The Valentine’s Day Monotony

As I write this it’s Valentine’s Day. If you’re reading this on the day it actually hits my blog then it isn’t Valentine’s Day anymore because I’m intending to publish this post on Monday. Specifically Monday the 19th February. If you are reading this on Valentine’s Day then it is almost certainly not the same Valentine’s Day that I’m writing on. It’s most likely a Valentine’s Day in the future. Possibly Valentine’s Day 2019, but potentially a Valentine’s Day even further in the future than that, and you’ve more than likely come across this because some search engine has mistaken the fact that I’ve written the term Valentine’s Day eleven times (including the title) in this post as being an indication that this post is about Valentine’s Day.

Which it isn’t.

It’s just that today, February 14th, 2018, I have a reasonable amount of time to kill and I’m trying to get a little bit ahead with my blogging. Because I’m on something of a hot blogging streak at the moment. This will be my 112th post in 112 consecutive days and I’m rather keen to keep the momentum up. But equally, time is a rather precious commodity at the moment and I really don’t have enough of it to dedicate to producing a daily post of even dubious quality without sacrificing some other commitments. And many of those commitments relate to things I need to do for the institution that pays my wages, which in turn I use to pay my mortgage provider, who, as a result of receiving said payments, allows me to keep a rather shabby (and in very inclement weather, leaky) roof over my head. So I’m trying to make the most of those rare occasions when I do have a bit of time on my hands to produce as much content as possible, so that I can continue with the relatively futile and pointless goal of producing something new everyday. Because we all need something to aspire to and this, frankly, is all I’ve got.

And today I do have time on my hands because I’m waiting for someone to knock on my door and collect something. It’s like a kind of reverse delivery. Ironically I wrote about the frustrations of having to wait in all day for stuff in the form of a poem recently. It’s ironic because when I wrote that poem I wasn’t actually stuck at home waiting for something, I was stuck at work, meeting with the parents of the children I sometimes deign to teach (or, y’know, stand in front of and say things at) and I had time to kill between appointments. I thought a poem about a school’s parent’s evening might be a bit niche, so I changed the focus of the waiting to another frustrating waiting situation (am I revealing too much about my writing process here? Because that’s pretty much how I produce most of the rubbish that makes up this blog). Anyway, just a week on from writing that poem, it’s half term and on one of my precious days off  I am actually stuck at home.

Waiting.

But like I say, I’m waiting for someone to come and pick something up.

So after all the waiting I won’t even have a delivery to enjoy.

So far I’ve been waiting for seven hours. The window closes in another two.

Fortunately Mrs Proclaims bought me some rather nice salted-caramel chocolates for Valentine’s Day.

There aren’t many left at this point.

But if it wasn’t for this interminable waiting, I’d never have produced this.

Although after seven hours of sitting around with nothing else much to do but work on this piece, you’d imagine it would be better than it is.