ONCE UPON A DREAM; To Be An Adventuress...

When I was a girl I used to love reading adventure stories - those fabulous tales of mystery, intrigue and high thrills penned by Enid Blyton, would often cheer up a boring rainy afternoon.  I enjoyed these stories so much that my friends and I would go out and actively seek adventures, using the gift of imagination to supply the mysteries in our own back yard.  We even started our own secret society, thinking that this would bring new adventures our way.

Of course when you are young, every day can be an adventure, but as we get older, the adventures seem to be few and far between.  We become so focused on responsibility that we forget to make time for playfulness; we work our way through a to-do list, when we should be working our way through a bucket list.

In recent months I have been pondering on my current attitude towards adventures and I have come to the conclusion that I have been avoiding them, when once I used to seek them out.  As we get older we become more risk averse so we need to really push ourselves beyond our comfort zone.  Suffering from disappointments and trauma can also make people less inclined to put themselves out there, preferring to cocoon themselves away as a kind of self-preservation strategy.  It works too, but a safe life is also a small life and before you know it you're feeling hemmed in and trapped, rather than cosy and cocooned.

That has certainly been the case with me in recent months and I am just beginning to chip away at the cocoon and think about stretching my wings once more.  I think part of the problem is that my perception of an adventure is huge - I dream big - and then decline accordingly! 

When I think of an Adventuress I call to mind images of the glamorous wing walkers, dancing on the wings of an aeroplane;  or of the women who were spies during the war, such as Mata Hari who was killed by firing squad; or the Suffragettes marching shoulder to shoulder to change the world and being imprisoned and force fed.  It's little surprise then, that I have been habitually turning away from adventures, when I hold such high expectations/risk assessments in my mind! I need to adjust my associations.

But what about the other, everyday adventures?  To someone who has just been widowed, booking their first solo holiday is an adventure; to the veteran soldier living with a life changing injury a trip to a public gym is an adventure, not to mention an act of tremendous courage.  To someone who has had an operation, removing the bandages and looking in the mirror is a brave thing to do. To the heartbroken, just smiling at a new possibility can seem like a high risk adventure, with no safety net.  These smaller, everyday adventures are no less important or valid, for without them we are not living, merely existing.

I have also realised that I am missing part of the equation.  My own spirit of adventure is triggered by my competitive side, which in turn is triggered by a male presence.  Growing up with an older brother and no sisters meant that I constantly had to prove myself; that I could do what he did; that I could catch up and keep up; that I could pull a wheelie on my bike, climb a tree, a rope, a drainpipe (!); and that I could go one better and do things he couldn't do i.e ride and jump horses.   

The things we are exposed to as children stay with us and inform who we are as adults, which means that I still respond to a male presence when it comes to being adventurous.  In fact, I need it. Some of the best riding I've ever done was at Leeds Armouries when I had the chance to joust against their First Knight - of course I hit him - three times!  He hit me too, but I kept my seat in the saddle, refusing to let him win and I loved every minute of it. 

The competitive spirit was my driving force, because I was riding against a man and I had to prove myself.  The same thing happened when I used to hack out in the woods with a man who was an equestrian trick rider and circus skills instructor - I rode beside him like I belonged there, un-phased by all his tricks, refusing to be impressed by him - except that I was, secretly quite impressed. It made me a braver, bolder rider - if a little reckless at times during our wild gallops through the mud!

Without this male presence to pull my Adventuress trigger, I am less inclined to push myself physically.  Without a male playmate to compete against, I turn to my Jane Austen side, pick up a book or my tapestry, and settle in for some girl time.  In short, I retreat into the safety of my shell and become the Indoor Girl.  This is no bad thing, but too much of a good thing can get you into a bit of a rut. 

Which basically means that I need to stop seeing men as the enemy or I'm never going to have any new adventures!  I need to start seeing them as valuable playmates instead; pals who can push me to push myself, like my brother used to do.  I need to start looking for male instructors to teach me the things I still want to learn ; sword fighting, motorbike riding, archery, rock climbing and more self-defence etc, so that I get the trigger I need from the professional presence of the instructor.  That way I can enjoy all the thrills of being a bold Adventuress and return safe home to more ladylike pass-times once the lesson is over. Genius plan, if I do say so myself.  What adventures are you planning this summer?

ONCE UPON A DREAM; Soldier On

Safe and Sound - even though the sweet music's gone, the protection will continue. 

