At the end of a long and tiring day, my brain told me to turn off the TV and draw a duck. I know better than to argue with my brain, Reader - there would be no sleep until I had followed the inspiration. So I did. One day, I would like to illustrate my blog posts and newsletters consistently, with drawings that clearly communicate something, and are in a style that is recognisably mine. But for now, I am playing around, drawing animals, weather icons, and whatever else I feel like attempting....

Do you keep track of what you’ve done, not just what you need to do Reader? A to-done list…. or even a ta-dah list if you’re feeling exuberant. I’ve done it for short periods when my inner voice has been particularly savage and I needed to feel better about what I was doing with my time. But it hasn’t been a habit of mine. It felt like too much of a faff to do The Thing and then write down that I had done The Thing. A few weeks ago, Son#2 began attending a farm-based day centre as part of his...

Yesterday, as I was a couple of hours into working on a new tool I’m excited about, I started to feel Not Good, Reader My chest felt tight, so I took off my bra (even though it was more than five hours before bra-off-o-clock), but I still felt like my lungs were being crushed. Then I realised my tongue was rammed hard up against the roof of my mouth - just like it is when I’m really stressed. I was focusing so hard on the thing I was excited about, I was holding my breath. So I looked it up,...