, it will be better but for now I have stepped out onto the first stone and for now that's enough. If one person I don't know reads it, reviews it then I'll feel a glimmer of success and self worth.

four walls again

I hate it here. I've hated it for years and not once have I felt like I was exaggerating. Everyday I wake up and it's not long before something makes me hate it from the core inside of me. It's the only thing that's really made me who I am. I am encouraged to push forward only because I want to get out of here and be in my own home. I don't care if it takes every penny I ever earn, I don't care if it's barely wider than a garden shed, I just desperately want it to be mine and be different from these four walls. I get sod all from these people, and what I do have from my own pocket isn't respected what so ever.

Arthritis in the morning.

The doctors said the stomach aches every morning were related to my arthritis. Something about the stationary position of sleep, the natural chill of the morning and my sudden excursion (if you can call getting up and boiling the kettle excursion) all combined. I thought I might outgrow this morning discomfort but no. When my joints are cramping up and throbbing  the night before and I rise from bed fairly early I feel like a ton of bricks are settling in my stomach and my joints go....Criiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeaak. I've always wanted to crawl back into bed with a hot water bottle, in my present life I could do that but I want to get on with the day and accomplish something. This is another reason why I want to be a paid writer....I could sit down at a desk with a hot drink and a water bottle on my lap and do what I love in comfort. It would suit my dreams and my body.

down a well. poem

Can anybody hear me?
I'm stuck down a well
there's no one else for miles...as far as I can tell
It's dark down here
dirty and damp too
If you wont even send down the bucket
then screw you!

Resized

I haven't resized yet. Since being shrunk down to the size of a nail I still haven't recovered. I'm highly annoyed by this because I wish I didn't care but I do. Those words hurt something inside me some people will never understand. They don't understand because they don't have these four walls. They're not being suffocated excruciatingly slowly.

Don't put up with that again Siviter. This is not the kitchen floor, or the edge of the bath tub. Don't you ever let someone make you feel that way again. We know what we're worth that's what counts damn it. Haven't I been saying that the last two years?

Grace, we've got so much to prove. So much of ourselves we can't forget about because there's only us trying to remember you know that right? Just you and me. We've got a lot to prove to a lot of people, most of all to ourselves. I'll be damned if I don't succeed.

Sometimes it's just us. poem

Sometimes it's just us,
and those times that's enough
Chin up my girl, I know who you are,
when you forget I'll remind you.
Put those autumn leaves back in your hair
one day we'll be somewhere
I promise, one day we'll be somewhere.
I won't forget when others do
I won't leave when enviably they do
I'm all you need, to see this life through.
Sometimes it's just us,
and those times that's enough.

September poem

It's September again,
I should have known that kind of feeling
always lasts longer than you think,
it sure has lasted longer than that last summer did
If I could take that goodbye back
If I'd laid down on the tracks
then maybe this September
You'd be here and not under the grass

Recent Nightmares

I keep having nightmares that I'm in a situation where a young child needs saving, and the child is always different. Sometimes it's one of my nieces, other times it's a character from a movie or a complete stranger. I always seem to fail. I'm so close to getting through the door with them in my arms, or I've almost reached them in the shadows and then I wake up and my mind is clinging desperately to the scattering remains of the dream as my body registers the bed and the light from the window.
I've had these dreams several times now and with the way my days have been going lately and the waiting room I'm imprisoned in I've started wondering if my subconscious is crying out. I spent an hour and half this evening putting 100% effort into something that made me feel small. I'd be lucky for it to lead anywhere, that's what I can hear my own stupid voice saying, but I wanted more than this. Part of me hopes it doesn't lead anywhere, because if it does I'll be obliged to accept something that makes me feel insignificant. It's not writing, it's not Grace, it's not even close to making me feel worth something. A graduate for less than a week, and this is where I'm already heading it just feels like I'm losing part of my soul, the important part, the bit that generates my happiness.
Part of me wants to curl into a ball inside my blanket with torch and book. Part of me wants anything, anything at all to give me a chance and help contribute towards my future. Part of me is thinking that child I'm trying to save in my dreams, who I can never quite reach, who I can't protect, is actually me.

Typical day

Every weekday morning I wake up early, make a cup of tea, check my emails and start my job searches. Some days go by when absolutely nothing has come up and other days I find several positions to apply for. I alternate my days between finding jobs to apply to and then researching those companies and roles, writing new cover letters and applying. By 11 O'clock I finish that and start work on my book. 

The second half of my day is obviously the more satisfying but at least I know myself that I am putting in equal efforts to both areas of my life. 

7am: get up 

7:10: tea and breakfast 

7:15 computer turned on, check emails 

7:30-11:00 check all jobs in email alerts, 

Sign into all 12 job sites I am registered on 

Search keywords and roles 

Read job descriptions, 

Save relevant jobs 

Start researching each job company and role 

Make notes 

Write suitable cover letters 

Apply for those jobs 

11:00 work on novel 

12:00 eat

2:00 buy groceries for dinner 

5:00 bathe, sort out outfit 

6:00 go to boyfriends, cook dinner, or hand groceries over and ask for dinner to be cooked

7:00 you know, couple stuff. Chill. 

