The last couple of weeks have been quite odd. These have been the first two weeks of the
summer holidays and they have highlighted a couple of aspects of my life now
that I’d never had to consider before.
The first week saw me and daughter together. It was lovely having all this time with her,
especially after having instigated a minimum time allowance for screens. She is something of a gaming enthusiast and I
fully understand and appreciate how she loses herself in these worlds she
creates and plays within. I was the same
when I was her age. The only difference
was that I was engrossed in my Airfix soldiers and she is playing her games
whilst staring at a screen.
My summer holidays, when I was her age – in fact any school
holidays/weekends (after some involvement in sport)/days off from school –
went: breakfast, a bit of TV and, after having been told to go out and do
something less boring instead, I would go upstairs and refight World Wars One
and Two – mainly Two. I would disappear
into my bedroom for the day. Sometimes
me and my cousin would take the battle out into the garden. That would be it. From start of the holidays to the finish,
with a two week break to go to Porthcawl…although I would always find room in
my bag for a few platoons and a tank.
It is exactly the same as her and her gaming. She is engrossed in worlds she builds and
interacts in or in combat and battles online.
She would spend all day doing this – she did for the first couple of
days of the holiday whilst I gave her her head and let her just come down from
quite a busy and involved term. Then I
told her she could only have a couple of hours a day on the machine.
She moaned.
Then she tried to irritate me into capitulation.
Then we started to go out and about and go for walks and
head to the park and stuff. Then she got
a hold of a book and pen and started doing some drawing and did a bit of
writing for her new school and stuff.
It’s been a good week. Lunch out
and about, or not. A quick in and out of
the library and stuff. Really
lovely. I’ve mentioned before that this
is the time where she’s still happy to hold hands as we walk down the road, or
not, it’s not a big thing but its not an embarrassing thing. She still laughs at the jokes and tries to be
appalled at my lameness but can’t help sniggering through the “Shut up!”
This week she is on holiday away. I’ve become quite lost without her.
I’m waking and doing all the routine stuff – the working ,
the exercise and that … still attempting to learn some German…Mein Deutsch ist
schlecht…sehr schlecht... and then I hit a wall.
I should be writing, prepping for work, reading. I’ve managed to proof one piece for a project
and read and sort of constructed a website for another project but I’ve lost
the drive, this week. The bit of why I’m doing it isn’t here and it’s knocked
me out of kilter. Silly really. I should be making the most of the time. This, for instance, has taken far too long to
write. Too many attempts. Too many days of thinking about it and not writing
anything. Instead I’ve been
procrastinating or prevaricating or, as it as described to me on Twitter today,
appsturbating (Thanks Bret Douglass). I’ve
been sitting in a morass of lethargy and I need to shake myself up.
I took the first step yesterday, Thursday. I got myself up and out and visited
Gloucester Cathedral. Beautiful. I managed to complete this. I have further website ideas in mind now and
shall be on to them tout and suite. Of
course, It is Friday today and so the week of daughter away comes to a
close. I’m back with her next week and
all this time will have gone away.
Ironic. In fact, there must be a
German word to describe it somewhere?
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