I haven’t written one of these blogs in a while. For a start I’ve been very busy again, things haven’t calmed down since I moved house and we started a new intake of students at work. But I’m sat here on a train being rushed from London – my home town – to Liverpool – my home – at speed. I love this journey, I love sitting here watching the the green fields race past. There is something that is so relaxing about it, so peaceful. It’s also, as I’ve mentioned before, a great setting for me to get ideas for my writing. So far since we set off at 11:15 this morning I have already written an entire new scene for the short story I am currently working on called ‘Herald of Truth‘.
I’m sat here writing this on my iPad, which is a brilliant tool for writing. It’s so much easier to sit here and flick through apps and add notes to each. Much easier than carrying round and having to get out a heavy laptop and wait for it to load. I found myself regularly using the notes app on my phone to write down ideas I had just had, but this is more conclusive and concise. I fully intend to use it more, it started off as a fairly gimmicky entertainment device but let’s see how it works for my writing. I still find it easier to compile my documents in word or pages. I’m also getting used to using a touch screen keyboard, so far it’s a very different experience, so bear with me while I weed out the spelling mistakes!
The main reason I haven’t posted a blog in a long time is because I haven’t known what to say. I feel completely burnt out at the moment, still very depressed and down. Work as I’ve said before has been very busy at the moment. We had a new intake in October, which means a host of new students starting their course. I think all in all we have about 80 new students. If you bear in mind that our previous overall student base was around 60 students on all courses, we have over double our students on one new course. While this is a good thing, it has meant a lot of extra work for everyone. I’ve had to teach a lot of things I haven’t taught before. While I enjoy it, I need to make sure I prepare for each lecture properly. Which has worn me out…
I’m also exhausted because a lot of events I booked a while ago – to try and occupy my mind – have come around all at once. As you’ve already read, I’m currently sat on a train from London after seeing Devin Townsend last night. I really feel that I should have stayed at home. In fact I had a really strong urge to stay home, which I can’t quite explain. It might have just been my tiredness or it could have been something else, I’m not quite sure yet.
One of the events I went to was last week, which was Destination Star Trek London. Now I’m a huge Star Trek fan, so I had been looking forward to it for a long time. At first I did have a great time. It was incredible to see all the five captains together on stage interacting. It was also incredible to meet Bill Shatner and Sir Patrick Stewart. But once the parties started, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. It brought back memories of previous cons I had been to and enjoyed. So it also brought a lot of stuff up from the last 18 months or so and I got incredibly down and unhappy that night. I should probably hide my phone when I get drunk and depressed…
The day afterwards I was pretty annoyed with myself, so I decided to give myself a self-imposed ban from Facebook, Twitter et al. I thought about deactivating Facebook again but I didn’t want to be accused of attention-seeking.
I also started to write a blog about the last 18 months of my life. About all the things that made me so depressed and desperately down. Why I often feel broken, with little to no motivation for life. But it was too hard to write, the things I wanted to put to paper hurt too much. There are a lot of things I’m sorry about and things that I don’t think are right. But some of the things I wanted to write could potentially hurt a few people and the last thing I ever want to do is hurt people. Even this short paragraph was difficult to write. I don’t think in my frame of mind I can accurately say what I want to say. So I will keep my silence and pray that one day things will sort themselves out. I always do…
My self-imposed silence on social sites lasted pretty well until last night and I wasn’t particularly drunk. Just morose. I had this unbelievable urge to be home that I can’t explain. I hold a lot of belief in instinct and fate etc. Although, those beliefs have been shaken a lot this last year.
Anyway, I decided to write this blog for myself, just to get some things out of my head while I was sat here on this train. I will hopefully be back soon. Thank you for reading…
M.J. Hollows/Michael J. Hollows - Author/Lecturer 