40/365

If you don’t post it on social media – did it even happen?

I have had a long, tiring, yet tremendous day. Seen some unique items and iconic cars. Casually strolled past historic landmarks and explored hidden spaces.

I have taken so many photos, walked 18,000 steps, travelled to the capital and back…

…yet the only image that graced any social media platform was a stunning piece of street art. So, is it ironic that I choose to write about my adventure, without actually, technically, writing about my adventure?

I put my phone away today, turned it off and slipped it to the bottom of my bag. I wanted to walk with my hands free, I wanted to admire the towering skyline, the architecture, the world above and free from a small glowing screen. I wanted to absorb my surroundings, not fight with constant distractions.

However, during my technology free time, I couldn’t fail to notice just how many people are glued to their phones. Neck bowed in what really looks like a painful position, grinning taking selfies, or ranting loudly to someone else.

The air is a buzz with hashtags and likes or 26 photos uploaded of the same meal. Check in at each location…. Got to let the world know, got to fish for those 💖 😊👍

I think I enjoyed my day more without needing to document every detail, taking the time to put my phone away, that’s like committing the highest form of rebellion and I enjoyed rebelling!

Anne 09.09.18

Unleashing caged up words

*Personal*

^this little word is important… it means this is a diary entry, it is not fiction^

I write a little personal shit at times because I follow an interesting theory that ‘Writing about emotions may ease stress and trauma’ it means, when I have a bad day (which are thankfully few and far between) I write. I pour my heart, my emotions and my pain down upon *my* page.

I don’t even go into detail, I skirt around subjects which haunt me. I use words to free my mind without having to trouble anyone. I like this freedom, I value this ability to have this page for self expression.

I have chosen to focus on my Poetry lately, this was a proud moment in my life and because I feared being seen as big-headed, it took months to choose to share the whole assignment. This also gave me a short break from my fiction and gave me a little time to reflect upon how I use this blog for my scattering of ‘diary’ entries.

Feeling unable to express yourself, when you have already established a good mental outlet for bad days, is utterly crippling. Like feeling caged up inside your mind, because my thoughts torture me with guilt about letting free emotions upon my page…
… why should I feel guilty? 
Why should I give up something which helps lifts the lid on painful memories, it’s unhealthy to cage words, it’s such a relief at times to pour my heart out into words…

This is my freedom, this is my self expression, this is not a ‘woe-is-me’ this is where I put my hurt, so it can’t hurt me.

Through my words, through my blog, I am free!

If you see any blog marked *Personal* you are hereby also free to choose to read my words or not, but I won’t give up using a tool which is of benefit to my mental health.

Family

I’m just Me

Thanks,
Anne Harrison  17.07.17

I’m at War with Myself

and i am not alone…

 

i see friends and strangers purge their deepest sorrow on line

i see a world where we strive to be perfect

but have no energy or motivation

i read through endless contradicting articles

and find inspiration for mere moments

 

i am told i am imperfect

i am told i am inferior – that i need to be something other then me

i am expected to carry this self loathing in my soul

and be grateful that ‘they’ point out my flaws

 

no one sees my talents my skills my passion

these are hidden with shame

hidden from sight

 

inferior – we always fight comparison

as we fight to be something we are not

 

pretenders on our own thrones

 

 

Anne Harrison 26.06.17

2 Nov 2014 @ 9:18am

I wonder how many times I have fucked up and slipped back into bad habits because they are an easy coping strategy. How many times I fool myself into believing I have conquered my depression only to get the black dog snap at my heels. I’ve worked bloody hard to this year without a holiday. I long to go away, but that’s an impossibly (currently) there are many things I long for, like a release from crippling insecurities or a magic cure for panic attacks. But there really is only one answer… Me!
I’m turning into another year of my life and I can not go on living my life inventing non-existing fears in my mind.
I found some answers which actually suit me and who I am. I need to work on these and drag myself away from negative bad habits. I know I can do so, I’ve done so before. I am strong,  I am beautiful,  I am worthy! I need to believe that!
This is my birthday gift to myself xxx

Escaping Fiction

Juggling Stones

Sometimes we have to face reality and ask ourselves, what the fuck am I doing with my life? Which pretty much sums up this year, my birthday is approaching and I’m finding that I’ve done nothing on my to-do list apart from adding more challenges to it. I don’t even feel ready to start my New Years Resolutions yet and it’s October! I feel that once I find myself on a roll, something comes along and pulls the carpet out from under my feet. One thing I have been able to maintain (even if I have not always written every week) has been this Blog. Which keeps my love for writing alive and my creativity flowing, sometimes you get my random thoughts, sometimes silly short stories and if you’re really naughty, you get my God awful poetry.

I’m trying to learn another language, having chosen to return to University, this is a  dreadful mistake. I’m a total brain dumb tongue tied confused wreck! But I’m going to stick with it, after all, it is another stone to juggle in my life.

Jack of all trades – Master of none…I question my intelligence, it would be so delightful to be clever enough to do a degree, yet the more I learn, the further from my reach this imaginary goal appears to be.

