I don’t do New Year's Resolutions. I've spoken before about how
September generally feels more like a fresh start to me; the time to make
changes for the better. In January I'm Resolutely Not Making Resolutions, I'm usually exhausted and too full of Christmas cake to do little more than
tidy up.
I start teaching creative writing again tomorrow after a
year away. I admit, I'm nervous. I was a big sufferer of chemo brain. It's a
recognised but misleading medical term as it makes the condition sound quite
cuddly and appealing. It isn't. This lack of cognitive function made my pregnancy
brain look like Einstein's and the inability to remember the next word in my
sentence, or even the theme of the conversation, lost its novelty very
quickly. Sadly, I've yet to completely banish chemo brain to the
past. Of course, writers tend to be good with words and ask erudite questions.
Will I stand in front of my students and wonder what the question was? It would be good to remember what I was doing there, standing in front of a group of adults in
the library of a secondary school, otherwise the two hour class is going to
seem a very long time for all of us.
My usual solution in this type of situation is to
over-prepare. However, this is harder to do these days as I don't have as many
hours to play with. My Larkism was a wonderful experiment which turned into a very manageable reality, providing
ten extra hours a week. Alas, the cancer fighting world took a dim view of my elected
insomnia which knocked that little idea on the head.
So, the only hours I now have are the pre-midnight, post sunrise
ones and I could fill each of those twice over. Couldn't everybody?
I can't decide whether I'm not very good at time management
or whether it's just tricky juggling lots of jobs, any one of which can
mushroom at any time and edge the others out of the question. It's a bit of
both, I imagine. Whatever the reason, I decided that to free up some time I had
to de-junk. And that meant clearing my mind as well as the rooms in the house.
* I threw out everything to do with cancer. If I need it
again, that will be the least of my worries. There were shopping bags full of
it – leaflets, redundant letters I was supposed to drop off at the GP (Sssh!)
and tips and tricks for dealing with treatments - much of it duplicated
information. It was helpful at the time, comforting also, but an obstacle
later.
* I had this great idea back in the new-born days of
emailing that I would have separate email addresses so that when I was working
on one job, I wouldn’t be distracted by an email pertaining to another. This
evolved into a separate email address for editing, writing and submitting,
teaching, my little business, PA work for my husband, public paranoia (for the
likes of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, an address which wasn't allowed to come
within a mile of my bank account details) and life (shopping and friends). My
phone, infuriatingly, even after several calls to helplines across the world,
as well as visits to that fruit shop in various cities, wouldn't send emails
from all those addresses and thus I'd be forced to send some emails from the
wrong account. It was carnage. Understandably, not everybody could remember
which email address was assigned to them and thus would send me a message in
sevenlicate. Every day I would spend several trips to my phone and pc to delete
the excess and I'm sure the amount of time spent in this futile pursuit added
up to hours every week.
So, I moved all my work and personal emailing to one
address. The shopping and paranoia ones remain but have been removed from my
phone so I have to visit them specifically.
* I unsubscribed to every junk email provider. It took a
little adjustment at first, not receiving ten emails every few minutes. But I
reminded myself that the lovely people at Wiggle, although with the potential
to add warmth and happiness, were not really my friends (or colleagues) and would
still be there if I needed them.
* I splashed out. I bought myself a large desk calculator.
It's purple, you'd love it. Now I don’t have to do the accounts on my phone. It
saves time and an inordinate amount of stress not having to re-key in a
multi-layered addition because my pointer finger was too large for the button
and typed the ninth entry incorrectly. It's a small thing, not the calculator,
that's large, but I do think that removing the little bug bears in life goes a
great way to sorting out the grizzlies.
* This next item is a work in progress. I threw out all the
plastic pots which had lost their lids. Now when I need a box with a lid, I can
find it. I shredded three box files of tax returns and all the paperwork which
goes with them from the early millennium. I decided that if the tax man visited and
was disappointed not to find them, I'd probably get away with a slapped wrist
rather than a prison sentence. And it means that the information which I do
need more regularly than in a blue moon, is now much more accessible. I removed the half eaten bags of nuts and
dried fruit from the kitchen cupboard and transferred them into neatly labelled,
recycled jam jars. The order pleases me (I do like to be grown up sometimes)
and now I don't waste time clearing up spilt food or arrive home from the supermarket
to realise that the three bags of pine nuts were an unnecessary purchase. Once
I'd sorted the dried food, I felt compelled to move on to the baking
accessories and food colouring. I have learnt that opened packets of fondant
icing do not survive from one birthday cake to the next, even when wrapped in
foil and popped in a plastic bag. OK, I probably knew this before but pre the
de-cluttering, I was ever hopeful. The bench seat in the kitchen filled with
felt tipped pens, paints and tissue paper from a pre-Instagram age, is next.
Honestly? Forget the New Year diet, I've lost two stone.
I feel better about starting teaching again. I still worry
that I'll stand up in front of the class and forget what I went there for. But
now that my brain is less of a dustbin, I remember that when I have time off
from any job, even for a mere two week holiday, I feel I've forgotten what I do
until, oh at least two minutes back in the role. It's interesting how over-loading on the
preparation wasn't the key to feeling calmer, but de-cluttering my life – and my
head – was.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your time-saving and
de-cluttering tips – please share!
The first is Seaglass, the anthology of short stories
published by Black Pear Press in which my short story, Fly Joe! features. Seaglass
is the name of the wonderfully evocative winning entry in the Black Pear Press
short story competition from where the twenty short stories hailed.
The second publication, the latest edition of Chase Magazine
where I recommend three books which must be read this year, isn't new, I've
been writing for Chase for years. However, it's just had a revamp and, personally, I'm delighted with what I see. Clever editor, Joe Cawthorn,
has kept its Yorkshire identity but also afforded it much more of a
professional glow, in my humble opinion. To access the on-line copy for free,
click here.
I hope you enjoy my musings. Comments, good, bad and
indifferent, always welcome :)
