Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly....

I'm not entirely sure where the last decade went. I know I spent most of it in a kitchen. I have a little more detail about the latter part of it as I finally started to put into practice what I preached all those years ago and write daily. It started simply, a quick diary enry in the morning of whatever the previous day had contained (working at night, post day-job, seems to be nigh on impossible for me, so working in the morning it has to be) and a few lines if they occurred. Dredging my brain for the good habits of the days when I was a productive (ish) writer I managed to remember to keep paper and pen close to hand, so the odd other few lines got jotted down. Not much, but it was a start. Casting my mind even further back I finally got back in the habit of reading again.

The various apologias I have issued down the years for the all-consuming nature of my day job (for those unaware, I spent ten years running a business, as well as being the chef of said business, it too a long time to find room to do anything else) had begun to chafe, and as I became dimly aware that the business was nearing its natural end, the old desires began to surface. I watched the writing world at a distance, with no small degree of envy, I resolved to drag myself back into the habit. so this year I've been engaged in a couple of regular and semi-regular writing exercises, not with any high hopes of creating anything amazing, but with a certain intention of producing something. Dating back to the start of the year, my Tumblr consists of a daily haiku. the more perceptive amongst you will note that they only date up to May, this is as they get done in batches, but are produced from my daily diary reflections. I quickly discovered that finding the time to write one daily during the dying days of the business was difficult. Curiously, whilst I've had no problem keeping a diary up, daily creativity has proved more elusive. However, by the end of the year, I will have a haiku for wevery day of 2017. More recently, and more actively, I started a fresh poetry blog Rapid Response, which I'll discuss in more detail in my next post. It feels like another shifting up of gears, more of a return to form (you can get updates on Twitter @celeriresponsio, should you feel so inclined). So this could be read as a semi-public way of getting back in the habit, and now I'm eight months into the year and still at it, I finally feel happy to say so publically, hence this post.