Quantity of republishing

content/post/2018/03/finding-your-voice/index.markdown

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+title = "Finding your voice"
+description = "Yours and only yours to claim…"
+date = "2018-03-28"
+categories = ["life", "writing"]
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+
+I haven’t found my voice. I have, however, found *more of* it.
+
+I don’t often look back at my previous work. Partly because when I do all I see is flaws[1] but also because my views have changed so much. For a variety of reasons[4], my world has opened up in the past couple years.
+
+It’s more than that, though. My eyes haven’t just opened, so has my mouth. I’ve found a voice I never knew I had. Because now that I’ve found it I know that I’ve always had it. Buried, somewhere.
+
+I’m still finding it. My writing style is evolving with every piece I write. Most recently and most prominently is my mild-major obsession with footnotes. But also a half-conscious attempt to use less needlessly complex vocabulary.[5] After all, it is no good saying something if you can’t be understood…
+
+Medium has been a vital catalyst for that change, and I hope it continues to do so. And maybe one of these days I’ll get back to working on my novel[6]
+
+The point of my waxing lyrical about beginning to find my voice?
+
+An attempt to inspire you to do the same.
+
+Many of you here on Medium have already done so.
+
+But just as many, if not more, are just like me. In the process of finding their voice.[7]
+
+My voice which is mine and mine alone.
+
+Their voice that is theirs and theirs alone.
+
+Your voice which is yours alone.
+
+Speak out. Speak your mind. Nobody else will, because nobody else **can**.
+
+[1] This seems endemic to creative types[2] I wonder if there is a name for it…[3]
+
+[2] Hell, I still feel awkward labeling myself a ‘creative type’ and only do so because it seems technically correct. That and I’m increasingly discovering I’m not as much ‘logic type’ as previously thought.
+
+[3] ‘Being Human’, maybe…
+
+[4] A long and winding tale, filled with intrigue and deception. Glammed up and rammed into a sci-fi setting I could almost see myself writing it into a novel…I truly have been cursed to live in interesting times!
+
+[5] And just generally trying to take writing (and Life) just a little less bloody seriously!
+
+[6] That thing is perhaps the epitome of my changing voice — reading beginning to end is also reading chronologically across two years of my evolving style. Quite a ride…hence the heavy editing required!
+
+[7] Maybe we all are, always. Maybe those that look to me like they’ve found their voice have just honed the craft of finding it.
+
+  

content/post/2018/03/heres-to-the-twilight/index.markdown

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+title = "Here’s to the twilight times"
+date = "2018-03-20"
+categories = ["life"]
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+
+Many people love the summer. It’s heat and relaxation.
+
+I’m not one of them. The heat melts my brain thoroughly. I find myself unable to think, let alone do. Which is all well and good on holiday, but otherwise a pain. And *dear* *god* the hayfever from all of these goddamn plants. Cluttering up the place looking pretty and producing lifegiving oxygen…how dare they!
+
+Some people love winter. Crisp cold, and crisper snow.
+
+I’m not one of them. As someone who is not a patient traveller — if I have a destination in mind I like to be there quickly[1] — snow is irritating to infuriating. Plus it stops me from getting astride my motorcycle, and anything that does that *cannot* be good.
+
+And the cold. The cold seeps into my bones and I feel like I’m never warm all winter long.[2]
+
+So sod summer. And sod winter.
+
+Here’s to the twilight times. The springs, and the autumns.
+
+Spring is the thawing of the world. Fields of green rising from the frozen waste, phoenix-like.
+
+Autumn is the herald of winter. And herald it does, with sharp fireblossom colours of dying leaves that so sharply contrast the bleak white snows to come.
+
+Unlike Winter and Summer, Spring and Autumn have more in common than not. They are the blurred lines. A fading transition drawn out over months. Between Cold Dark and Bright Fire.
+
+Best of all, they don’t overstay their welcome.
+
+[1] If I don’t, that’s another matter entirely. Not all who wander are lost.
+
+[2] This may have something to do with having not heating at home for the past several years. Why? Because it isn’t quite cold enough for it to really *need[3] *to be fixed. Certainly cold enough to make me damn grumpy, though!
+
+[3] Need as in…if you don’t fix it you’re going to actually *freeze*
+
+