This morning, when I woke, I decided that I should put on my wooly hat … the one with the flaps that cover my ears.  I wasn’t cold but my head was whirring with activity, a thousand thoughts of things I have to do crashing around, and I feared that if I didn’t cover my ears, they would seep out and be lost to me. Estoy loco!!  Crazy the ideas that momentarily fly through the noggin!

You will be glad to hear that I didn’t go out in the glorious April sunshine with a wooly hat adorning my head.  My daughters probably would not have let me past the front door anyway … thank god for small children to keep me from making a catastrophic fashion faux pas.  Instead I decided to go for a run.  Would normally have training with the most amazing bunch of people but, this keeps me out of the house until near 11:00am and as I could feel the panic rising in my stomach I opted for a run after dropping the kids to school – which generally means I’m back at the desk and good to go by 10:00am.

I just needed headspace.  Needed time to think of nothing but breathing and putting one foot in front of the other.  And as I jogged along the bog road, with the April sun warming my face, I felt at peace for the first time since my eyes opened this morning.  It always amazes me what happens when I run.  I spend the first five to ten minutes trying to breathe, wheezing like a geriatric enphaseema sufferer, and thinking about how bloody crap I am at running.  Then somewhere along the way I start to think about other things, sorting my day out in my head, planning a chapter or a story and I forget that I’m actually running.  The brain gets busy and the body automatically takes over and carries on.

For the past few days I’ve been thinking about writing a short story.  Need to get entering some writing competitions and get some of my stuff published.  Hard to do when you’re working on a novel and nothing else.  I’ve always shied away from short stories.  Not my strong point.  Or so I thought.  This morning, as my feet rose dust from the dirt bog road, a story took shape in my head.  By the time I had returned to the car I had a road map created, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  And as I write this I have five pages printed and a complete short story ready to be edited.  Will polish this up over the next day or two and enter it into the Frances McManus short story competition on RTE.  Sure why not!!! May as well give it a lash Jack!

Needless to say I’m buzzing at the moment, feeling accomplished.  It was worth taking a bit of time out this morning.  Worth getting the headspace.  And as you can see by the photo, there is no better or more beautiful place in the world to get the head sorted than here.

See y’all later.  Enjoy the sunshine wherever you are!

Deb x