So, that's half term done again. The children are fast asleep in bed. They dread going back, though it seems, not as much as previous times.

This week was very good for me. I had planned to completely withdraw from the Internet for some days. I did not properly manage that (mainly for arranging things through Whatsapp, emails etc), but I reduced it so much that it had a significant effect, and the one that I wanted. Calming down from the anger caused by political news. Most amazingly, I might have now managed to step away from a conflict that I had found so hard to cope with. I will not argue anymore. I will accept that somebody has gone down a certain route, and the lesson to learn from that is that something is not right in such a way that sensible people begin to take drastic turns.

The thing I have noticed is that I can still get very distracted, even without the internet. The main distractions are books, and my own thoughts. One day the children were at a friend's house, and I had planned to tidy up, but then I spent virtually the whole day reading Carrie Fisher's "Postcards from the Edge". I had watched the film the previous night. The film is really an additional thing to the book, in the book the mum hardly appears at all while she is central to the film. - It was weird with that book. It took me back to the 80s, and to LA where I've never been. And above all, it took me into Carrie Fisher's mind and there were quite a few things I recognised while on the whole I am not very much like her, I certainly don't have her humor and wit. I feel it was kind of important to me to read that book, or to read the book and watch the film.

I continue to write in fragments, that is all I can do for now, and perhaps that's what I've been doing for most of my life. Starting and stopping.