There's a draft in here...

Except this is a short story, not a big book

This is exciting.  I have a draft, and it's now a revised draft that I'm happy to spread about.

I'm also happy to spread it about freely, because I'm fairly sure I'll be giving it away for free when I come to properly publish it via the proper publishing thing I'm looking at.  First one's always free, and if I can get more than 2 people to download it, I'll count that as a win.

Clicky link here for the revised draft.

It's just shy of 5k in terms of words.  I think that's not too shabby.  You can read it and leave it at that, and I'd really welcome some feedback, mostly on the whole 'doctor' 'Dr' issue that presented itself.

Of course, there's a back-story and a trail of inspiration which might give you a window on how my mind works these things out.  Read on below, with spoilers...

My head is not right (Old Blog)

All this will become clear

I haven't actually died, but I continue to get weirder and weirder.  My inner life is a very interesting place to be right now.

Quick roundup of news before we get down to business:

Work is little better, but progress is being made, slowly but surely, and it looks like the whole place is going down the toilet anyway, so my concerns of having a bright career future at such a fine organisation are dwindling.  My new manager is a cowbag.  My old manager is properly wonderful.  My emails are evil.

A friend who goes by the name of Joanna came to visit.  Good chats, potable beers and general positivity all round.

Christmas looms.  I mostly have all the presents.  It should be a good one.

Now, down to business.  This is a long one, and it ends up in a very troubling place.  It was quite hard to write all this, but it's even harder trying to live with it.  Bear with me if you can, but this post carries a severe Weirdness Warning.  Credit should go to my therapist, who is really fucking good, but the results of his inquiries are pretty much as follows:

My head is not right...

A bit of everything all at once (Old Blog)

Work-life balance, or something
along those lines

This post is a little bit of everything.  It's long and rambling and it has subheadings.  There's a long tract in the middle about personal stuff.  It's positive and upbeat, more or less, but if you're just looking for some nice pictures and a quick exploration of one of my occasional fetishes, then skip straight to the bit at the end, subheaded accordingly.

It's the start of a new year for me and my colleagues, and everything is happening all at once.  There's work stuff, family stuff, house stuff and Dad stuff.  There's also fear and work avoidance, but there's also success, focus and concentration, which is feeling pretty wonderful.

There have also been triggers which have failed to set me off on one of my habitual binges, which is a good thing, and finally there's been one thing I saw today that's worth a bit of a blog post about.  That's the bit at the end.

Sound good?  Read on!

My Women Thing (Old Blog)

I think it's fairly safe to say that I have a thing for women.

This particular post has been a long time in the making.  About a week, on and off, with large chunks of earlier drafts saved for later.  Helen Mirren and Victoria Coren will have to wait.  Fourth and final draft as follows.