INSPIRATION

Here I am. It's Sunday night and I am spending time wondering what I should blog about. Sunday evening appears to have become the blogging hour and I like the discipline that that sets me. If Sunday were to come and go without me putting pen to paper (as it were) then I would feel guilty. When I started to blog last August, in a rush of excitement at the prospect of my new lifestyle, it was to allow myself some sort of creative outlet where I could play with words and sentence construction, something that I have always enjoyed doing. If I were now to let a week pass without writing something, it would be as if I had given up on that opportunity to explore and that would smack of slipping back in to " mother of pre-school children" hell. I really needed to move on from there. So by having a structured and regular place in my week devoted to blogging it motivates me to do it, not least because of the guilt that I feel if I don't do it and there is enough guilt in the world without me adding to it unnecessarily.

But each week an issue arises. What shall I write about? I have certain rules. 1 . No moaning. It would be very easy to choose some aspect of modern life, moan about it for a page and then conclude with a witty sentence about how things were better in the old days. This may pay the mortgage for some column writers but it’s not my style. 2. Nothing too personal. I must not lose sight of the fact that these musings are published throughout the world and that my blog is not a diary. Whilst I am sure that no one but my nearest and dearest read what I write, I am conscious of not giving too much away. 3. No bitching. See above. These rules are simple to follow and really not that self-limiting and so I cannot use them as an excuse when my muse fails to drop in for tea.

Sometimes, I have a germ of an idea, a kernel that plants itself into my consciousness during the course of the week. I acknowledge its presence, am grateful that Sunday should be sorted and push it to the back of my mind. But then, when I sit down to write it, it becomes apparent that it only has enough legs for a witty paragraph or two but can take me no further. I sometimes think I should write something made up of all these first paragraphs just to see what it would look like.

The most frustrating situation (and ironically one that has just occurred in relation to this very posting) is when the web site's auto save function crashes and all my efforts are lost .Irritatingly, this always happens when I am at my most erudite and the words never flow as smoothly second time around. I am certain that this paragraph read better the first time I wrote it.

Sadly, when I struggle to think of a subject it makes me realise how mundane and uninspiring life can be. To date I have not let that hold me back and have blogged about the ironing and cleaning children's shoes, both subjects which take up an inordinate amount of my time but are not obvious sources of inspiration. Perhaps I should just approach the problem by sitting down and typing what comes into my head without having given it a second thought. Or should that be second's thought? Both expressions work just as well in their context although I don't know which the commonly accepted idiom is. And there I go off on a pleasing tangent. Perhaps I should not worry about it and just go where my thoughts take me. You will be pleased to know that next week's posting is already taking embryonic shape at the back of my mind. A bientot.