Musings

Don’t Write Bollocks.

March 1, 2015 by Merry Leave a Comment

You wouldn’t think it would be a difficult rule to follow, really, the one in the title. The internet makes us all writers, gives us all an audience, provides us with endless opportunities to read, learn, digest. It’s hard not to inhale information when Facebook is filled with links, videos, rants, shares and the like. And if you move your face from Facebook (clue is in the name), my word, you could learn a lot.

Let us not forget that in only a few hundred years we’ve come from not even being allowed to read the book we were supposed to live by in our own language, right through ‘the holy grail is a job being allowed to write for a newspaper or get a book deal’ to ‘open laptop and splurge opinion out to several hundred people at once’. And audience. A community. The ability to inform and be informed.

With that information dissemination blessing comes responsibility of course.

For the love of goodness, don’t press share until you’ve checked it is real. Snopes, my friends, Snopes.
For the love of sanity, don’t share repetitive, needy memes. If it starts “it occurs to me”… it needs deleting.
Don’t write something unless you are happy to stand by it (and that includes passive aggressive Facebook updates).
Learn fast: if you use Google as your doctor, you’ll be dead 6 times by dinner.

But Google. We could blame a lot on Google. If you are old enough to remember life before a decent search engine, you’ll know that once upon a time, when you searched for something you got, by and large, a useful page written by someone with a passion who knew something about the subject matter. Or, you know, possibly you would get drivel with the most important word in the article written 55 times in white text at the bottom of the page. But still, mostly you got somewhere real.

And then came ‘content’, regular updated content, which is a whole different thing to ‘words on the virtual page that someone really wanted to write’. Meaningful keywords and meta descriptions and all that jazz to keep websites fresh and lovely and churning over in the Google machine. And of course, so came blogs and all the wonder that is what blogging which can do. Which is great, really great. I love blogging. The world is made better by blogging. MY world is made better by blogging. Infinitely.

But if Google was a cupboard under the stairs, it would have a serious date with a 40 day declutter.

And I’m far from guilt-free. I make part of my living writing copy for websites, trying to put together something half way meaningful from facts gleaned off the internet, a few nuggets of opinion and ideas of my own and a healthy smattering of keywords and useful phrases. It’s not perfect but I do it a whole lot better than some people who also get paid not very much at all to assemble words on a production line. And of course there are the times when trying to write for money, on my blog or elsewhere, squeezes out every last individual thought I have and all the energy for writing something worth saying.

It happens. It’s not pretty and it’s self-defeating in the end, but it happens. Possibly as self-defeating as raging against your own industry.

The thing is, in amongst all these words and all the splurging of beautiful and boorish writing, of eloquence and assaults on grammar, come headlines like this:-

“Practical Tips for Thoughtful Self Gifting”.

It’s like something from the feverish dreams of a copywriter; charged with the creation of a mail-out sales spiel to remind humans, in the ever growing scream of cacophonous void that is the internet, to come and buy… come and buy.

“Here is help on how to buy something you want, for yourself”.

Really? Has the world improved for this? Are humans so dumb now that we need help – practical help – on buying something nice for ourselves?

If this is sales and content, we need a new ploy. We are filling the universe sized space of the internet with an ever decreasing circle of meaningless nonsense; once that headline gets past an editor, are we lost?

It’s an amazing thing, being able to find words, hear words, create words. It’s the ultimate liberty, to have the right to write and the right to read and hear. And the internet is made better by the raw outpourings and connections of words like these, the raging rant of the grateful mother, pulled under by the every day ordinariness that most of us don’t ‘Facebook’ for fear of either being sectioned, seen as less than perfect, or deemed needy.

My lovely friend Josie, who lives a life making a living much as I do, with words (only I fear, rather more connected to her soul as she does so) wrote about losing her voice online. I know I have; somewhere in the fear of accidentally plagiarising, being unoriginal, speaking words spoken yesterday or being shot down for daring to voice and opinion, I lost my words. I lost them – most of all – because I wrote with such brutal honesty after Freddie died – and nothing I write will ever be as good again.

But if we all think like that, soon the internet will be full of nothing but the cud of redigested copy.

I’ve taken a leaf from Josie’s book – grabbed a notebook and started hunting, in private, for my voice.

Why you won’t get a word from me.

January 2, 2015 by Merry 5 Comments

I’ve been watching with a vague, perturbed fascination as bloggers sign up to a defining word for the year. I noticed this happening last year too, in lesser numbers. Perhaps it is something like a January ‘Elf on the Shelf’ and it will sweep every manner of social media channel for a while, piling up motivational images and quotes and fueling a right on positivity wave that makes everyone happy, successful, creative and marvellous.

