Sowing and Growing

I've now completed two years of my degree. The last assignment of this semester was handed in last week. I am hoping I have done enough to get the marks I need to continue on my quest for a 2:1. I will find out my grades in due course, and this week will be able to send off the last application form for funding.

I spent a whole afternoon trying to work out what I was supposed to do with one funding form. In the end I put it down and went out and forgot about it for a while. I felt like my brain was about to explode. This applying for funding each year amounts to approximately two of the worst days of my year...intensely frustrating, ridiculous and scream-inducing. I write this, however, with the caveat that I am truly grateful that this funding has existed. I think that, following the recent election, this will all change out of recognition pretty damn quick. Fingers crossed the funding all goes through and I can complete this year.

In the meantime I now have a boisterous three-year-old, who is every inch the little boy, and such good fun. Hilarious, loving, wild and bright. Also a little monkey who has tested my patience to its limit recently. Having a break from uni will help restore the peace - I have been sleep-deprived for the last six weeks, since Sam decided it was time to leap (funny that) kamikaze style out of his cot. So the transition to a 'big-boy-bed' has been made but there have been lots of very early mornings. Trying to study and complete assignments after battling to get Sam to bed, and then never getting more than 5 hours sleep has been tough. But I've done it!
Hooray!
I just looked at my blog this time last year, here.

And that is still representative of how I feel.

I have been dying to get all of the uni work out of the way, even though I have enjoyed doing most of it, so that I can get on and just write. And read the piles of books sitting in my bedroom in very cliched leaning-tower-of-Pisa-like ways.
I have started with Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", which I've had for about a year. It is so good I keep thinking to myself throughout the day "just five minutes of reading..." but of course it's impossible to do that with Sam, although I manage a flick through the paper for half an hour every morning.
I read The Road for one of my creative writing modules this semester and am still haunted by it, I won't and don't want to see the film. I am rubbish with horror, and it is horrific. I have read that it is very respectful to the book, and I love Viggo Mortensen, but I don't see how it could possibly do it justice. I recommend it to anyone but it is not an easy read.
I am still mainly concerned with writing poetry. If this is the vein I continue to plough and be excited by then I may end up doing an MA in Poetry...but let's see. I have to get through the degree first.

Since finishing uni I have been hard at work in the vegetable patch, as I have been in every spare minute I have had in the last few months. Yes, I have a veg patch! I started work on it last year and the blog I began to record its progress will soon be blooming again: http://www.roarearth.blogspot.com It seems to be the perfect antidote to and also fuel for writing-and so I can relate to Murakami's thoughts on the way his running has affected his writing.
I have also sent off a poem to a competition- I am intending to do this as much as possible over the summer. I've also entered a piece of visual art into a competition. More about this in another post. I had something that fitted the brief. I have written elsewhere about how I always thought I was a visual artist- well, I am- but I am more wordsmith than that. The piece I have submitted is a mixture, maybe, of the two.

I can't stop and I don't want to. I am busier and more creative than I have ever been.

I am also trying to dig myself out of a hole. I need to get qualified so I can earn decent money so that I can give Sam the things he needs. So I can take care of us.

I have taught Sam to say "We don't like David Cameron". I shall say no more for now but this may change as the travesty unfolds...

Love, Love, Love xxx