So. Writing again.

by Veronica Foale on September 19, 2019

in Life, Me

When I was writing fiction, regularly, way back in the Deep Dark Before Times when I wasn’t running a small business, juggling customers and chemicals in equal measure, I remember I used to be non-functional until around 1pm. Nothing got written until 1pm, and then boom, three hours of productivity.

Maybe it was years of conditioning – get shit done while my babies are napping. Maybe it’s just how my brain works. I just remember that I didn’t knock it, and I knew how my process worked, with the jiggle juggle of very small children and a need to write dripping off my fingers.

So why now do I feel terribly unaccomplished if I haven’t managed to do anything productive before 11am? And sure, I’ve usually gotten my children off to school, and replied to work emails, and fed all of my animals, and put washing on, and made breakfast…

But somehow none of that feels productive. Just exhausting.

I didn’t get out to the studio today until 11am, and sure, I am also a little bit sick, but I still felt awful as I sat on the couch with a cup of tea, and read a book, and replied to work messages, and planned. Why does planning feel so unproductive? Why does resting feel like slacking? Why is my brain trying to sabotage my efforts to not actually fall apart?

Because no matter how well I medicate myself, my joints are still falling apart, ligaments like warm bubblegum, no snap back in sight. I dislocate my shoulder taking off a shirt if I’m not careful, and my wrists go pop pop pop when I move my hands, in out in, out in out, and it’s all paaaaiin, no matter what.

Blech. This is not meant to be the blog for this, but it’s quiet over here now, silent and a bit forgotten, so maybe I’m entitled to a little bit of a whinge about sabotaging brains and a headache I can’t seem to shake.

(It’s 3pm now, and I have been a little bit more productive. Sure, the kitchen bench is untidy and that always makes my brain a bit spinny, but lye is mixed and cooling, my recipes for tomorrow are organised neatly, I posted a letter, I’ve fed all of my birds, eggs are stamped for sale, and I’m prepared for my shop to be open tomorrow, and the planned customers to come and see me…)

Writing is like a muscle and I haven’t been flexing mine very often. Sure, updates on facebook about frivolous things, but I miss this.

So. Here we are. Practising again.

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Too Long. God. Too Long.

by Veronica Foale on September 16, 2019

in Uncategorized

It has been too long since I’ve written anything proper or decent. I know this because I’ve begun narrating my life to myself, and stewing on things as I try and fall asleep. Mumbling under my breath as I make soap and fill animal waterers and collect eggs. Dreaming of words as I fold washing, hang washing, lay on the couch trying not to die of exhaustion.

There are excuses (there are always excuses). My hands hurt, the computer is hard work, my children won’t stop talking at me and needing engagement – particularly when I’m sitting at the computer. You think things will get easier as they get older, but instead the challenges just change, because Sarah kissed Jessica’s boyfriend and Annalise got suspended from school for swearing at a teacher and Alice is lying to her mother about smoking cigarettes and Emily has anxiety so crippling I’m not sure what to do to help….

I am not qualified for teenagers, but here we are. My eldest turned thirteen and my house is now full of a steady stream of teenage children, whom I actually like. Baby teenagers are kind of amazing.

And my littlest is seven, which feels very small, but is actually all kinds of sass and grown up, and don’t you even KNOW what I’m TALKING ABOUT? No I do not, because I’m not following the latest story line of her favourite Youtube soap opera, OMG MUM.

There is the love affair and subsequent break up with Fortnite and online gaming with friends, of anger and shouting and reminders than Online Is Still Real and You Cannot Speak To People Like That and Would You Like Me To Ring Your Mother?

Life, man. Kids. Time moves on and I’m just here, swimming, not drowning – not quite, but almost. Almost drowning often enough that toddlers seem such a very long time ago. And I do not miss it (I DO NOT) but christ, it’s so much easier to be worrying about whether you’re going to accidentally cut their sandwich into the wrong shape rather than worrying about whether Susie is being pressured into sex with her boyfriend.

And if you think thirteen, fourteen, fifteen is too young for all of these problems, then I applaud you, laud you, good luck to you.

But. It’s good. They’re good. Even if they did just get home from school and all three are having various forms of meltdown with the transition to home. Poor kids, transitions suck.

(There’s a lot of fighting right now. A giant red stuffed bird is the Most Sought After Object EVER.)

Yeah, that’s it. Kids are home. Brain is dead. Sorry, I was going somewhere with this, but I’ve lost it. Time is fluid, it keeps vanishing. I need to write, before I do something stupid like sign up for NaNoWriMo in my busiest month of the year.

Help.

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Welcome to 2018 I am exhausted already

by Veronica Foale on February 20, 2018

in Navelgazing

I need to bake. This is what my life is lately, I work and I bake, and I work some more. Soap, cookies, soap again. Muscle rub, cake, biscuits, lip balm. Around and around and I am never still, not even when my body isn’t moving, because my head spins spins spins.

Stop.

I don’t know if it’s my mental health playing up, or my physical health, but I am discombomulated. Stretched too thin and feeling all of this energy leaking out out out and nothing coming in to recharge me. I am stressed and tired, and my bones slide around under my skin, refusing to stay in place. My eyes prickle with tears and exhaustion and probably hormones, but there are so many feeeeelings and who cares why they’re happening, I just wish they’d stop escaping from my eyes.

My children are back at school and remarkably, this increases my work load because now there’s no excuse to stop and sit. To watch a movie with them, popcorn and two hours with my brain turned off.

