All quiet on the Central Eastern front

The sunshine has come back to Prague!  Hurrah!  I have felt all the better for it, after a confusing and challenging whistlestop London visit where the weather was predictably dull.  I am so grateful for sunshine and warm weather these days, as though my life depends on it, as there seems to be a very quiet 'calm before the storm' theme developing in my life now that I'm back from the epic road trip.

I'm deliberating many things and trying to work out where to start.  First and foremost, I need responses to my ads for offering Skype meetings for anyone with a music career that needs bolstering.  Secondly, I'm trying to pitch article ideas to magazines and am getting stuck in a chicken and egg situation as to who to approach first where an interview is involved.  Thirdly, I'm wondering if I should sign this momentous publishing deal that would last twelve years (that's why it's momentous, not because of the money they're offering of course!) because if they sit on it and do nothing for twelve years, that's my music career well and truly finished and nailed in its coffin with a Black and Decker power drill.

I am imploring the universe like never before because something has GOT TO CHANGE and significantly so, because I have done the work of researching new things, taking new actions, freeing up time for new and better work and now, comes that deafening silence of the wait to see if this time it will be different.  Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual guru type, but not as annoying as some of the usual crowd, said,

"Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and can afford to wait without anxiety."

So I shall not worry and fret.  I shall take the steps I need to take and then switch off my insistent brain and do something I enjoy instead.  I am watching my world get smaller around me here in Prague, as my realisation that I cannot live here forever finally dawns on me, coupled with the realisation that I cannot return to London either and I stand alone in my little waiting room because I don't know what else is left to do.  I felt that emptiness and pang of being "cut-off" here again today and was going to (dangerous though it was) flick through a few magazines in the bookshop I always go to just to maybe cheer myself up, only to find that the magazine section no longer exists and the magazine racks have been simplified and put right behind the cashier desks now.  

So there will be no more taking magazines up to the cafe to read and then put back because I can't afford them.  It's like a strict school mistress has decreed this terribly naughty behaviour a nasty habit that must be eradicated.  I know I want to move to the next level and stop wasting money on overpriced imported magazines or magazine subscriptions that never arrive because of my remote and foreign address and get myself an iPad and a subscription to the online versions of my favourite publications, but I'm waiting to see if that can even be possible within this year.  Have I risked too much by whittling my accounts down to nothing due to going on this road trip?  Have I been too trusting that new actions will yield new results?

I honestly don't know the answers.  I don't feel anxious because I am sure that I have done the best I could, and I wouldn't have done things any differently given a second chance on the last few months' activities, but there is a sadness, a loneliness, indeed a questioning of my relevance to the world while in this waiting room-type silence.  I can only keep going and feel that sadness (instead of frantically trying to do something about it) and hope that something better really is just around the corner.

I'm back!

The routine has fallen out of this blog - of that I am acutely aware - but I am going through a whole host of changes and hope to bring that to this blog in due course, so for now, please accept my apologies and see this site as a 'site under re-construction' deal in the meantime.  It is not that I have lost interest in writing, rather that other interests and necessities (such as earning money) have been tugging at my shirt hem like a three year old needing urgent attention.  

First and foremost, I've been adjusting to being back in Prague, then had a flying visit to London which threw me in terms of climate and didn't help get me back to a sensible sleep pattern.  (Not to mention all this airport stress getting too much.  Though I got a rather nice kind of over-clothes-massage from the security woman in San Francisco.  She said I'd been randomly selected for it and it was, "My lucky day".  The architect stared at this potentially arousing intimate pat-down as she reached around my back to check I wasn't storing a bomb under my bra fastener and, when finished asked me, "did you enjoy that?!"  But most people are finding all these airport checks and restrictions less than amusing: see this )

And now Prague time beckons because all my meet-ees who didn't want to start back immediately due to a couple of Bank Holiday days here that meant everyone took time off, are now booked in and I am down to my last 500 crowns in all Christendom until I get paid and have thus taken to eating sweet corn out of a tin mixed with mayonnaise as my evening meal.  And I'm worn out from the trying to squeeze in an important couple of meetings while in London and slept longer this morning as a result.  So I'm still thrown as to what time zone I'm on and will somehow have to manage to get up and leave the house at 7.30am tomorrow for my first meeting!  Phew!

The good news is, there are positive things afoot, from the spectre of a bit of freelance writing (that will materialise, won't it?) to a possible music publishing deal which is waiting to be assessed by the MU that I've had to re-join in order to access their free "Contract advisory service" which could threaten to send me overdrawn if I don't get some Skype meet-ees in London or a substantial article payment in £s soon.  So I'm on the edge of the platform again financially, but the memory of San Francisco sunshine and palm trees is keeping me optimistic.  For now.

