narrating kayoz

Writing update

I didn't post much about writing over the university break, however I did do quite a bit of it. I think I wrote around 14000 more words on the romance novel, putting me at around the half way mark (not quite) but most of that was in less than a two week period. Then I took a week off (with my family) before uni started again. Then uni started. Then I got sick.

At the beginning of the break I had a huge amount of trouble movitating myself to work after the stress of uni was over. But more than that it was really hard to get back into that way of thinking in general, and back into the world of this novel in particular. I realised that by taking all that time away from the novel, however good my reasons, I had made it really hard for myself. I vowed not to do it this semester. Even if I just wrote for an hour a week, I reasoned, I would be maintaining my connection to the novel.

Here's the kicker though. It turns out that there were good reasons for letting the novel slide during semester last time. Namely, that the writing I'm doing for uni is very different, and doing it involves me focusing all my attention on it, even when I'm not. As soon as I got my readings for this semester I started to realise that - it's like, I can't handle having both these things taking up space in my subconscious at once.

I'm still not completely closing off the possibility of continuing work on the novel during semester, but I'm willing to accept that it may not happen. Especially as now that I've been sick for a week (and still not really recovered, although I did study today) I am  a little behind with uni work already. I'm going to try to do an hour on the novel on Wednesday nights, after my pilates session, but once I am seriously thinking about the assignments for this semester I may have to give it up. We'll see.

In the meantime (if there is any time) I need to look around for a market for my final story for last semester, and see if I can get it published. It needs a little bit more revision I think, but basically it's right to go.

What I am not blogging about

I have a whole lot of things to blog about, but I have been spending most of my time working on my story, my final assignment for the semester, which is due next week. And I have a cold. However, because this blog operates partly as memory jogger I am going to list, briefly, the topics I am not blogging about.

1. Liam. He is going through an interesting and somewhat challenging developmental phase right now. And 'going through' is definitely the right terminology, because it is not a stationary thing, this phase. He definitely seems to be moving through something, and we along with him. There is a lot of calling people 'bad' ('you are a bad Daddy!') especially when they are taking my attention away from him. There is a lot of telling me (and also Chris, but mostly only if I'm not there) how much he loves me. There is an interesting tendency to preference Chris as night time comforter which has only begun in the last week. Even he seems to be confused by this. 
2. Liam. I also have been meaning to write about his singing. He's always been very into singing, but lately he seems to have taken another leap forward in this. He used to sing along to Play School and to tapes in the car, but usually be a few lines behind. More and more he is singing right along with them. And more and more he is singing whole songs to himself at other times. He's always done this - sung in the bath, at the dinner table, in bed - but he's tending to sing longer songs now, or more of them, rather than just snatches. He knows songs that I don't, and today I heard a Play School song at a friend's house that I'd never heard before - except I new it word perfect from listening to Liam sing it at home.
3. Writing - or more specifically revising. I am finding revising this story to be alternatively satisfying and frustrating; fun and depressing. It has made me realise that I have never really got to this point in my fiction writing before. No wonder I'm not published yet. And thank god for a deadline (I think).
4. Homeschooling. I recently discovered that Dawn started blogging again latish last year, so I’ve been reading her back entries. Almost every time she has an entry about homeschooling/unschooling it makes me half want to do it. She had an entry in October about it, then in December she had a running conversation with some commenters about homeschooling.
   So I wanted to talk about why it appeals to me (mostly the kid-directed learning, though I have to admit the saving in school fees appeals too) and why I don’t think we’ll do it (partly because I’d be concerned about them missing out on the shared experience most of their peers will have and wondering how they’d cope when they eventually entered the mainstream system if they wanted to go to uni, and partly because I’d be terrified I’d stuff it up and ruin their lives. But also because there are a lot of things about being part of the Steiner school community that I think will be really great, and everyone I know who's kids are at Orana seem very happy with it. Also I don't know how much support there is for it here - far less, I would think, than in the States, but I admit I have done no research).
5. Hmm, what else was there? Oh yes, work. I can’t remember where I left the work story most recently, but to sum up, I now have a position where I can stay at 20 hours/week until the end of the year, then go up by one day. I was still looking around for other things for a while, and came very close to getting a job I would have loved in a different department (the selection committee recommended me for the position, but then they ended up not filling it, at least for the moment), but… I have now decided to stay here.
   The reason I was still looking for something else is that this job promises to be unbelievably boring for a good deal of the time. It is mostly copyediting with a good deal of proof reading thrown in. On the other hand, staying here means that I get to stay at 20 hours which means I can keep studying next semester. If I got the other job I would have had to put my hours up by the extra day from July, in which case I would have deferred uni. I just don’t think it would be fair on Liam – or Chris - for me to be working virtually four days/week, plus studying on weekends. It’s bad enough as it is. (Actually, to tell the truth, the idea of having to quit studying for a while and thereby get my weekends back wasn’t so unappealing. But all in all I am happy that I will be putting my time and focus more into study than into the Public Service).
6. And finally, last but not least, the Budget. What can I say? I am sure it has all been said already. I just don't get why there isn't more of a public response to the fact that, according to Costello & Howard, we can't afford to maintain the Medicare Safety Net as promised, among other things, and yet we can afford more tax cuts, predominately for the rich. As Bob Brown said (sorry, don't have a reference) "Spending on the nation's health, skills and environment when the money is abundant is much wiser and fairer than tax cuts loaded for the rich."

