After going to bed at midnight last night, I woke at 3am, then 4am this morning, and turned thoughts over in my head until the alarm went off at 5am. An hour later I boarded a train in the middle of town towards London, and set off towards a really rather large and important sounding conference. I’m not saying any more about it, because that’s “work”, and I don’t write about work. I will say thousands of people were there.
The tiredness is just starting to hit me.
I’m sitting in the dark of the study, playing a random “rainy day jazz” playlist, and trying to decompress a little.
I suppose the highlight of the day was travelling on the new “Elizabeth Line” across London. What a difference. Back when I was commuting into London during the late noughties, the journey from home to the far side of London would take at least two hours - that’s been cut in half.
What else has been going on?
Since last writing I’ve accompanied both of my daughters to the opticians. My youngest (who we discovered needed glasses while travelling home from holiday) now has glasses. My eldest (who had glasses but didn’t wear them) picks hers up early next week. While visiting the optician I crossed paths with the beautiful eastern european lady once again - the one who’s eyes I had to stare straight into while she measured my vision. Awkward.
I built a website!
My Dad is a member of a club that had no proper web presence - just an old blogger account that was creaking somewhat. After a couple of hours earlier in the week I magicked a website, domain name, Discord server and newsletter out of thin-air for them. Now begins the task of handing off running it to some willing victims. I love building things. Running things - not so much.
This jazz playlist makes me feel like I’m in a Charlie Brown movie.
Oh - one more thing. I’m slowly disentangling myself from Wordpress and Tumblr. I’m my own worst enemy really - while I love the idea of writing, in reality I rarely find time to empty my head properly. I’m going to carry on with substack (because it’s easy), but switch off commenting for the moment. If you previously subscribed by email you still will be - if you were only following elsewhere and want to continue, you’re welcome to subscribe.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop blogging entirely. Perhaps stepping back will make time to start writing the novel I’ve never written. Or maybe I’ll just enjoy having a little free time.
I need a coffee. And a bar of chocolate.