99% of the time I have no interest whatsoever in sport. This changes for about two weeks in June, the Wimbledon fortnight and I get very excited indeed about tennis. I’ll have the BBC Sport news feed open all day on my work computer and random people from all over the office call the switchboard to simply ask the score/s of certain match/es. I even recall actually ‘borrowing’ a meeting room that had a television in to watch the Mahut and Isner match – and wasn’t that amazing?

This year, I seem to have been sucked into the French Open. I’ve been on the edge of my seat watching Andy Murray play. I had the video feed of his match against Chela playing most of the day – and of course was then complaining about how slow my computer was. Rather than turning it off though, what did I do? Simply stopped working for a while and enjoyed the tennis.
Yes, I’m a naughty girl but it’s not like my manager (and his manager) aren’t among those who use the ‘Megs Wimbledon Hotline’ on an annual basis.

My heart has however sunk with the realisation that Murray’s semi-final is going to be against Nadal. And oh how I’m looking forward to Federer vs Djokovic!
I’m genuinely not sure if I want a Nadal vs Federer or Nadal vs Djokovic final – I think either way is going to be amazing!
Tomorrow I’m looking forward to Li vs Sharapova.

I’m wondering if maybe I’m more of a tennis fan than I ever actually realised!

I was going to write a blog post about the concept of role models, something I’ve thought about for a while but then I looked at the date of my last entry and oh my, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s also been a long time since I’ve even been on the internet as well.

I don’t even have a good excuse… just… well, life, I suppose. I’ve been busy with work and school, and really the last thing I’ve wanted to do when I finally got time to relax was boot up my computer and do what felt like more of the same. As a result, I’ve done a lot of reading which is always good.

My plans for the second quarter is definitely to get back into blogging – both here and on my livejournal, as well as to continue working on book reviews and short stories… at least if I get a chance to. I’m also painfully, embarrassingly, far behind on all of the television shows I watch. I’ve seen very little of my friends. Just call me Megs The Hermit!

I did however get down to London last weekend to see Steve Carlson play at the Halfmoon Putney and can I just say that he completely blew me away. His CDs simply do not do him justice. He made mention of the show being recorded so I’m going to sit here with my fingers crossed for a full band live album. That would be incredible.

That’s really it from me.
So, how have you been?

I seem to have a huge pile of books to read gathered on the floor, piles of them in front of my bookcase. I dread to think how many of them there are. A good couple of hundred I’m sure. They’re taunting me. I’ve had very little time to read for pleasure lately and these books… I swear they know it and are multiplying. Or maybe I just need to keep clear of ebay, amazon and waterstone’s sales hah!

One thing I would like to accomplish this year is one of those 50 books challenges.. the 50 books in a year. Normally it wouldn’t seem such a daunting task, that’s less than a book a week. Maybe I should just worry about the first few weeks?
OK, the top of my pile consists of:
A. N. Roquelaure – The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy (yes technically this is 3 books!)
Stephen Donaldson – Against All Things Ending
Maria Landon – Daddy’s Little Earner
Michael Jecks – The Death Ship of Dartmouth
Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees – Come Together.
I aim to have read these – and posted reviews – by the end of February.

That certainly sounds doable… any one have a time turner I can borrow?

Kant said that we require three things by which to measure happiness: someone to love, something we like to do, and something to look forward to.

I’m not in a relationship so I don’t love anyone in a romantic sense. That’s not to say I don’t love people in a familial or platonic way. My friends and family are incredibly important to me. I also love my cat, Cookie, who is my constant companion when I’m home.
I know there are people who believe that I couldn’t possibly be happy without ‘someone to love’ but I don’t feel I’m missing anything in that respect.

One of the things I love doing the most is simply curling up on my couch with a good book and losing myself for a few hours. It’s something that in an ideal world I would do everyday but in reality only have chance to do 3-4 hours a week. Cookie usually curls up with me too.

I’m failing at having something to look forward to. I pretty much live in the today, I take each day at a time rather than wishing my life away waiting for something. You could say I look forward to tomorrow to see what it will bring.

I’ve always described myself as a ‘writer’ but as 2010 rolled into 2011 I’m starting to wonder if that’s really such an accurate description. Surely, in order to be a writer one must actually… write something. Writing is something I’ve done very little of over the last year. I know a lot of that is due to going back to school and having a lot of time taken up by studies. I was expecting my muse to still be telling me stories, to still be having lots and lots of ideas with no time to write but apparently this is not the case. I’ve not even been having ideas of things to write. I cannot remember a time since childhood that I’ve had no creative ideas. It’s quite distressing, actually.

I tried my hand at fanfiction but it all seems to be a very cliquey and sexually driven place that I’m not sure I belong in. I’m asexual so the focus on sex isn’t something I can understand.

But again, even with fanfiction, in order to write, you must have ideas. Which, as I just mentioned, I’m greatly lacking. I’ve looked at some of the prompting communities. I think I rather bit off more than I can chew with regards to the bingo cards and ended up writing nothing. No, I wrote one fanfiction and did have some wonderful reviews on it so that was nice. But I’ve had no more ideas. Possibly because I knew I’d taken on too much and didn’t know where to start. I’d like to find another one starting anew, for the new year, just take on the one challenge and see where that leads me. I’m not completely sure where to start but at least I know such communities exist on livejournal.

Ideally I’d like to get back to writing something every day, even if its just 100-250 words. I’ve looked at sites like 750words.com but the lack of ideas and this… big empty white space with a flashy cursor and that little note telling me I’ve written 0 words became a little daunting.

I know I’m probably overthinking this. I’m probably getting stressed over nothing and that is what is stopping me from writing. I used to be able to just open up Word and start typing and then I would have lost a couple of hours. I miss it. And I need to stop thinking about the past and start thinking not even about the future of my writing, but about the now of my writing. I was hoping that blogging about it might help me get it straight in my head but I seem to be chasing my own tail.

What I need is inspiration. Some kind of daily prompt to give my muse the proverbial kick up the backside. Preferably not sexually oriented like too many fandom livejournal communities tend to be. I liked the bingo card/prompting communities, although I do think that’s contradicting myself since its fandom and is therefore sexually oriented. But just something to make me think, to make me write.

I’m hesitant to make it a new years resolution because I’d be too nervous of breaking it, and therefore feeling like I’ve let myself down. But my aim for 2011 is definitely to get back into writing – whether its original or fanfiction – and to try to write something every day, even if its just 100 words.

If you know of any inspiration/prompting sites/communities that you think I would be able to make use of, please link me to them as it would be much appreciated. Thank you.