I feel fucking terrible about starting to write today. But I am taking myself through my emergency writing steps anyway. I have headphones and music, and two hours on the selfcontrol app started. the source of the terrible - having the feeling of Starting Work tomorrow and the pressure on the time, like everything is banked up behind the wall, and the pressure to attend to all that, a sense of anger from the other about what I haven't already done. A "WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE THE DISHES" feeling. Which is not trivial because it was threatening and constant and overrode my needs and preferences all the time. Or maybe not all the time but there was no negotiating? And what I needed was undefined, and no kind of priority at all.

Anyway, I am taking myself through these steps. have music, headphones, time will stretch. There are dreams.

Last night I dreamed I was in the water - the sea, a large bay, with Mum and Cathy. There's a really strong current sweeping us fast in a direction which may be beyond where we want to go. I think I've dreamed about this water & coastline before. There are multiple bays, islands, it's quite pleasant but there are the dangers of being in the water to negotiate. Swimming out of the current to the land. This was the plan, and I'm not sure if I have the strength, if this is too big an ask.

There's another section to the dream. Getting out of the water onto a pier, this place is Japanese, we are in a museum? A row of artefacts in the centre of a room. A very weathered beam - or is this the pier?

To be in the cultivation of a dream life, which is more important than the poetry. This feels like a really core piece of the puzzle. I want Martha to understand its importance. And in that, finishing this book is not the same significance. It is not INsignificant. It is just not the 'end' of all. And my accountability is not in having it published, but in developing this life.