A different kind of falling ...

the things I thought were falling apart
they were just falling into place

This weekend I became a parent. Of sorts. I met the boy who is going to become my sort-of-stepson, and tumbled into love I haven't really experienced before.

I was anxious about our meeting. On thursday night I had bizarre dreams about giving birth in which nobody would make me a cup of tea and someone insisted I go bell ringing. In the dream I told my continuously morphing partner that we must give the child a name that would be good for a dog. I suppose this is the only experience I've had of any kind of parenting really - trying to bring up Ruby to be secure and well mannered. I have half succeeded.

The anxiety, I realise now, was not that he would not like me. I think that would be manageable, understandable - I half expected it, warned by all and sundry of the potential for resentment, confusion and anger that he might experience on being told that his mother was not only asking him to accept a new partner in her life, but that the partner was a woman. As it was, he was completely unperturbed, being a remarkably wise and sanguine example of a 12 year old boy, but regardless, I realised that the deep anxiety was that I might not like him.

But I did. I loved him, liked him, found him interesting and funny and easy to talk to. I am not just feeling ok about moving in with him as well as his mum, I am absolutely exploding with excitement about it.

All being well, in about 5 weeks time I will be moving, with Badger, up to a lovely little barn conversion in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. And then his mum, the most amazing person I have ever ever ever met, and gorgeous boy, will join us when they feel ready. And with 4 cats and 1 dog and a few chickens, we will be a perfect, if slightly unconventional family.

I can't believe how amazing my life is today, and how excited I am about my future. The relationship I have with my new love just blows me away. I feel lucky every time I think about it. And not because I am not worthy blah blah blah ... I do feel worthy - I feel like I am a lovely person too, loved equally by her, and just incredibly lucky to have found my soulmate midst the six billion people on the planet.

A year ago, quite frankly, everything sucked. I was about as low as you can go, and life seemed to have no purpose or plan. My partner and best friend of several years had left me. I hated myself and had few friends and felt incredibly deeply alone almost all the time. Today I have an amazing partner, a wonderful friendship with Badger as well as strong relationships with quite a few others, and am beginning the adventure of being part of a child's life as they become an adult. I know myself, understand myself, have a philosophy on life that feels coherent and I love my work. I have somehow* discarded the sense of being 'not enough'. As a result I feel able to try things without being paralysed by a need to do them brilliantly - including becoming a sort-of-ish parent. (eek!)

I feel absolutely sure that I could not have all of this richness in my life simply by tacking extensions on to the person I was a couple of years ago. The difference in foundations would have destabilised the structure, and cracks would have spread and turned to fissures. I needed to be bulldozed, dug out and flattened, so that I could start again from scratch.

I suspect this is an experience shared by the people who held me together, who smiled at the mess and the chaos and the destruction, and firmly reassured me that all sorts of things were possible. Some of those people were therapists, some were nurses or doctors, and quite a few were bloggers.

So. I shall be starting a new business shortly, peddling t-shirts and badges bearing the simple statement "Blogging changed my life". Any takers?

--


*somehow = with lots of therapy and deep conversations with very wise people, face to face and online.

Synchronicity

Following on from my amazing coincidental arrangement to have lunch with Ms M and Cas on my blog birthday, today my Dad requested a copy of some lyrics I wrote when I was much younger.

I have a scary memory stuffed full of the words of thousands of songs ... mostly other people's but also everything I've ever written it seems ... so I found myself typing out the words to a song that I wrote when I was 17? 18? 19? (I'm 31 now - those years are a bit of a blur despite the clarity on the words themselves). I don't remember writing it - it seems like it was always there just waiting to be written down. I know that I recorded it in the band I was briefly in when I was 20 ... with the most talented singer I've had the joy of working with. Who, of course, I came to be writing music with because she was the glass collector in a pub where I was serving drinks and I overheard her singing in the loo.

Fitting.

I don't think it's an amazing feat of lyrical achievement - but I do still believe strongly in the subject matter - so much so at the moment when I have so many lovely people in my life through blogging. And so, typing it out to email to my Dad (I have no idea why he wants it) it struck me that at the time that I wrote this song I had no concept of a 'blog'. Which made me think of the wonderful contractual clause for rights in TV these days "All rights in all media now known or hereafter invented... ".

