Lazy Days When No One is Watching

A week into full summer and the kids have been sleeping in late, having stayed up too late again. Menopause has gifted me with mornings, so I read and write all morning. In the afternoon I'll do some things that need doing, but if they don't get done I can do them tomorrow. It's a lovely feeling that I know won't last. I have my summer school trip coming up soon and then my mother is coming to visit, so I'm going to enjoy these next two lazy weeks. 

The pollen count is dropping so I've been working in the garden, mowing the grass, cutting dead branches, planting at the plot. I'm trying to make my allotment easier for my joints, so I've built lots of raised beds and am putting down bark mulch on the paths to try and keep the weeding down. I usually dig up a meter or two of the path at a time, clear the weeds, place down the fabric and the mulch. It's slow going, but I'm seeing the results. A lot of what I try to grow doesn't work or the slugs eat more than the kids and I do, but every year I dig in and plant with hope.

2020 v 2025 - hopefully a lot less digging.

My poetry is going in a similar way at the moment. I still write every day, but am producing less poems. Slow writing, slow editing and I'm barely submitting to magazines or publishers. Little or nothing to show for all my work.

I keep seeing memes about 'would you write if no one ever read your work?' That's what it feels like just now. No one really cares about my allotment, my poems or how I spend my unstructured time, but I've done it anyway. Occasionally my son will enjoy eating some courgette bread from veg I've grown or a distant editor will accept a poem and say some kind things, but for the most part they bring only me happiness. 

I'd like to get one of my collections published of course, but after waiting over 5 years after my last acceptance that was never published, I've become mellow about it. It may never happen. I may leave a trickle of poems published in journals over my lifetime, hundreds of unloved poems and a humongous pile of notebooks behind when I die. So be it.

It doesn't matter that no one is reading me, I will continue, filling my notebooks, writing my life. It gives me joy and purpose which is more than something.