Evening walking

The sun starting to set behind Elvaston Castle. Is a beautiful walk around the park which tonight was accompanied by a soul cleansing breeze to get rid of the oddness of the weeks activities.

Rural Acrobatics

todays little surprise on what turned out to be a really lovely walk between Chester Green and Darley Abbey.

As I take the deepest breath

so here i was sitting
thinking ponderous solutions
thoughts of a practical nature
strategems and conquerings
life and love lost
time gained
fights i have won and those defeated
bitterness everlasting
a distaste beyond
those who do not understand
the emotions that bind
entwine and suffocate
all to take a breath
sweet enough to numb the senses
dull for eternity
the end to all

A consideration of mortality

From todays walk

Walking

I did something out of the ordinary from my little rut that I have ground myself into. It is going to sound silly but I went for a walk, just for the absolute hell of it. It’s normally something I do with friends and so very rarely alone. Due to the lovely weather recently I’ve been out to different places, sat in the sunshine and don’t get me wrong, thoroughly enjoyed the company I was with but it’s very random for me to do it on my own and not feel like some sort of social pariah (a possible overstatement but I’m naturally a very sociable person).

I found myself sitting a park bench overlooking the park and suddenly realising that I was very alone, as for all my current spare time and even time spent alone I attempt to ‘busy’ myself, my photographs, tweet deck, facebook even this blog they’re all just distractions, things to busy my brain so I don’t entirely go and break the delicate line between my strange sanity and a despairing insanity, and yet somehow the realisation of this still confused me and in my haste I tweeted, feeling a odd warmth of a connection to the world again when all I thought I wanted to do was to be alone.

I only must have sat on that park bench for all of 15 minutes watching as people went about their lives. Parents played with children, dogs chased thrown sticks and people walked purposefully towards a goal unknown to me. I was passed by without a passing glance or a lingering thought. I wasn’t a username or a reference number, I wasn’t categorised or pigeonholed, labelled for all to see and for a brief moment I was grateful for that, for my moment and for the beauty of my surroundings and because I took the step and broke the cycle.
Here I am again though, back home, in my comfy spot in the corner of my sofa with my laptop balanced on my knee but I thought I would write this before I fell back into my distractions, before I opened up a world of social networking and Photoshop use.

It’s ok to walk alone.

Thinking about time and time for thinking

I would definitely say that recently I have had a lot of spare time for thinking, not that it has really gotten me very far or accomplished much more than to make me question every move in my life up until this point.

A decidedly odd 3 months have passed not having a job, having a particular sense of direction taken out from underneath me. I have found myself being almost allowed to indulge in things that I had previously set aside, taking photographs and starting to write again, looking into becoming that person I knew I was before my work life took everything over (except with vastly better dress sense). I’ve felt a little ‘kid in a candy store’ in a way, opening my eyes to a fraction really of what the internet can offer. Will my photos really attract any attention on flickr? No more than likely not, but does it make me feel good that I finally posted some of them after much deliberation. Yes, it does and that’s the important part.
Maybe that's why my new job isn't in retail, maybe it's still all too painful to go back and say 'yeah I worked in that shop that closed'. I hated those faux expressions of awkward apologies coming from those safe in their jobs, the asking of the immortally ego crushing question, ‘So, when can we expect payment?’ And in one small question the world as you know it comes crashing down around you and the emotional backlash hit me worse than I’d have ever thought it could have.

What’s so painful is knowing that things I worked for still exists, things I put time into, deliberated over like nothing else in the world mattered, it's still there, it's just not mine anymore. I have yet to go into the place where it's all still very real, I’m not sure I ever will, but I’m willing to risk that it will hold no more closure for me than I have now.
However, I'm lucky you know. Every so often I think about it and I am just stupid enough not to realise it until I’m forced to think it over. I look around at the people who I used to work with and a couple of them have fallen straight back into retail jobs and carried on, for the need for money outweighed the need to maybe find a job that was more fulfilling and challenging. Three of the girls have gone into jobs in Debenhams (who are the people who took Principles over and made us all redundant) and I’m not sure how I would cope with the sense of sadness of working in such close proximity and watching as it is slowly becomes another nameless brand in a soulless department store. This isn’t something I say lightly, it’s not as if my bitterness is all the controls my opinion, its real life experience, and a case of ‘been there, done that and ritualistically burnt the work shirt’. Then there are the rest of us, those of us struggling to get back that lost direction, trying to find out that something that might actually make us happy rather than just having a job for the sake of it, and I feel I’ve wimped out in that stake, all this job I have will ever do is earn me money, but will it give me the ways and means to start improving myself again. Will I ever properly take advantage of what is handed to me, who knows?

Though, more recently I would say that I have found more a sense of inner calm, a little more grace but still the elegance of a cat with an inner ear infection (I shall and forever will be clumsy, end of). Whatever anyone says or may think things aren’t so bad. Life moves on even though the feelings remain and will sometimes cut deeper than you could ever imagine I can still hold my head up high and know I did that and so help me, I’m so proud.

Starting - to begin something either anew or the rekindling of the old. This is in a way is both, something to rekindle the old writer in me and a start of something new and in a little way slightly frightening (yet rather exciting)

A lot of inspiration has come my way recently, in the forms of new friendship and sometimes just a strangers kind words that may hold my delicate heart aloft for the briefest of moments before my own doubt creeps back in.

This will never be a regularly updated blog, though i'm not actually that keen on the word blog maybe so much as random musings. As I have never been that consistant with anything, I would see this as a chance to prove myself wrong but well I do so hate disappointment and my own always tastes the most bitter.

So I come baring something quite simple, my soul. I would ask you to be gentle with it for one day I might ever hope to see yours.

L