In the meantime, I hope to make the necessary changes to this blog in due course, as well as fill you in on the rest of the road trip experience as and when I can.  And when I get my new website page up and running, you'll be the first to know!  Just for now, I'll introduce the first change:  henceforth the architect shall be known as my cowboy, purely because of the acquisition of this hat:

I can't prove to you how brilliantly it suits him with a photo of him in the hat because it would break his anonymity, but take it from me, all who've seen him in it attest to the fact that he was surely born to be a cowboy!

Up, down, Up, down....

Ah writing...how I have missed you.  The soft and soothing attempts of scrolling through my brain for just the right match of word for my mood.  The hot coffee to help me wake up in order to land on that word landing strip.  The sense of wistful wallowing in a field of language.  Sumptuous, luxurious, WRITING.

Why is my life filled instead with sleep deprivation, planning and organising and generally STRUGGLING to get from one day to the next?  I have at least kept to the important things, namely doing aerobics, singing from time to time and earning MONEY.  But it's been up and down on the emotional front.  One day I'm feeling positive because new possibilities have opened up, the next there's some mini-crisis and all that hope is suddenly rendered very precariously positioned on a cliff-edge.  In those moments, the previous kick-ass attitude, endless energy, achievements and belief in a future I can look forward to, dissolve into an unfathomable grief, fear for the future, self-hatred and disgust.

One such illustrative example of which would be when the architect and I booked flights for a fabulous road trip from Chicago to San Francisco.  The spanner in the works came the day after booking them, that the architect's prospective new job, provisionally to start in May, fell through due to a Mafia-like stroke of corruption that I'm finding out is more than possible within government departments here in the Czech Republic.  He's now scared that if he gets an offer somewhere else, they won't let him put off starting until he gets back from the States and we'll have to cancel the trip altogether.  (Or even worse, he'll remain unemployed and have to start selling his possessions to be able to live...)I am resolutely ignoring this possible scenario and have fixed my mind on a picture I've got on my wall of the Golden Gate bridge.  I am going to stand on a beach overlooking that famous structure if it's the last thing I do!  The flights are booked, we are GOING!  I may even start my own Armistead Maupin type novel while there.  Y'know, why not?

[There've been lots of capitals so far - why is that?  I think I'm getting back my demanding inner child who wants what she wants and she won't take no for an answer.  (Waydda go inner child.  You are the future.) Fake it till you make it, right?]

What do I really want?  Hey people, it's LIST TIME AGAIN:

1) Paid writing work - come on, it IS possible

2) To travel, extensively and often so I can WRITE about it and meet curious new people who can inspire me

3) To be able to buy myself some new make-up and clothes, so I can try that thing of 'enjoying being in my own skin'.  Not least because I've got to do a photoshoot on Sunday to get new acting headshots and shots for my website that is in the early developing stages.  I'm currently scared that the photos will reveal how much the Czech Republic has aged me, like it does so cruelly to everyone here.  (I'm hoping it's down to their mindset and poor diet and am determined to overcome both.  Greek salad again today.  And salmon.  Yep, smoked salmon.  Living the high-life, eh?)

4) To earn enough to make progress with the language of this country.  I even forgot the past tense of 'write' earlier.  That either means I'm REALLY tired or REALLY stupid.  Not sure which.  Czech has the capacity to remind me of my stupidity on a regular basis and it bothers me.  Because if I really am stupid, why have I spent most of my life being ostracised for being too clever, too complex, too 'high maintenance'?!

5) Salmon - grilled salmon - once a week!

6) To go to NYC for Christmas.  I KNOW I could do it.  I know someone who usually goes back to the UK then and sublets her flat.  I just need the MONIES...

7) To be able to afford to get my hair done somewhere good and to have a soothing, relaxing massage. And to be able to afford to buy face masks and body scrubs to use to pamper myself with at home after doing aerobics.

8) Decent red wine.  Czech Republic, you know not the likes of this.  Nor would you appreciate that it's worth paying the extra money to have it instead of the cheap rubbish you sell instead.

9) A piano.  Just thought I'd throw that in there, nothing's impossible, right?

10) A holiday in Hawaii staying in a hotel room with a piano and being able to write songs and blog posts and poems all day long.  Peppered with walks on the beach and swimming in the sea in my 50s style swimsuit, of course.  [Now I'm really pushing it, right?]

So there we are, the ups and downs of a hopeless, hapless individual with delusions of grandeur.  But it's surely better to be in the gutter, looking up at the stars, than standing on the street looking long and hard into the gutter and wondering how long it'll be before the gutter is in fact your home.