Spaghetti in my head

I’m spilling over with creative ideas – the Disneyland I spoke of the other day? It’s inside me too. I feel like the tortoise who was put away to hibernate all winter and now she’s awake and hungry to taste everything in the garden. Alas, the tortoise’s legs are stiff from a winter of sleep in her comfy box filled with straw.

All of this new enthusiasm is wonderful of course, but I am stuck in the Land of Limbo and have a way to go before I can execute my escape plan. To get my from where I am now (in a (cheap) flat by the sea; two bedrooms; lots of possessions) to where I want to be in April (an (overpriced) flat in London; 1 bedroom; downsized possessions) is going to take more energy than I expended during the whole of 2006.  It’s not the move itself I’m worried about – I’ve moved roughly every two years since I left home at 17 so I have the routine worked out. No, I’m worried about how I’m going to finance this adventure. To be living in London again I need to substantially increase my income. So what’s new? Why oh why does everything always come down to (a lack of) money? I wonder who it was that decided that living in the modern world had to be so bloody expensive (especially for single people)?

So here I am in a new year with these old familiar worries. But I am also here with new plans, new goals and new enthusiasm. Being a creative person can be a curse sometimes. I have ideas ripening that want to be manifested: photographs to be taken, two books to be written, articles to be pitched, a website to be designed, books to be read (and that’s after blogging and eating and showering…) Who has enough time the day to get it all done? And I don’t even have to cook my children their dinner and collect them from school, or be a minx in the bedroom for my husband (after washing his socks). I want to get more done, as I have a sneaking suspicion that one day I will look back on this period and shake my head, marvelling at how much me time I had (and squandered).