Perhaps everyone will be the happiest mum, with the most successful blog and the most improved photos with the most bestest selling of novels and the top pinned craft post by next year.

That would certainly be a lot of worthy happiness.

I might say I’d worry about the fallout, of the people who pick aspirational words and then measure themselves against everyone else as they sculpt a social media presence to prove how they’ve achieved it.

But to be honest, everyone else isn’t really my problem.

It’s not that I don’t understand, or even admire the sentiment and god knows we should all do whatever works for us. I had years worth of blogging where people repeated “You write about yourself online, for strangers, with your real name??? That’s WEIRD! It’s probably DANGEROUS! WHY????” at me. Years of New Year posts and aspirational planning, navel gazing or positive thinking.

I’ve not changed. I’ve been doing all that over this festive break too. (Not the new year post round up though, I’m rather scared of rocking the boat with those, these days and ending up in despair a year later.)

I’m certainly planning, evaluating, allowing myself the concept of a fresh start. It always feels natural for me to do it now, when the rush of Xmas at work closes down and we can breathe and be together and think about preparing ourselves and the business for the next onslaught. It’s not so much the change of year date that causes it as it being very much part of our rhythm.

I love a fresh start. I hate placing expectations on myself and anything imposed, even psychologically, on me causes an instant fail mechanism to kick in. The minute something external is measuring me, I work out how to fail. It’s a dreadful habit. If I join a diet club I figure out how to cheat so I fail. If I came up with a word, I’d come up with a reason at the end of the year why it didn’t work to me.

One of the girls wrote up a history of her life over the last 4 years the other week and it struck me painfully how almost nothing but Freddie, Bene and surviving have occurred for almost half her life. We’ve had no great amazing adventures. There has been very little fun or innovation or excitement. Nothing memorable but living or dying brothers. I can’t define wanting to change that in a word.

I can’t even define how I want my other blog to be in a word: I managed to say I want a return to “record” and “legacy”.

I’d like to be more meaningful.

I’d like to be doing more than surviving.

I’d like to get some adventure back.

I could sum that up in explore. Or grow. Or climb. Or create. And none of those would be all of it.

I don’t want to dream, I want to do. I don’t want to write, I want to publish. I don’t want to improve, I want to be brilliant. I don’t want to be a survivor, I want to be an inspiration.

I don’t want to publish, I want to publish brilliantly.

I am ready to shine, but I’m lacking the time or head space to do that in a way that I would believe if I did it.

Besides which, I can barely manage a week without one of 5 kids needing me to divert to focus on them and it is hard to believe in shining if mostly you spent the week saving other people from drowning.

No word can define what changes I want to make or aspirations I have to follow.

Success sounds too commercial. I don’t need roots, I need leaves and flowers and to thrive where I am so that I can transplant safely.

I’m bored of dreaming. I’m bored of existing. I’m bored of grey days and managing to stay breathing.

I’d like a little mystery and beauty.

I’d like to stand on top of the hill and say “I did it. I got here.”

I can’t do any of that with a word because there are about 6 people living in this body, all fighting for airspace and none of them believe in the same word. And that before you count the 6 people living in the house with me (all of me) who all need accommodating too. There is probably at least 6 of several of them too.

It’s crowded.

It is plans that work for me. Goals, measurable goals and ideas with a list to be ticked.

January has some simple goals.

Write 7000 more words.
Write a synopsis.
Send it to someone.

I need that out of my system. Either it will work and I’d find someone who thinks I’m worth publishing, or I’ll forget that dream forever.

Read 3 interesting books.
Lose 6lbs.
Run more days than I don’t.

After that, we’ll see. Best to re-evaluate in February. I might be someone else by then.

Editorial: Living with…Diabetes.

November 24, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

As part of their Living with…series Active Brokers are trying to give something back to the hundreds of people they speak to each year that have recently been diagnosed with a life changing conditions.

Over the next couple of months they will be supporting Diabetes, something that has been very much to the forefront of parent blogging in the last couple of years. Both Northern Mum and Actually Mummy have gone through the traumatic experience of discovering their young, fit and healthy daughters have diabetes and learned to cope with the huge changes that are involved in helping a child to manage the condition so they can live an ordinary and exciting life.

I’ve had my own brushes with diabetes, first when I was tested for gestational diabetes in case it had been the cause of the death of my previous baby and more recently to rule out type 2 as the cause of some other symptoms. While I’ve been lucky enough not to have either – and so far our children have escaped it too (one of the few autoimmune issues we don’t seem to have 🙄 ) I’ve seen the pressure it can put on adult and children’s lives first hand for many years. My particular interest in the condition comes via my mum, who rather incredibly designed the artificial pancreas and insulin release gel that is currently in development. The campaign could hardly be closer to my heart.

