mazohyst

I’ve picked up on this goal after ages of not doing anything about it. I have a trip to Japan coming up in November, and I have set myself the task of getting to a relatively acceptable level of conversational Japanese by then. I’m using a free program from byki.com – which has turned out to be unexpectedly good – and am hunting down reviews for audiobooks so that I can listen/learn while round the house, doing chores, or on journeys. So far it’s going well, and I’ve never felt more motivated about studying!

My sister came to visit last week. I laughed so much when spending time with her – the kind of laughter that brings tears to your eyes and makes your face and chest ache. I realised I hadn’t done that for months.

I have a collection of journals with the first few pages filled – the rest are blank. I made a resolution to buy a new one and stick to it, so I hunted down the perfect book and found a bargain on eBay. It has a handstitched Coptic binding and opens completely flat. The cover is the painting ‘Sunset Landscape’ by Ma Lin – very serene and beautiful. It arrived today.

I know I’m not going to write in it every day. (I am going to take it with me wherever I go, though, as a gentle nudge to write more often.) But I’ve realised what stopped me from doing anything in my other journals – invariably it was some mistake, or a page where my handwriting was sloppy. I was thinking too much about the look of them, and I was trying to make them perfect. When I ‘ruined’ one, I would pick up another. I’ve only just seen what I was doing, and with this journal there’ll be no pressure to write and certainly no pressure to write well. I think that will free me from this mental block.

I plan to write a collection of my favourite quotations and song lyrics inside the front cover, in black ink, with my old and trusty fountain pen. I am looking forward to using it.