Pressure: Who is responsible

Who puts the most pressure on you — yourself or others?

That would be me.  I’m doing it to myself right now.  Just one New Year Resolution, I said.  Bring that dormant blog back to life and this time, don’t just dive in and start messing with the widgets and the themes and the colours and the photographs … just write one thing every day.  So from 1 January, I took up the WordPress  Daily Prompt.  Swiftly followed by the WordPress Zero to Hero challenge (oops, this seems to have a lot of focus on the widgets and the themes and the colours). Then I spotted the  Weekly Photo Challenge – added to the to do list without further ado.  Mercifully, the themes suggested in the Weekly Writing Challenge so far this year haven’t really appealed to me.

Having decided I like the Daily Prompt, I thought “why not look around for another one like this?” and hey presto! NaBloPoMo presented itself.  Disappointingly, by the time I got to that point, the deadline to sign up for the January 2014 run had passed. But I’m doing it anyway.  So, 16 days into January I have committed myself to producing a minimum of 10 posts per day, Monday to Friday, executing the various tasks from Zero to Hero, and at least one photograph every week.

Alongside this I am currently brokering peace negotiations between two recently-arrived cats and three large dogs, which I described earlier this month in Daily Prompt: Beyond the Pale.  Each one of them has a blog of their own which weigh on my conscience while I busy myself with resurrecting this one. And then there is the other blog I started to deal with bits and pieces I do around my house and garden from time to time.  And the one devoted to mobile phone pictures. These have been relegated to weekends.  O yes, and the “central” one which I fancifully like to think pulls all the others together.  While I’m dealing with the writing, the painting and drawing are calling me, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to find the words “blog us” in their vocabulary. There are photographs that must be taken and sorted and edited.

All the animals need their individual moments of personal attention, every day. All three dogs are special needs animals, and those needs must be met.  I’ve a talent for making houseplants grow, and a weakness for accumulating more and more of them. Lately it’s orchids.   I keep losing count of the number of aquariums I have on the go.  I think I’ve got around 30 fish, I’m going to have to take a census soon – the planted tank I was cycling before populating it is currently home to two baby Orandas who hitched a lift on some new Amazon swords.

All of the above requires different combinations of attention, maintenance, knowledge, learning, practice, research and just plain cleaning. As a complete aside, I also work full time.  But the thing is, I chose to adopt the dogs , the cats and the fish.  I want the plants so  I continue to cultivate them.  I went out and bought the paint and canvas because I wanted to paint.  I’m looking at my favourite orchid right now and it is gorgeous.  When I look at the walls in my house, the paintings, good or bad, I don’t care, are mine and I loved every moment it took to make them.  The dogs are currently piled up round me while I type this, and the cats are having a ball chasing shadows up and down the stairs. The various fish are drifting gracefully about their respective aquariums.  So even if I did take a whole lot on, the net result is my own personal paradise.

Under Pressure – Queen – NaBloPoMo January 2014