Ten years a blogger

I started writing my blog in 2013 and published my first blog post in November, it was my ambition to keep it going for at least five years, ten years would have been even better. So I am very pleased to have reached my ten year anniversary. The purpose of this blog was to showcase my creative endeavours, but my most popular blog posts have been about exploring Stoicism, discovering mindfulness and encouraging people to vote. Blogging is sometimes advocated as a way to ease anxiety and promote mental health. I can attest to it playing its part in my own mental health recovery journey which is why I have produced these 'Just Blog' mindfulness colouring doodles.

Everyday is a mindful ACT

2018 was such an unsettling year, my need to find sustainability and stability through mental health, healing and therapy went into overdrive. I read dozens of Buddhist psychology and third wave therapy books and tried many guided meditations. They did work and I felt much better in 2019, despite continuing problems at home and work and with my menopause. 'Everyday is a Mindful ACT' features a selection of thoughts and meditations for every month of the year, a book a fortnight and twelve mindful colouring sheets (below are eight of them).

The Midnight Cat

'The Midnight Cat' is a piece of flash fiction inspired by our cat Maddie. It is part of my flash fiction collection 'Bubble Universe'. This story did not make it onto WattPad, so here it is, in full, on my blog.

The midnight cat by LJ Finnigan

Jasmine couldn’t sleep. She was restless in her bed; the atmosphere oppressing her, the air stifling and the rain beating hard against the window.

‘What a day and what a night. If I don’t get to sleep soon I’ll be late up in the morning,’ she thought, ‘I wonder what the time is.’

She reached over to her bedside table and pressed the night light on her clock.

‘Midnight.’

Somewhere outside, beyond the rain and the wind, a cat’s meow pierced the dark night.

Jasmine rolled over and stared through her rain splattered bedroom windows at the deep grey night, the shadows and the swaying trees. She closed her eyes and the sound of the midnight cat’s plaintive cry broke into her waking dreams.

Suddenly she was outside, following the serene, soothing creature through the stormy night. Her nightie was thin, she should have been freezing, but the cat had an extraordinary presence; an aura of coolness, warmth and calm emanated from it; an aura whose sphere of influence surrounded Jasmine.

She walked on behind the cat; through the sparkling city streets, along the haunted canal, through the lush park and the sparse forest on the edge of town. All the while the cat walked through the weather and was hardly affected by it, its velvet paws hardly touched the ground, yet is senses were acute; seeming to register every light footstep, feint car hum and gentle leaf rustle that stirred in the darkly hostile night.

The motorway loomed and the cat turned to face its follower. Its eyes gleamed a glowing green and transported Jasmine back to her bed. She rolled over to check her clock once more.

‘One o’clock.’

Jasmine sighed, before becoming aware of the soft purring, emanating from the furry mound that now inhabited the space beside her.

(302 words)

Summary: A sleepless girl’s troubled night-time is soothed by the mysterious influence of the Midnight Cat.

On-line Mindfulness

I do not spend so much time on-line as I used to. After 10 years on social media from 2008 to 2018, I decided to live more in the real world. I also discovered mindfulness which helps you to live a better life in the real world. I have continued with my blog as I find it particularly therapeutic. I have also found further on-line resources that can help you live a better life in the real world. Below are links to my mindfulness resource lists on Pinterest and YouTube and five websites that I have found particularly helpful.

Mindfulness Plus on Pinterest

Mindfulness Plus on YouTube

Mindful Blogs

London Mindful

Everyday Mindfulness

Breathworks

Tiny Buddha

Still Mind

The Poetry of Surrender

At the end of 2018 I did a mega sort out of my house and also managed to put six of my favourite SubVerse poems onto Wattpad. 'The poetry of surrender' which I started to develop in the early noughties had gained a new significance after discovering Buddhism and mindfulness in March. The six poems on my SubVerse page are The Wave, Normal, Still, The Yes Party Manifesto, Geisha and Dare. I think Normal, Still and The Yes Party Manifesto are most relevant to what I was discovering in Buddhism.

Bubble Universe

Writing has long been one of my main interests in life, although life often seems to get in the way of various projects. In 2014 I gathered together twelve of my shortest stories for my project Bubble Universe, with the aim to develop them further over the coming years (see above). I was very happy with the twelve pieces of flash fiction I eventually came up with (see below). They have been elaborated upon, but have all been written between the ages of ten and fifty.

Last Bus Home

I reworked a number of old stories in 2017 specifically so that I could publish them on Wattpad. Four of them were from Shadow magazine which I first worked on in the late 1970s. 'After the rain' is in my 'L's Flash Fiction' reading list and Last Bus Home expanded into a serialised short story. The last two Shadow stories are 'Girl on the pier' and 'The Midnight Cat'. A summary of Last Bus Home follows.

Last Bus Home
My lonely late nights were transformed after mysterious, spirited Miranda entered my life.

Week one
My first sight of the strange girl in the rain.

Week two
The flowery girl speaks, already I feel a change coming over me.

