Lately, I have been dis-jointed from life.

I've been randomly scribbling in my notebooks for the last month, plotting this, that and the other - but it's all been around the edges. I have been walking through the city and seeing things but not really seeing them. Noticing the sunlight but not really feeling it. Just the odd little thing has burst on through - an annoying women in a coffee shop yesterday talking too loudly on her mobile phone, the reflection of the sky in glass on a tower top in Manchester. But then - nothing.

I'm not sure why this is. Post-holiday trauma? The general business of life taking over? I woke up this morning and tried writing in my notebook and couldn't do it. I was itching to get up. I needed to do something. Move forward in some way. I started pulling out cupboards looking for things to sell on ebay. I was convinced that if I could just get things moving it would be OK. I would come back again.

And then I came here. To write. To write! Only even now, here I am and suddenly everything evaporates and leaves me with just a blank screen and a sense that I am repeating the same mantra over and over again: I must get going. I must get going.

Going where? I returned from Canada with my list of "ten things" - ten things I wanted to do between now and this time next year. Write more, pay off debts, learn something new... all that kind of stuff. And then you come back and the days slip away in a haze of office work and social meetings. And while part of me carries on, on autopilot as it were, part of me just sinks - the feeling part of me, the doing part of me. Sinks down into some kind of black pit and sulks. I am have been swimming in the lake, I have climbed the hills, I have been out to sea in a tiny boat. Now what? You want me to come back here and get down to it? Sit at my desk and actually write? Are you mad?

Always it's about that. About this. Coming back and getting to the word. Stop scribbling about writing. Stop making lists of things to do. But actually do it.

As I type all the other worries go away. So I have a massive credit card bill. Who gives a fuck? I ca eat, can't I? Yeah there are things that need doing. Plans that need putting into action. But all this time, trying to put those plans into action and finding barriers, now it suddenly hits me - here - right now - why I haven't been able to get it done. Because I've been cutting myself off from the one thing that keeps me sane. Not this blog. But writing.

I mean, writing with the sense that someone is reading it (even if no one is). There is such a different. Scribbling away in a note book which no one may ever read and doing this which is out there. Which can be read.

It always amazes me. How I keep forgetting this. Every time the darkness creeps up on me, the haze envelops me and I sit about wondering why. It takes me a good few weeks to realise it. "You need to write dumb ass". Oh yeah. It actually works.

And so then to this project. This next thing. All the excuses I've tried to build up. When will I get time? How will I do it? Now they fall away and I can sense it. It's coming. At last. A breeze lifts the curtain and the bright sunlight on this Saturday morning fades a little and then brightens again. Onwards...