Keep your spirits up

I've been feeling despondent about work all day, because after last week's cold-hiatus I haven't been able to pull my concentration together all week, and then I started to get locked into that whole stupid mindset I have about how this is just typical of my inability to bring anything substantial to completion. Then I decided that panicking myself into a cycle of self-loathing was a really rubbish idea, and that often these periods of agitated downtime precede a burst of creativity, so I stopped trying to write the thing that manifestly didn't want to be written, and I wrote something different which was short but gave me some clarity about backstory.

Then I had a ham and tomato sandwich and listened to the Scissor Sisters tell me that while their hearts might well be cold and hard and petrified, everybody nevertheless wants the same thing which turns out to be love. Hurray! Then I put aside the current project and reread the chunk from the other project wot I wrote in the US last summer, and I decided it was an awful lot better than I remembered and might be quite good if it got finished. Then I went and had a shower and treated the bathroom to a medley of alto-range hits starting with Tippett's version of Deep River and ending, via a number of Aimee Mann songs, with Trouble in the Fields and Fairport's Come All Ye as an encore. Ah, the healing powers of ham, hot water and song. Next this evening: Jericho.