I need to *Stop* Just pause in life, look around and take stock of who I am, where I am, where I am going and what I want to do… Because I feel like I’m trapped on a carousal, spinning, dizzy, grasping and slipping … There is so much I want to do, so many stones to juggle, I don’t know where to start and where to finish…

I destroyed my journal as my thoughts were drowning out production, thinking instead of doing. Stomping over the same ground, picking up more stones to juggle as I spin… I could be a circus act, if I had a glittery costume…

Don’t worry… I will carry on with my story shortly, today, I needed to air my thoughts. Maybe I should use my Birthday for a marker point for change? Or is that just tempting chaos? Maybe I should just embrace the chaos with a smile and a wink, safe in the knowledge that life will never be boring as long as there are stones to juggle…

 

Anne Harrison 25.10.16

In Prose:

Anne’s Final Essay … First Draft … 

A personal reflection on Creative Writing

Once upon a time (for that really is the best way to start such tales) there was this crazy lady, who, following a life threatening illness, decided in her ultimate wisdom to do something she had never done before in her life. Enrolled at University.

Little did she know that this impulsive decision would throw her headlong into an academic adventure that would last two years and result in gaining some very good friends. Along the way her little brain was subjected to rather some baffling use of language and a vast array of information, which she wasn’t sure would fit inside her head. At first it felt like she had found a platform where she could unleash all the lovely twisted little characters which lived in her imagination upon the world, but soon came to learn that there was a lot more involved than simply scribbling on paper.

For a while she felt totally out of her depths, struggling to tread water and keep her head above the surface, each word, each sentence was finely constructed in order to keep with the daunting rules and regulations which were slowly smothering artistic desire. But she was determined to soldier forth, sometimes burying the need to scream (for that would have been most noisy) but mostly because of stubbornness, no one expected her to succeed and she had to subdue her own self-doubts.

However, there was an amazing abundance of inspiration. Little characters in different genres came out to play and she ventured forth into different styles and all new exciting writing experiences. As well as reading a vast quantity of literature that was totally out of her comfort zone.

Yet this inspiration blasted her world wide open, beyond the classroom, beyond books. These lessons inspired our shy heroine to explore the theatre, dance, poetry, art, screenplay and local events. How exciting it was to find a trail of breadcrumbs that lead from one subject to another and how these all in turn slowly began to influence her own writing, going full circle.

Though this point of the adventure may have drawn to a sad closure, this has been a starting place for a wider range of experiences and the journey continues.

 

A.M. Harrison.

Broken Thoughts and Wrong Words

So I spent most of my lunch time yesterday working on a blog that I thought would be interesting and informative. I attempted to express an intelligent opinion and used myself and my own circumstances as a counter position to my argument. Yet no matter how much I wrote, re-wrote and starred blankly at the screen, I just could not get my words right. For some reason (I cant explain) somewhere between my brain and the keys, all the words got themselves in a jumble and what I read was bullshit. I’ve scrapped it, it’s shit.

I can not write like a blogger. I follow all these glorious blogs which are beautifully articulate with immaculate presentation and detailed thoughts, enhanced with links and images to express their words.

Oh not me, I just sound like a crazy cat lady, maybe a little bitter and twisted when I compare myself to the world around me, but ultimately I sound like a ranting loon!

I’m starting to feel like my writing is inadequate, my ideas inferior, I’m doubting myself and my abilities because I am always seeing my work in comparison to others work and I always view others work in higher regard than my own. I have this ‘I’m not worthy’ complex, which has haunted me since childhood, with constant school reports of: “Must try harder” “Could do better” “Fails to concentrate” “Constant daydreamer” … Following years of bullying quashed by confidence to the point of non-existence and despite putting all that crap in the past, I *still* believe that I am not worthy. Though I’m not exactly what I should be worthy of and why I need to constantly compare myself to others?

I am NOT a writer, but I LOVE writing… But I cease writing as soon as I lose confidence in what I am trying to write. The result of this is more than a dozen half finished projects, shelved ideas, foolish daydreams and an abuse of the ‘delete’ key.

I use blogging pretty much like my journal at home, to scribble ideas down upon a theme I wish to express my thoughts about. Generally I just write drivel and end up more confused than  when I started. Recent events have shaken my resolve a little, I’m feeling a little lost and self conscious. But I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details…

Suffice to say, I’ve deleted what I wanted to write, I’ve written what I wanted to share and even though I am feeling a little fragile today.. There is always tomorrow and besides, maybe venting on the page might help clear my thoughts? Or maybe I shouldn’t really give a shit about (what I think) others think about? But then I would cease to be the complex and insecure individual I am.

Once my confidence has been restored I go back to being my glorious fabulous self and you would never guess at the hidden brain worms which make me feel shit about myself and my writing. So I’ll shut the fuck up before I bore the pants off you and go and get myself chocolate… Because… Chocolate!!

 

Anne Harrison 29.06.16

 

15 Minute Blog

Why do I always wait until 15 minutes before the end of my lunch break to get a eureka moment for a good blog idea?