It is 3.30pm on a Monday afternoon and I am fighting a bad cold, curled up with my laptop and a box of tissues and procrastinating my final essay.   I have psychotherapy books all around me and I am looking for quotations to include in the essay - so I am still working on it - just very gently!

For the past few nights I have been dreaming of my soldiers and I can't seem to shake the feeling that they might be needing a bit of a magical boost, so for the past few days I have been casting protection spells to keep them safe and sound.  There are currently spell candles flickering around me as I type - shining a little bit of love and light into a dangerous world.   I have been having a break from casting due to the fact that I am so tired from my course, but I do listen to my instincts and follow my intuition.  

I love this Taylor Swift song above - it always reminds me of the things we would do to protect a loved one and keep them safe. The video makes me think of the Bronte sisters too, wandering the moors and woods of Yorkshire, dreaming up their novels and anti-heroes.   It suits my mood today, as I work and worry at the same time, but I have deadlines to meet so I have to get back to work now. Enjoy the music and stay safe - love to you all x

ONCE UPON A DREAM; End Of Academic Year!

It is quite late at night and I have just come home from the last class of the 2015/16 academic year.   Tomorrow I am going out for a celebratory meal to mark this milestone in my training, as I am now three quarters of the way through the diploma, with just one more year to go.

Although there is still some work to do, in the form of an end of year essay to be turned in mid-July, right now I am in a reflective mood and I wanted to mark this night with a blog post - and a glass of red wine!   It has been quite a challenging year of studying.  This higher level of the course has meant a deeper level of intensity and a new task-master tutor.  We have had to develop our professional persona as psychotherapists, prior to going on clinical placements and working to achieve our clinical hours.  Last week I passed my Fitness to Practice test, which was another milestone and another step forward in my training.  This means I am now competent and professional enough to be let loose on the public as a psychotherapy counsellor.

After three years of training we are now on the same level as a Registered General Nurse, in terms of how much studying and training we have under our belts and if I had chosen to spend the last three years doing nurse training instead, I would be qualifying this year.  Come September we shall be moving up another level and progressing into further studying and even more training, alongside clinical placements, so it will be even harder.   I am starting to see why counsellors like to tell people that they are on the same level as a doctor - I don't personally feel that way myself, but maybe I shall after another year of study.

As the academic year has drawn to a close I have frequently compared it to finishing a big creative project.  I have all the same feelings that I usually get when I have been writing a book for months on end and I have just turned it into my editor; or when I had sung myself hoarse, to the point where I literally lost my voice completely, as I wrote and recorded my album Moon Chants.  The feelings of elation, relief and fatigue are exactly the same.   I am mentally exhausted and physically drained.  

As always happens when I reach the end of a big project and a prolonged period of creative work, I can feel a bad cold coming on.  It happens like clockwork - as soon as I have some down time, I go down with a cold - it's like the germs have been waiting for me to sit down long enough to catch me.  I think it is my body's way of making sure I get the rest I need.  And I do need it!  My thyroid illness makes everything about ten times more difficult and it has been screaming at me for the past few weeks that I need to take things easy for a bit, but I just haven't been free to do so.

All that changes from tomorrow!  After a celebratory meal out, I can spend my days working quietly at home on my essay and my writing projects.  My psychotherapy feature ideas continue to be commissioned so I am thrilled by that and I love writing on my new subject of expertise.  Beyond that I plan to read lots of novels, work on my tapestry, practice my piano, get out into the garden and the countryside and generally catch up with all the lovely aspects of my life that have had to be put on hold to make way for study time.  

I'm going to enjoy a nice long summer break of gentle activities, fun outings and of course, my writing work.  No more classes; no more homework; no more course stress for the next two months...just relaxation and recharging my batteries, ready for the last big push of my final year come September.  But that's too far in the future for me to think about.  I'm currently looking forward to long, lazy summer days, reading in the garden, taking country drives and generally recuperating from academic anxieties!  

For the remainder of tonight I plan to curl up under the duvet and watch rubbish TV in bed.  It has been a long and rewarding year of academic study.  I feel a sense of achievement now that I have come to the end of it, but right now I just need to start getting some rest.  Goodnight Moon :-)

WRITER'S DREAM; Pretty Words That Fly

Being a writer is...

... hatching out pretty words that fly off the page like birds so they can roost in the minds of your readers.

ONCE UPON A DREAM; Technical Problems

I never thought I'd be one to love technology but when my beloved laptop died a death late on Wednesday night, I was gutted.  I've had it about 10 years so it was certainly past its prime, but it has served me so well over the years that I was really sorry to see it go - not least because I thought I'd lost a lot of my work.

