This post made it past the censor, but only just barely and maybe only temporarily, we'll see...

The other evening I put up a blog posting entitled "Down", left it up overnight and then removed it in the morning. I just wasn't up for hearing responses to that one.

Having an audience is a double-edged sword, on the one hand it is most gratifying to know that someone out there is actually interested in the stuff I write, and on the other it makes me cautious about what I post, "what will people think?" So I self-censor a lot. But now, this self-censorship thing is getting in the way, shutting me up so to speak.

In the comments on my posting "Work" you have admired my energy, or at least remarked on its seeming excess for a woman of 61 years. That may be due to a misleading photograph, you may have assumed that I stacked that entire pile of firewood in a single hour, when in fact that pile represents many hours of work spread over the summer season.

The actual work accomplished for that blog posting was a single hour, comprising eight wheelbarrow loads of firewood, which was approximately 128 pieces of wood.

Give or take ;-)

After that one hour's work was completed, I was utterly wiped out---physically, mentally, emotionally---and that was the intended outcome of the exercise.

The energy for that work I explained in the blog posting "Down" which immediately followed "Lunch" and "Work", and which I subsequently removed but maybe shouldn't have since it might have explained things somewhat.

It's basically a neurological thing I think, a matter of being driven to expend energy RIGHT NOW, and hauling firewood was the most productive thing I could come up with at the moment, given that all of the things that I would like to be putting my energy into seem now to be BLOCKED in a BIG way.

A kind of railing against the Fates.

Those two postings (well three, including the one I recanted) were linked. Seeing and admiring the creative accomplishments of a neighbour, feeling huge frustration at my own "spinning" as Sheila identifies it (as in spinning one's wheels) and having to do something---anything---to silence the chaotic and very accusatory shouting in my head. And then the final posting in which I more or less named what was going on. More or less. Maybe less. Yeah, less.

So when I blog about stupid accomplishments like moving 128 pieces of wood from one pile to another, don't be impressed, it is only sheer frustration in action. Better to move stuff around senselessly than to sit there fuming, but not a lot better.

This is not productive because I am not even going to benefit from having all this firewood piled up in and around the house. And I seriously doubt anyone will, or if they do, they won't be particularly appreciative of the effort involved.

Instead they will wonder critically why the heck I didn't move the whole GD pile from point A to point B. Or put up a curtain. Or...

...never mind, it's quite a long list. The voices are shouting again.