The New Room

New Year's Day was a fuzzy one, like so many in recent months, where time just dissolved away to leave behind little of any consequence. I'm determined to have far fewer such days this year. I've been working towards declaring a truce with my demons and today marked the beginning of a ceasefire in my head. I'm going to stop the fighting and get them on board as friends, accepting that I can no longer do many of the things at which I once excelled. I can't do any detailed analysis. I can't solve complex problems. I can't spend long hours at the computer. I can't run up mountains. Those are all hard statements to make in such a blunt way. The fact is that both mind and body no longer work in the way they once did. I've lost the abilities that essentially defined me. I'm a different person. That's been a big adjustment to make.

Recent experience has demonstrated how much I love to write. Finding the right words often feels like getting blood out of a stone, and that's not to mention the tricky problem of then getting them in the right order! But I'm at peace now with that languid rate of flow. It doesn't matter if the words only come drip by drip, as long as I give myself the opportunity to work with whatever appears on the page. 

The good thing is that in parallel with my reasoning mind seizing up, so my creative mind seems to have been set free. I'm not short of ideas for things to write about. It's finding the application and focus that's difficult. 

Which brings me to this photograph, of the New Room at the Leeds Library, celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. You enter from a door on Commercial Road, bang in the middle of the shopping centre of Leeds, ascend a staircase, and enter a magical haven from all the hubbub of the modern world outside. It's a place of sanctuary and retreat and inspiration. Without the distractions of home, using just a notebook, I'm hoping to be able to find the application and focus that was so elusive last year. I'm hoping that here I will get the words to come more readily. And when they don't, there are at least a few books to read instead!