writer's block II

Following the suggestion Suzoz left in my comments after my last writer's block post, I used some procrastination time the next day to read this article. Actually, Suze didn't suggestion I do it to procrastinate, but...  I think it should be obvious that that is what I would do.

Anyway, I read the article. It was worth it for these few lines:

Why do writers get blocked?

• ...
• They want to be sure before they write . . . . . . instead of writing when they are not sure. There is no end to the project in sight.

Blocked writers have somehow lost the art - or perhaps never had it - of using writing as the 'engine' of their thinking. They have not integrated it into their thinking and learning. They do not use writing to solve the problem.

In fact, I do usually use writing as my engine of thinking. Especially when writing fiction. But I definitely seemed to have lost the art of it when I was working on my story last week.

I think part of the problem was that there was an end in sight. The end was a 3000 word short story to be submitted for my course. But the trouble was also that there wasn't. Usually I just write and see what happens. This time I had a goal (said 3000 word story - with deadline attached) and so I felt like I needed to know how I was going to get there. And where exactly 'there' was.

That was part of the trouble.

Another part was that the story ideas I had come up with would have potentially made an okay novel. This wouldn't have stopped me writing, except that I knew that what I needed was a short story. I couldn't figure out where to start to make the novel into a short story.

And the thing is, I knew that I needed to 'just write' to figure things out, and I still couldn't seem to do it.

But I did. First I did a little of it at home on the weekend. I wrote a few bits of scenes, bits of dialogue. I didn't know if I would use them, but at the end of the weekend I had at least gotten to the point of realising that:

a) I needed to narrow my focus in order to make a short story and not a novel, and
b) In that case, I didn't really have a story. I had ideas and a way that they could be explored in a novel; I had characters; I had fragments of dialogue & scene. What I didn't have was a story.

This was somewhat discouraging, but I pressed on.

On Monday I had a break while I was at work, so I thought, what they hell why not try writing? I wrote two short scenes - about 400 words each. And yes, finally some new ideas seemed to emerge.

Wednesday is my writing at home day (Liam spends the morning at his friend's house), so on Wednesday morning I sat down with all the fragments I thought might be useful, including the two bits I'd written on Monday. I was cautiously hopeful, but also rather worried that when I read over what I had I would once again realise that what I didn't have was a story.

I was pleasantly surprised. I did have a story. As I sat there at my dining room table editing my words on the page, writing new ones in red pen, I finally remembered how fun writing can be. Back when I was doing my undergrad degree I didn't get how people could enjoy revising. For me writing was a one, maybe two draft affair (this is essay writing I'm talking about now). It wasn't until my honours year that I started to get into revising more than that. Now, I love it.

The first draft, the first discovery of something - that can be fun, there's no doubt. Especially when there's no deadline looming. But reading through something I've written and finding the story in it, and then getting to polish those words and add new ones - that's really fun.

What is it about writing?

Sometimes I have to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I spending my weekends studying? Why am I planning to spend my mid-year six week break from uni working on a romance novel?

