Sadly, I am not one of those people who can always remember what year things happened and so I had to look up when I had a nasty fall whilst out running when on holiday in southern Italy, not knowing anything about the road or the surface when we started out to do our Sunday run even though we were away. I broke three bones and that finished most of my race season in May of 2012. I was very bad tempered about having to sit quietly and repair and to find something that I could do sitting down at my desk I set myself the task of writing a poem every day.
That was a challenge since it had been a while since I did anything more than a birthday message or a rude limerick, though I have always been a big fan of poetry and was in The Speech Choir at school. The poetry teacher was Mrs Thomas, and reflecting on that I realise how much I have to thank that dear lady for and often do mentally. I have shelves of poetry books and keep a handful of them at my bedside for sleepless moments.
The once-a-day mental work-out worked well and I was soon looking forward to writing the next one. The therapy worked well and I have been writing regularly ever since. This year during Lockdown, Steve suggested that I should write my diary blog every day instead of now and again which was the case. That worked well to keep me half sane during this horrible year but writing a couple of pages a day had the effect of slimming my poets out put down way down. And I have not written a poem as much as once a week. So now since there is just a hint of a light at the end of the tunnel, I am trimming the diary pages down instead to give myself some breathing space instead of forcing myself to write something every day.
Every three months I get a women writer’s magazine through the post and the latest issue arrived two weeks ago and flipping through it eagerly I noticed that one of their regular poetry competitions would reach its deadline very soon. Every since I have been a subscriber I have sent in entries to one of the yearly compo’s. This would be perfect to keep me busy since I have been feeling down in these dark days.
Over the past few years, I have sent in the odd entry more to show myself that I take my writing seriously and the fact that I have won nothing at all does not deter me. I have had some useful comments returned and that alone made it worthwhile. This year because it was not advised to have friends come into the house, I had to stop the monthly poetry group Scribblers, that Steve and I hosted and that has been a very sad loss and one I don’t see being restored any time soon.
So, in the last few days I have buried myself in the time-consuming task of selecting up to twenty poems from my files to send in to a Poetry Pamphlet competition. Checking them all over and making a couple of tweaks here and there has kept my occupied. There are rules of course and I had to check of change odd things and make sure they were all in the same font and size etc.
Sending in the entry online got my blood pressure on the rise because I could not seem to work out how to do it and must have read the instructions a million times, well twenty anyway. I felt slightly better when Steve came in because he said he couldn’t get things to work on his computer or i-phone either and there were men from Open Reach working just along the road from our house. GGGGGRRRRRRRRRR! In the end after another coffee, I saw that the entry was done and I had an email thanking me for submitting it so it may not even have been my fault. I did hate wasting so much time though, especially with the closing date being Monday!
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