Category Archives: Distractions

Jan 3 2013

It’s Never Too Late to Surprise Yourself.

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In my previous post I talked about the ways in which I I might try to move forward with my life. I wrote a list of 30 things that I wanted to do before I turn 30, giving myself just over a year to complete all of those things. This was to inspire change: to do things I’ve been meaning to do but haven’t, and generally saying ‘yes’ to… well… doing more things outside of sitting around eating pizza.

A few days after I (finally) posted my list of 30 before 30 post, I came home with this:

ABC

An 8-week-old border collie puppy. A very cute 8-week-old border collie puppy… that needs toilet training, constant attention and an endless amount of expensive safe-for-puppy toys to chew on.

Did I mention that this decision came three-weeks before Christmas?

And that various family members would be staying with me over the festive season?

And that (with the exception of my SIL) no one in my family actually likes dogs?

Did I mention that I was very much a ‘cat person’?

Until recently, I didn’t like dogs. I wouldn’t say that I hated dogs, but at times I felt like I strongly disliked them.  I don’t like it when they bark for ages for no reason. It annoys me that every time you eat near a dog they beg or weep or pester you. I don’t like visiting people who have dogs that attack you the second you walk through the door, especially if its owner is all “DON’T WORRY HE’S JUST BEING FRIENDLY” and the dog is midway through chewing your hand off or something.

It’s probably the dog-owners I have a problem with – especially if their dogs are badly trained. I’ve always found dog-owners a little bit insane detached from reality smelly eccentric. The main offenders are the ones who treat their dogs like people. Or the ones who wear jumpers with pictures of dogs on them. Or the ones who have dog ornaments or pictures of dogs in every room of their house… Especially if every room in their house smells of dog… Especially, if they smell of dog and don’t realise… And ESPECIALLY , if you smell of dog after spending any time with that person.

Dog-owners whose lives revolve around their dogs can sometimes end up a little bit bonkers.

Because dog owners can be a bit bonkers, it goes without saying that their dogs are also slightly bonkers.

And bonkers dogs are unpredictable. If a bonkers dog is the apple of its owner’s eye, then it can do no wrong. So if you’re a small, unsuspecting child happily playing in the park and out of nowhere a dog bites your trouser leg and refuses to let go, chances are, its owner will take no responsibility  for the dog’s actions and, instead, blame you – a small, innocent child (called Jo) playing on the swings.

It is the attitude of so many unhinged dog owners that led to my extreme dislike of dogs.

And then a month ago, out of nowhere, I decided that I should really own a dog. I don’t know how this thought even entered my head – I can only assume that some kind of Derren Brown mind-trickery took place. Anyway, once the spontaneous thought had taken hold, it started to snowball… Rapidly.

The next day, I arranged to go see some puppies that were for sale.

By the end of that day, I had bought a puppy.

Four days later, I was living with a puppy.

And the weirdest part was, no part of me thought that what I was doing was weird. Even though it directly contradicted everything I thought I knew about myself.

Last July I wrote a list of things I wanted to do before I was 30. It took me nearly six months to commit to the idea and actually write about it. Yet committing to the responsibility that is owning, raising and taking care of a dog on a daily basis for the next twelve (ish) years (from someone who has spent their whole life disliking dogs) was totally not a problem.

Owning a dog wasn’t one of the things on the 30 before 30 list. In no way was owning a dog part of my life plans. I never, ever thought I would want (let alone actually get) a dog.

Despite all that, I’m quietly confident that this was most definitely a brilliant idea.

Don’t get me wrong, raising a puppy is hard work. It’s pretty much non-stop, never-ending, wall-to-wall responsibility. She’s cute, but she needs the toilet every 25 seconds, wants to chew everything, be best-friends with everyone and sniff ALL THE THINGS.

I’m beginning to look constantly dishevelled and harassed. My hair is even more of a disaster than it normally is, and I no longer bother wearing make-up or nice clothes because there really isn’t any point. I’m beginning to realise that being a dog-owner doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be eccentric. It’s just that living with a puppy makes you appear a little bit like you’ve totally lost your mind.

I suspect that by this time next year, I’ll be sporting knitwear with a dog’s face on it. And not in an ironic, hipster way.

While I’ll admit to being slightly more bedraggled and chaotic than I usually am,  I’m actually very happy in my new role as dog-owner. Strangely, it’s given me a sense of purpose.

