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Keeping my gob shut

Hello-o-o-o-o (echoing silence)

As has been noted in these pages on more than one occasion my posting habits over the last few years have been. Well, shall we say sporadic? Patchy, maybe. Fair enough, I'll go with that. Patchy it is. Now, there are a variety of reasons for this. Opening a business at the same time as starting a family wiped all my free time out at a stroke, it also meant that after the initial furore had died down there was very little else for me to think about (once I had regained the capacity for cognitive thought). Out of respect for my business partner and co-workers I'm unlikely to post anything work-related (except in the broadest terms), also because hey, not in work, don't want to talk about it; and my wife's relationship with the internet could best be described as "uneasy", so posting anything about family is right out the window. And that's all I've thought about for a long while. Sure there's been the odd eruption on here but mostly I've not said anything because, well, I've not had anything to say.

This is probably about to change, though.

I've written here before about attempting to wrest a semblance of self back. It's been slow going, but since the turn of the year I think it's safe to say the pace has picked up a little. I want my life back, and a big part of that is writing. Not necessarily dear old Coastalblog per se but it'll be part of it.

I remember years ago, teaching poetry to classes of eager (and some, admittedly, less eager) students, and one of the lessons that we drilled into them was to write, you have to write. Sounds laughably simple but it's not that easy to do. It's about carving out some time when you just sit, and write. It won't all be good, in fact the vast majority won't be, but somewhere in there will be something. I've gone past the age where I'm convinced I'll be famous, I've gone even past the age where I think I can make a living as a writer (plus, you know, kind of making a living as a chef, ta), but I do recognise that writing makes me who I am, in a sense, and I want it back in my life, because, in a sense, it IS my life. So whilst I still have nothing to say, I'm going to start talking anyway.

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