This blog is under quarantine

The blogger responsible for this blog has been infested with zombies. We advise extreme caution.

Blogging will continue once all the undead have been decapitated and their bodies safely disposed of. We apologise for any inconvenience this infestation has caused.

I Need Chuck

Some technical problems have cropped up for me in the last day or two; Areas on my website I want to fix but don't know how, my humbling inability to podcast, my almost complete and utter lack of html know how. I have come to the conclusion I need Chuck, or someone from the Nerd Herd, although preferably not Jeffster. In fact DEFINITELY not Jeffster. The thing is, do these people exist in real life and will they fix my computer woes for free?

Is there anybody there?

After my long absence, I know it is not very likely.

If there is anyone reading this, I want to apologise for not posting. I've been ill and, on top of that, I got eaten by my pet cloud, Fluffy. For any Futurama watchers out there, think of the horrible gelatinous blob, but with a cloud. And then, when I thought I was getting back on my feet I had a relapse!!!

Thank you Miss Panda for guest blogging. You did a great job. Pity I asked you to cut your stay short.

To my loyal followers - thank you.

To any new comers, please stick around. I hope it will be worth your while.

And while you are here (if any of you are) please let me know what you think of the little changes I've made to the space (the new header and the tweaked colour scheme). Love it or hate it, let me know.

Yes, Aliens got me

Hello all. I'm back - sort of. I apologise for the two weeks - er - vacation. I would like to be able to tell you that I've spent the last two weeks:-

1. In London discussing a six figure book deal with my agent and publishers

2. On a closed set of the next Firefly movie

3. Holidaying with Nathan Fillion

4. Imprisoned by aliens from Alpha Centuri

But alas, no. The real reason is not so pleasant to talk about, but includes illness and loss. I won't bore you with the details.

Thank you for the lovely comments while I was away. It will take me awhile to get back to you all and to check up on your blogs (which I have missed) so please bear with me. I'm looking forward on catching up and finding out what you have all been up to.

SSQuo - I'm sorry I wasn't around to receive your orders. I'm ready and waiting for the new batch.

Oh, and today is Friday 13th, the second one we've had so far this year. Spooky! So, do you think 13 is a lucky or unlucky number? I've never felt superstitious about it. Black cats and walking under ladders don't bother me (although if you do the latter you might get splattered with paint or soap suds, depending who is up the ladder). I have a friend who was born on Friday 13th and she sees it as her lucky day. What do you think? Is it a tuck your head under the duvet kind of day (sounds good to me) or is it business as usual?

The Don't Wants versus The Wants

For most of my life I have focused very much on what I don't want - where I don't want to be, what I don't want to be like, what I don't want to do, etc. - and given very little thought to what I DO want. Those who believe in the Law of Attraction would say that doing this has kept me in the position I am in. By focusing on the things I don't want to be, I have actually been spending time and energy keeping those very things attached to me. I think it is time for a change. I'm changing the old mental tape (it really should be mp3 by now) and making sure I am looking towards what I do want. Let's see if it works.

The End of the Inkpot Files???

Despite my recent successes at publication I am not yet making a living out of writing. I know this will come as a surprise to you, but it is the sad truth. Perhaps if I could live on a handful of grain a day and never leave my den I would be ok, but unfortunately I can't. My family have been very supportive and I thank them for helping me out in so many ways. However, it has come to the stage where I can no longer make ends meet and it kills me to ask for handouts all the time. I know I am a sponge, but I don't like to be reminded of it daily. So I have come to the realisation that I must now go looking for a nine to five job. It makes me feel such a failure. I wanted to give this a chance for five years and I'm only a little over two. I've done part time work before to help keep me going, but doing bits here and there isn't going to cut it any more. I feel such a failure. I feel I am turning my back on everything I have spent the last two years working on. I feel I am taking huge steps backwards in my life and I hate it. If this was a sound file rather than text I would be screaming at this stage. It isn't the fact that I have to look for a job that ties knots of frustration and dread in my stomach. It's more the fact that earlier this year I thought I would be well on the road by now. Not rolling in money, but broadening my horizons and doing what I loved. Instead it is like I have entered a time warp and gone back eight years, except with more financial commitments. I can't believe I have done this to myself. Scrolling through lists of jobs on the Internet - most of them denied to me because of my lack of experience and qualifications - is like digging the grave for my last shred of hope. Of course I can write and work nine to five at the same time. Everyone must make money to make ends meet. I just can't get over the enormous pit of despair I've dug for myself at the thought of writing not being my 'job' anymore.