Clock is ticking, fingers are clicking and I’m failing to spell check as I go along, so dance with me as I share my thoughts…

There are so many deliciously crafted journals around, these are a source of inspiration, as I absolutely adore the perfection in which these are presented. I admire the attention to detail, the handwriting, the illustrations, the layouts and such. I mean look at this shit here, look how fucking beautiful it is, how elegant and delightful to the eye.

Now beyond my little corner of cyberspace, out there in the real physical world, I write and create journals of my own, I love shit like Smash Books and Wreck this Journal I collect scraps of papers with pretty pictures, quirky quotes, darling little clips of information and those intolerable motivational quotes, which are Ooh-so-Hispter! Yet it doesn’t stop me obsessively collecting them.

I am inspired by this and that yet in reality, as my mind spews its nonsense across the pages, mind thinking swifter than the pen can write, thoughts race faster than fingers tap keys and instead of graceful artistic perfection…

…Brain Vomit! –  Binder1.pdf Blanks
(Inside the boooook-in-a-blanket. An insight into my messy mind)

 

Anne Harrison 31.05.16

Kill Your Darlings

I’m not going to lie to you… I absolutely *hate* the post I wrote yesterday. It’s a jumbled mess of scattered thoughts without any real structure or argument. I failed at trying to write a comprehensive essay about the rules of writing and my frustration at these limitations (as I see them). Though as usual I could not get my words across, my views were scatty and I skipped from subject to subject without any clear conclusion.

In brief… I suck!

…and you wonder why I will never be published? It’s simple really, as much as I love words and I am forever writing, I simply suck!

I break all the rules, I string together great lengths of words, which really aren’t all that necessary to try and say something, which makes sense inside my head, but somewhere between my mind and my fingers, everything is lost in translation and what I wanted to say becomes garbled in the process.

However, I’m not going to remove my post, I’m going to keep it there, like some morbid trophy, a testament to my frustration. Hopefully one day a lecturer somewhere might come across my work and use this in class as a perfect example of ‘how not to write’ that I expect shall be my ultimate writing claim to shame.

 

 

Anne Harrison 25.05.16

 

Breaking the Rules

The Rules of Writing – Why I can never be a published author and why do we feel the need to place limitations upon creativity. PART TWO…

 

The Prologue:

Please don’t judge me too harshly, but I had never heard of this Gent before a University class one evening, where these ‘Rules of Writing’ were covered by our lecturer. To appal and alarm you even further, I still hove no idea who he is or what he has written, I remain blissfully ignorant. Perhaps I should be a good little student and familiarise myself with everyone quoted in class, but I’m a little rebel and staying true to my rebellious nature (as well as my blissful ignorance) I can not agree (or understand) these rules laid down before us in class.

 

It was a dark and stormy night:

I love this! It automatically makes me think of Snoopy, or Frankenstein…. However the weather is a non starting point regarding stories. But how does the day start? If not with throwing open the curtains and seeing what the weather is doing? The weather creates atmosphere, mood, emotions… A misty morning conjures images of Silent Hill, bright sunshine can inspire a romantic picnic and a dark and stormy night can create monsters.

 

When most people think of Prologues, they relate this to deep classical literature, Shakespeare and the link. Prologues relate to a time and style of writing, which isn’t widely regarded or used today. However, in my mind a prologue, or ‘The Prologue’ I can only ever hear in Frankie Howerd’s  voice, avoid prologues and how would ‘Lurcio’ start his tale? Having said that, even ‘Up Pompeii’ is dated and is a form of comedy which now belongs to another time and style.

Times change, styles come into fashion and slip away again, prologues remain… Should you choose to use them…

 

She said, he said, the monster under the wall who didn’t even speak a language … said …

… Don’t you just love contradictions?! She exclaimed

 

I could continue and work my way through all of these rules, indeed there are some I would prefer to go into detail and the examples I have given so far are only my opinions and a little vague with no academic evidence to back up my words, as these are nothing more than observations. I always found, and still find, the ‘rules of writing’ used throughout creative writing classes to be exhausting and suffocating. Writing is an art, we paint scenes with words, we create worlds with nothing more than 26 letters (in regards to the English Alphabet) it is called ‘creative’ writing after all.

I feel lost with all these rules … it’s like juggling with too many balls … How do you write and remember to keep everything in mind to create a perfect story, when your words are trapped by limitations, restricted by plot structure diagrams and basic spelling/grammar.

 

I can never be published, because I can not take my writing so seriously. I cant even argue this point without going off on a tangent and carrying a measure of guilt for wanting to disagree with professional authors.

However, before this blog quickly becomes TLDR, I would just like to leave this topic with one lingering thought…

… Recently at work I had to print off over sixty different CV’s for business studies, however, I am clearly aware that each and every CV is individual, BUT! Every single CV looked exactly the same, because of the way we are taught to write CV’s they all appeared identical… Is that what we are creating? Clones of ourselves? Clones of our creativity? Clones of our writing? Because that is how we are taught success should look like…

 

I re-posted this tweet recently and thought to myself, if I ever send in any work…

… I’ll print the fucker on Pink Paper!!

 

Balagan Productions‏@Balagan_Films

If you think finishing a script is a great achievement, here is a pile of 2000 unread scripts at a friends office!

 

 

Anne Harrison 24.05.16