Tight Spot

Now that the cavalry element have settled on the same property as The Goddess, they’ve been finding ways to make mischief. The Exmoor Mini in particular has provided entertainment (for me, at least; The Goddess, not so much) by having her own ideas about how things should be done. One of those things is the paddock to which she is allocated at any given time.

I totally understand her modus operandi:

1. arrive in new paddock with quiet excitement;
2. hoover up all easily grazeable (?) grass;
3. do a second, slower, pass of the paddock to eat remaining grass;
4. patiently find opportunities to look meaningfully at human captors;
5. when captors don’t bend to one’s will, wait for dark to make alternate arrangements;
6. greet captors from outside allocated paddock the following morning.

Most times, her alternate arrangements are awesomely worth it. (Luckily, there are enough fences and gates on the new Fortress Mamea lands that she can’t hurt herself.)

Some times, things don’t quite work out.

Same thing with my projects: some take off; some don’t.

I’m in the process of mothballing a project I’ve poured 250 hours* and a good amount of money into since late last year. I’m consoling myself that I’m mothballing it rather than scrubbing it: I’ll learn what I can from the circumstances of its being mothballed, and try again next year.

Meantime, I’ve got a couple of other projects — including Kingswood which has attracted some interest** — that I’ve been itching to get on with.

I can’t help thinking that if this had happened a few years back, all writing would have sulkily ceased, this blog would have gone black be very quiet (yet again), and The Goddess would be girding herself to smack some sense (yet again) into the sighing hairy blob in a corner of the keep***.

I daren’t suggest that I might be maturing in this writing gig. But tight spots like this are no longer the catastrophic failures they used to feel like. They’re 1). a learning opportunity, and 2). time to spend elsewhere.

* Damn straight I keep a worksheet of how I spend my time.

** I know! Actual outside-family-and-friends interest!

*** The Goddess doesn’t smack me about, not even figuratively. She’s pretty good like that.