So going from disliking dogs to owning one (within a couple of days) has been a pretty strange  turn of events. On reflection, it makes me wonder what other surprises life might have in store for me. Or, more to the point, I wonder in what other ways I might surprise myself.

Jul 11 2012

I’m Recruiting: Could You Be My Mentor?

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I wish I had a mentor. I can’t really explain why, but I think that it has something to do with my neediness abandonment issues aspirations of becoming a writer.

I recently committed myself to becoming a full time writer. That’s the dream – writing… ALL the time. Making the decision was easy, but once I had finished celebrating my decision-making, I realised that was the easy part. The reality of my decision involves working really hard all the time and not getting distracted or losing motivation. All the things I’ve perfected being terrible at.

Writing is lonely business. I’ve known that from the off. As a complete social recluse, I guess it’s part of the appeal. But every now and again I’ll get a crisis of confidence – a week will disappear and I’ll question what (if anything) I’ve actually achieved. Then I panic, because I don’t have the right work ethic. My writing isn’t good enough. I’m not marketable as person. I am an impostor, a fraud. I’m not really a writer – aspiring or otherwise and everyone knows it.

This is where the mentor comes in. The mentor has to kick my arse whilst also being supportive and reassuring. But not too supportive and reassuring. Encouragement is difficult to get right, particularly with weirdos like me. Too much encouragement and I’ll momentarily trick myself into believing I am doing so incredibly well that I don’t need to do much of anything for a while. I don’t really respond well to negativity so zero encouragement only confirms my fears of being an under-achiever and prompts me to fall into a depressive slump.

There are loads of potential mentors out there, and I’m sure someone out there might be right for me. But for some reason, whenever I think about my ideal mentor I imagine some dapper gent – someone sophisticated, wise, worldly, humorous, someone successful who can afford to by me mojitos.

Take, for example, Jonathan Ames’ mentor George Christopher in Bored to Death. Apart from the fact that he’s played by Ted Danson which automatically makes him brilliant, he’s a gent, an editor of a magazine, he makes martinis in his office and wears waistcoats. Brilliant. And to top it all off, he offers genuinely good advice:

Although, this is not the sort of chat I would want with my own mentor. Even if he was Ted Danson.

That said, George Christopher isn’t the perfect mentor. My perfect mentor is the mentor of mentors, the crème de la crème, the spaghetti to my cold left-over bolognaise, the Jack Donaghy to my Liz Lemon.

Without a shadow of a doubt Jack Donaghy is my ideal mentor. The tragedy is, my dream mentor is a fictional character played by Alec Baldwin. The only way this fantasy will ever be fulfilled is if Jack Donaghy actually existed and Jack Donaghy actually happened to be Alec Baldwin.

This pretty much renders my search for the perfect mentor futile and perhaps a little bit crazy. I’ve set the bar pretty high. When you set the bar at ‘fictitious character’ you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

I’ve contemplated trying to recruit a mentor  using an application/interview/test process. But I think that might put people off. And I wouldn’t know how to go about ensuring that my application form/interview questions/rigorous testing methods would result in me actually finding my ideal mentor. Also because it looks like a lot of work when I really should be writing. And because I seriously doubt any level-headed person would actually go through the process, so I’d probably just end up with someone more crackers than I am. Not ideal.

So the search for the mentor kind of continues whilst also collapsing and becoming redundant at the same time. My dream mentor doesn’t exist, so I can only hope that some day a Jack Donaghy/Alec Baldwin type will appear in reality. If they do, and they become my mentor, I suggest that their first job is to stop me from wishing fictional characters actually existed.

In the meantime, (and in case you have no idea who Jack Donaghy is) here are some of Jack’s greatest personal attributes.

Best. Mentor. Ever.
Jun 28 2012

And Then I Ate a Snickers Bar…

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This isn’t really a blog post, this is just a confession of my recent weird behaviour.

So, I don’t really know how to say this but… this week I got addicted to eating Snickers bars. I have eaten one or more Snickers bars every day since Saturday. I can’t explain why this has happened to me, I can only describe the events leading up to this realisation.*

*This post is in no way endorsed by Snickers (but it totally should be).

Saturday

I was rushing around being busy and important and had to make a speedy trip to the supermarket to pick up some food for dinner. I also bought a pack of four Snickers bars – on a whim. They were on special offer. And it wasn’t as if I was going to eat all of them in one go.

