Jogging and Blogging (and Marking)

As Spring hesitantly turns toward a Summery-type of weather, I decided today that, rather than go to the gym as per usual on a Friday, I'd head out the door for a jog.  A good way to continue to acquaint myself with the local area.  There were glorious moments of sunshine though mostly very cold breeze, not as conducive to asthmatic breathing as the warm gym conditions, but today I wanted to listen to the birds, the traffic, and to get some fresh air after a particularly long two weeks with a very heavy work load.

Today was marking transition day, a fulcrum as it were, between handing in the first batch of marked portfolios (51 in total) to receiving the next batch of 42 drama scripts, short stories, opening chapters of novels or poetry sequence submissions.  The transition means the handwritten, green-inked feedback for the first university is done and now on to the online forms and digital submissions for the online university.  But fear not: I finally have a new tablet and will travel to cafes across the county to give myself a change of scenery while marking.

The brain fog I have been in, correction, the brain thunderstorm I have been in (it gathers while marking, it crashes and rages havoc) will have a moment to clear this weekend while I have two days off in a row.  Alas, not the third, bank holiday day, but oh well, bank holidays can't interrupt exam marking!  Then the new storm shall begin and by the end, exhausted, tormented, somewhat enlightened and usually a bit inspired, I shall turn my attention to my own writing again.   In the meantime, jogging has gotten me out of the house, tuned to vitamin D and breathing away the post-portfolio anvil head clouds...and as per usual it slicked up the writing wheels.

There's nothing for the writing quite like moving: driving, dancing, walking, running, moving around.  And as soon as I switch off my work brain and start to move, the words, phrases and lines start to float into my clear-sky head like a lovely soft breeze that brings petals or a few leaves sweeping in.

Perhaps this weekend will include some writing.  I'm certainly inspired to keep reading and doing some more writing from the images on visualverse.org

Remarkable Things

• giant hail stones in the grass looking like lemony sweets
• cat 2 sleeping through my skype call without having a go at me
• a GIANT coffee to celebrate being halfway through the marking