Why not just stick with my day job - currently 20 hours/week editing publications in a government department - and spend my weekends with my family?

Okay, I kinda know the answer. Because my 20 hour/week job editing is often unbelievably boring. Because I love to write and would love to make a career out of writing that doesn't involve copyediting technical government publications. Because I may not always be able to stay part time in the public service, even in this mindnumbing position. And even if I could, it may send me crazy if I didn't know I had something else going on too.

But. I am going to be keeping my boring day job for the foreseeable future whether or not I waste my weekends studying. And making a career out of fiction writing is rather more easily said than done. Making one that pays the bills is even harder, and even more so for literary fiction than romance.

At the moment my plan is to finish Fction Witing A & B, worth a point each, this year (I'm taking A now). Next year or maybe the year after (if I manage to have a baby next year) I plan to enrol in a four point, year long subject which involves about 16000-18000 words of creative writing plus a 2-3000 word exegetical essay. Something like that.

But. If I wanted to I could instead do a one point, one semester course in editing (which I would love to do as well anyway, and which would be much more sensible public service career-wise) and leave it at that - that would be enough for me to finish this Masters. And I could then focus solely on the romance writing, when I'm not editing boring pubs for the government.

Or, I could simply stop studying, stop worrying about writing a romance novel (or just do bits of it when Liam is taking naps on week days) and have my weekends back.

Instead I am at home, supposedly working on the story I have due next for uni, while Chris and Liam are playing in the sun at Commonwealth Park. Why am I like this?

Writing report

And in other news... I finished a paper tonight (yesterday really, just proofed it tonight) which is not due to be postmarked until Wednesday. Woohoo! This is a first for this Masters, and actually probably a lifetime first for me. I'm usually working on papers right up until the moment they are due.

And, I have already started work on my next assignment, which is a 3000 word 'original work of fiction'. Draft due for workshopping on May 9, completed story due June 1.

I do have an article due between now and then (not for Uni) but it shouldn't take long.

And then I will have about 6 weeks to get back to really focusing on the romance novel before the beginning of second semester. I am enjoying uni a lot, but I am really looking forward to that six weeks too.

Listening to heartbreaking cries from a distance

What I hate about working/studying from home, secreted away in the study while Liam and Chris occupy the rest of the house, is listening to Liam cry and Chris get cranky when (for instance) Liam refuses to co-operate in the tooth-brushing process. It's not that he would necessarily be any more co-operative for me. But if I were there I'd be the one getting irritated, instead of the one listening to heartbreaking cries from a distance.

You'd think it would be worse listening to him cry if he hurt himself, and in some ways it is, but the difference is that then he has Daddy to comfort him. If he's crying because he's in trouble, or in a rage, Daddy's not comforting, he's causing (however innocently and justifiably - please don't think I'm criticising Chris here - I'm not). So I feel bad for both of them and I just want to come out and make it all better.

Especially on a day like today: It's Liam's birthday. We should be having fun as a family. But we had fun yesterday, what with the party and everything (beautiful weather by the way) so I have to study today. bleh.

Another HD

Just quickly, I must report that I got a high distinction (HD) on my final paper - the one I had so much trouble with - it was waiting here with all my mail when I got home today.  So that's something good at least.

Assignment complete, but still stressed

I posted off my final assignment today - the memoir piece - which is a huge load off my mind. I really struggled with it, trying to get the right balance between memories and exposition. I went through seven quite different versions, plus multiple drafts of some of those. And the past three nights I was up late trying to get it finished. Trying to get a version I was happy with. In fact, three of the seven versions were invented in the last three days!

But I've also been feeling quite stressed about something else. Namely, work. I would love to have a good bitch and moan here, but it's really not the right forum to be providing details. Suffice it to say that I have been frustrated for at least a year by the fact that the agency I work for pays little more than lip service to its 'family friendly' policies. Oh, maybe that's not entirely true, they are certainly better than some. I have been able to work part time for the past 18 months after all. But. They have a lot of policies where some level of managerial discretion is allowed (whereas my contract says they have to let me work part time for at least two years after returning from maternity leave), and in those areas, managerial habit is not to honor the spirit of our agreement. Ie, if they don't have to grant something, they don't. I don't blame my direct manager for this. It is the corporate culture. And unfortunately that extends to treating part time workers like second class citizens.

