Manageable thoughts

A good end to the week. I felt as if I had been struggling with my identity of being a writer, and if I should chuck it all in, and focus on something less pointless, but as Wordsworth says in the Prelude, "The Poet, gentle creature as he is,/Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times; /His fits when he is neither sick nor well,/ Though no distress be near him but his own/Unmanageable thoughts." Although the issue was this week whether I was a poet at all, which I suppose is demonstrable by having quite a few actual poems published. But this proves nothing as there is an enormous amount of rubbish published (some of which I witnessed last night). On that note, someone posted Facebook posts of one or two people reading, but as I was sitting near the front, they were also loving portraits of the area of concern, which now appears to be the size of Australia. Bah.

But today it was all different. Did some practical stuff, like a spot of billing for the scraps of freelance work I'd done this month, and ended the week having made some hard decisions about my writing, and I have benefited from these and at least managed to get one lot of poems sent off.

Spoke to Mum and to Anton. Spoke briefly to Sonia, who was joking that England was the place where people only worked. She seemed a bit glum, but I was too busy working to discuss it.

A really nice evening with Lorraine, who was cheery as her performance management review had gone pleasingly, and her board of governors is supportive in all the right ways. Just nice to sit in the Preston Park Tavern for a chicken burger, and a couple of beers. Home very early though, and both of us falling asleep on the sofa. A blissful early night, without having to wait tremulously for the sound of iPhone ducks quacking at six AM.