The good things

They're few and far between these days, those good things aren't they?  The news is full of, well, bad news with few feel good stories to lighten the public mood.  If you want lighthearted current affairs you have to turn to celebrity gossip columns and reality TV.  Since I can't bring myself to partake of either, there's little to talk about that isn't cutbacks and austerity and government bashing.  I can't always be bothered with those either.  It gets to be chore, reading stories that only make you fret about how you'll make it to retirement.

I've been writing my own stories when I haven't been reading headlines or novels.  It turns out there's quite a lot of blood and death in my stories and makes me wonder sometimes just where these murderous ideas come from.  I don't dare over-analyse it - I might be quite alarmed at the answer.  If they give me something to write about, I suppose they're one of those elusive good things.  That I write them and don't go out and act upon them is definitely a good thing.  I'd be so bored in prison.

One thing I notice about writing so much and having those side ventures with the charity publications is that good things can be a double edged sword.  Every time I have an idea or complete a short story, the one person I want to call and tell about it is my Mum.  Sometimes I've even picked up the phone and started to dial before I realise with an awful lurch of my stomach and missed heartbeat or three.  The good things serve as a stark reminder and not simply a means to keep me sane (I wrote about it and might publish it some day.  Right now, it's too close to my heart).  So I quite often finish writing and smile then burst into tears.  I've set myself off again just writing this paragraph.

Good things just aren't as good when you can't share them with the people that mean the most to you.  The cat showed a modicum of interest when I told her I'd written a short piece as her (under her pen name of Foobyevsky) but she was on the arm of the sofa when I told her and that means she wants food, so it might not have been her debut release that interested her at all.  You can read that for free from the links on the right for a time or download the PDF from from the website.  Just don't tell the cat it's up there for free.  That would definitely not be a good thing.

The weirdest thing of all, and I think it's human nature and not just me, is that it's really hard to write about the good things.  When you're a kid and writing something in your exercise book at school, it's easy.  It's easy to write a tweet or a facebook status about something good that happened.  It seems just as hard for people to respond to those messages about the good things.  Post a good tragedy or catastrophe and everyone has something to say.  So are good things really that good?  I'll let you know when I eventually (the law of averages says it has to happen) have something good to write about.