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My recent free-spree from social media had been going really well right up until yesterday when I tried to pat myself on the back for dealing with my Twitter addiction then realised I couldn’t because my hands were gripping my phone,  facilitating my new addiction to YouTube.

In my defence, can I bring your attention to jiggly cakes, the captivating beauty of Fresian horses, Alexa Chung learning how to dress more Frenchly and watercolour artist Lena Gemzoe blowing my mind with her ability to turn smears of paint into a piece of art I would like to step into and set up a whole new life within?

I will do better.

I WILL DO BETTER.

A rare moment off YouTube, taking an afternoon walk up Calton Hill to share a winter-spiced coffee with the pooch. We nosied down at the new shopping mall in progress; a henge of cranes worship daily and nightly, making the most of their ephemeral moment in the Edinburgh skyline. 

Inbetween YouTube sprints, DIY this week has been all about our bedroom now the en-suite’s had a budget glow up. It’s kind of stupid to work on the bedroom at the moment as next year we’ll be adding a walk-in wardrobe, removing two built-in wardrobes (with ludicrously inaccessible space configurations) and losing a corner of the room to make a downstairs loo accessed from the hallway. It’ll be the last of the building work we’ll do in the house and it’s pretty pivotal to completing the new layout in a way that feels intuitive while also making the most of as many original features as possible.  So, lots of dust to come, but the room’s in such a tired state meantime I’ve started filling in plaster cracks and preparing the ceiling and walls for paint. There’s a lovely built-in shelved recess next to my side of the bed which we primed a few years ago to get rid of a horrible wood stain finish and I can bring that to glory now as it’s clear of the two sides of the room that’ll be changed. Just like when I repainted the hall a couple of months ago, I’m working on the bedroom one wall at a time; it’s more set-up and clean-up in the long run but short-term it cuts down disruption and allows for the ebb and flow of available time and energy.

Samples tried for the en-suite. Loved them all, ended up sticking to two greys and one dark green.

The next big tick off the things-to-do-in-the-house-makeover-list will be fitting the engineered oak flooring in the porch, kitchen and hallway. The boards arrive in about ten days, we managed to get the ones we were after with 50% off last month so I am beyond excited to see, stroke and smell them after all the years of saving, fantasising and not being very patient at all. I can’t quite believe we’re shortly going to be looking down on actual flooring rather than the patchwork of subfloors, carpet trimmings and rugs. Aesthetics aside, best of all will be the reduction in dust from the generous crawl space under the house which, thanks to essential ventilation panels, pumps miniscule historic debris into the house every time there’s a draught outside (and hello, it’s Edinburgh, there’s a draught outside twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four).

We’ve never laid flooring before so have been swotting up (on YouTube, natch) and bending joiner’s ears whenever we can about the tricks of the trade. We’ll start at the easiest section – the porch, then move into the kitchen and finish in the hallway with all it’s doorway challenges and half-hexagonal shape. That’s the plan anyway. If I’m no longer married in summer 2020 you’ll know the new flooring teamwork challenge was a push of optimism too far.

I usually listen to podcasts while DIYing but, again challenging my phone and 24/7 information addiction, I’ve been hitting Spotify hard for music only instead of podcasts and letting it do its rando playlist thing. I’m enjoying how that’s a source of stories from my imagination and memories that feel helpful and curious rather than heavy. I even walked home from the Post Office the other day listening to the soundtrack for a Broadway musical and trying to guess what it was – Groundhog Day, turns out, who knew? I hated the movie but the musical lyrics made me laugh and imagine all sorts.

Look what happens when I put down my phone/keyboard. I’m going to try a huge board before the end of the year too.

Workwise I’ve been contributing to the amazing WomenBeing network’s next step which is a magazine teaming with international content and grass-roots energy as well as being a love letter to practised feminism everywhere. Editing and reading the magazine pieces in advance of publishing has been a privilege that’s made me feel so much more connected to women around the world, reinvigorating my belief that change for the better is happening faster than we think, and that for many likeminded people feminism is a whole-life, whole-behaviour philosophy and even if we don’t get to be around each other every day, we’re connected in our intentions and deep efforts. As well as checking out WomenBeing, there’s brilliant stuff on related issues here on Gender and the Economy here, too. Well worth a read, especially if you, like me, are close to death by boredom in conversations about quotas with people who are change-resistant and stuck on repeat about what they don’t want to do because they’re comfy rather than changing the topic to working out how to make things comfy for everyone.

I’m lacking motivation for chasing and developing my own new writing stuff right now. I think this is a downside of not being on Twitter; I used to gather good momentum from watching what other people were saying or doing, chipping in and enjoying the energy and validation/challenge. The lack of all that has rather left me with my own ever-quietening echo which, creatively speaking, isn’t helpful for how I build up ideas of what’s next. The motivation problem is weighted by the fact my novel isn’t getting any bites from publishers or agents too, and the fact that I currently feel pretty meh about the Edinburgh literary scene generally, having seen a totally mind-boggling amount of weirdness in it during the last eighteen months. I have the feeling something’s brewing inside me though in terms of new material, and that I just have to let that develop and see what pops out one day. Meantime, there’s editing and painting and flooring and walking with the beautiful black dog. And maybe the odd bit of jiggly cake porn.

Otto, less of a dog, more of a lifestyle.