The fact that I'm having a hard time picking a title for this blog is probably the best example of the problems I'm having this week. Focus is wavering as I deal with life stuff.
It's been a week of frustrations and high emotional drain. As I get into the flow of this new lifestyle, I routinely come across new problems to be solved and inconveniences to be walked off.
I've started putting together layouts for issue two of our magazine and planned a few trips to gather stories. Thankfully the weather was on my side for the most part and the days I needed to be out taking photographs were quite comfortable. I have spent most of the last couple of weeks in Cambridgeshire.
I picked the next village to appear in our Village Focus feature and spent a fascinating day in Burwell, covering 13km all in all as I took in all the places I'd found to visit. While there, and with my mind in a freer place than it had been of late, I came up with some other ideas for features and articles which I'll develop for future articles.
A few days ago, again while struggling to make decisions about how to usefully spend my day, I had a phone call from my mum. She wanted to do a laundry drop. That's every bit as boring as it sounds. A few weeks ago I left my laundry drying all over her house and subsequently abandoned it. Mike had brought home a stinking cold and I had made the assumption I would be catching it, so put off re-visiting her to collect it. She has no immune system, so it was a preventive action. As it happened, my own immune system was doing its job just fine and I didn't end up catching anything. I hadn't yet gotten around to collecting it, so she suggested meeting somewhere to hand it over. We decided on the little village of Coveney, just outside Ely. Obviously I couldn't just enter a village and not go looking for things. We ended up visiting the village lock up and pound, a handful of war graves, and the very pretty church. The church contained a memorial plaque to a downed Lancaster, which I'll cover in a future article. I did photograph the site of the crash on the outskirts of the village as I was leaving.
Since then I've been trying desperately to get some writing days down. It has not been a grand success. Personal distractions, problems with my power banks, other work commitments, and my van breaking down have conspired to make me sit down and wonder what I've done to deserve this. I can only assume that I was a politician in a past life and I am indeed being punished in this one.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I do my best to lean toward the positive. I try to deal with things in the most practical, realistic way forward, and I try not to allow things to bring me down. That has been sorely tested this week. I won't go into the grim details, but my health has not been on top form and I've had to teach myself new ways of dealing with things alone and on the road. I am very blessed to have a strong 'virtual' support network who have been there throughout, and I truly don't think I'd have managed this last week without them. If you can, take five minutes to appreciate those strangers on the internet that become friends and confidants, that step in when others are no where to be seen.
For now, I am encamped at my Dads as my little van is off the road until the garage can take it in. That will be the other side of Easter now. Until then I won't know if the problem is fixable, or even affordable. This may have been the shortest adventure year in history...
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If you want to cheer a girl up, please go and download issue one of the magazine and give me some reason to want to write issue two...I'm struggling with it right now.
It's £3 and available on Kofi...
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