Back in the Saddle

Yes, I have been neglecting this blog. Time, depression, lack of energy etc are all to blame. As is my habit of thinking of things I’d like to blog about while I am out and about during the day, or driving somewhere, and totally failing to remember by the time I do get home.

This is not to say that I haven’t been writing. The Second Life adventures continue, though I am woefully behind on blogging Nathaniel’s diary. I have also been making an extra effort to attend the Milkwood Dashes (15 minute writing exercise with one-word prompt).  Most of those pieces have been set in my Windseeker story series, which are now getting sufficiently complex that I decided I needed to make up a crib-sheet, reminding me of all the people and places featured, in case I ever need to refer back to them. I didn’t get very far – yet…  Once I had decided on a format for the crib-sheet (pending a decent database type application), it was then necessary to start going back through the archives to skim through each and make a note of the people and places mentioned. Since all the dash pieces were in the same place, I found a bunch of the early ones, mostly not written in the Windseeker ‘verse and I thought, what the hell, let’s stick them up here instead. Hence the sudden flurry of posts after months of inactivity.

With a bit of luck, and effort, there should be more regular updates in the future. Feel free to nag me, or suggest ideas, if there aren’t. Who knows, maybe I’ll do some catching up on the charity blog too.

The Anxiety of Mornings

A few weeks ago, I came across an article in the Guardian on lost words – words that would be very useful, yet have somehow fallen into disuse.  One word listed in the article was uhtcearu, which the article described thusly:

“Uhtceare is an Old English word that refers to anxiety experienced just before dawn. It describes that moment when you wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep; no matter how tired you are, because you’re worried about the day to come.”

This struck me as an incredibly useful and relevant word, since it is something that happens to me on frequent occasions, as I am sure it does to many other people, especially in these days of financial and job insecurity. In fact, I thought it was such a useful word, I wanted to use it for the title of the blog, except somebody beat me to it, so I had to opt for a modified form. If you are a student of Old English, please don’t kill me if I got it wrong.

Despite the name, this blog will not be all about my morning anxieties. Since I am more likely to be writing it in the evening, I may well have forgotten whatever formless fears caused me to wake up anyway. What you will find is comments upon the day, the occasional rant about the stupidities of the bureaucracy of whatever august body I had dealings with that day, gripes about whatever job I am doing at the time, comments on political matters, or indeed, whatever takes my fancy at the time I sit down to write. There may even be the occasional bits of fiction, as and when I commit them.  Who knows?  This is my first entry, and the future might consist of pedantic pontificating on the purpose of porpoises, though I suspect that is highly unlikely.

So, here it is, my first post, mostly to stop the stupid 404 message when I navigate to this page. As and when things occur to me, there will be tags, categories and somewhere at the lower end of the possibility curve, interesting posts.