Hello readers,

No subscribers? How sad.

I returned to work to recieve immense support from my managers and the business team. They want to ensure I'm happy, like the rest of the staff. Tesco may be taking over the world right now, but perhaps that isn't such a bad thing, since they seem to have the right idea about how to treat people.

At my job we recieve weekly stats; these stats show our call productivity, the quality of the calls, and the times it takes us to resolve problems. Mine were fantastic, I'm proud. For the first time in my working life I feel proud of how I'm performing at my job. My team leader even wrote me a fucking thank you note - I thought this sort of thing was unheard of.

Customers and the general public are still sociopathtic bastards. I'm having to terminate a few calls now due to the abuse, which sucks.

In other Amii news my daddy bought me a bicycle! He wouldn't let me have the rad pink and silver one I wanted, but I got a great bike that I haven't stopped riding since I got it. I ride it to town, all the way down the Taff trail, by the river, to work, and I love it.

I was having a pleasent ride in Llandaff the first day I got it, glowing with glee and riding fast so the wind felt awesome, when all of a sudden this car screeched next to me with four guys in it and yelled out. I braked, smiled, and asked what they wanted. I couldn't understand what they were saying to me, at first I thought they were asking me a question, but they all kept laughing and laughing and saying more stuff that sounded pretty insulting. Then one of them threw a can out of the window at me and they sped off.

I wheeled home all slow then, it totally ruined my day.

The next day I took the bike through Bute Park and nearly ran over a squirrel. I broke hard and the squirrel just stood right in front of me staring, standing straight up the way they do all cute, and didn't move for like a minute before running off. It was so weird! I hope that squirrel is doing ok now; I felt we somehow connected at that moment, like both of us were just staring at eachother thinking 'Shit man, that was close, mind out'.

I've been finding drug baggies all over the floor, some at work and some on the way to work. One had a silhouette of a sexy lady in a provocative position on it and the other simply a marijuana leaf printed on it. I thought it was odd to see two in the same week. I also found a really, really old car key for a foriegn vehicle in the grass when I stopped to sit on a log during a bike ride. I felt compelled to keep it and I've decided I'm going to start collecting these things because there's something so fascinating about them. I can't work out what though.

The earthquake in China has terrified me; I've started getting that apocalypse feeling again. My best friend is in China right now and I can't get in touch with him. He hasn't been online in aes anyway, but I'm still very scared. I cried this morning at the thought he might be in trouble and I'm desperate for him to get in touch and just tell me he's ok. I'm devastated so many thousands of people are dead. Being naive I think that every time there's a natural disaster it's the last one that'll ever happen, but another one has happened and it scares me.

Even more worrying the news is reporting more about the Sex and the City premiere, fucks sake. I'm excited about the movie but come on BBC, put shit in perspective.

Fair play to the guy that poked a great white shark in the eye during an attack though, that's awesome. I wish I could say I fought off a shark, I'd be the coolest person I know then.

My writing has hit a serious slump. I have a book plan, but I can't get my first page right. I can't decide what tense to write in, should it be first person or third person?

I crave writing. I want it burst out like it used to, even when it was complete crap, but it isn't hapening. I feel self conscious about everything I write, as if I'm judging myself every word, as if if I write a bad sentence I'm a terrible person who will never succeed.

Lately I considered giving up, quitting telling people I'm a writer. I just can't do that though.

Now this is going to sound pretentious: I feel ike I have to be a writer. Ages ago I said his, I said it was like a calling, a vocation, like a priest or other religious leader has. Then later I read Paul Auster say the exact same thing. How can this sort of thing not confirm that I am a Paul Auster at heart? That writing is what I am simply meant to do? No matter how much of a struggle it is with my severe lack of self confidence I can't get the feeling out of my bones that I should be writing all the damn time. It's the only way I'm ever going to be happy and I know that.

If only I could start writing this book I have planned...and then keep writing. And write poetry and articles and, well, blogs. But I want to write them well. I know this isn't well written, it probably isn't even interesting, but I don't want to stop writing it, I just want to carry on writing.

I don't know whether creative writing courses at university will help. My brief experience with the course was merely depressing. Old lecturers with daft sounding novels that sell badly telling us not to bother trying to write a great novel when we're young because we need life experience. What has life experience done for them? They still aren't writing to a successful standard, and they are bitter.

One even told us, 'Young writers burn out; you don't want to be a one hit wonder, like Jack Kerouac or Harper Lee' - what writer would say that? What writer wouldn't KILL to write On The Road or To Kill a Mockingbird? Fucking ridiculous.

I think young people have plenty enough life experience to write great literature. Do they think we're blind and deaf until the age of 40? We see the world changing right now, scary shit happening, we have school days and family issues, young love and new experiences. If anything being young is the best time to write. It's so fresh, you can write to your own peer group without patronising them, your readers will relate, rather than a has been middle aged loser guessing at what it feels like to be living life at 22 in 2008.

No, fuck university courses. I want to join a writers' workshop, read stuff outloud and hear the bad stuff about what I'm doing wrong. I want to go to poetry slams and read the bad and the good poetry, and watch other people who have the same heart for it all.

This is my resolution, I'm going to change my life, fuck it all and just write whatever I feel like whenever I can.

Anyone else have any thoughts on the writing process, any blocks or struggles? Anyone else need to write to be happy?

Thanks to anyone who reads, it really makes me feel good. Notify me of your blogs, I'd love to be reading other people's thoughts and learn about their quirky lives.

I'm done,

Amii
xxxx