Half Way Point
Today marks the half way point of my write a book in a month challenge. I should be 50% done at this point. I’m not. I am 40% done. I’m disappointed not to be on schedule, but I am very proud to have over 30,000 words done and I still have enough time left to meet my goal.
Today was a productive day in that I managed to do some errands I really hate to do (hand washing, eurgh! hoovering, eurgh!) and I wrote 2,500 words in one nice easy session. I had a day off from writing yesterday partly because Sunday was a disastrous day for the book. I spent the whole day writing about one particular subject which really has nothing to do with the book. I ended up writing over a thousand words about a vegetable. Yes… a vegetable. Not an exciting vegetable like pumpkin or asparagus. It was one of the boring ones. I needed a day off from the book to think. Clear my head about it and remember what the story is that I’m actually trying to tell.
I used the day instead to go shopping. I don’t particularly enjoying shopping anymore. It used to be my most favourite thing to do but now I find it stressful. Spending too much money, being annoyed when nothing fits right, gathering more clutter- not fun. I really did need some summer clothes for Egypt so I caught the train through to my nearest Primark. What followed was a shameful 2 hours were I scavenged the £1 rail and snuck too many items in the changing room. I walked away with two bags full of clothes and got pretty much everything on my shopping list in one go.
I used to catch the train a lot and I seen it as a time-wasting, money draining pain in the neck. Yesterday I was excited to get the train. I wanted to go to Primark early to get the good stuff first so I ended up catching the train at morning rush hour. Everyone at the station was rushing about, talking on their phones, “meetings, meetings, meetings, let’s do lunch”. I felt like an imposter in a sea of salary people. I wanted to walk up to people and say, “I’m not going to work. I’m going shopping”. I got to see commuter rage in action. An announcement came on to say that the next train had been cancelled. One man growled, jumped in the air and threw his Metro newspaper on the train tracks. It was brilliant!
I realised then that the idea of having a 9-5 job has become completely alien to me now. I imagine that everyone who works 9-5 is completely miserable. They certainly seemed it at the train station and I sure know that when I had a “proper” job I was miserable. So…while everyone talked on their phones and typed on their laptops I read my paper and stared out of the window and enjoyed every minute of my train journey. As far as getting ideas for the book the train is the perfect place for me.