I never would have believed it, five years ago, mother to very small people, school makes more work, not less. You’d think children out of the house for eight hours a day would be peaceful, but there’s no peace. Just a spin spin spin in circles, when your body can’t keep up with the to-do list and you feel the weight of waiting for them pressing down on you.

I need to bake, because the cake squares in the freezer are running low, and we’ve no sweet biscuits left, and I put my foot down. No more muesli bars to languish in a lunchbox with one bite removed. No more bought treats. I am done with the waste and the whining and you can make your own bloody lunchboxes from now on (except you, yes I know you’re too little and no, I will still make your sandwiches ever day even when you don’t eat them oh my god) .

BREATHE. And bake.

I worked on Sunday, at a private event. Stand there, smile, make people feel good. I enjoy it, I do, but it’s so much work. There’s no time for breathing, in between hurried bites of sandwich and making sure you’re looking socially acceptable and pleasant for every customer ever. They just appear in front of you, and my mouth is full of sandwich crusts and coughing and drink and breeeeathe.

“Hi, how are you today? Good! Are you having a good day? Enjoying Tasmania? Is this your first time here?”

I love this, trust me, I really do. Being the point of contact, smiling, engaging with people. I like people. They’re interesting, and I like talking to them.

But two days later I’m still playing recovery. There’s nothing of me left. Spread too thin and washed too well. The car is still full of market boxes needing unpacking and the job is beyond me. I need a shower, and I’m waiting on the builder, and we need to fill out Official Forms and submit them back to the surveyor, start dates, end dates, builder numbers, do we need to apply to be owner builders, or is our favourite local contractor registered for us? No one knows until I can ask him.  Building makes me feel stupid, like I’m three steps behind everyone, and they’re all speaking a language I don’t understand, my breasts getting in the way of my brain. Apparently.

I am counting down the hours. If I start baking now, I have four hours until my children are home, getting off the bus in a swirl of complaints and discussions, X said Y and Z needs X and K wants Z and oh my god, child, breathe. With me now, breathe. Unpack lunchboxes, dirty clothes in to be washed, clean clothes ready for doing all of this over again tomorrow. Have a snack, not too much, I’m cooking dinner, seriously, stop eating marshmallows, god, what is for dinner even.

Spin.

Spin.

Spin.

It will be okay. I will recover, and smile, and ask people if this is their first time in Tasmania. I will liase with customers, and make beautiful pretty things, and I will breathe breathe breath again.

But right now, I am tired. Bone tired. Emotional tired.

Too much of everyone else and not enough of me. I need things to just be easy for a time.

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The most depressing day of the year

by Veronica Foale on January 16, 2018

in Navelgazing

January 15th is meant to be the most depressing day of the year and I think, maybe not? Maybe not in the Southern Hemisphere, where we have light long lazy days, summer and water filled, warmth and beauty. When our gardens are full, and if there’s snow on the horizon, it is confused snow, and hilarious in its ridiculousness.

Yesterday was the 15th, the most depressing day of the year for my northest northern friends, and yet, there I was, with a garden and a book, and summer sunshine. My children are old enough to walk to the creek alone, and explore. They found wild-gone cherry plum trees dripping with fruit and picked buckets full. Apple trees fruiting in readiness for Autumn, and a space where platypus play.

My tomatoes are green, but changing, my weather is Tasmanian-confused, but the days are warm. Mostly.

I love this time of year, where even if my heart is heavy, then I know it’s a chemical reaction of exhaustion and school holidays grinding me down to bone and dust and dirt. When I just need five godforsaken minutes of silence and stop talking at me please.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done summer depression and boy it is the worst, but it isn’t a day or a date, it’s oxygen refusing to fill your lungs and a desire for everything to just stop and let you off this stupid rollercoaster ride of broken brains and broken hearts. Amongst other things.

And I will never forget how terrible awful it was, to be stricken with PND and be unable to even appreciate the smallest things, like how my baby probably wasn’t dying, how the summer paddocks smell at dawn, how the light paints the hills in shades of purple and blue when the sun goes down.

(Spoiler: My baby wasn’t dying, which was good.)

I don’t know. It just seems so dismissive to mark a single day of the calendar as the most depressing day of the year and call it good, call it even, call it done, like that’s it, you can’t feel any worse than you do on the 15th of January, off you go, bootstraps pulled up. Suck it up sweetheart, it’s the 16th now, you’re all good, move on.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Ask me again how I feel on the 15th of July. Maybe I’ll have changed my tune.

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The same old song

by Veronica Foale on January 10, 2018

in Uncategorized

I have almost forgotten how to do this. Sit down at the computer and bleed from your fingertips.

I read through my archives (briefly) and I’ve been singing this same song for three years now. Exhaustion, kids, business, soap, work. Mental health (up and down) physical health (down and up). Round and round we go, with the chorus playing the same melody over and over.

We’ve got foster kittens, and kittens of our own. My work room and desk are full of broken soap display ladders. There is music playing to drown out the sound of school holidays, which sounds remarkably like TV and whining. One child is sick in bed, and when I tried to read a book earlier the dog vomited everywhere, which is pretty much how my days go now.

Who has time to be introspective and bleed bleed bleed all over the screen.

But oh my soul hurts. I’m like an old ballerina, sadly telling everyone she used to be beautiful, used to be amazing.

I used to be amazing.

I used to write and drip emotion and now I’m hiding in the cracks as all around me the chaos reigns and I try to remember how to pick this back up again.

 

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