Active Brokers have teamed up with a number of fantastic food bloggers to create a series of recipes that look at great savoury and sweet treats and give them a low sugar twist. Far from taking all the fun out of it, their Living with… Diabetes recipes are full of helpful hints and delicious recipes that anyone can try at home (even if you are just looking for a low sugar alternative for your diet).

As part of the campaign the company will be producing a fantastic e-recipe book that will be e-mailed out to every person that applies for life insurance with diabetes and then to support the charities that do the research, they will be giving a donation to Diabetes.Org.Uk for every person that takes out a policy.

The details on the book are still being finalised so if anybody is interested in getting involved they are still looking for bloggers of all descriptions to submit a recipe and a bit of a bio. You can get in touch with sam@activebrokers.co.uk and get a page that looks like this:

In association with:

Looking Forward to Getting Older.

November 19, 2014 by Merry 1 Comment

In the last month I’ve discovered that the pain I have been struggling to overcome in my neck and shoulder for more than 15 years is in fact arthritis. An ultrasound and x-ray confirmed that my shoulder joint, collarbone and top of my spine are struggling to cope with the toll that ordinary movement has taken on them and I’m facing the prospect of the remainder of my life being about pain management of both bone and the muscles around that area rather than finding a fix.

I’m 40 and even though rationally I know that I’ve had this since I was 25 or so, I feel old and frightened by this breakdown in my body and its ability to care for itself. All those years of thinking I had time to get fitter, lose weight and improve health and diet have caught up with me in a huge wave of horror. 6 babies, a sedentary life and poor posture have combined to mean I’m now looking at discomfort long term and presumably eventually a life that has severely restricted movement.

I won’t lie, I find this desperately frightening.

I still feel like I’m waiting for my life to start. Having brought up the girls and with 15 years before Bene is an adult, there is still so much that I want to achieve and do and much of it depends on being able to walk moors, use my hands and sit or stand comfortably. I want to run and I want to stand straight and try new things. I don’t feel as if 40 should be the start of getting old. I don’t want to be toning down my new experiences and I’m realising that in order to make sure my body is up to it, I need to make some plans and give the future some thought.

It’s not that long since 40 really was the time when people settled back and waited for old age. That is no longer the case but if it is the time when our body might start to fail, or need extra care in order to make 50, 60 and 70 joyful, then so be it.

This is my guide to planning now for being older. This is my plan. It may be a little tongue in cheek 😉 (Because otherwise I may cry).

Decide on some hobbies that you’d like to see you through to old age and start hoarding. If you knit or crochet, start stashing yarn now just in case it turns out your pension won’t support an expensive yarn habit later in life. As the kids leave home, replace the contents of toy boxes with hobby materials and lie profusely if your partner calls you out on it.
Start accumulating stories of all the dreadful things your kids did, in written form, to tell your grandchildren. For one thing the book will be legendary, for a second it will mean you don’t forget them and thirdly (painfully) they can never be lost for good.
Move to your forever home with an eye to the room you’d like to be in on a regular basis. Make sure that whatever it has to be now, you’ve decorated or renovated it in preparation for the day it becomes YOURS to read in/knit in/or do OAP yoga in. It will save time later.
Hoard books on a Kindle that you love. Paper books are all very well but when you need to go back to your library on a Kindle, you can increase the text size without having to physically acknowledge the change in your eyesight by getting a large print book out.
Start saving for a stairlift. We all want to pretend we won’t need one but an awful lot of people do. I have happy memories of whizzing up and down the one fitted in a huge house with a sweeping staircase I visited as a child. If possible, also buy a house with a sweeping stairlift. And let your grandchildren play on it. They’ll love it and you’ll be the best nana ever.
Remember you can use the stairlift to knit on, read on and have a second ‘me’ room upstairs, ideal if you do a better than average job of hoarding yarn. And at £7.26 a year to run once it has been fitted, the stairlift running costs are significantly less than needing a storage container in the garden for craft supplies.
Learn to bake, if you haven’t already. To be honest, if there can’t be cake, I’m not sure getting old is worth it.
More seriously, make some small changes now. If you are already getting aches and pains, see someone and learn the ways of taking care of your body that will minimise later problems. I want to still be able to walk Dartmoor and go running in 10-15 years time and more but I now know that won’t happen unless I get some physio support and make sure I stay fit and able now so I can still do those things later.

The truth is, our lifestyles are changing how our bodies work and arthritis affects over 8,000,000 people in this country, mostly women. Take a moment to read this infographic and consider making some changes and planing ahead for how later life might affect you.

This post is in conjunction with Stannah.