Category: Perseverance
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The compelling relief of access, or egress . . .
When you live far up in the high fellsides, half a kilometre from the nearest road, you do feel properly isolated. That’s lovely, and we’ve loved the sense of living in a remote location for the past decades, of course. But there are challenges to this sort of lifestyle, and perhaps the most salient one…
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A completed list
I do make lists, but it’s rare to have a completed set of ticks by the end of the day. For one reason or another, with the perseverance I aspired to yesterday, I did manage to tick every task off the list! That’s enough joy to carry my weary muscles, joints and sinews through into…
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Perseverance, because . . . what else?
Sometimes setbacks feel so very daunting that it’s hard to see how or whether one’s pursuit of any particular project is worthwhile. In writing, in particular, this feeling must be so pervasive as to drive so very many authors to despair. I’ve had this sense of banging into a wall for several days now, amplified…
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Advent joy
My beloved opened the first package in her advent calendar this morning. My delightful task, after receiving a lovely thank you embrace, was to retrieve her faithful eSpinner from out of the recessed window nook in the craft room, so she could start to spin the Falklands Merino, Sari Silk and Bamboo blend. Nothing like…
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Resilience: the gift that keeps giving . . .
I don’t know how a parent teaches resilience to their children, except by some sort of example. We’re pretty sure that ours have seen enough situations where we’re down, struggling, and have somehow managed to get back up on our feet and try again. Let’s say rather that we’ve certainly felt we’ve had our share…
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The accumulated joy of small steps . . .
We were just chatting this morning, waking up with our daily word games, about the joys of a daily activity, whether that little step is poetic, journal, memoir, or something more physical like a small knitted square or another sorting exercise. One of us has been a fan of Brian Bilston‘s daily poems for some…
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The strangely compelling world of writing competitions
I participated in an annual competition, at the end of my first year in our local writing group. I entered a piece in every one of the 10 categories proffered by the National Association of Writers and Groups. I worked hard to hone each piece, to adhere to the rules, and to submit my entries…
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Joys of Writers Groups
Today I’m hymning the praises of writers groups; that is, groups of writers who have a common interest in becoming better writers. I’ve participated in four (no, wait a moment, five) groups of writers now, in addition to a writers retreat under the auspices of the Arvon Foundation, at Lumb Bank, Ted Hughes’ home. The…
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Joys of written records . . .
Every few days, it seems, I trawl back through my adventures in daily diarising to retrieve some tidbit of information about this particular patch in the North Pennines. Although I know the diary inside and out, it’s useful to have some tangible pointer for illustration, when I’m relating this or that bit of relevant factoid.…
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A slight discombobulation . . . perhaps a good stimulus
So I began the day on a different schedule: quick coffee, then a dash to the dump (aka Household Waste Recycling Centre) in Allendale so as to get back for my beloved to have time to return to the village for choir practice and the knitter-knatter group. But the rain was pouring down, and it…
Roads to Joy 