Monday 24 August 2015

Butterfly

Sunshine, rainbows and butterfly wings,
Little girls are made up of the prettiest things. 
Eyes opened wide and mouths made to smile, 
Tiny laughing creatures, make all the pain worthwhile. 

As each day ends, some of the light fades away, 
But little girls, forever, you wish they would stay. 
Sunshine becomes secrets and smiles turn to dust. 
Innocence corrupted as love turns to lust.

Little girls must grow up,
I'm sorry but it's true. 
But you say she will always
be that little girl to you. 

Life wreaks havoc and even butterflies break. 
Counting stars is replaced by a tally of mistakes. 
Headaches and heartbreaks and goals not achieved. 
Yelling and crying from lies not believed. 

Falling short of expectations,
and losing the will to try. 
Let go of little girl perfection,
or your young woman may say goodbye. 

Sunday 23 August 2015

Things that make me happy.

This is a post about good things. Things that make me happy even when I am lost in the darkest parts of my mind. It's something I started working on a long time ago, but I never got around to finishing it until now. And now I need to finish it. I need to finish it because right now I am completely lost in the pitch dark nothingness that makes me who I am.
So, I need to remind myself that it's possible for me to be happy.

A little while back a friend of mine asked me to write a guest post for her blog of all the things that make me happy. Initially I thought this would be the easiest thing in the world. I mean, I know what makes me happy right?
Turns out no. The first list went something like this.
  1. Books. New books, old books, second hand books, any books
  2. Piercings and tattoos.
  3. Tea
  4. Music
  5. My family and my pets
  6. Late night adventures with my friends
  7. Stepping on crunchy leaves
  8. Rain. Both when I am walking in it and when I'm inside listening to it. 
  9. Having pretty coloured nails and awesome eyeliner
  10. Sleeping
The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that these things don't really make me all that happy.
The destructive hyper-energy I feel when I'm listening to really great heavy metal and rock music where the people scream so I don't have to isn't actually happiness.
The peace I feel walking on my own at night is actually much closer to despair the more I think about it. 
There are also things that make me smile, or things that I enjoy, but they aren't necessarily things that make me happy. 

After a lot more thought and close examination of my life, I think I came up with a pretty good list. Check it out here :]


Sunday 16 August 2015

Commitment Issues

As some of you know, a few months ago I started on my resolution for this year of writing a novel. 
It was going pretty well. I really liked my idea and I thought the plot and characters were quite interesting, but making it come to life was kind of like pulling teeth. Like pulling my own teeth. With no anaesthetic. And only rusty screwdrivers as tools. 
So yeah. It wasn't going very well and I was feeling pretty disheartened. 
I also noticed that I didn't really want to talk about it. Which was worrying because some of the sites I had seen on writing novels said that it can be really helpful for authors to talk about their ideas with trusted friends or to let people know that they are writing a novel to help keep them motivated. I know this isn't for everyone, but I didn't even want to admit to people that I was writing, let alone discuss the content.  
I guess in hindsight I should have seen that as a warning, but alas, I pushed on. 
I pushed on for a few months with no success at all.
Finally I got fed up with the whole thing, and interestingly that's when everything started to fall into place. 
I resolved to stop writing (hence the blog inactivity), or thinking about writing, or reading about writing, or trying to talk about writing. I just stopped. 
I focused on my normal everyday life and trying to kick the cough that had been bugging me for weeks. 
That's when it happened. That's when I had the idea that has made me happier about writing than I have been in months. 
It was an idea for a new story. It started out as a random thought and developed quite quickly into a plot and characters and conflicts. 
I have progressed further with this story in two days than I did with the last one in all the months I was working on it. 
It seems wrong to jump from one thing to another. I feel like my commitment issues are coming out to play and I know this might be a huge mistake, but here I am, powering through the random notebook that I hurriedly bought at Coles the other night. :)

Here's hoping this streak of inspiration lasts a little longer. :)