School Reunion

On Chuck this week Chuck went to Sarah's ten year school reunion. I don't know if my school is having a reunion (I certainly won't be going to it if they are) but it will be ten years from when I (first) left school and seeing how much Sarah had changed from the time she was a senior in high school made me look at my own life. Have I changed much in ten years? Well, apart from being more hopeless and bitter, not that much. Still over weight, still penniless, still living at home. The incidentals have changed but not the major stuff. I know it is shallow, but what is the point of going to a school reunion if not to rub your classmates faces in how successful you have become? Maybe if I had been able to attend school regularly or had made friends there things would be different. Paintpot went to her 30 year school reunion recently (gosh that sounds scary) and thoroughly enjoyed it, but then again I think she and I are from different molds, different species and possibly different planets. According to my mother, all her year (Paintpot's) were exceptionally brilliant and did very well for themselves. Good for them. From what I know of my year, they didn't quite make the doctors and lawyers stage. Single mothers and school teachers are more like it. However, given my circumstances even that is a phenomenal success compared to me. Self pity much?

Days like these

I wanted to post today about my new iphone. I wanted to go into ecstasies about how cool it was, how much I could do with it and how I didn't know how I lived my life without it. I wanted to write my post with it, but alas, Madame Fortuna had other ideas.

The mission started at 12.30pm when I went into the phone shop. I was changing from prepay to a contract so I had to endure a barrage of questions about my living arrangements and produce written documentation stating I lived where I said I did. Unfortunately my proof of address had to be dated within the last 3 months, and my letter missed it by 3 days, so I had to go home and get a new letter. That took the best part of half an hour and when I returned to the store the assistant who had helped me had gone on lunch. I then had to queue for forty minutes before the new assistant got around to me. She accepted my new letter but had bad news - they had no black 16g iphones left in stock.

Actually, that is not strictly true. They had ONE black 16g iphone left in stock but she was holding it for someone. I asked if she could hold one for me when new stock came in but she said it wasn't their policy to keep phones on hold. Upon my request she phoned the other phone shop in the town and they did have the right iphone but they wouldn't send it over to her. I decided to go to the other shop because what is the point of spending so much money on a phone when it isn't the one you want? This caused more hassle, of course, as she had to get all my information and documentation together for me to take to the other shop. Compounded with this was the fact that the assistant in the other shop had gone on lunch and wouldn't be back until 3.30pm.

It was now after 2pm. Armed with my information I got lunch and wondered how to spend my time while I waited for the assistant to return from lunch. I browsed the shops for a while, but without money shopping isn't much fun. I drove around to pass time and then headed to the second phone shop. There was a poster pasted to the phone shop window.

'Closed for lunch. Back at 4pm'.

As it was only 3.30pm, I got a coffee to pass the time and on the dot of 4pm I went to the phone shop. The assistant, just returned from lunch and the headphones hardly out of his ears, looked a bit surprised to see me. My expression was perhaps not the friendliest as I was not in a particularly good mood at that point. Nothing against the assistant, just not in a good mood. He was pleasant, but did not exude confidence as he had to phone someone to get help on every step of setting up my account and ringing up my purchases. However, the final blow of the day came when it was time to pay. I had a gift card to pay for my phone but - surprise, surprise - the gift card reader wasn't working in the shop! To be fair, the assistant did try hard to fix it and was very apologetic, but at 4.30pm, after four hours of trying to buy a phone, I had no option but to go home without one. Very disappointing.

The gift card reader should be fixed by tomorrow and I'll pick up my phone then, which has been set aside for me, but still...

Don't know if I will have the same thrill when it comes to blogging about my phone tomorrow.

How to lose friends and alienate people

I don't need to see a film to learn how to do this, I'm doing a pretty good job on my own! If there is anyone looking at this blog after all these months of inactivity, I'm sorry. I would love to say I was too busy finalising the details of my book deal, or travelling the world, or even writing, but no.

I'm afraid not.

To be honest, I had a melt down over the summer and decided to live in a very dark place with that part of me that likes to tell me I'll amount to nothing and I'm better off dead. I like to call her Miranda. She likes to eat pizza and lives at the bottom of a deep, dark well. She is always there, in the back of the forest of my mind, and occasionally she pops out of her hole to kick me in the shins. She usually waits until I'm tired or stressed to visit. She has good timing that way. You probably have someone like her living in your head too. However, this is the first time I've gone to stay in her hole with her. It is very dark down there, so you don't have to look at yourself and see that things can be different. And she encourages you not to speak to people, to cut yourself off from the world. Perhaps the worst thing she can do is to tell you that things will never change and you should give up hope.

The good news is, I've thanked Miranda for her hospitality and climbed out of that hole. The bad news is, it is really hard to pick up the pieces and make amends after you have neglected things for so long. You just can't walk back into life after refusing to take its calls and expect things to be the same as they were when you left off. It's tough.

Today I'm feeling rotten from the tail end of a cold, can't fit into my clothes and haven't got any money. I'm feeling like a sim who is being played by an evil child who wants to keep them up all night drinking coffee and then laugh when they wet themselves and all their friends shun them. Perhaps I will be kinder to my sims the next time I'll play. :)

Anyway, that's enough about me. How are you? Is there anyone left out there to reply?