To do List

I want to clear everything out again. Everything is looking decidedly pokey. I want to sort through everything and give things to the charity shop. I want to find a place for everything, but it seems impossible. I find myself sitting on steps, knees to my chest in doorways, neither in nor out, looking in for things to throw away. But this feeling is premature. It isn't that long since I did this, sorted through clothes and got rid of loads. Rearranged everything so I could fit in.
I think it is an overspill from sorting through poems, editing, re-working, looking again, and I'm doing this almost everywhere. I find myself wanting to put useful but critical post-it notes everywhere I go- on the neighbours fencepost 'This is looking dry and could do with a coat of creosote','If you shut your back gate it looks more like you are home', on the kettle at my friends house 'If you moved the mugs from the bottom cupboard it would be easier on your back. You could make a cuppa in 50 per cent less moves'. I want to do this all around the house- cover the place in question marks on bits of paper, problems of everyday life to be solved- what is a good method for storing ties?, where should gloves and scarves go?, how do you stop tights tying eachother into one great big ball? Mostly, what will this collection be called? What is missing? What still needs writing, what must go?

Everything does look dog-eared. I think the real reason is the lack of light, it's been a blah sort of winter, no snow to brighten things up. I miss snow. Last week I walked round to slimming world and it was snowing. The sky was busy but everything was quiet. People scurried indoors. When I came out the meeting it was gone. Is this it? When I opened the curtains next morning I felt excited. The snow would be waiting. It was like opening a present wrapped in sparkly paper and finding only an empty box inside when the snow was a no show. When I was younger I never liked snow. I remembered the ordeal it was at school, how the big boys would pelt you with showballs on the way to school. Snow their hands had rubbed into ice, snow that left red marks on your skin and slithered down your spine. Your eyes would water. Your hands turned to marble, as you ran, ran, and when you couldn't run anymore found a vestibule and curled into a ball till the boys got bored. As a young adult I was practical. With snow comes caution, the wearing of less pretty shoes, the zipping into woollies. I lived in a damp flat, hunched by a little electric fire. How was I supposed to get these wet things dry? The snow slid from the roof in sweeps. I could see my breath and windows wept.

I was too busy being practical to look at the snow. I've changed somewhere. I don't know when. I'm still practical, when I'm not looking out the window and waiting for the snow.

Hello

To everyone I've met before but didn't have the balls to go up and speak to at Winter Babies - Hello.

That's all I want to say, that and a smile.

Coming out the closet

So 2007 is here, we knew it was coming. What's so important is the possibility of a fresh start somehow, the chance to do those things we meant to and didn't get round to, the chance to be slightly better somehow. We can do this anytime, but sometimes need a new calender to remind us to think about it again. It's like that feeling when you are at school and you reach the end of your exercise book, can't wait for the new one so you can write more neatly, and for the first few pages there are no mistakes.

I think I've already laid the groundwork, spent a great deal of 2006 thinking about things that aren't quite as they should be, and wondering how this can change. I decided I didn't know how to have fun anymore (I thought I did, but just drinking a few beers I realised isn't the same.) I am too shy, too awkward, find it hard to open up, to string a sentence together and talk to strangers (and sometimes friends.) The result was that people found me aloof, arrogant, distant or just a miserable twat. I think for years I blamed people for this, but it would have been simple to set them right, make them reconsider at least with a bit of conversation or a smile. If I don't give them anything to go on what do I expect? These aren't things I can change overnight, it takes a lifetime to make you shy and doubt what you have to say will be of interest to anyone, but I am trying. I am blogging, being open- it's a start.

I realised you don't automatically become self important, a show-off, insensitive or attention stealing by just being visible. I have been the invisible woman in so many ways, not saying things, hunching into nothing, giving off an air of being sorry for breathing your air. Sometimes invisibility is something that is done to me, most times I do it to myself. I don't want to be overly visible, I just don't want to come back from every social event feeling misunderstood and pissed off with myself that I really would have liked to speak to so and so, and ask them about that poem, but in the end decided they wouldn't be interested. I need to give myself a chance, by not doing so I'm not giving much chance to other people either. This is something I'm going to work on in 2007. My main resolution is that I'm just going to be kinder to myself. I don't have to love myself, not entirely, but I don't have to flush my head down the bog and steal my lunch money either.

So, in the interests of self improvement and less apology, this is a photo of me on New years Eve. Someone messaged me recently and mentioned a photo of me they had seen on the web- and I realised, that for all my careful exclusion of photo's, if people are curious about what you look like they can find them out there. I had my entire website done without a single one, which seems a bit unusual. I want to say this is purely because I have strong opinions about writers being judged exclusively on their work, not their appearance (I do think this, but that's not all.) The truth is I was just hiding, and I was being mean to every photo I considered- 'too fat', 'too miserable looking', 'too weird looking', 'too ugly'- the list goes on. The fact is people seem to like to put a face to a voice. I look at photos of writers and think they look quite laid back, like their work, or this person looks very outdoorsy; they must write on their mountain bike. That's about it. It's rare for me to look at a photo and think what a twat, and if it was an awful photo would it stop me reading the work? Not really.

So happy New year.
This is me, putting on the slap, about to step through the mirror.