It’s been a couple of years and nothing much has changed since the last post.

I’m older. My health is possibly worse.  I haven’t written a full romance manuscript. My husband and I have been learning how to live, work, and parent and do that all together at the same time in some form of positive manner.

But mostly, there has been an overabundance of self-indulgence.  I’ve been thinking about me quite a lot. I’ve been thinking about me so much that I’m actually a little over myself.

I did submit one children’s story to a publisher but the three month deadline has passed so I am assuming it was a bust.  I know people get heaps of knockbacks before something sticks so it’s not that I’m devastated. It’s more that some part of me has to believe I deserve a yes. I’m clearly not there yet.

When I have written something it has always been about me or stemming from me – something that some misguided part of me believed other people would want to read – which is inherently what a blog is. I suppose that is why I moved away from blogging in the first place – I just couldn’t see how complaining into the universe would help anything or move me forward in a positive manner. Perhaps I wasn’t blogging correctly? Perhaps I had no idea what I was doing? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  Also a song off my favourite Cake album.

So I’ve started to weed through the copse of self-indulgence to look for the positives that have grown. I have continued reading my favourite novels and continue to love romance as a genre. I have learnt more about myself.  I have reconnected with my favourite music.  I have submitted one manuscript. I have been learning every single day through work and through parenting.

So I wonder – how does one move from a period of learning and self-indulgence to whatever the opposite of that is? Is all writing self-indulgent? Self-serving? Why am I uncomfortable with that? All great questions.

So was it a beginning? That last misguided post and attempt to refocus and push myself? Yes, yes it was. It wasn’t the beginning I was hoping for but it was a beginning.  Hope, I have realised, doesn’t really have a place here.

I am also an incredibly private person. Unfortunately after my last post, instead of engaging in writing, I essentially went to ground. I stopped using social media. You know, so I would have more time to think about myself I suppose.  Or it was born from some misguided attempt at not being vacuous and attention seeking.  That is not so say that those who use social media are vacuous and attention seeking. More, that’s how I felt.  Once again – because I was all up in my own business rather than being out in the world thinking about something other than myself.

So up next is a piece of writing that is completely not about me. Something that scared me because it didn’t fit in a box. Also, something that fell out of me after a large cup of coffee and a moment of bravery.  So maybe coffee and bravery is the key. Maybe hope gets you started but bravery gets in and does that hard work.  Maybe I still don’t get it.  I might be back in a couple of years denouncing bravery too.  Who knows?

Please enjoy my short story titled: The Gardener. Or not. I can’t tell you what to do.

x Angelina.