Pottery & Poetry & Life
Writing 2026
Lydia and I had a quiet walk this morning.
After we had both breakfasted, I set about cleaning the bathroom. The steam cleaner helps a lot, and I made a concerted effort to do a good job.
It did look a lot better when I’d finished.
Being cold outside today, it’s been good to stay in the house, although the boiler seems to have packed up, and I’m definitely not going to opt for a cold shower!
Writing into Life, more
I woke this morning to the sound of heavy shredding. Contractors next door were clearing the house of ivy and putting it through a machine. I could almost hear the walls of the house breathe a sigh of relief, as they were exposed to fresh air and sunshine for the first time in years.
Ivy can look attractive – I have set some to grow up and around the front wall and railings of our house – but it needs to be cut back heavily and regularly, otherwise it just takes over.
With my cold still working its way through, I took Lydia for a shorter walk this morning than we usually do, then headed back to bed.
She didn’t seem to mind the shorter walk – she’s such a treasure – and came up to join me in the bedroom, so we’ve both just snoozed and rested on what is, outside, a grey damp day. Fortunate then, to be warm and comfortable at home with nothing much to do other than boil up some chicken bones to make stock for soup that Trev is going to be making later.
Tomorrow I will be more active; today I’m not.
Writing into Life
Lydia loves her home; our home.
I’ve noticed how her confidence has increased, particularly over this last summer when she makes decisions about what she wants to do and when she wants to do it. The back door is open most of the time, and she comes and goes as she pleases, within the confines of our garden.
While I continue to train her and manage her behaviour around reactivity, reinforcing basic commands such as “sit”, “wait”, “down”, “stay” and “heel”, I like the fact that she works things out for herself, and we sometimes have a compromise. For example, if she’s outside barking at birds or other dogs or motorbikes going by, and I use the “here” command to bring her in, she will often come towards me but then settle down quietly, still outside but near the door. I think this is really clever. She gets what she wants – to stay outside – and I get what I want – for her to be quiet and not disturb the neighbours. I like the fact that we can come to an understanding about this arrangement between us, me using my language and she using hers.
Some people may say that I shouldn’t let her get her own way like this, that I need to be ‘top dog’ but I’ve read that the ‘alpha’ principle that used to be thought to apply to dogs, doesn’t, and I’m happy to go with the latest research.
Source: Alpha Dog Myth: Understanding Canine Behavior – PetPress, and others
Lydia belongs here. After the life that she’s had – much of which we know nothing about until she came into our lives through adoption – it’s good to know that she has a strong sense of home now. Her home; our home.
At the poetry open mic meeting that I performed in last week, another reader read out an extract from ‘The House of Belonging’ by David Whyte. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it resonated with me at a level that leads me to want to reproduce it here:
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
The House of Belonging poem – David Whyte
Going forward, that poem will underpin how I apply my own ‘rules for self-management’ that I introduced in yesterday’s post: https://gladabout.life/2025/08/26/day-1-filing/.
It somehow feels like it’s what I’ve been working towards for a long time, and the poem just said it for me.
Thanks and thoughts go to David Whyte, and to the lady who read out the poem at the open mic meeting.
First published 16 March 2020
I’ve recently read an article in the BBC’s Science Focus journal about willpower.
I’m not a scientist which is one of the reasons why I get this journal every month. I find out about all sorts of interesting things that I wouldn’t hear about otherwise, and it’s generally a really good, accessible read (although some bits go way over my head!).
In this article there was reference to willpower in relation to eating disorders and the impact that meditation and other aspects of mindfulness training can have on the power of the human will.
In my early teenage years, I had to use willpower to start to take control of my own life but eventually had to allow myself to move beyond it and enter that scary place where self-control no longer prevailed.
I still use willpower – to push myself from the point of doing nothing – which I can so easily fall into – to the point of doing something, making a start with decorating my house, for example. But as far as eating is concerned, I seem to have arrived at a much healthier state of mind, where I eat when I’m hungry and recognise the signs when I’m full. I enjoy food – a whole range of different types of food, not just the ‘cottage cheese and crispbread, endless omelettes and no chips diet’ that I lived on for many, many years.
When I concentrated on eating as little as I possibly could every day, I had little capacity to concentrate on anything else. I’m no longer limiting my life like I limited my food intake although I’m not just eating my way into the oblivion of obesity either.
Ironically, the room that I’ve started working on in the house is the dining room. I’ve found a fabulous wallpaper – ‘Mystical Forest’ – and I’m taking my time, doing a bit at a time, and can gradually feel that sense of transition from having to push myself to do it, to getting drawn in to the process of doing it, and taking pride in the way it looks. I don’t think I will gain any interior design awards, but it is a labour of love, to enhance the lovely home that me and my lovely partner are lucky enough to live in.
Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ptwe4S
A Woman, a Dog & a Blog – Writing into Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ho21L8
Glad About 
You must be logged in to post a comment.