Seven Days in the Park #2

I have officially clocked off for the day, and have been forced to put on another layer and close all the windows. It appears Summer is over now and for the next week we return to the weather this Estuary does best: mardy bum hissy fits, which today included some rather meaty hailstones. There’s 45 seconds captured ‘live’ on my Instagram if you are interested.

The clouds outside right now seem to be lining up for another massive Wet dump. Anything further than the Kent shoreline is completely obscured and the wind has picked up noticeably. When you live with this kind of instant changeability on a daily basis it gets quite easy to know when not to go out. Watching the cloud formations form in real time however is a joy I am going to miss when I have to leave.

Today has been a staggeringly decent day for professional progress.

So, where do we start? I’ve drafted three things. A sequence has emerged. There was a hugely useful and wide-ranging meet-up with a poet on a similar trajectory to mine (albeit one pamphlet ahead). I’ve pitched two ideas initially to the team here and need to spend tomorrow firming up the makeup of them both, which will be tomorrow afternoon’s job, after I’ve visited an Art Trail person.

Tomorrow is also training and Heavy Lifting day and I intentionally have done nothing since Sunday because I was so exhausted physically it just seemed like a sensible idea. The physical fatigue has been greatly addressed by having had the best night’s sleep in a strange bed I can remember since quite possibly a decade. These details end up getting lost in the faff and drama of everything else.

Tomorrow I am very much looking forward to an online Open Mic.

My family have reminded me not to let Imposter Syndrome get the better of me, and so far things are proceeding very much unhindered. It has helped greatly to have had an unexpected publication yesterday, and to have stuff this week that can immediately go to submission with little or no work. I have made a mind map of where I’d like to be in a year from now and getting my work celebrated in the Trad Poetry world is still very much an unfulfilled dream.

The difference between me now and me a year ago however is that it isn’t the be all and the end all of my existence. If the publications happen it’s a bonus part of the process, and it’s not where I am pinning all the hopes. As someone pointed out to me today, I’ve got very good at not running down dead end streets any more. If one pathway to success is closed or inaccessible, I simply find another way to get to where I want to be.

This approach is now providing the potential for significant rewards.