Anyway, so I've been frustrated. But the new development is that there is a push from above to 'look at' our part time staff, and whether their hours are really appropriate to their job. That's the line they are giving, but in fact the push is simply to get rid of part timers wherever possible, as far as I can tell. So, despite the fact that in the last renegotiation of my part time agreement (only a month ago) my director stated in writing that she was happy to keep me part time, that my hours were in fact well suited to my job, I have now been moreorless told that they want me to go full time once this agreement runs out, or at least greatly increase my hours (read: four full days).

I haven't had a chance to speak to my director about this yet, so I don't know what my chances are of talking them down, but unless I'm pregnant, I'm thinking not good. If I'm pregnant when the issue arises, I'm hoping that they will just write me off as a lost cause. And I suspect that my doctor would support my request to stay part time if need be, because sitting at a desk became really painful last time, because of my pubic symphasis dysfunction - something I still haven't completely overcome, despite physio last year, and doing Pilates for about three months now (with a personal program). So I am not looking forward to finding out how that is going to go with the next pregnancy.

But, if it helps me to stay part time, that might be the silver lining. Because, and here's the thing, I really, really don't want to put Liam into childcare. I know other people do it, some from under six months. Bully for them. But I don't want to. Chris and I have lived on (effectively) a single income for two and half years now, because we don't want to put our children in care. The idea that we might be forced to do it now, when we are about to disrupt Liam's life in a huge way anyway (if I ever get pregnant), is making me both stressed and mad.

It's also frustrating that everyone at work who might be an ally or have some impact has their own kids in child care. So for me to be so anti putting Liam in care implies a) a judgement of their parenting and b) that I am too controlling and protective by far, and really this will do both me and Liam good. Both of which are crap, but I am sure there are people who think both those things.

So, the outcome is that between work and study I haven't been sleeping and have been more stressed and more tired than I remember feeling in a long while. Now my paper is in, I am waiting for some of the tension to leave my body, but so far there's been no change.

Update:  Re-reading this I can see it might look like I've gone into details after all, despite saying at the top that I wouldn't.  Believe me, I haven't.

Spring industry

It feels like summer today. When I came home from work, after taking time to help Liam undress dolly and make her a skirt, followed by a quick rummage in the dress up box to make skirts for Liam and Daddy too, I changed into a sun dress and took Liam for a walk to the park. That's right, a sun dress. At 5:30pm in the evening of a Canberra October day. Definitely not normal. And even when we got home, a little past six, I was plenty warm enough. And still am now, though maybe I'd be beginning to get chilly outside.

Summer lethargy hasn't set in yet though, I'm happy to report. Instead we are in the middle of Spring industry. In the past two weeks between us Chris and I have

• had an electrician come finally and fix the light fitting in the study, which hasn't worked since we moved in three and half years ago, as well as replacing the down lights in the kitchen/family rooms which worked only intermittently, installing new - wired in - smoke detectors, and most importantly redoing our fuse box (which was archaic) including adding a safety shut off,


• had a pest inspector come to check out the termite situation, another thing we'd been meaning to have done for three and a half years, since when we originally bought the house (five years ago) there were termites in the fence and the garage, but no nest was located - happily, it was still all clear,


• Mowed the lawn (that was Chris),


• submitted the article I had due and received good feedback from the editor (that was me), and


• interviewed both parents and siblings for the memoir piece I have to write for my next uni assignment, plus written about 9000 words worth of notes (for a 2500 word assignment, hmmm) (that was me too). Oh, and I got my last paper back and I got an HD for it, so all in all I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Now we just have to get on with painting the deck and pergola. I painted some of it before winter set in, but then I got too busy with uni and it got mostly too cold to paint. And basically one of us has to be looking after Liam, or ready to go down to him if he's asleep, or we need to get someone to baby-sit - both of which have been hard lately because I've been so busy studying/writing - any baby-sitting we've had has mostly been to facilitate that. But, only two more weeks of uni to go, and then it's summer holidays. So the painting will definitely be the next big priority then.
[edited - to fix the embarrassing typo in the very first line]

The shades of grey in blogging

I've been participating in a discussion over the past couple of days at Treppenwitz about issues of blame and responsibility around terrorism. I'm not going to recap the conversation, you can go read it if you like. What I want to observe about it is just that it has made me think. Reading blogs, and participating in blog discussions, does that, and I like it.