I ate one Snickers bar at lunchtime. It was delicious. It made me wonder why I didn’t eat Snickers bars more often – they were so chocolatey and peanuty and full of that other thing which is also delicious.

Later, I was reviewing a punk gig (I know, it makes me sound 3000 times cooler than I actually am) and when I returned home four hours later, I was starving. So I ate another Snickers bar.

So far, so harmless.

Sunday

I had loads to do – like  writing, and sleeping in and combatting yet another mountain of laundry that had accumulated since my Singstar epiphany a few weeks ago.

At some point in the afternoon, I took a little writing break and decided that I needed a little pick-me-up. I figured that seeing as I enjoyed my Snickers bars so much yesterday, maybe I’d go out and buy another. So I did. And I ate it. And then I promised myself that tomorrow, I would do exercise.

Monday

I didn’t do any exercise. But I did go on a long mission to buy a mattress which was fun! And horrible. Mattress shopping is fun because you’re actually allowed to lie on the beds they have in the shop. They give you pillows and everything (I know, it’s sad that I didn’t know that). The horrible part is that you are followed around by a needy sales assistant for the entire duration of your shopping trip. To make things worse, that sales assistant constantly talks to you about springs and memory foam and other mattress-related chat.

Mattress shopping takes a long time. Way longer than I expected. Like, five hours longer. So when I eventually got home, I ate a Snickers bar. By this point my brain seemed to be following this simple logic:

Snickers equation

 

Tuesday

I made lots of notes about the new novel I’m writing , which was both exciting and productive. I later discovered that I couldn’t understand any of my notes because, apparently, I can’t read my own handwriting.

Then I ate two Snickers bars. One after the other. I didn’t even feel that bad about it.

Then someone from my gym called me and asked, in what I perceived to be a pretty judgemental tone, why I had stopped attending the gym. My gym have never called me before. I can only assume that they’ve been monitoring my intake of chocolate, and when it recently went off the scale, I triggered some sort of alarm alerting the staff to call me and guilt me into going back.

Wednesday

I woke up thinking about Snickers bars and told myself I really needed to get a grip and stop eating them every single day.

I decided to keep busy – I organised my entire life into various Excel spreadsheets, I cleaned the house, tidied my desk, vacuumed everything and then wiped every possible surface with anti-bacterial wipes.

And when I was done, I went to the shop and bought a Snickers bar.

Thursday

I went to the supermarket and bought more Snickers bars. I ate two and started to feel sick.

Later, I tried to put my phone on charge and when I looked down I discovered that I was actually trying to connect a half-eaten Snickers bar to a USB cable.

It would appear that I have developed a bizarre addiction that is slowly taking over my life. And so today I staged an intervention with myself. I was resistant at first. Then I presented myself with the following scientific graph to show how my Snickers intake had gone from zero to excessive in a very short space of time:

Snickers graph

You can’t deny science. And this is most definitely science and not a graph I made using MS Paint.

So I admitted I have a problem, and tomorrow I’m going to go cold turkey. I have given the rest of my Snickers bars away and I have hidden my house keys and cash, preventing me from leaving the house to buy more. 

Tomorrow will be a dark day.

May 16 2012

Dancing in the Moonlight…

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Here’s something that probably won’t surprise you. I don’t deal with stress well. I have never been able to deal with stress very well. And I’m not even talking about STRESS, stress – the type of stress important people with lots of responsibility suffer from. On a daily basis I give myself a hard time about almost everything – issuing myself with serious mental lashings for even the slightest mishap such as: waking up late or forgetting to pick up milk from the supermarket.

So when I’m presented with something that a ‘normal’ person might find actually stressful, my fragile mental state hits warp speed and I start behaving in slightly peculiar ways. These can include: constantly frowning, crashing into doors, dropping things and being generally non-responsive. My consistent reaction to stress is to start eating. Lots. And often. It’s not so much a comfort-eating thing, it’s just pure, good old fashioned self-indulgence – a non-stop gorge festival of consuming as many calorific items as possible and refusing to feel full.

Sometimes I get a double-whammy of stress, which is caused by a slightly overwhelming fear of failure. This is something that I feel so intensely that I just stop thinking logically – my brain is using so much of its resources to torture myself with feelings of failure that I can’t be practical about the task in hand. It’s like this:

Is this shit

The harder I try to be practical, the more failings I see in whatever it is I’m doing and the worse I feel. Next thing you know I’m in floods of tears, tearing open a third packet of Jaffa cakes.

