The past few days have been bliss. For the first time since I've been ill, I've been able to sit in my garden and relax in the sun. I knew that having a private outdoor space would affect hugely the way I feel about the place I live, but this week has been the first time I've been able actually to experience what it's like. Even when the weather hasn't been good enough to be outside, having good views from my window - of my private courtyard at the back, and of the scrub land at the front, which no one else uses, so is effectively private - has given me a sense of living in a larger space than that contained by the four walls of my house, whereas the space outside my flat in London came to feel threatening more than anything else. Now that I can actually use the outside space, it has brought a whole new dimension to my experience of this house and environment.
Another thing which has brought me joy in the past week has been actually to do some creative writing, for the first time in a couple of years. Predictably, I've not gone back to that poetry book since posting about it a couple of weeks ago, but when I visited a friend with whom I frequently write last week, we shared some ideas for books, and started writing a couple of them. I've been writing the opening of his idea, and he mine, and we'll pass our work on to each other and build it up that way. As I said before, when I'm able to think creatively it makes me feel so much more energetic, and alive. It would be good for me to find ways in which I can do creative work more of the time; for example, since returning, my sleep hasn't been that good, and the tiredness I've felt has made me feel less able to be creative. If I could build up the habit of writing and creating even when feeling less like it, I'm sure I'd be able to write more of the time, and not just when I'm in tippy top shape.
Anyway, I've heard that we are due some snow at the weekend, so as the sun is out now, I'm going outside.
