I overheard something on the radio the other day, just a snippet, I didn’t catch the rest of the report or any details, so I am gratuitously quoting out of context, but what I heard was that the divorce rate is adding to the isolation of older people, but that among older women, single women suffer less depression and mental health problems than married ones. I think about my friends, and this rings true. There again, what do I know about my friends’ lives? I am too self-absorbed for lasting friendships, people wander into my life and I enjoy their company for a while, I’m pathetically grateful even, but then they drift away from me, and I make no effort to hold on to them. I complain about loneliness, but I don’t work hard enough at any of my relationships.
I woke at 4:30, got up at 5. Probably about 5 hours sleep. I went out into the garden, looking for the moon, and found it behind the house. The sky was light, it was lighter outside than in the house. Ninja came over and rubbed against my legs, then sat on the front door step. But I didn’t have the key to let him in that way, I had come out through the dining room French window.

I started work on the website design for the European project yesterday. Didn’t make much progress. It’s always like that at the start of anything creative, how do you get going? Starting and finishing, those are the hardest, in the middle usually isn’t so bad. I wonder if it’s such a good thing to be paid for something you enjoy doing after all? It creates pressure which detracts from the pleasure you would normally feel, you know it has to be done in such a way to satisfy the clients, but you don’t really know what will please them. I think I can blag my way with the Italians – I look at what they did for the previous project, and I’m sure I can come up with something better. But the German guy knows what it’s all about, it’s going to be hard to impress him.
And anyway, how do you come up with ideas when you’re trying to start something like that? I messed about with colour schemes, played some of the Dreamweaver video tutorials, which left me completely confused. Lots of messing around with no concrete result. In the end I went back to the PC work, paid a few invoices, sorted out the correspondence, checked the bank statement. Sometimes you just need to do something relatively mindless.
I’ve got a mosquito bite on my right knee, and I’ve picked the top off and I keep picking it off whenever it scabs over. Now it’s getting really sore. A metaphor, I guess. If you keep picking at it, it will never heal. What will it take for me to heal? Well, if I could identify the wound, maybe that would be a start, better than this dull ache.