Spare time: work on novel, or draw illustrations

                   Visit the family 

I live for the weekends with my mr Jones when I'm out of those four walls for the entire weekend but like I said before without a full time job I am in a waiting room, waiting for someone to read my ticket number and say my life is ready to start. 

Various apologises

I found it amazing that after an angry charged ambiguous blog post I had several people message me with apologises for various things and all of them believing the post was about them in particular when it was actually about a group of people all for various reasons. I am not one to overlook the bravery of an apology though and for the several individuals out there who took the time to contact me with an explanation/apology I thank you and accept and continue to offer my friendship out to you. 

Calm

I'm so bloody upset right now, and I have given way to those damn waterworks that I despise and then reigned them in. So now I am furious with myself for breaking down. I hate breaking down. Almost as much as I hate those four walls. I'm upset with life and the people in it. Too many judgemental words from too many people who don't know me or what I have put up with over the years. One too many, simple as that. I have one of those tempers that burns and burns until one final thing pushes me over the limit and I explode quick and furious and then it dies down after half an hour or so. I'm like my dad I guess. I have a temper that threatens to throttle anything in its path. I found a way around shouting and breaking things though: I write diary entries, I just happen to make them available to the world.
Some of you reading this may well be part of the group that's set my temper a light today, there are several of you who have contributed to my breakdown and only one of you who has apologised. Which I accept happily. The others of you who remain silent and I suppose ignorant to the fury you ignited I have little time for anymore. I have said goodbye to some very dear friends who pushed me too far, this evening marked the final straw. I bet two of you will read this, but will you realise I refer to you? You have pushed me away when once I told you my deepest secrets. I will blog my goodbyes to you and if you stumble upon them I hope you know it was your fault and not mine because I tried, with one girl particularly I tried very, very hard to keep you but you weren't interested in maintaining our friendship. I was disposable to you. Now I have had enough. I have exploded, I have calmed, and I have a clear head when I realise some friendships I used to cherish are well and truly over.

Bottom of well

There are few things that pick me back up when I'm right at the bottom of a well.

The girls: dancing and singing with them, just being around the same house as them.
Talking to one of my best friends: Pidgin, Chrissie, Stacey, Brett.
Writing my book or just talking about my book to someone.

I am such a little person, living a little life, and I have very little to work with. I don't pretend anything on here is worth anything really. I put my thoughts on here in whatever mess they were in while in my head. I don't try to be clever or creative and I don't really edit so I make errors. All my effort, heart and soul goes into my books. My novels actually mean something to me because they are all I've ever felt like I have. All my life I've had stories to tell and that is it.

I've spent my life telling myself that I will not end up like those shadows in the four walls. I've promised myself I will become better than the life I was born into. My novels were the key, as far as I'm concerned they are the only thing that can rescue me. My novels are my knight in shining armour.

Graduation

4th September 2014

When I left school at sixteen I had this daydream playing out in my head of myself in so many years walking through Victoria Square awaiting my graduation. The dream was always a perfect day, crisp but sunny in my favourite month: September. I would be carrying a satchel bag, wearing a beret and look and feel every inch 'The Student'.

It's that little dream that kept me going at certain times of uncertainty and now that day has arrived. The weather is very accurate.
I have with me my satchel bag curtsey of Pidgin.
No beret because the blue sky dictates that it is unnecessary. Even the fountains are on, a tank is filling one just now, it's a beautiful day.

Yet I don't feel every inch the sophisticated graduate. I feel unemployed. In a charity shop skirt with scuffed shoes. I don't want this ceremony bullshit. I would rather stay here on these steps, hearing the water from the fountain, feeling the sun on the back of my neck while I write in this notebook. My scribble of thought will eventually turn into the structure of my new novel and I will be at peace, writing the stories that might one day prove me to be more than I am right now. Right now I don't feel like the world is my oyster, I don't feel young with everything ahead. I feel poor and wretched.
Stupid dreams...They never work out the way you think they will.
I waited for this day for five years and it was a complete and utter let down.

Trying my best

I'm furiously angry right now but its all contained extremely well I think. Inside I'm half struggling not to cry, half struggling not to lose my temper and break something. All I can do to vent this emotion right now is what I am doing: blogging. So I say on here instead of out loud: FUCK OFF!
I can't believe I didn't just say it when I wanted to, a part of me wishes I'd just told you to fucking mind your own damn business you TWAT and stay out of my life. Like I need your unwelcome opinion and the extra pressure it's putting on my shoulders. I am so annoyed. I'm really upset ok, I'm really genuinely close to tears and I can't show that right now. I have a carpet to clean, I have a brave face to put on.

