Mental Activity

I am a firm believer in activity. Not just physical activity but taking plenty of mental exercise too. Once every three weeks, I bowl along to Littlehampton High Street to have my nails done. It is sheer torture. Sitting still for about forty five minutes is almost painful to me. I prefer one of the guys in there to do my nails because they don’t try to talk to me as the girls do. The girls ask for co-operation. With a boy, I can just sit and think about something I’m working on; meanwhile a grip of steel manipulates my hands. I get funny looks. Sitting still is difficult. 

As long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed writing and as a teenager I had pen pals that I got from the NME.  Sheaves of paper would go off to each of them every week. I wrote to my brother when he was in the RAF in Germany, I also wrote postcards to radio stations requesting music for him. 

I read Mslexia magazine because it is aimed at women like me who enjoy writing. I find it most encouraging the way they try to get their readers to make writing a habit. Start with a simple goal it says…. Ten lines a day. It soon grows to a page per day. There are adverts for courses, weekends in peaceful places that they hope will inspire. For me it is a solitary thing. I work best when Steve is out. He cannot help disturbing me. Mslexia is full of competitions too, I send poems and flash fiction in, probably a few a month, just for motivation, although I did read a comment from an article in there this month that said ‘Entering poetry competitions is like queuing up for a slap!’ 

There are strict guide lines for competitions and I always read the rules very carefully, I think it is worthwhile. I take a shot at all sorts of things because it is like having a tutor setting you a test. I do rise to a test. It was a shame really that I had to leave school at fourteen to start earning something toward the household costs. 

In May, unfortunately in a way, I spotted one that requested a written work for which there were no restrictions at all. ‘You write it and we’ll read it’ they claimed. No line limit, no page limit, no theme, a modest entry fee but the deadline was close. Like a lamb to the slaughter. My entry took me three weeks of hours per day; it ended up at 47,427 words on 108 pages. It was hard work, and it gave me a few headaches, but it was most satisfying. 

That is how I believe you should tackle any aspect of life. It’s how you should work at your sport. It’s how you should work at relationships. Pity it doesn’t work for me with housework. Housework gets in the way of everything. If you let it!