Back in the usual groove

Sundays, ah, Sundays. That feels better. It's a particularly quiet Sunday here as small girl is at a sleepover and so I have been reading in bed and other exciting activities that small girls do not permit (most of the time). It's funny though...you want the peace but then as soon as they're gone you miss them. Well, I do and so does her Dad. We are a right pair of soft gits and I will never be a proper intellectual at this rate (thank god...it's always been one of my least favourite words...or maybe it would be truer to say I very often hate the way it is used...to draw a line between people, to make some people feel better and others less so).
I am still reading 'Primo Levi' by Ian Thomson. I have been reading it for ages. Why is that? Does it seem wrong to rush through a biography because it's someone's real, whole life? Is it because of the kind of life he had? Am I putting off the death at the end (which was a kind of suicide though from what I've read so far no one was 100% sure it was that or not). Suicide, suicide, everywhere you look. Some days I feel better about it, others I could cry all day (but that might just be hormones and again not very intellectual behaviour...unless you're Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath or...hang on, maybe it is intellectual behaviour...). Anyway, anyone who doesn't know, my Dad killed himself when I was 6. It does make things complicated.
Other complications...started sending off drafts of my book-to-be this week. I feel excited about it and still oddly confident. I know some people will hate it but I don't care, I really don't. Other people will love it and that will do for me.
Also I have a ticket for a StAnza event on Thursday but I'm feeling pretty hyper and not very intellectual and I find sitting politely and quietly at StAnza events hard work at the best of times (sweat, can't breathe, may scream out loud, may collapse and writhe on floor etc etc...if you've never had a panic attack, you have no idea what you're missing!). I even wrote about it once ('Poetry Festivals' on website, under 'Writing'). I may go. I may not. I hate wimping out of things but I can often come up with a good excuse for myself (very creative, you know). Shame though - I would like to see Adrian Mitchell and hear him talk. Maybe Colin Will will video it for me if I ask nicely...
It is annoying to still be panicky and weird at 41. I'd hoped it was a 30s phase and I'd have grown out of it by now. Still, it is better than it was and I can do some things that others can't. After big shows like last week's at Out of the Woods people always say 'you're so brave, there's no way I could stand up in front of all those people and talk and read poems and sing...you're so confident'. I just smile. What odd creatures we human beings are (and that's what I write about most of the time, I suppose).