I am sure when I wrote this I would have applied the same clause. I just wouldn't have known it. Because I didn't know much ... a lot of fancy stuff with numbers and the whole back catalogue of the Smiths were about the limits of my wisdom at that age.

Anyway ... er ... please add your own smoke and beer ... here's a little number I wrote when I was just a kid, and with a small nod to the late great Carl Jung I'd like to dedicate it to his fan Ms M. I call it Synchronicity ...

these interlocking interlinking hands are weaving patterns of coherence
mapping out the paths the steps the dance this rhythm, making sense
of sights and sounds and words and pictures, sketching, drawing it together
twisting tying knots the threads of life unbroken spun forever

don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, believe and you will see
don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, it's synchronicity

scratch the surface feel the pulse this living breathing breeding force
undercurrents shifting tides that surge the river down its course
the fluid fragile webs of plans we're spinning growing day by day by day
the ever present wind of change blows complex til they fade away

don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, believe and you will see
don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, it's synchronicity

Completing a cycle

Tomorrow this blog will be 1 year old.

Completely coincidentally, tomorrow I also have a long arranged date with lovely Ms Melancholy and Cas, on a day chosen before I realised it was my blog's birthday.

Fitting though.

In the last year I have, through this blog, stumbled upon a few handfuls of valuable new relationships. With parts of myself, with my camera, with writing, with ruby, with my home, with the day to day minutae that is so different when your first thought in reaction to any quirky event, positive or negative, is "I could totally blog this ... ".

I have published about 150 posts. I have written many more - as mental drafts, sketched out on scraps of paper at the back of my mind. They have often made unbearable moments bearable.

Equally precious though are the relationships I have with real live Other People. Friends who now know me better than I used to know myself. People I have drunk coffee with, cried with, laughed with, chatted online with, shared meals with, even been on holiday with. I went into my recent surgery calming myself with the knowledge that a wonderful group of people from the meditation blog I joined were, in their different time zones all over the world, meditating simultaneously and holding me in their thoughts. How beautiful is that?

I have read wisdom, poetry, funny stories, terrible pain and miraculous insight. I have ached with others in their struggles, been made braver by their honesty and feel quite encouraged about the much larger numbers of lovely people than I had imagined existed!

It's been a pants year in so many respects - but this blog and the friends I have made through it have been so positive that I don't think I would change it if I could.

Big huge kisses and cuddles and thank yous to all of you. (Ms M and Cas you can have yours in person, the rest of you will have to take them virtually for now :) )

xx

What do you eat?

A good friend of mine (hey K!) and I were chatting the other day about stuff I do. I was talking about writing, about having done well in Maht's fiction comp and not being sure what to do because I like writing and I like maths and I like making films ... and she interjected:

Yeah, well you're totally an omnivore.

(you need to add a kinda laid-back-east-west-coast-mixed-up US accent there to get the full effect).

I love that description of me. It feels so accurate - I like the taste of numbers, I like the taste of words, I like the taste of music and pictures and philosopy and sociology and psychology and poetry and the combustion engine. I like the texture of journalism, I like the way true stories crunch between my teeth. I like chewy meaty things and silky soupy things. I like dry and wet. I like sweet and savory - sometimes even together. I like chinese and indian and street food and home made jam.

To make the point to myself, I just spent my lovely amazon gift voucher from Maht for winning the short story comp on a book called "Use Cases: Patterns and Blueprints" which is a high level theoretical study on best practice in software design for use.

In short: I am an omnivore - I eat everything.

What do you eat?

Lovely bubbly!

Goodness me I have some very talented blog and whole-life friends!

Lovely Badger's fab post about living with tourette's has been picked up by the BBC's disability blog Ouch. OMG! I'm living with a famous Badger!

And gorgeous Caroline has her very real very actual very tasty looking book in her hands today! It looks amazing, you can preorder the hardback from amazon, or go into a real life book shop and pick it up on the 15th June.

Talented Brumcunian wrote a left-handed ode of congratulations to Badger, which I have paraphrased here :)

Bad ass Badger bags great award!

