Thursday, October 27, 2011

This is not a poem

I’m trying to write something.

I wrote a paragraph. Actually I wrote one and half paragraphs.

But they were less than perfect so I am abandoning them.


I tried to set myself a project.

A reason to regularly return to my blog.

I thought I’d write a thought for Thursday.

Every Thursday from now until the end of the year.

But then I didn’t have any thoughts.


Because I am a vacuous silly woman refusing to use a comma between those descriptive words those adjectives.


But actually I had lots of thoughts.

And I just couldn’t settle on one that seemed worthwhile.

Because I so desperately want to be worthwhile myself and I don’t always believe that I am.


Number one thought was mediocre.

Well, the thought itself was old news.

Its my biggest fear. That I will never be anything more than mediocre.


Thought number two was

Write about Fomo. The Fear of Missing Out.

I couldn’t decide which thought was better. Or were they maybe the same thought.


If they were two thoughts

Then I would have to decide which

I would write about, which was better and I couldn’t.


What if I made the wrong choice

And the thought that I wrote about was the wrong one.

What if the other one would have been better, would have been inspiring

And all I’d done was ramble on in some less than perfect way,

In some less than perfect paragraph

Or paragraph and a half

About my fear of

Mediocrity.


This is not a half baked poem.

It is a prose piece

Which is desperately trying to be something else.



Thursday, October 20, 2011

Could it Be?

Could it be time to come back to my blog? And if so why? Why now and not tomorrow? or not next week or last week? Or last month or even 5 months ago. Alas, I do not know.

I had these grand plans of writing a London update once a week - things I'd seen, done or eaten. Maybe things I'd learnt. Yet, I've never been very good at following through with my grand plans, even one as, um, not-that-grand of writing a blog regularly.

There was a day, back in August, when I thought, yes, today is the day to write on that blog of yours. I think I even logged in. But I had recently found out that a friend of a friend had been found dead, and though I didn't know him, I felt that all the energy, the vivacity, the self-importance and arrogance of writing a blog as though I had something useful to say was pushed out of me, like the life that so sadly and prematurely was taken from one with youth, beauty, intelligence, friends - all those things we think make a life enviable, and yet in this case they weren't enough.

So I don't know why today, a day when people all over the world must be asking could it be? Is Gadafi really dead?, I do not know why its the right afternoon to return to my blog.

But I have returned to it, and I've rambled away, because I don't have a plan for what to say or what my next project will be that will keep me, and hopefully you, returning.

Its odd, because sometimes I do love a plan. I love to plan a holiday months in advance. I plan where I'll eat, I'll book train and plane tickets, I think about what clothing to pack (I have, for instance already planned in my head a complete list of what clothing to take when I go to Ireland and then Copenhagen over Christmas/New Year which is about 10 weeks away). I do this, and then I often don't want to do what I planned, or I don't want to go on holiday at all, or I get outrageously upset that somehow the 10.20 bus to Newcastle from Newry just didn't seem to appear meaning my plan is thrown by 2 hours because for some reason the bus comes at 20 past every hour except for 11, and there is no bus scheduled between 10:20 and 12.20. Truly, I'm over it now.

Sometimes I think about my inability to calmly wait two hours for a bus (I mean, it wasn't that bad, we walked home had a cup of tea and went back to the bus stop later), my inability to always see a plan through, my inability to not be annoyed when the washing machine my landlord installed yesterday hasn't been connected properly meaning I have to wait a few more days for a functional washing machine, and I realise I'm not as patient as I like to think I am. I realise I'm not as in control as I'd like to be. I think about how there are things that I want or thought I needed in life; recognised intelligence, appreciated beauty, fame, a family, spare cash, a functional washing machine, and I realise I don't actually need these things, even though they'd certainly make life easier or perhaps just more colourful.

This afternoon I think about a woman who lived such a long time ago, and who was told of a plan for a family, a home of her own, a good life and who waited and waited. Who sometimes tried to ease the wait by being in control, but invariably made a mess of things, thinking that instead of waiting to be pregnant herself, she'd get her family by telling her husband to sleep with someone else. What was she thinking? And I see that as she got older, and probably got bitter, the plan wasn't forgotten and the one who made the plan, God, the God of her husband, the son she would have and the grandson she couldn't even imagine, came good on the plan. And he gave what he promised. And he did it at the time of his choosing, not hers.

So although I don't know why today seemed like the right day to return to my blog, or why sometimes I make a plan and stick to it, and other times I make a plan and it goes horribly wrong, I'm comforted to know that like Sarah, that woman who lived so long ago, I'm not forgotten by the God of her husband Abraham, their son, Isaac, and their grandson Jacob. And although I do love being in control and trying to make a foolproof plan, I was reminded as I sat and read Genesis 18-19 this morning, and again as I sit writing this now, that I have to patiently, faithfully trust in the timing of the God who is in control and who, because he doesn't need one, has no plan B.