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The ‘Before’ And The ‘After’
Is this what my life has become? I’m sure we have all seen magazine pieces or shows on TV where we can look at a person’s ‘before’ and after’ story. It could be their weight, re-doing their home or having a beauty make-over. Certainly here in Britain we have plenty of them. I didn’t realise I was a ‘before’ and ‘after’ person until I wrote this post, even though I’m sure I’ve written in those terms in other posts! Anyway, before I bore you and myself to death let’s get on. We have a heatwave in the UK at the moment. This is very difficult for those of us who…
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Why do I think of myself as not normal
And does it really matter? I love watching travel and wildlife programmes. I find them quite peaceful and easy to watch, especially before going to sleep. The cinematography is stunning. They inspire me to want to see these places and things for myself. I am thinking about things I would like to be doing or things I wish I could do. I always think ‘if I was normal I could be doing that’ . What is this ‘normal’? I spend most of my time writing about how disabled people should not be seen any differently to able-bodied people, about accessibility, about attitudes, and yet, in my private thoughts, I am…
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Writing a blog is my grown-up project
And it means a lot to me Talent comes from originality which has a special manner of thinking of seeing of understanding and of judging. Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean I recently read some blogging tips. The advice was ‘start with a small project’. It made me think. What is a small project? Does it mean writing a short blog. Or writing a blog and doing some small scale marketing for it. Or maybe something else, like organising all the rubbish that you collect and putting it in some sort of order. When I was young, I loved projects. We did them at school. I remember doing one on…
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Why good notes are a must for writers
Organise your notes to avoid scraps of paper! I listened to an interview with the fiction writer Louise Penny recently. She said that she had suffered from writers block, and had seen a therapist. She learned that the biggest obstacle to writing is fear. Fear stops thoughts, ideas and characters entering one’s mind freely and then being transferred onto paper. Recently, I heard the quote ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ (F D Roosevelt). The next day, I opened an e mail from the British Library focused on writing, Then, quite coincidentally, I read an article about President Roosevelt in which the same quote appeared. This…
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How My Life Changed Almost Overnight
And what I’ve learned In 2004 fear took over my life. This is when the first symptoms of MS began, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I went from a fit, active person to someone who could only walk a short distance, had difficulty driving, could no longer type with both hands and so many other things. Almost overnight. The fear was intense, I suffered panic attacks, I cried a lot, lashed out at my husband and he at me. This was completely alien to me, we had been married for a long time and for the most part happily. Neither of us could understand why…