Getting Real

The Beach in Dundrum

I’ve long considered myself an ‘ideas person.’ I make lists and hatch plans at least every other day, but it’s not always big things. Sometimes it’s small. A lot of the time it’s maybe silly stuff. I once made a list of super long walks to go on, for example. Like Bangor to Belfast, and Belfast to Lisburn, and who even knows where from there? The world? Maybe.

Or, uh… maybe not.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that a lot of my ideas won’t pan out. Even the ones I embark on rarely go to plan, but that can be okay. Crazy misadventures are how memories are made. But also… being real? There’s honestly a lot to be said for staying wrapped in a blanket and drinking a cuppa tea. I know, I know. I sound so old and boring, but fuck it, let’s go for full honesty: life is hard, often exhausting, and so very expensive. You have to find joy in the little things. I know I’m not alone in learning that during our collective two years spent inside.

You know who didn’t really learn that, and I love her for it? My cousin.

In a lot of ways, my cousin is like me but turned up to eleven. She has more wacky ideas, more adventures, and by extension, more mishaps. Sometimes she invites me on her wild road trips and unplanned hikes. (Get in loser, we’re getting LOST!) Sometimes it’s not remotely practical to say yes to driving all the way to Galway at a moment’s notice, but sometimes… sometimes I do say yes.

“Let’s go to Dundrum,” she said to me recently. And I went, thinking all the while, “What the fuck is in Dundrum?”

Turns out, sand dunes. Lots and lots of sand dunes, in which we’d get lost and I’d get injured and, at several points, legitimately fear for my life as my dyspraxic ass tried to scale almost vertical slope after almost vertical slope as the ground shifted under my feet. It probably would have made an excellent, if ridiculous, YouTube video, if capturing the event wasn’t an extra level of stress on top of experiencing it first-hand––which it so would have been.

I love watching such videos. Sometimes I daydream about making them. Yes, they’d look great… assuming I did them right. But doing them right is actual legit hard work, and here we are back at my point about things being exhausting.

I’m not fifteen anymore. I’m not even twenty-five anymore. I can quite happily sit at home and listen to my cousin tell me of her latest near-death experience, or live vicariously through other people’s stunning videography.

So many things I’ve romanticised over the years: people and places and objects and experiences. But how much of it actually matters? That maybe sounds depressing, or defeatist. I’m not saying I’ve stopped wanting to do things. Not at all. But some things? Yes. I actually think that letting go of some dreams is freeing me up for other, better things.

Coming to peace with something isn’t about resignation, it’s about actual peace. Contentment.

Maybe at almost thirty-three, I’m finally learning to chill out.

I guess at this point in the post I should say what I’m actually saying and stop talking around the issue.

So.

I have let go of a dream. Not given up, as such, just realised that I was holding tight to this idea that I’d go back to college. To university. That I’d complete a bachelors degree, and a masters degree, and that I’d finally feel validated in my skills and education and life choices. Lord knows I’ve spoken of this deep desire to return to formal education several times on this blog over several years, but every time I read through syllabuses or yet another online prospectus I’m left with this sense of frustration. Restlessness. Dissatisfaction. This is almost what I want, I would think, but not quite. Over time, that ‘not quite’ mutated into ‘I don’t want this at all.’ Until I’ve finally landed in this place of knowing that I was in love with the idea of studying. Of sitting in visually impressive, grand old buildings, and graduating without a sense of impostor syndrome. Of feeling like I’d finally “fixed” the three years of my life that I so royally fucked up a decade ago.

And people have pointed out to me for almost as long that life doesn’t quite work like that. And I knew that, intellectually, but it didn’t make the feeling go away. Maybe it just had to happen naturally. Gradually. Whatever it was, I’m there now––the other side of the ridge, wondering why the hell I spent so long fantasising about something that was, at the end of the day, exactly that. A fantasy. Life isn’t a movie. Going back to uni wouldn’t be funny montages of goofing around the library at 3am, and drinking so much coffee my eyes pop out of my head, and coming out of all of it with straight A’s, or whatever. I don’t even like coffee.

And when it comes down to it, I don’t really want any of that stuff. Not the reality of it.

My current reality is that I have a husband, and a housemate, and a tiny dog, a job I love, a lot of dear friends, and many opportunities still ahead of me.

So, I’m leaving the sense of regret behind. It was kinda cramping my style, anyway.

Travel Awkwardness

This evening, I’ve been clearing out some paperwork from my home office. So much of what I found was so old, I’d forgotten ever writing it. Alongside my long-abandoned novel, and a partial script for a random radio play, and drafted children’s book, and doodles for a Christian colouring book were six loose pages.

Two of the loose pages outline a story I will share here next week, and the other four (titled ‘Travel Awkwardness’) form what I’m guessing was supposed to become a blog post. Well, today, I’m going to make that blog post a reality, because it’s (in my opinion) so cringingly funny I just have to share. Below, therefore, is a direct transcription.

I travel fairly regularly – not very far most of the time, but usually just enough that I require a small wheeled suitcase. Other than a suitcase, though, I travel alone, and this comes with a few issues that couples or groups would never experience. Like, when sitting in an airport for a few hours – waiting for a flight, obviously – a common thing to do is to read and/or help yourself to a caffeinated beverage. This is fairly standard, regardless of who you’re with (/not with), but the difference is what happens after this period of sitting but before the period of getting up to sit in a big metal bird: one goes to the bathroom.