Stress also affects my sleep patterns. I stress so much that my entire body stiffens with tension until I’m suddenly completely rigid, like a taxidermy version of myself. When I send myself off to bed, I’m still tense and can’t get comfortable, and if I can’t get comfortable, I can’t relax and if I can’t relax I can’t sleep which, I’m told, is pretty normal.

What isn’t normal, however, is the way in which my brain chooses to torment me during those achingly awful moments where I’m telling myself to hurry up and relax so I can doze off. My brain, like demonic version of iTunes, will select an annoying song, at random, to get stuck in my head and loop (continuously) until morning. Recently, these songs have included (but are not limited to):

*Best. Video. Ever.  

These are not songs I listen to regularly. They are not songs I have on CD or MP3. They are not songs I have even heard for several years (with the exception of today to aid writing this blog post). They aren’t songs I used to like, they aren’t songs I cheerfully sing along to every day torture my friends with at karaoke.

I feel like I’m subliminally picking them up somewhere, but where? It’s not like these songs are on any adverts or TV shows I’ve been watching recently. I don’t know where they’ve come from, but they get in my head somehow and they do not leave. It’s like I’m being haunted by a poltergeist of crap music. The song starts slow and quiet somewhere in the back of my mind. At first, I barely even notice it:

Moonlight1

Then it becomes more prominent and I can hear it in-between thoughts:

Moonlight2

Then I hear it more fully, I’m conscious that I’ve got an annoying song stuck in my head:

Moonlight3

I try to ignore it as best I can until…

 

Moonlight4

I go to bed. And it’s all I can think of. It’s becoming painful. I might have to start going to bed wearing headphones whenever I’m stressed. Of all my weird stress-related behaviours, this is by far the weirdest.

So, how do you deal with stress? Anyone else suffer from annoying-song-itis – if so, what’s the song that plagues you?

Mar 13 2012

Me and Smoking Guy

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As I might have already mentioned (several billion times), these days I’m spending an awful lot of time sitting alone at my writing desk (that’s not to say that I’m writing necessarily – but that’s a whole other blog post). Present company includes the automated telesales callers, a cat who stares at me from the wall outside my window and Smoking Guy, who stands next to the wall outside my window, smoking. Occasionally, he stares at me too. Sometimes, I stare at him. It’s becoming a little awkward.

Because I’m so socially starved these days, I’ve become mildly fascinated with smoking guy. Every day, I sit at my desk in pyjamas, every day he stands outside his house in his pyjamas smoking. Usually with bedhead. And wearing flip flops. Neither of us knows what the other does. He doesn’t know that I’m an aspiring writer, I don’t know that he’s… well, I’ve no idea what he is. He rarely leaves the house, except to have a cigarette. And sometimes (as noted on Sunday) to go to the shop to buy more cigarettes.

He always wears flip flops. Whatever the weather, smoking guy consistently wears flip flops and no other footwear.

A month ago it snowed. Not only did Smoking Guy continue to wear his flip flops to smoke outside, he also wore shorts.

One day, I saw Smoking Guy returning to the house sans cigarette, fully clothed in (get this, are you sitting down?) a shirt and v-neck jumper. I was so thrown by his relatively smart getup, that I cannot confirm his footwear. Where had he gone that required such a relatively smart ensemble?

Writer Nick Bryan (who has sadly been landed with many tweets about the daily goings-on of smoking guy) assisted with my speculation on the matter.

Smoking Guy Controversy

Since this discussion, I am partially convinced that smoking guy has a part-time job as a professional smoker. If I see him returning to the house, I automatically assume that he’s coming back from “Casual Smoker” afternoon-shift.

Last week, on a particularly gloomy Friday, I decided to tackle the piles of laundry and ironing that had once again, been mounting up all over the house. With the bedroom light on, and Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits booming out like a 90s disco, I violently ironed through item after item of ridiculously creased laundry whilst simultaneously pulling off some killer, never-before-seen, dance moves. Mid-Thriller-zombie walk to collect more hangers from the wardrobe, I glanced outside to see Smoking Guy observing my every move (both domestic and disco) from beneath his usual nicotine cloud. I hid on the staircase until he had gone back inside.

Yesterday I was washing up, and I think he might of smiled at me, but it’s hard to tell because the only thing I was looking at were his flip flops.

