Stress, stress and more stress

Writing Under Stress

This is what I am doing at the moment, and no, I don’t mean writing when there’s a tight deadline approaching. Of course that can be very stressful, though some people thrive on the pressure.

My personal stress, writing this, is due to the fact that three days ago we moved house. We’ve downsized, from a large family house to a neat little bungalow. It’s something we’d talked about doing for a while, and the stamp duty holiday plus Covid forcing us to stay home, made this year seem like a good time to do it.

Moving is always stressful – our estate agent said the three most stressful life events are divorce, bereavement and moving house, and the third of these can easily lead to one of the other two! (He’s not wrong, though thankfully we both survived and are still married.)

I reckon having the builders in can also be pretty stressy. We decided we might as well get it all out of the way in one hit. We’d planned a number of small alterations to the bungalow, and booked a builder to start on them two days after moving – ie yesterday.

So I’m writing this surrounded by boxes, furniture that has not yet been reassembled, and behind me two (very nice, friendly) workmen are drilling and sawing and generally making lots of noise and mess with their power tools. I have no idea where anything is. Our duvet was eventually uncovered on the first night in a box marked Shoes.

Thankfully I do not currently have any writing deadlines – I think if I did, my head would explode. So other than knocking this piece out so I can fulfil my obligations on this blog, I have told myself if I write nothing until after Christmas that is OK. It’s permitted. It’s allowed. If I do manage to add to my work-in-progress, that’ll be a bonus.

And if the work on the house is all finished by Christmas, I will be one very happy writer!