Going to the bathroom is not as simple as it sounds, for people with other people. But people without other people have to pack up everything and head to the bathroom with it for fear that it will be stolen (by security guards more likely than actual thieves).

People with people (PWP) can leave their caffeinated beverage half drunk, their magazine open on their table, their suitcase and their toddler behind them for a few brief moments alone to freshen up because – joy of joys – they have a minder.* Meanwhile, I’m getting strange looks reflected in my direction from the lucky “look, free hands!” woman standing by the mirror, taking her sweet time to fix her already perfect hair as I try to squeeze both myself and my case round a tiny cubicle door only to find that, now I’m in, the door won’t shut because me/my suitcase are in the way. Needless to say – it takes some manoeuvring.

As the perfect-haired PWP resumes her coffee/magazine/parenthood I am now faced with the problem of releasing myself [from the space] I’ve just spent the last seven minutes trying to get into. Typically, when I do get out, I discover that – due to the plane being “delayed for unforeseen circumstances” – my pre-flight preparation piss was in vain, as I’ve suddenly got two more hours to kill and will therefore no doubt have to complete the process two more times (a side-effect of all those time-killing caffeinated beverages).

Just recently, I was in Dublin – on my own, of course – and an odd thing happened:

Snoring in toilet.

Unknowledgeable fart.

(Yes, that’s really how it ends.

*There’s an asterisk here in my original notes, but no corresponding footnote. Absolutely no idea what I had been planning to clarify or elaborate on at the end. I was so very good at this!)

SCBWI Con 2019: A Comedy of Errors

Sketch by Imogen Foxell

This past weekend was The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators annual British Isles conference. Having won one of SCBWI’s Margaret Carey scholarships, I got to attend with all expenses paid. And wow, was it one heck of an experience, even if it didn’t quite go to plan.

Having studied in England for University, I’ve travelled back and forth there a lot of times over the years and it was not uncommon at all for me to return with tales of a wacky adventure and/or a war wound. This past weekend was a bit of a return to that.

I should start by saying that, before I even left, I’d been sick for about a week. Really, really sick. To the degree that, I spent most of that week wondering if I was going to make it at all. But I pushed through, packed my bag, and got on a plane.

Minor inconvenience number one (aside from being sick): a short delay taking off. This in itself would barely be worth mentioning if it weren’t the first of many, many things that went awry. How many things can go awry in three days? WELL!

Things kinda started off on the back foot for another reason: I was going entirely broke. Our rent went out the day I set off, the very start of the month, which means our bank account was empty. Over empty, in fact. Even our overdraft was gone. (October was a hard month, you guys.) But anyways, this shouldn’t have been too much of a problem because of the ‘all expenses paid’ bit. My travel was free, my accommodation was free, and of course the conference fee itself was covered. What I also had was £5 on a gift card leftover from my birthday that should work in a long list of places. I double-checked the balance and the list of places before I left, and I planned to get myself a bottle of water in the airport WH Smith once I’d gotten through security. Sounds simple enough, right? Except it didn’t work. Of course it didn’t. The person at the till conjectured it was probably because an airport WH Smith probably doesn’t count as a normal WH Smith.

*deep breath* It was gonna be one of those days. Continue reading

DeptCon Adventures in Dublin

Last Friday and Saturday, I was in Dublin for the fifth annual DeptCon: Ireland’s Biggest Young Adult Book Convention.

It was super fun and I’m now, almost a week later, almost recovered. Let me give you a rundown:

I couldn’t sleep the night before. I tried but, like so many other nights, just couldn’t manage it. So I caught the 10.35am train from Belfast on thirty minutes rest, fueled by tea and enthusiasm.

On the journey down, I finished reading Savannah Brown’s poetry collection and started reading her novel. I had them with me anyway so I could get them signed.

Savannah is someone I’ve been watching on YouTube for years. I’ve been meaning to get to her books since they came out, so this was the perfect opportunity to bump them off my TBR.

Once arrived at Connolly Station, I made the forty-minute trek to my hotel. It was in the north of the city: somewhere I’d never stayed before, but I’d charted the route via Google Maps in advance and found it easily enough. I had just enough time to pick up my key and dump some things out of my heavy rucksack onto my comically sized bed (more on that later) before walking forty-minutes back into the centre of town for event registration and panel number one: Natália Gomes, Savannah Brown, and Connie Glynn. Continue reading

Holiday Update: Meeting James Marsters

Meeting James MarstersI used to travel all around the UK and Ireland a few times a year, catching trains, sleeping on people’s living room floors, and going to events.

I’d call the trips ‘Ellie Adventures’ and they would often involve missed connections, little money, very little sleep, and a hell of a lot of photos.

That craziness was great when I was in my early twenties. Not so much, these days. ‘Low Key’ is very much becoming the theme of my life, and I’m happy with that. I’ve settled down.

(Settling down sounds boring, when you’re young, but in truth? It’s relaxing. It’s bliss.)

Anyway, I got back yesterday evening from my first and only trip of 2016, and it was great. So good not to be going places on my own anymore!

My partner and I went to Wrexham for Wales Comic Con (via Manchester) mainly so I could meet my favorite actor: James Marsters. (See photo. I’m so happy!)

This is the life! #GoodTimes