But one thing’s for sure – if this were a Richard Curtis film, six months from now, Smoking Guy would come to my front door, knock on it, and hold up little signs expressing his true feelings for me. Kind of like in that Richard Curtis film, where that guy goes to that girl’s door and holds up signs expressing his true feelings for her.

Except Smoking Guy’s signs wouldn’t say “To me you are perfect” they would say things like “I’ve decided to no longer wear flip flops all the time” or “Have you got a light?” or maybe “It’s time you bought some new pyjamas”.

But this isn’t a Richard Curtis film, and I don’t think Smoking Guy and I will ever communicate, via speech or little cardboard signs we’ve made. However, if me and Smoking Guy were in a sit-com, me and Smoking Guy would probably meet face to face during a mundane domestic task such as taking the rubbish out to the bins. Then we’d be forced to chat. Then we’d make friends, and then constantly be at each other’s houses doing fun stuff like playing Singstar and Wii Bowling or whatever the character’s of Friends or The Big Bang Theory do when they go to each other’s houses.

Except, since the rat incident of early 2011, I no longer take the rubbish out to the bins. Because I’m scared rats. And also, of social interaction.

To conclude, life is not like Richard Curtis films or like sit-coms. As a writer, I’m quite astonished at how long it has taken me to fully realise the differences between life and fiction.

Also, I need to get out more.

Nov 28 2011

How Blogging and Apple Crumbles are the Same (but not really)…

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Recently, I’ve been feeling like a total charlatan with this blog. I call myself a blogger, I tell people I have a website but actually all I have is a string of infrequent updates and an excessive posts about how picky I am when purchasing a new notebook.

I realise that this happens from time to time; I disappear without a trace and then come back with an apology and a long post about whatever and expect people to read it and for my stats to jump through the roof.

Fictional stats

But that doesn’t happen, because in order for your stats to be through the roof, you need to keep up with the internet. The internet is an Olympic runner, and I’m someone who hopes to keep up by running flat out on a treadmill in the gym once a month, and then spending the next three weeks recovering.

Actual stats

Blogging is just like dieting and exercising and anything else really… Breathing – there’s another example. In order to do something well, you need to start by doing it consistently: To diet you need to eat well, every day; to be gym ninja you need to work out at least five times a week; in order to live, you need to breathe all day and all night. Actually, that last one doesn’t really work in this whole simile thing I’ve got going on here. It’s like I’m suggesting blogging is the same as breathing, which I’m not. Blogging is almost nothing like breathing, at all.

Thinking about it, I’m also kind of suggesting that blogging is like dieting or exercising. It’s not like either of those. I’m not really sure where I got the idea for this simile from, but I’m beginning to feel like it’s crumbling around me like… something that crumbles really easily – like apple crumble – that crumbles pretty easily, and is also delicious.

Actually, apple crumble, despite the misleading name, is really not all that crumbly. It just has a crumbly topping. And sometimes that topping is chewy rather than crumbly. In which case, this simile works less well than saying that my original simile is crumbling around me like apple crumble. Because I’m not sure a simile can be chewy.

Okay, I’m giving up on similes because this is becoming a disaster.

And now I’ve pretty much forgotten what the hell I was talking about initially, because I was all “Mmm apple crumble is delicious, but not as a simile…”

Okay, yes. Blogging. Which, while not really similar to dieting or exercise by nature, it does operate on the same principle in that in order to be successful at blogging (or dieting, or exercising) you have to do it consistently.

Actually, blogging is a lot like those Tamagotchi things. Remember those? They were like tiny little virtual pixelated creatures that you had to look after and ‘keep alive’. If you kept forgetting to feed them or play with them or clean up their massive piles of pixelated poop they would die.

Tamagotchi happy1

Mine died. Because I played with it endlessly for about a day and then got bored and didn’t feed it or play with it and allowed it to live amongst the poop for too long. This is pretty much my mantra for life: Something is super-exciting for about ten minutes, and then it becomes annoying and boring and generally seem like too much effort to actually bother with. And then I pretty much start resenting it. Then I come back to it weeks/months/years later, forgetting all the hate and resentment and wondering why it’s no longer as brilliant and fun as it was to begin with (in the case of the Tamagotchi, because it was dead).

Jo's Tamagotchi

I’m sure I quit similes a few paragraphs back because I decided I was terrible at using them, and yet here I am again going off on a whopping digression comparing my entire life with how I treated my Tamagotchi.

