Reboot
I am trying to reboot The Punk’s Universe or Punk In Pink series – don’t worry I don’t mean starting the story again with updates and more actors or a shift in political perspective – I mean… well me.
I have been struggling for a long time with writing and being creative – since the head injury really which was now a ridiculous amount of time ago – I had a lot of content already written so the writing blogs and submissions got to limp along and I have had periods of clarity and creativity but I have done very little actual getting published or bringing projects to completion. Most of my energy and brain capacity has of late been taken up with the domestic – made extra hard by trying to care for my elderly mother as well as the kids whilst struggling with the now many medical problems of my own. Sadly my mothers health is failing and my kids have unfortunately had some of the autoimmune problems I suffer from triggered and we are adapting to this new normal which includes after affects of Covid and genetics.
I could go on and on with the misery memoir and state the sorrow and lost of loved ones and so on but that isn’t really the point of this post – it is purely to let people know why I have been struggling and what I am trying to do about it.
The new year as always seems like a good time to reflect on these things and to start planning and bring myself back into the creative fold.
So this reboot – it is not for the writing as such but for me – I am glitching and sluggish and need to do something – anything. I was given a creative writing course on the NHS to help me and that would have worked wonders but got kind of scuppered by my poor mum being rushed to hospital twice during the course and then needing even more care than before. I know some feel that I should just leave out this stuff and focus on my family – but I tried that and it didn’t work – it broke me worse than all the physical/medical stuff – I also tried to do nanowrimo and other creative challenges and kind of did a couple of days of each and then ran into the crushing dependance of everyone on crippled exhausted me. I still bizarrely managed to write a lot but maintaining in one story was hard and it ended up being jottings in scattered notebooks that I fell asleep on.
The same goes for the visual arts and arts and crafts – and I found it hard to actually even consider starting a project let alone dive back into on and the Punk Universe is dicey at the moment anyway – it contains within it what was supposed to be an alternative future but it has increasingly become more and more our reality and I kind of feel I waited too long to share it and then it was too raw to share with the current events that were happening and I stopped the launch I had planned for 2020 – a series based on global pandemics and climate change and economic collapse and war was perhaps not the thing to be sharing when that was the current speeding train of reality we were dealing with and then of course I got to sick to contemplate anything for months.
But the Punk Universe has had too much work put into it throw it away and too much of it was built by my dad who is no longer here and the kids keep making me characters to add to the stories or create pictures of the characters so really there is no choice but to move forward with this!
And so I am basically trying to start again from a mental point of view – I will attempt the challenges such as NaNo but not be upset with myself for having to fit it around things – I will revisit my projects in progress and try to get some sort of semblance of order in the myriad of notes and files I have. I think I have promised this all before!
I want to start submitting work again.
My eldest would like to resurrect The Spaces In-between which is a non-punk project but possibly just as sprawling and large and something I started with my friends 20 yrs ago. They are happy for this to happen and are still on board which is amazing!
I have the Moon Mania project which has a book I need to get published full of wonderful contributions from across the glob and some other publishing works for others (if they still want it).
And of course I want to take part in more of the communal projects – stuff like Hopeless Maine but I feel so useless and like any talent I once had has flown away – all I can do is try and hope that that feeling goes away and that I defeat the Imposter Syndrome.
Not really sure where to start with all of this if I am honest which is why I am writing this blog post because this in itself is a start and so it is started and so hopefully the next step will be that much easier.
Posted: Saturday, January 1st, 2022 @ 11:04 am
Categories: Waffle.
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