I still actually write and dont just use the keyboard and screen.

Some of you may have in the past; and still receive my handwritten letters on real paper. I also keep a journal and have done so since I was about 15 years old; okay, I may miss a few days here and there (well sometimes weeks, months, years) but I always come back to it.

I cut up cardboard to about the size of a playing card (good recycling!) and have stacks of them around the house. I use them for making little notes, jotting down ideas or even the original reason for doing it, writing a shopping list. In the shed I also have these little cards (and in the car) but, in the shed I have bigger pieces of cardboard cut from beer and cider packaging, which I make my ‘shed’ notes on – plans, measurements etc.

And… in the late of the night, I use these larger ones to write poetry?

I learned the art of recycling little pieces of paper to make ideas bigger, plans clearer and a place to actually put a pen to a piece of squashed wood, found in a broken carton or beer box, from a friend: a lifelong friend: for which I will be forever grateful (although now I have more stacks of little pieces of cardboard and paper than meaningful thoughts!)

… and now I sit and write (very close to a friend of mines birthday?) and think about why it is that I often write, knowing, but hoping, that others may read what I …. muse about.

… in addition there are many stacks of these little cards: and perhaps tooooo many of the larger cards with my poetry, that I don’t share: I think perhaps in the new year I will post them regularly so-as you may suffer, as I have, in writing them….

I have but a few days until the celebration of the birthday of a mate (and gratefully the day before the birthday of my always stalwart sister Cheryl)… I think in this time, other than packing my bags to travel to the big city; where I look forward to spending time with friends and family, I will perhaps not trouble myself with those thoughts that seem to engulf our lives, particularly mine; for no purpose other than pain, or anguish, or regret, or the imagined sinister nature of the future yet untold… I think, I will spend that time writing things that are honest, meaningful and do not preach but tell a story, of from now until then.

I have missed writing, although I have been doing it so long… and since the theft of my beloved diary (not my Journal as that would be just tooooo harsh!); I have, well no, I am, attempting to enter a digital age of writing that travels with me, is saved in the cloud (where ever that is) and I know will be a place I can come to, hide perhaps, but always access, the writings, that I love so much.

In doing that, today I posted a letter (I think I paid too much for the postage… it changes all the time and I have outdated rolls of stamps in the hundreds which I bought with a great of expectations, and now plaster on the envelopes, of letters with as much expectation…)… the first for a long time.

I am practicing tonight, with fingers on a keyboard; not as I love, the swirl of pen on paper; to write a request tomorrow to ask for a new view of what it is like to be a member of our race, our humanity, our planet, out country, our state, our region, our community… or just neighbours:

…. and if the world is as I see it, I do not expect to fail: for in this request, there is but triumph for everyone.

I hope, pray, believe: I can write tomorrow and make a difference.

(Wow, how is that for click bait… although, I have no intention but to post this on my long lamented blog: which I love: I am embarrassed by: I am proud of: and it provides me with the solace to be, who, I suspect I have always been.)