Only The Lonely

As a writer, I find myself alone a lot of the time. It’s not that I don’t have any friends, I’m bored or have nothing to do, on the contrary, there aren’t enough days in the week to complete my to-do list and WIPs.

So how do I keep myself company? Do I talk to myself? No, I don’t and I think I would be more worried if I heard a reply.

My day consists of trying to get out of bed early enough to get some writing done before ‘Operation Get Kids Out Of Bed’ commences. I confuse my cats on a regular basis, I am after all their main feeder, so when I creep downstairs at 5am they yawn and stretch along with me as I settle down to get some words on the page. You have no idea the mental abuse I take from four eyes that follow my every move. I’m not being mean, I just don’t want to feed them at 5am every day. I stick to 7am. I’ve just learned to cope with two hours of boy-cat licking non-existent food from his empty bowl and girl-cat defiantly glaring at me as she plots my murder when I continue to type. I’m a bad cat-mum, I know.

I have also noticed that my life evolves around alarms. I set one for getting up in the morning, one for time to get kids up and one for picking up kids from school. This is because time seems to zoom fast when I write. Whoosh, gone. I also set alarms for one hour intervals during the day, mainly to get me away from the glare of the screen for five minutes but also to get me up out of my chair in an attempt to convince myself to consume essential nutrients and to keep the blood flowing to my legs and feet (what do you mean chocolate doesn’t count?).

Obviously to survive, there is the need for human contact. I need another breathing person to say hello and shoot the proverbial breeze with from time to time. It’s a fact of life that I need adult interaction so I make sure at least one of my working days has another live person in it between the hours of 9am and 3pm. I couldn’t function otherwise. The librarian I sneezed/coughed on the other day might not think herself that lucky though. I am ashamed and will not return to that particular book haven for a while. Oh, the shame.

I am not lonely or alone. I am working. I am creating on paper the imaginary characters that fill my head. I am writing. I am doing what I love to do every day. With added chocolate.