Anyone else winning awards? Having books published? Being extra special?

Phew! What a lot to celebrate :)

Buzzed about blogging

Badger's post on what it feels like to have tourette's disorder has been shortlisted for Post of the Week!

Well done Badger!

Just 8 posts made it to the shortlist this week - so to be amongst those is a huge achievement.

A friend of ours recently said to Badger "Blogging is boring", and I'm still blown away by that comment. It reminded me of when I talked to the team at the BBC's Imagine programme about blogging. There was a wonderful moment in which they suddenly realised that it was not about websites or technology or news or reporting or personal diaries - it was about relationships. I introduced them to the wonderful Natalie of Blaugustine, and watched their confusion and hostility towards bloggers melt into warmth and humour and understanding.

My blog brings me into relationship with many lovely people, but also facilitates communication between different parts of myself. I can no longer work with the concept of 'real life' being outside of my online relationships - surely these are real lives being lived and expressed regardless of the medium? Instead I have settled on a notion of 'whole-life' friends. Those who are part of my blogging community, with whom I also meet up in the flesh.

In just 34 days time, Caroline's book, In Search of Adam, will be published in hardback (yes - hardback! - that's for serious grown-up writers only!) and a whole bunch of us bloggy friends will be gathering together at the book launch event (details to emerge soon says Cas) to support her and celebrate her achievements. We won't be there out of obligation. We won't be there to network. We will be there because we love Cas and believe in her. How gorgeous is that?

Currently, we are running a little treasure hunt over on the In Search of Adam Map - which now has almost 200 pins in position! The treasure hunt clues lead you to the blogs of people on the map, and whilst it's really just for fun, we also hope that people will discover new blogs, new friends and new relationships whilst they are hunting. One of my most valuable bloggy finds recently has been lovely Maht at The Moon Topples, who has been running a very community spirited Short Fiction competition.

I haven't written a fiction story since I was at primary school. The idea of doing it terrified me. But I did do it, and I enjoyed it. As Maht says: if you like your entry, you are a winner. Wise words. I do like my entry (resisting inner voice that says I sound like a conceited wanker saying that). I liked the process and I'm content with the result - I don't think it's brilliant, but it answered my own questions. Simultaneously, I've discovered that someone on the other side of the world has read my whole NaNoWriMo story. I wrote something like 15,000 words of the beginning of a book last November, before illness interrupted me. Prompted by Natalie, I chucked it up online fairly recently in a secret location under a pseudonym, and I have a stat counter on there too. I guess I was interested to know what the response of any unconnected stranger who stumbled upon it might be ... and then somebody did.

I don't know who this person is. I know that they are in thailand, and I know that they found my blog simply by clicking on the 'next random blog' type link. Then, over 4 days, they made 3 visits of about an hour each, and read the whole thing.

Isn't that kind of exciting?

Not in an 'omg I could be an author!' kind of way. More in a 'wow, somebody has digested my thoughts' kind of way.

Of course, it's always possible that they were simply trying to learn English, and sitting with a dictionary in hand trying to work out what my peculiar turn of phrase meant ;)

But still. I'm buzzed. Buzzed by it all - Badger's post of the week shortlisting, Cas's book launch, the Map that keeps joining us to more wonderful people, Maht's short fiction comp, the stranger in Bangkok who has read my book, the fact that a whole bunch of my lovely blogging friends did a group meditation all around the world at 2pm on Wednesday as I was going into surgery, plus, above, the most beautiful flowers I've ever had - sent by the gorgeous Ms Melancholy.

*sigh*

I am a happy little blogger.

You wait a whole week for a badger, and then 3 come along at once!

First, of all, a Badger that was found by lovely Maht MoonTopples.

I love the sentiment: Demand Badger Food Service!

(are you listening Badger?? Mr Moon says I can use this picture to get you to bring me breakfast in bed!)

And then! The wonderful Matt of Turboart whisked me up this little beauty: A Badger Playing Guitar Hero!


(if you ask him very nicely he will make one for you too!).

And then, most importantly, the real Badger is back from her travels in the south of France. She has new badgery twitches and vocal tics with a french accent! Bien!