charles barrow's writing

Some five years ago I blogged on here about a stressful time at work and how it was impacting my creative process, and my writing habit. Reading over that blog post this morning I easily remember the anxiety of that period, and how it bled into every area of my life. Anxiety and stress are like poisons that seep through the blood, affecting every part of the body, as well as the brain. The solution I found, back then, for my inability to write anything, was an eight minute daily exercise. I'd sit down each day and write for eight minutes. It would seem that hardly anything could be achieved in such a short amount of time, and if a daily word-count is all important then that might be true,  but beyond the matter of a word tally was the not inconsequential matter of confidence regained. Over time, an eight minute a day habit worked wonders for that. And I also found that those manageable eight minutes could easily stretch into ten, fifteen, twenty, often without any effort ...

I didn’t turn up here at all in July. I was absent from many things in July. The day job took a toll through June, and July saw the train come off the tracks. There was no multi-carriage pile up, thankfully, but many weeks have been spent in a siding while repair work has been carried out. But, enough of this train wreck analogy. My health took a nosedive. My physical health (a nasty chest infection) and my mental health too. Stress, anxiety, panic attacks. Not a good state of mind to take into a busy working environment, not that I had much choice in the matter, mind. So, I also took myself off to a doctor and asked to go back on medication, again. It’s been a few years since I had need to take anti-depressants and I seemed to be doing really well, but that’s the thing about mental health issues, they can ambush you at any time. It really doesn’t take much of a real-life issue to nudge you back over the line into illness. So I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to say, ‘That’s me fixed,...