Anyway…

I always have a thousand TOTALLY VALID excuses for skipping out on the internets for a while. But then coming back to blogging is like starting a new diet or a new exercise regime (seriously, stop with the similes) all over again. What I’m saying is, the weeks off from the internets/diet/gym undo all the hard work put in so far. Essentially, I start back at the beginning again.

And I’m a bit sick of starting back at the beginning again. Because when I’m back at the beginning and faced with the challenge of writing a post and pleading people to read it, I’m more inclined to give up easily and fill the text with terrible similes.

This time, my excuses extend to completely changing practically every aspect of my life in the space of two months,  and then deciding to take part in NaNoWriMo (again) which was totally stupid, because I failed (again). But in the 20k (or so) words that I did actually manage to hammer out, I got a few good ideas which could work for the blog. And so I’ve decided to make concerted effort to blog more consistently. The quality might be a bit patchy (i.e. talking about Tamagotchi poop and apple crumble), but at least it will be something. And that something might get posted more than once every two months.

If you’re someone who happens to read this blog regularly, then I guess I want to say thanks. And also, sorry for being really bad at updating.

So from here on out reader(s) (and spambots trying to sell Ugg boots in my comments section) it’s all change: I’m promise to post regularly. But I honestly can’t make any promises about refraining from using terrible similes.

PS. If you’re the person who found this blog by Googling “accidentally drooled on motherboard” then please get the hell in touch – joandthenovelist[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk. I’d love to hear from you.

Jul 5 2011

How TV Ruined My Life…

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It’s coming up to three weeks since I last wrote a blog post, and I should warn you that by no means, will this post make up for it.

 

If you haven’t closed your web browser, or navigated yourself elsewhere and you’re still reading this, then you should probably reconsider. I’ll give you a moment (you’re welcome).

 

Still here? You crazy. Here’s today’s post:

 

Despite all my fantastically amazing intentions to write as much as possible, sometimes I quickly admit defeat and other life type stuff appears and completely destroys my writing schedule (suggesting I even have one). It isn’t long before it’s been a week since I last wrote, then two weeks and then three. Eventually, once things have simmered down, I know I’ll have to get back on the horse.  And getting back on the writing horse is always a bit of a pisser.

I know this. I know this fact so well I torture myself with it while I’m loafing on the sofa watching repeat episodes of Friends for the 8 millionth time. I am so overly aware of this fact, that I’ve already written a post about it. Twice.

But after a slog in the office or a weekend plagued with late nights and hangovers (that’s right, I get out), I’ll happily opt for slumming it on the sofa in my pants over writing a blog post about not writing because I’ve been at karaoke parties, torturing people I’ve never met before by shouting my way through Prince’s 1999 (seriously, no matter how much you think you know this song, you don’t. I learned the hard way).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to justify that watching TV as a valid reason not to do any writing. It’s even harder to justify watching repeat episodes of Friends, which I’ve seen a buhzillion times, and have on DVD instead of writing, but I still do it. And just when I start to feel guilty about wasting my life away watching shows I practically know line for line, I start watching something else instead, something really crappy, like The Big Bang Theory, which I don’t even like. Eventually, guilt will set in and my psyche starts to use all this TV watching apathy as ammo against me and I’ll start asking myself why I’m  watching shows I’ve already seen/don’t even enjoy instead of writing.

To minimize the guilt, and justify TV watching further, I’ve been asking people to suggest other shows (ones I haven’t seen, and might enjoy more than The Big Bang Theory) that I can watch instead. Therefore, I can justify not writing, because I’m relaxing.

Seeing as words are failing me right now, here’s a diagram of what goes on in my head.

Writing not going to happen

When other life stuff starts happening all over the place, and you’re trying to juggle work and a suddenly very hectic social schedule (I know, I can’t believe it either) alongside all the usual crappy things (like laundry and ironing and visiting parents and going to the supermarket and crying at your bank balance), collapsing in front of the TV to watch, well, anything is more appealing than shifting your brain up a gear and getting creative and bashing out a blog post or another chapter in your sprawling novel that is taking forever to complete.

Underneath it all, I know this isn’t really a valid excuse. I know that really, I’ve given in to laziness. I know that even if I just did five minutes of writing a day, it would be better than not writing at all and merely spending hours snarling at how crap The Big Bang Theory is.

But I also know (or at least hope) that I’m not completely alone in this. So, when you’re other life stuff gets hectic, do you still make time to write? How do you discipline yourself, or do you also resign yourself to watching The Big Bang Theory even though it’s rubbish?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.