Bugger all really

I'm only doing this because I like it, rather than having anything to report tonight. Nick Roach said there may be a good reason for all the extended delays in my life, so I can detach from them. Good point, and one which I'll attempt to apply now. Basic Buddhist non-attachment really, though the other side of the coin as I said yesterday is the element of sadism if life is arranged, as it's only when we take our attention off something that it usually happens. So having an alternative or simply letting go awareness of a blocked issue seems to unblock it. I see it as training a puppy with electric shocks, but who am I to comment...

So the immediate future is empty of any ideas, I won't have a chance to take more pictures till next week for various other commitments, and again I suppose I'm only even looking ahead as there's so little happening now. The painting has reached the stage of details, the hardest bit and pretty tough in watercolour which doesn't really do detail. That's a challenge now and will probably take as long to do as the rest even though it's less than a fifth of the area covered. I'd summarised the year as one of planting, and next year will hopefully reap some benefits. And my health didn't stop any of it thank God, in fact the painting is twice as prolific if I don't feel like going out, and I can never do too many paintings. Painting the doors and windows outside were possible regardless as well if it's light and dry so that all looks good as well now. I know once every other event finally happened in the past the delay became irrelevant, though my main worry is they simply won't happen rather than how long, as I have no definite date for anything yet. Even if they said the programme was going out next December at least I could tell everyone and have a definite, but the little doubt it won't happen is the real problem, the TV one a lot less now the company are editing it, but the other stuff may never materialise though my work will remain for use whatever happened.

If there was more to do now I wouldn't need to think ahead I know, but if I can't follow a particular track I want to there's little else instead. The computer's here but you can't find new stuff to do online forever. I have also compiled a few pages of my grandma's sayings, nearly all regarding her own or others' bodily functions, and sent it to another writer who is published I know to see if he can find a suitable home for it (assuming it's up to scratch...). I really don't care about that aspect now as I have been writing long enough to trust my standard is fine, and unlike here which runs off the top of my head as it feels, my real articles are planned and on an actual topic with a beginning, middle and end.
To drop the odd name as I love to do, I just discovered Toby Young, who is now flavour of the year TV wise did actually study journalism unlike me. So as well as being a lord's son (which can't hurt) did actually qualify in his chosen field (and studying it in Cambridge along with our compatriot Will Self doesn't hurt either). Will studied English and became a writer with no help from anyone, so was really all on merit unaided by connections, where Toby clearly has both.

I however learnt writing from technical work, ie 2-3000 word pieces for therapy courses. I suppose that must have numbered about 30 or more in a 5 year period on and off, which showed me how to pick a subject I'd noticed in my own therapy work and explain its mechanics to others with suitable references. I think once you can produce a standard shape article using recognised rules of construction, and read a lot of experts as well, you have a formula that usually works one way or another almost regardless of subject. Toby's articles are very much in a style I like to read, Will's are pretty pretentious and I have tended to give up less than half way through, but the people who believe they ought to understand it keep him in business, though the one book I had of his remains unread as I can't really handle novels if I'm not stuck in a hotel. But though my background didn't lead to the media naturally, I reckon I still have a foundation to become accepted by the media establishment, though it doesn't affect what people write I assume they somehow trust people more with qualifications. I reckon my therapy ones will have enough weight for anything that needs a professional opinion, and otherwise just need to connect something I've written with someone who pays money that needs one, or even better someone knows them and asks me to write something. So back in the circle, as I often do if you read long enough, that's a big item to detach from. My career hangs on the success or otherwise of the few vehicles that are carrying my work, and though I know worrying about if they'll do it, it won't make any difference. Just like my exam results, once I'd taken them it wasn't in my control or influence. I just don't have a date to find out now. So I've just been thrown in the deep end and have to accept looking in a 360 degree circle and seeing nothing. Great...