poor lager and cocktail sausages

I'm waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can go for a run without drowning. The cat is feeling mischievous and lingers just around the corner, or peeking out from under a chair, somewhere he feels unobserved, where he can watch and plot. As soon as he realises I've seen him, he bolts, disappearing up the stairs. Or he just starts nonchalantly licking a forepaw, as though he was never really interested anyway. 

Last night I brought a few wines to my local, wines that I'd made, as they'd asked to try them. The owner and the manager liked them. I liked them. It was that nice time in a pub just before it gets busy on a Friday. Everyone walking through the door genuinely happy to be there, to be finished with the week. We sat and we chatted and tasted and folks arrived and drank their beer while we sipped wine in the corner. A spittoon made a brief appearance but was put away because it was a Friday evening, and there's little point spitting on a Friday evening.

After the pub and wine I went to a friend's office for beer and nibbles. Friends and strangers milled about and when the good beer ran out, the bad beer was drunk. It was late when I left and the walk home seemed particularly long. I was full of poor lager and cocktail sausages. It wasn't raining, but the streets sounded damp and wet. 

The rain's just got harder. I ate some eggs and bacon so have to wait a bit longer if I want to run. By then it will be dark and the mud along the river thick. The cat's not hiding anymore. He's napping on a chair behind my desk. 

It seems the perfect sort of day for ignoring everything I have to do.

stop. hermit-time.

There's a dangerous friction between the number of words I have to write in the coming weeks and the amount of times I'm expected to appear in either a social or professional context. I'm not good at saying no to people. I like seeing my friends, raising a glass or two. I'm easily flattered - the idea of being needed professionally plays well to my vanity, and having spent a year unemployed (freelancing, of course), I'm loathe pass up on opportunities to help out, and even get paid for it.

I like being useful, and around friends. 

But I like writing more. I love it. It's what I want my work to be. I like having my cup of tea next to my keyboard, my notebook open while I try to decipher my scribbled missives and improve on the words as I transcribe them. I like wearing my big headphones and listening to Miles Davis or Beethoven. I still find it hard to write to music with lyrics. The only words I want to hear are my own. I like the give of the keys beneath my fingers, the abstract rhythm they reveal when the letters turn to words turn to sentences turn to paragraphs turn to chapters turn to a book.

I lose myself in it, and that's a good thing. 

Time to decline invites. Switch my phone to airplane mode and make sure my polite 'no's' will not be easily converted into 'just the one'. It's time to go back to the writing hermit that I was 6 years ago, to place the book in front of everything else save maybe remembering to breathe and wash. 

Time to remember what I love doing, and do that. 

fleeting

Once again the weekend went too quickly, and I find myself having crossed out nothing from my rather long to-do list. In fact, quite a few things got added to it. Big things, important things. The road isn't so much forking as it is dividing exponentially. As a recovered comic book reader, it's as though I'm staring at a multiverse of futures, with the only constants being irksome, inescapable truths. 

And so I wake up on a Monday with a clenched chest and play decision-tennis in my head while I sip my espresso, munch on toast and catch up on Twitter. And then I look at the clock and see these brief moments to myself have taken too long, the decision-tennis rally is on-going, like those old Sampras/Agassi Nike adverts. 

So I write something, anything, to break the rally. To be doing instead of pondering and worrying. 

And so I'm late.