Panglossian Monday

I awoke with a start this morning at seven thirty before suddenly realising it was a Bank Holiday: The best of all possible Mondays. Well, it could be a little sunnier perhaps, but yesterday was glorious and the luminous pallor of my thighs and torso is now tinted to a respectable beige.
I was reading my book for a while, as a kind of sanctuary from all the thoughts of jobs around the house that I probably should do today, when suddenly a whole roman candle of thoughts burst in upon my head and I was forced to rush downstairs to fire up this conveniently always-on Macbook (not mine, I hasten to add: Bought for a project for work and occasionally intensively used for such) and commit the thoughts to words. It interests me that mental functionality manifests at different times: I get my ideas profusely before breakfast, but at that point the words have not yet been roused from their nocturnal slumber. But the gist can be at least be recorded for later exploration.

What to do with these thoughts though. Sometimes they are so insistent that they simply cannot remain trapped in one's head to merely dissipate and be lost. Their implications are sometimes just too important.
And yet, I find the act of writing to be mildly shameful. It is as if it is an indulgence that has to be hidden away, like a secret hob-nob addiction or a penchant for wearing ladies' dresses (neither of which examples are drawn from my own personal list of peccadilloes: hob-nobs I can take or leave and few dresses would fit a frame of these proportions).
But it occurs to me that I feel embarrassed by my need to write and hence I don't do it. Some invisible sense of disapproval seems to cause my faculties to shrivel up and I wander off to do something more worthy of the time.

In fact, this mild form of shame is so influential that it seems to stop me in my tracks and words and ideas remain unexpressed. Which feels like a waste.

This is all very self-indulgent and nobody need read it. But I am going to post it here anyway as a kind of challenge to myself to see if I can take a small step towards dispelling this pervasive obstacle to expression.

As an aside, I have decided I am going to write a book; a book about how to make home-made wine (which anyone who has ever tasted my own fair creations would attest I know an awful lot about). If I write my intention here, perhaps I will find it harder to back out of the commitment to myself. It won't just be about recipe. You can get that nonsense anywhere. No, it will be about the philosophy of making things for oneself and the existential satisfaction it brings for its own sake.

There. I said it now.

Some much lauded Elderflower wine I made.
Cheers!