Week three
I travel home with Miranda, she sees everything so clearly.

Week four
We travel to a graveyard and I see what's wrong with the world.

Week five
Walking with Miranda is like walking on air.

Week six
I wait for the Spring and my new friend.

All Grown Up

'All Grown Up' is the third of my 'Still Life' poetry collections on Wattpad, it contains the poems that most reflect my grown up thoughts on life.

'Opening the door' is about being bold and stepping into the unknown.

'The shadow people' is about the invisible forces that shape our world.

'Alone' is about the profound difference between loneliness and solitude.

'The sufferers' is about the deep pain sometimes involved in just being alive.

'Crossing the bridge' has a similar theme to the first poem, it is about leaving the familiar behind and moving into a completly new landscape.

Shadow stories

I was writing my magazine 'Shadow' when I was around about 11 in 1979. In 2017, when I was 49, I concentrated on four of my favourite 'Shadow stories' to see if I could develop them into anything more substantial. Two of the items 'After the rain' and 'As the cat meowed' became two pieces of flash fiction, 'As the cat meowed' changed its name to 'The midnight cat'. 'Last Bus Home' developed into a serialised short story which I published on Wattpad. Nothing much became of 'The girl on the pier', so I shall have to develop it further in the future.

Blog Therapy

 

I have enjoyed writing since I was little. I have been fascinated by blogging and blogs since I first encountered them in the early noughties. I was too busy with my young daughter and my poetry group to start blogging at the time. When I found out about craft and creative blogs in 2010 I was quite eager to start a blog myself. I started my blog finally in November 2013 after spending much of that year thinking about what I would put on it. Now I find blogging a good way to organise my mind and my ideas and get my life and times into some perspective. Below is my working list to inspire blog posts for each month of the year.

London, Interrupted

I started my 'Secret London' project to support my short story 'The Assertiveness Group'. I have long thought that my short story could be developed into a much longer story and my initial thirteen places could be expanded into 52 and the story and places could cover a whole year. As part of this development I have also been working on 'A Year in London' idea which supports my story with 52 London place descriptions. The 52 places I chose can be seen below, although I do change them from time to time. Some of the descriptions can be found by clicking on my London label, they start with 'Secret London'.

Twenty Years of SubVerse

When my daughter was born in the year 2000 I got the feeling that surrendering to aspects of my life that were beyond my control would be very important in the years to come. I decided that a good way to deal with these difficult feelings would be to start a writing group to explore 'The Poetry of Surrender'; I called it SubVerse. SubVerse came to an end in 2005 and I wrote an obituary for it on the 6th of June 2006 (6/6/6). I have used aspects of SubVerse, over the years, in various of my creative projects including my virtue project, my craft stall and my blog. This poem, 'Malleable' is one of my favourites from that time, it commemorated SubVerse's brief life and the twenty years that have passed since its birth.

Underground

'Underground' started off as a confusing, not quite satisfactory, short story in my New Food collection. Something about it hinted that it might do quite well as a serialised short story on Wattpad, as it was written as a series of days and in the first person. After I rewrote and reworked it a little it has proved to be my most popular story on Wattpad, so I think my instincts were correct. A summary of the story is below.

Underground- story summary by LJ Finnigan

Underground

My new journey to work is great; ten stops on the tube and ten minutes walk at either end, I wonder what ten days of it will do to me?

Day One
I thought the tube was meant to be quiet, where no one spoke to you.

Day Two
I wonder what those two little girls want.

Day Three
'Some people can be crazy and dangerous, more than you would suspect from looking at them.

Day Four
The dreams were worse last night.

Day Five
I can still feel them watching me as I walk towards the stairs.

Day Six
At least I've been settling in at work.

Day Seven
What was it he said again?

Day Eight
I'm not enjoying the journey home this afternoon.

Day Nine
It's my late night tonight.

Day Ten
Everything looks so normal now.      

Teenage Troubles

I used to write more and much longer poems when I was a teenager, maybe I had more time back then at least for writing poetry. The five poems in my Teenage Troubles collection occupy a special place in my heart.

Dave was a caveman came second in the Hounslow Poetry Competition in 1984.
Not a very pretty sight is an earlier insight into body dysmorphia.
The Antique Junk Shop has developed into a YouTube video.
Who's been corrupting our son? is about my brother and his teenage friends.
Inadequacy comes from the same place as my interest in 'Unspirational' and Stoicism.

The Need Fairy

I first thought of the basic story of the Need Fairy in the late 1990s when I got married, moved into my house and was hoping for a baby. I was so busy being a working mum in the noughties and also running my SubVerse poetry group, that it was ten years before I sat down and wrote it out as a proper story. It now exists in the real world as an ALF Book and on my Wattpad channel as one of my serial short stories.

The Need Fairy by LJ Finnigan
Tony and Cleo are happy in their new home, but the more they settle in, the more Cleo senses another presence in the house, one that is neither happy nor settled.

Christmas Day
As Cleo and Tony enjoy their Christmas dinner in their new house, the house's spirit reminds them of its presence.