It's unlikely that I am going to change my mind about the evils of (some) US foreign policy, but having considered discussion with someone who has a different perspective can, at the very least, remind me that there are shades of grey. Everything is not black and white. I don't generally bother reading RWDBs (Right Wing Death Blogs Beasts - self titled), because these are so extreme - so extremely different to me - that there seems little chance for finding common ground. But I like reading the more moderate bloggers - Treppenwitz, who I have just discovered, and Troppo Armadillo among others. I also like reading John Quiggin, who thinks along more similar lines to me, but has a whole lot of different information at his finger tips (what with being an economist and all). And of course I like reading the (mostly less politically oriented) blogs of people with whom I have other interests in common, like Tamar's and Nick's.

But one of the things they all have in common is that I learn things from them. I like that. And since I am still working on that essay, I am thinking a lot about the social impact of blogs.

David of Treppenwitz has a post recently about enzymes. About how reading his blog - the blog of a real live person living in Israel - can help people more readily "digest and internalize the real personal tragedies behind the news". This is another, related, social impact - benefit - of blogs. And it works. Not only does reading his story of the previous day, a story about being the bus bombings in Beer Sheva on August 31, personalise that particular tragedy for me, reading his reaction to it also helps me to understand a different view to my own. It helps me to understand how and why someone might talk about "the ugly swath of destruction that Islam has wrought throughout its history" and might say with true and understandable rage that "as far as I’m concerned, if you are a Muslim and you do not loudly and unequivocally condemn the unspeakable savagery of your coreligionists… you are as guilty as the animals who kidnap and behead random victims…"

In one of his responses to my comments on the first post I linked above, David says "I pray that you... sitting in the relative safety of Australia... will continue to enjoy the luxury of your current point of view." This sounds a little patronising at first. But actually I think it's a fair comment. That's not to say that I have changed the opinions I expressed on his blog. But it is true that I (so far) don't have to live through the horror that many people do. Who knows how I would feel and think if I did?

For now, I will have to go away and think about his latest response to my comments and figure out exactly what my answer is. Because right now I don't actually know.

The joy of doing dishes vs the joy of finishing my essay

Yesterday our dishwasher broke down. Actually, it may well have broken on Friday, since we hadn't put it on since then. Not that we didn't have the dishes. We did. In fact, I packed it, completely full, on Saturday morning. And then, somehow forgot to put it on. And because I spent the rest of the day studying, and Chris spent the rest of the day trying to keep Liam out of my hair, we didn't look in there all day. So come Sunday morning, when I opened it up to unpack and repack, I was confronted by a dishwasher full of dirty dishes. These were in addition to all the dishes we'd accumulated on Saturday of course.

Does that not sound like such a bad story? Two days worth of dishes can't be so very bad can it? But it gets worse. Sunday I was studying and Chris was keeping Liam occupied while at the same time cleaning house. Why? Because we were having a dinner party of nine that night. My brother and his girlfriend are visiting from the States very briefly, so we had a family dinner at our house. But because the dishwasher wasn't completely buggered, it took Chris a while to notice that it wasn't working - it did the rinse cycle then stopped. It had been doing that a bit last week, and in fact we had someone already booked to come and look at it this morning. So when Chris happened to notice that it had stopped, but not finished, he started it again. It did the rinse cycle, then stopped. In desperation, not wanting to believe that it was completely hopeless, I am ashamed to admit that we tried this more than half a dozen times between us over the course of the day.

It wasn't until lunchtime, when Liam was napping and I came up for air, that Chris broke the sad news to me. Our dishwasher was done for. And we had a lot of dishes to get through before the 6pm dinner guests arrived. Plus Chris had to cook that dinner, and there were other household cleaning chores to do. Goodbye essay, hello housework.