It was much like that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie Bradshaw loses her laptop to a nasty virus and she says "My whole life was on that computer!"  - I can relate.  I had a good ten years work on that laptop - and not all of it was backed up.  I thought some things were lost forever, but fortunately, the clever people at PC World can extract the lost documents from the hard-drive of the deceased computer and give them back to me on a USB stick - so all is not lost.

And now I have a brand new laptop! It is a very pretty shade of purple - it reminds me of Victoria Plum and love it.  I've had it for less than 24 hours and already I have synced it with all my social media accounts, my three email accounts, my college website and Google Classroom accounts.  So I'm feeling quite proud of myself for that - I've not done too bad for a technophobe. I have a brand new internet connection too, which should improve speed.

Of course I do have to get to grips with the new laptop as soon as possible because I have writing deadlines to meet and my final essay of this academic year to write as well.   Just because my old computer broke doesn't mean that I can miss the deadline for my column etc.  So it was essential that I got a new laptop and got it up and running immediately.   There are still one or two teething issues - namely with the email, so bear with me if you are trying to contact me in the next week or so, as I find my way around the new program.  

But all in all, I'm thrilled with my new computer.  It's such a pretty shade of purple and it makes me smile just to look at it. The keyboard is beautifully soft and quiet - that was one of my criteria; I hate clicky-clacky keyboards, they drive me nuts!  This keyboard is virtually silent and very soft to work on for long periods of time.

Best of all, it has automatic back up to Cloud storage, so I will never lose my work again, which is a relief.   I feel very grateful to have this purple laptop, it's just so pretty and a pleasure to work on.

I suppose the moral of this blog post is that you really should back up your work in some way, as regularly as possible.  And don't use a laptop until it drops - with mine there was no real warning - it worked fine at 5pm, but by 11pm it had crashed beyond repair.  My Mum likened it to a heart-attack - there one minute and gone the next!  It was just like that.  It had been making a strange noise - like wheezing, but no other signs that it was about to crash and die. 

So do back up your work and upgrade when you can, before your laptop gets too old.  You just never know when technologies time is up - and you wouldn't want to lose a potential best-seller! 

WRITER'S DREAM; Spinning Straw into Gold

Once upon a time...

When I was initially published, some past acquaintances used to say that I had 'the Midas touch' - meaning that although everything I touched seemed to turn to gold, there were no long term prospects in it and it would all come to no good end eventually - like a flash in the pan.

Of course, I didn't and still don't have the Midas touch and I have had plenty of false starts and disappointments along the way to publication, but once I was offered an initial contract with a publishing house things did start to happen very quickly for me and I was kept very busy with one project or another. 

To those on the outside it probably looked a lot like the Midas touch, as one book led to another, to another...then the magazines came calling; then a pagan recording label; then I was offered a column...and so it goes on.  Was there magic afoot? Absolutely and I have made no secret of the fact that I tend to Cast for book contracts and publishing opportunities to come my way. 

I also happened to be in the right place at the right time, in that I was offering Wiccan proposals right when the witch-craze of the Mind, Body and Spirit genre was starting to take off, so I was fortunate enough to get to drive one of its brand new band-wagons.  Of course by the time the aspiring writer realizes that there is such a publishing band-wagon and tries desperately to scramble aboard, it is always too late - the band-wagon already has a driver and the publishing industry is busy building the next wagon and a whole new trend!  This is why it pays for an author to have more than one publisher and several outlets for their work.

Personally I think that being is writer is more like Rumpelstiltskin than King Midas, in that writers are effectively spinning straw into gold.  We take something as mundane as a moment in time when the spark of an idea flashes through the mind, as flimsy as a piece of straw...and then we spin it out into a theme, a concept, a synopsis.  We keep spinning and spinning, everyday, hour after hour, until the straw turns into the gold of poetry, song lyrics, a book, a column or whatever the author can dream into being.

Spin well enough and eventually the gold starts to come back in the form of publishing advances, freelance fees and royalties - that is when the straw really does turn into gold!  It's the kind of gold you can live off too, for this is no fairytale and bills must be paid.

Spinning words is like an act of alchemy - you can take anything that has had an effect on you, good or bad, and spin it into your work as an author.  This means that if you have a fantastic date, or a ticking off from the boss, a romantic let-down, a spat with a frenemy, an tender encounter...you can use the event as the fuel of inspiration and spin it into the gold of your writing. In this sense, every moment is precious straw for your imagination to rework in the spinning and inspiration is all around you, every single day. It's all raw material. Just add talent. 