New Year's Day
As Tony works in his home office Cleo ventures into the attic and begins to unearth the house's hidden treasures.

Valentine's Day
Cleo introduces the elaborate idea of the house possessing a Need Fairy to a bemused Tony.

Ash Wednesday
Cleo discovers a little of the house's gruesome history and the house spirit begins to find its voice.

Mother's Day
Cleo finds the true value of the attic treasures when she visits the local antique shop.

Palm Sunday
Cleo and Tony both experience tangible encounters with the house spirit when they both venture into the attic.

Easter Day
The Need Fairy visits Cleo in the middle of the night with a promise of love for the future.

Christmas Eve
The spirit of the Need Fairy is alive and well and living in the nursery.

An Anatomy of Love

'An Anatomy of Love' is my seven poem cycle of reflections on romantic relationships from waiting for something to begin through enjoyment and endurance and finally coming out on the other side. 'Anything but love' is a poem about distraction, about what you might concentrate on when trying to move on from a broken heart. It is more descriptive of my life since 2008.

Poe Therapy

 

After the difficulties of 2018 I decided that my coping strategies needed reconsidering and recalibrating. I realised that some of the 'distractions' I had developed over my previous 50 years had great value. I'm not so sure that 'distractions' is even the right term. I decided a few years ago that what gave my life most meaning was music, art and creative writing.

Edgar Allan Poe has long been a source of comfort for me. He died poor at the age of 40 in Baltimore in mysterious circumstances. He left behind morbid tales of psychological torment and human frailty. I have always felt a connection between me and his fragile characters, the overly sensitive, sickly Ushers, the tormented souls in the Tell-Tale Heart, the doomed party goers of Prince Prospero. He doesn't go in for happy endings, he didn't get one, maybe no one does. There is something therapeutic about him and his tales of frailty and failing. I've found Poe Therapy to be a thing. I've also found solace in Dr Who, films, books, ghost stories, poetry, Shakespeare. I've started making more lists.

Below are some pictures I took of Poe Cottage, The Bronx, when I visited New York City at the end of October 2017.

 

    

Lucy Vale

 

I was writing Lucy Vale over ten years ago, in 2006, just before I started work on ALF Creations @ the Star Heart Cafe and embarked on various social media projects. For years I couldn't work on my story, I felt it was a big mess and I was busy being a working mother, I had a lot of grief to deal with and I was also nursing a big broken heart. Then on her ten year anniversary I felt once more able to engage with Lucy and came up with a year long plan for her dream diary adventures which I am still working on.

  

Debut or The EWOC

This piece of flash fiction was inspired by a wedding reception I went to in the City of London. It was a very 'fish out of water' situation, I am a far cry from the city types I was mingling with. I was only on the very edge of that world and now that situation feels a very long way away from me. I'm glad I have this small piece of writing to remind me of that 'unreal' time in my life. I still find myself wondering about those people and the kind of life they lead. I couldn't keep up that level of pretence and 'I just had to let it go,' as John Lennon once sang; 'Watching the Wheels' indeed.

Debut by LJ Finnigan

'The wedding party arrived by double decker bus. Christine was one of the last to step outside into the late afternoon sun, onto the hard grey city of London pavement, before stepping foot into the Merchant Taylors grand hall.

Inside the hall was cool and dim, Christine’s black heeled shoes clattered on the hard stone floor and she found herself fascinated by the echo that was produced. It was then that she became acutely aware of her difference.

Despite her expensive haircut and her elegant clothes, she didn’t quite gel with her surroundings. The others seemed to carry on as they normally did, they were at home. But to Christine, this was odd.

‘Max,’ Christine called to her date, her boyfriend of two years.

A little ahead of her a shaggy haired, rugby-playing, ex-public school type lowered his eyebrows at her and gave her a crooked sort of smile. He was standing amidst a group of Greek Goddesses and their mother, apparently. Christine felt her face heat up and knew that she must be going red.

‘I’m an embarrassment,’ she thought.

It was then that she became aware that her time in this world and with this man would be short lived. He was already tiring of her. Soon she would be banished; back to her shabby house on the edge of the council estate where she had lived all her life, back to buses, lonely nights in front of the TV, her mediocre family, her ‘just getting by’ existence. Back to the land of the EWOCs, the vanishing English Working Class tribe that she belonged to.

‘OK Christine, I’m just catching up with some old friends from university. Help yourself. There’s plenty to eat and drink,’ said Steven, obviously itching to get away.

‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me,’ said Christine, humbly.

The couple were edging away from each other even now; Steven towards a new group of ex-University students and Christine towards the long white table-clothed table full of Champagne and canapés.

Christine stood alone sipping her glass of champagne and studying the assortment of wedding party guests until her gaze settled on a particularly pleasing specimen of city boyhood; tall, blond, athletic. His handsome face returned her lustful look with a particularly manly one of his own. Christine felt the exquisite sensation that she would be the instrument of her own destruction.'