Not that I'm complaining. Tonight, for instance, I was planning to study. And then I saw the kitchen - I did some of the dinner party dishes last night, and Chris did some more today while Liam was asleep, but there were still some left - and today's dishes of course. So instead of studying, I got to rediscover the joy of having a clean kitchen by my own hard work. And, having it clean at night. Normally we leave the dishes till the morning and pack/unpack the dishwasher and generally clean up while Liam either watches Play School or draws/plays with play dough in the high chair. And by lunch time it's all a mess again. This way it is nice for the evening and will still be nice when I get up tomorrow. And the bonus is - no study time.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned how much I hate studying? Was that me, three or four weeks ago, thinking I might like to do a PhD next? Who am I kidding? Studying sux! And believe me, Liam agrees. He is truly sick of mummy going to work so much. Did I mention his latest excuse for not having a bath/eating dinner/getting dressed etc? He says "No Mummy, I'm too busy. This is my work!" No kidding.

PS The truly sad part? $140 spent today to get someone to diagnose the dishwasher's problem, $400 more to fix the it. We already spent around $200 on it about 18 months ago. An equivalent new one would be around $1000. So now we have to decide: do we cut our losses and do the environmentally irresponsible thing, dispose of this one and buy a new one, OR do we fix this one and hope that we don't just have to spend another $540 on it next year?

PPS I wouldn't hate studying - I think - if only I could get paid for it. If I could do it instead of my paid job, instead of instead of Liam & Chris time, that would be OK. Fun even. I think.

PPPS I do realise that there is an alternative to spending either $400 or $1000 - sucking it up and doing our own dishes. But believe me, we are not good housekeepers. We are not good dish washers. Actually, we suck. We should not sacrifice our dishwasher. Truly. That one extra thing to fit into our day would probably be the thing that pushed us all over the edge. Liam especially.

Ocean View Verandah comes to an end

I am currently working an essay about online journals as life writing: their �phenomenal popularity� and the social and ethical issues involved in keeping one. So, naturally enough, I am doing a lot of reading about them. There's not as much out there as you might suppose. Oh, there are dozens of articles on blogging - hundreds even - but they are largely unacademic, repetitive, and focused more on filtering style weblogs and weblogs as journalism, than on web journals.

At the same time I am evaluating other blogging software packages, thinking about how they can help me to structure this site in a more useful way. And how an examination of the ethical and social issues of weblogging might impact on that structure.

A while back, as regular readers would know, I segregated posts into two areas - journal styles posts, or posts primarily about me, would remain here, while externally focused/current events posts I moved to a different blog. I did that because I'd been posting a lot of the commentary style at the time, and when I suddenly wanted to switch gears and write about a pregnancy 'scare' we had, it seemed out of place.

But this set up isn't really working for me. There are too many occasions where I am divided about which section to post something to. For instance, if I write about the different styles of weblog - journal/diary, filter-style, current events commentary etc - and then write about how I see them and want to use them, is that externally focused, or is it about me? And then there's the fact that quite frankly my political commentary isn't all that hot. It tends to consist of small rants and links to better commentary. So on it's own I guess I�ve felt it was a little inadequate.

So I started thinking about other setups. I was thinking that what I might do is have a blog as my main site, posting there as a default be it personal or critical writing, but have a separate section for longer, more thought out, journal style essays. But then, sometimes I might want to write longer, thought out, non-journal style essays. One solution is to use a system that allows 'click here to read more' entries, so that longer pieces only have to have the first few paras displayed on the main page.

That still mixes up all different types of posts of course, but if I combine that with category pages maybe it would be OK. That way, if all you are interested in is parenting posts, you can just go read that page and forget the rest -bookmark it instead of the main page.

I confess to being, theoretically, something of a weblog/journal purist. To me, until recently, online journal/diary meant exactly what it sounds like, while blog, or weblog meant a reverse chronologically structured collection of links with commentary. The links were probably based around a theme - politics, for instance, or programming - but the main idea was of a web filtering system. However, all the reading I did for the article I wrote last semester on the use of blogging technology in business (as yet unpublished BTW) showed that most of the mainstream world has decided that the term blog will do for both categories and various others. I assume this at least partly is because of the proliferation of places like Blogger.com which publish both types of sites.

It�s also probably to do with the 'phenomenal popularity' of the weblog style, which has resulted in the proliferation of other types of blogs. Sites like John Quiggin's or like Troppo Armadillo. Sites that combine political commentary with semi-academic (or even truly academic) essays, serious discussions in the comment threads, and perhaps the occasional personal essay/journal style post. They simply don't fit into either of the above categories.

