Thursday 28 August 2014

Safety valves



On Monday evening I was watching Channel 4’s ‘Food Unwrapped’. The subject was detoxification and among the features was one on hangovers, where several studenty subjects were encouraged to party and then tested the next day to see what was going on with their bodies. The headaches, nausea and exhaustion, the expert explained, were all signs that their bodies were working efficiently – breaking down the toxins and expelling them.

If you’re a long-term reader of this blog you’ll know that I suffer from regular migraines. I tend to beat myself up about them. They’re my fault, I say to myself. I don’t know how to live properly. I’m still hung up on past events. I kick against them and see them as a waste of time.

But yesterday when I woke up with a migraine and said to Frog, ‘I feel as if I’ve been partying for the last two weeks’, I found that my attitude had changed.

I’m more Aunt Polly than Pollyanna. I race around ‘doing’ things. I fret. I don’t give myself time to rest. When I have a migraine however I have to stop. I can’t read or watch television or write or garden or walk. I can hardly talk. I have to do nothing.

Migraines are a safety valve, I realised. They rid my body of all the nasty hormones I’ve been creating and bring me back to the present, to simply living. If I didn’t get them I might be storing up far more serious health problems.

I’d quite like to blog about this, I thought as I brushed my teeth this morning. But it’s not quite enough. (As my writing sister Emma says, you need at least two ideas to make a story.) What else can I write about? Blogging came the answer.

I’ve always been ambivalent about the value of blogging. Is it self-indulgent? Does it distract me from the serious business of novel-writing?
    ‘Why do I do it?’ I asked Frog the other day.
    ‘Disclosure,’ he said.
    That’s what I write novels for, I thought.

Recently I’ve been working hard on the novel, doing what I hope is a final draft and giving myself until Christmas for it. I’ve almost completely stopped blogging, thinking that I can’t have both blog posts and the novel fermenting in my head at the same time. In the last week or so however I’ve found myself wanting to blog again.

And I think it’s OK to do so. Blogging is light relief. It’s novel-writing in miniature. It keeps me going. It’s another safety valve.

And that was a very long-winded post. Blame the dregs of the migraine.

3 comments:

  1. Your safety valve is a lovely gift to us - thank you for keeping on even when you aren't sure....Samantha Reynolds(Bentlily) in her poem | A peculiar way of drowning says 'There is a quiet rebelliousness in going off line which I urge you to try....sometimes my muse needs some privacy....Migraine definitely not your fault .....X

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  2. This is what Samantha actually says! x
    A peculiar way of drowning
    On the water taxi
    you agree to keep your life jacket on
    not in case we capsize
    but in case we get swallowed
    by a whale.

    **

    I'm back from another "digital holiday" and a thousand thank you's to all of you who wrote to tell me you missed my poems. I continue to write a poem every day, but I am seized now and then with a sudden need to scratch them into my journal instead, relishing the inky smallness of it.

    I suspect I will go on this way, sometimes sending out a poem every day, sometimes retreating back into my private journal for days or weeks. To be honest, there’s a quiet rebelliousness in going offline that I urge you to try. For me, my muse needs an occasional rest where no one is watching.

    That said, it's lovely to be back. Thank you for waiting.
    xo S.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's so helpful. I really like the idea of coming and going - retreating back to the 'inky smallness' where 'no one is watching' and then coming out again. On the other hand, I do admire your honesty in blogging nearly every day. xx

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