Eventually what you spin will come back as the gold of money which effectively means that the row you had with your friend or neighbour last week could well pay for your next holiday!  
Not a bad job, is it? 
Happy Spinning...

ONCE UPON A DREAM; Counting Blessings

It is a lovely springtime evening and as I settle down to write this blog post I am counting my blessings. Next week is half term and I am in the final few weeks of the penultimate year of my psychotherapy diploma, which finishes at the end of June.  Come September I will have begun the very final year of my training and by this time next year I should hopefully be making preparations to take on a new role as a qualified psychotherapy counsellor.

It's an exciting prospect and sometimes it still feels very surreal. Just three years ago I had only just thought about doing an academic night class - and now here I am, in the last stretch of this semester and looking towards my final year of training.  I am also looking forward to the end of studying for a time - it is possible that I will resume further training a year or so after qualification, but I do feel that I need to take some time out for myself before I embark on further study. By then I will have been studying for four years, so I will have earned the break.

It is a strange thing, reinventing yourself...it can be fun and exciting, but there are also moments of doubt and wondering if what you have embarked upon is really going to be worth it in the end.  I have had quite a few of these doubts over the last three years and it hasn't always been easy to trust that the universe has my back covered.  But its the little things that tend to prove we are on the right path and there have been many instances of serendipity that have helped to smooth out the path before me.

As an example; by the next academic year, the course I am currently studying will no longer be offered as a night class in my home town.  It will be amalgamated with higher levels and offered as a part time 3 days a week study course.  When I started at level 1, the level 4 I'm now on wasn't offered locally at all and I was faced with having to take a train out to Leeds or Manchester to complete the diploma. Level 4 was only offered as a local night class from last September, right when I was ready for it, having passed my level 3 last summer - which means that I have been very, very lucky...I have fallen through a window of opportunity which has only been open for a very brief time; just long enough for me to enroll and qualify, in fact.  I feel extremely grateful for this twist of fate, which has certainly been in my favour.  That's serendipity for you.

In addition, as part of our course we have to undertake so many hours of personal counselling, which is expensive and costs hundreds of pounds. But almost as soon as I had arranged my first private counselling session, I received a commission to write a new feature from an editor who had put a freeze on all commissions for the past two years.  Yet suddenly she was back in a position to offer me writing work, which helps to pay for the extra training expenses. Serendipity again.  Take the leap of faith and trust the universe to provide.

Other things have also made me think that I was meant to do this course.  The lovely counsellor I am seeing is a subscriber to Spirit&Destiny magazine and she is familiar with my column and books etc, though we didn't know that when I first booked a session.  The building where she has based her practice is now the local village business center, but it used to be my step-dad's pub and my mum's old kitchen is now the therapy room!  Its uncanny!

It's a building where I have lots of history and a place in which I feel completely at home.  Even better, I have recently been offered rental space there should I choose to set up my own private psychotherapy practice once I'm qualified! Again, its a fortunate twist of fate and serendipity at work...opening the door and giving me a glimpse into my future as a private psychotherapist with my very own practice. 

In my final year I have to go out on placement for one half day a week and I had been told how difficult it is to find one, but the very first organisation I contacted has said I can start with them as soon as I feel ready.  So I could well be on placement with SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association) come September, helping soldiers  and working with the Military as I planned.  I am also looking for a second placement in a more general setting and I have no doubt that I will find something local and suitable, without too many problems.

Oh, and the new feature commissions that have recently been rolling in - they are of a self-help psychotherapy nature in content, so my training is feeding my writing, which in turn feeds my training expenses, just as I hoped it would back in 2013 when I started Level 1. The seeds I planted back then are starting to bear fruit and I am enjoying the abundance.

It is all being presented to me on a silver platter... like magic.  All I have to do, is show up and be ready to receive with an attitude of gratitude. The Serendipity Fairy is casting her wand over my life and I could not be happier with how things are going right now.   My writing career is enhanced by my new academic knowledge and is funding the psychotherapy training; my editors are loving this new string to my writer's bow and I am enjoy the challenge of writing something totally different, fresh and exciting.  It has been a series of magical moments; of becoming more aware of those convenient coincidences and being grateful for them. 

I hope this post has helped you to become more aware of serendipity at work in your own life...because giving thanks for magical moments of fate as you go about your day will in turn give you more blessings to count each night.  Whatever career path you are on, or wish to be on, have faith and trust that it will work out for you... Blessed be.