Thinking about the ethics involved in online journaling, and in life writing in general, has led to another level of my rethinking this site. Back when I first started 'Kay's Journal' more than four and a half years ago, I didn't think too carefully about the ethical considerations. Unlike various other people, like Tamar or the author of Daddyzine, who use primarily initials or pseudonyms for their blog's 'characters', I used real first names and had a cast page. This didn't make me unique - I only copied what I had seen elsewhere. And I told my family and a selection of friends about the site, rather than have them come across it accidentally. But it was at least a little thoughtless.

Well it wasn�t long before someone with a quite distinctive name asked me to remove it from my journal. Not her stories as they intersected mine, just her name. So I changed her name to an initial, and gradually made some other changes.

First I added my real name, having originally just used a nick name. Then I stopped linking to the cast page, and now it�s completely gone, although the broken links to it in early posts remain. And gradually I stopped using most other people�s names, although only in an ad hoc, unconsidered way. Of course I still mention Liam and Chris frequently, but I am rather more careful about revealing personal details about the other people in my life. Still, I haven�t really sat down and thought the issues through and come to any �policy decisions�. I�ve just changed what I do on an almost unconscious level.

Now that I am thinking of moving this journal to a different platform and a different host, the obvious question is, what do I do with the archives? Some of them are in Blogger, so I could easily just publish them to a Blogspot site and leave them there for the record. But the older ones � the first maybe two years worth � I did the long suffering way in Dreamweaver. For historical purposes I don�t really want to trash them � or not all of them anyway. My journal has changed quite substantially since those days, and while re-reading some of those early posts may well make me cringe (as reading over some of my old paper journals certainly does) something about honesty[1] makes me want to leave them there. But I also feel I would like to clean them up � take out some of the names, maybe delete an injudicious post or two, and certainly take out any links to a cast of characters.

The obvious conclusion is to do nothing for the present. I have an essay to write. And a whole lot of other writing to do for that class and other projects.

But, I am moving. This will be my last post here at Ocean View Verandah. http://www.kayoz.com/ will still be my domain, but it will soon point to a TypePad site called Narrating kayoz. There will be a link back to Ocean View Verandah for the time being, and eventually I will probably archive most of the last four years either to Blogspot or to another TypePad site (since my money pays for up to three weblogs). Future Liam's log and Mountain View Commentary posts will be rolled into Narrating kayoz. The beautiful picture of my ocean will be gone, but my dreams of writing in front of my imaginary ocean view or my real mountain view will remain.

Now I just need to get myself a good lap top and a wireless home network. Oh, and a house at the coast.

PS. I will post a link to Narrating kayoz, and move the domain name, at the time I post my first post there. I will also send an email to my notify list.

[1] Of course, talking about honesty and 'truth' in life writing opens up a whole other can of worms, but we won�t go there today.

**This post was orginially published on Ocean View Verandah using Blogger. Please let me know of any down links (especially to photos).**

Spring excitement

Sometimes when I am studying - often actually - an idea will trigger a thought about other writing: or about journaling or creative writing or my plans to eventually become a world famous, critically acclaimed novelist... and I feel excitement and restlessness and basically a desire to live in the future instead of the present. And my excitement about the future or about whatever idea I've just had makes it hard to knuckle down to do what I need to do in the present in order to get to that future.

Another example of the same feeling, and one that perhaps shows that I haven't really captured what's going on very well:

A beautiful spring day. I'm at home alone. The mountain view is as beautiful as a sparkling ocean view would be. The house is clean. Maybe the Betty Blue soundtrack is playing. I feel fresh and inspired. I imagine sitting down on the deck and writing... I make a cup of tea. But I can't buckle down to writing, to anything. Perhaps I feel inspired but have nothing actually to say. I am feeling so joyful I just want to sit and enjoy the joy. And part of how I know to do that is to write, but writing - doing anything at all - takes me out of the moment of just enjoying.

Or is it just that I am too restless and excited by Spring and the feeling of holidays it always brings to concentrate on any one thing?

**This post was orginially published on Ocean View Verandah using Blogger. Please let me know of any down links (especially to photos).**