How dare you judge me.
I'm trying my best.

waiting room

As I walked back to Connie from the shop this evening I found myself deep in thought praying. If you won't send me a job at least send me a sign. Just point me in a direction. I think I'm hiding it quite well but I can feel a twist of anxiety the same way a girl will wring her wet hair out, getting tighter and tighter inside. I told myself I wouldn't worry this early on but I am. Jones is unbelievably supportive. In fact he's the only one who isn't getting on my back. I think I'm stressing because time is flying by faster than it's ever done before. If this was just another summer holiday it would be over next week. But it's not a holiday, its a stand-by period. Time is running past me and nothing is changing, nothing is happening. I feel a little bit like I'm in a waiting room holding my ticket but the receptionist calling the numbers out has lost and forgotten mine. How long am I going to sit here until someone notices me? I wish I was 19 again. 19 felt like a great age when I met Jones and my life started getting interesting but I was young enough to make mistakes and still had time to work out what was coming next. At 21 it's a completely different story. Just 2 years changes the outlook on life and the way people look at you. I feel very much under pressure. I know for certain that I do not want to reach 22 and still not have my own place to live. I will hate myself if that happens. Please God don't let that happen. I've done what I promised I would do when I was 11. I went to college, I went to Uni, I got a degree, I've almost published my first book...just give me the one thing I've wanted for the last ten years, I want to get out of these four walls. To do that I need a job. Come on. Just give me a break.

Scotland

I was more angered on Pidgin's behalf than relieved when we discovered that she cannot go to Africa. On the one hand I felt as if a mysterious being was interfering because I have been fretting inside over the upcoming absence for months, but I truly felt guilty to see her plans fall through the floorboards. After a hurried rush around it is settled that Scotland is to be the plan. Still eight months, still a long absence but at least she's in the UK. At least I can get there. I wasn't at all envious of a trip to Africa. Truth be told the whole thing sounded like a version of hell to me, but Scotland. I'd love to experience that. I am totally jealous of that and I fully intend to get myself up there at least for a weekend to see Pidgin and the highlands.

I'm just glad to report to my own thoughts that at least there's now one less thing for me to be worrying about. Scotland is not Africa, it's practically home. England's cousin. All will be well.

Spoilt Rotten. New Laptop

So my blue H.P Laptop Harry Potter finally died. Gave up. Shut down. It had a good run with various repairs and it saw me through uni but now we've called it a day. Brilliantly though, the night my old machine tuckered out was the night my Mr Jones bought me a brand new shiny RED laptop!! A better one, a sexier one. One with separated keys and a smooth sleek touch pad and a slim light weight screen. For a piece of technology it's beautiful. Marking the end of an era. The old blue one was never my personal choice and all its connotations is for the trash, this new red one is like me, it's bright and vivid and as University ends and life in the real world starts I am kitted out with a wonderful new piece of equipment. :-) I am so spoilt. Not silver spoon in mouth spoilt but awesome Christmas day pile of presents, expensive treats and date night spoilt. Cinema to watch my movie spoilt. Cans of pop and making tea spoilt. I have a surprise for you spoilt. :-) I've become a gleeful naughty faced child when I read a message that says I have a surprise for you. And my hands clap together in over the top exaltation. Amazingly this gold and marble pedestal is wonderfully comfortable. :-) haha! I have no intention of climbing down any time soon, and after all I've been put up here so very nicely. :-)

I am so spoilt. :-) I love my new Laptop. Which incidentally I am writing on now. I'm not sure what to name it. I think I shall be very original and call it Red. Like Red riding hood and those erotic passages. Yes. Red it is. I love it. I love how easily it types. the keys are so beautifully spaced. I clickicty click with perfect ease. Ooo I am so spoilt.

Kids

I love my nieces with a love like no other, sort of an unyielding adoration that nothing can tarnish. I love being fun and weird Aunt Sian but I often wonder will my own children one day love me the same as these girls do. I want my own little ones to think I'm fun and weird and enjoy my company. I've decided the first thing I'm going to do when I get a little money is to construct some sort of little presents for them. Trip to the pound shop it will be.

Damp Pillow

I approached that door with an ominous feeling not unfamiliar. I didn't even like that door, I'd never have chosen that glass. Blue for money they said, what money? What a hark! The unfinished attempt of a porch, left for more than ten years yet another example of the disinterested attitude that surrounds this place. Sometimes it's like there's a crushing weight pushing down on me every time the key turns in the lock. These four walls are the most oppressive thing in my life.

I waited until I scrambled into bed and pulled the covers up like a child before an overdue assault of suppressed emotion came gurgling up and I had a little cry. Not for long, just a few minutes of silent sobbing and deep ragged breaths while makeup remains trailed from my eyes. For the first time in a while I wasn't waiting for that text, my mind preoccupied. These four walls and the image of my twelve year old self. I can see her sitting there crying for much longer than I allow myself to now. Writing similar scribbles in a weathered notebook. Nothing really changes until we change it-Is that a quote? It feels like it should be. The tears brought on a headache, it's been quite a while since I've been overwhelmingly upset over these walls. Even though I scrubbed my face with a towel and tucked deeper into bed I still felt a few more quiet tears slide into my pillow and after five minutes had to turn it over to avoid the dampness.
I hate it here. I'd sell half my soul to be somewhere else and never have to come back.