I went out for meal last night – Steak and Ale Pie at a local pub. Since I last had it either the portions have grown larger or my capacity for food has ben reduced. I’m hoping, after over a month of losing weight, it is the latter. I hve to get my portion size down, it’s the only way to do it. Experiences like last night are worrying, because it’s an example of how you cn start eating too much again.
Newstead Abbey Again
Work was dull in parts, interesting in others. I ate my sandwiches far too early. This has always been the case. When I worked on farms I ate at lunchtime but as soon as I had a job driving between farms to do blood tests and monitoring I started eating my sandwiches about half an hour after leaving home.
I had an email last night, two tanka accepted to go with the tanka prose I previously had accepted. Some editors are very quick. One of the others tells me they don’t send out rejections, but if you haven’t heard from them within 12 weeks you can assume it’s safe to send the poems to other people. This isn’t satisfactory and I don’t usually submit to editors with similar policies, but I fancied a change this month.
For January I sent out 11 submissions. I missed one out because they wanted poems to a theme I didn’t feel like writing and two because they were competitions and I’m not altogether in favour of competitions. You tie up the poems for months, pay for the privilege, and then when you read the winning entries you wonder what idiot picked them. Sometimes I optimistically enter a competition but am usually brought down to earth when I read the results.
Next month I just have five. I may look for a few more, or I may just take a rest.
Newstead Abbey again
Thanks to Julia for the photos again.
Congratulations on the tanka acceptances, Simon. I am also not fond of subjective competitions.
I enjoyed Julia’s photos, too.
She is warming to the role of official photographer. She took a good one today which I will be using. 🙂
Eating is habit. I struggled to eat all of a good cafe meal for my lunch today which I would have had no trouble in polishing off in the evening. I am sure that the best way to lose weight is portion control, a very little less at a time.
You are scoring well on acceptances. Perhaps being ill has helped a bit. I always found it very hard to write creatively if I was happy.
Yes to habit – good habits are key to ll good things in life. I must keep telling myself “smaller”.
I found that being ill for the last few months wiped out a lot of writing time but as I recovered there were times when I felt relaxed and well rested, and wrote well.
Mood is tricky – a degree of dissatisfaction works well for me, but real unhappiness often puts a stop to inspiration. If I’m too happy I turn to Limericks and my credibility as a poet cannot survive Limericks. 🙂
Good news on acceptances. I hate all competitions that rely on subjective judgement. Stick with the smaller portions and eventually you won’t be able to eat bigger ones
Yes, I’m determined to stick with it this time as I need to relieve the strain on my joints. Acceptances are always good. I have mainly cured myself of entering competitions. 🙂
I really like the top photo. It reminds me of your poetry.
Alas, it is all too easy to go back to eating too much.
Yes. Julia’s photo is quite stunning.