“So Helen? What’s all this moaning about being stuck home alone?” I hear you cry “Surely as you love writing then this is a blissful few days of space and time to write away to your hearts content?”

Well yes. I suppose I should be looking on the bright side. And most of the time I can. But it is amazing how isolating being stuck home alone with an injury is. When you have the flu/migraine/stomach bug (delete as applicable) your brain all but shuts down. You’re capable of sleep and watching TV and not much else. Your needs are pretty much water, soup and paracetamol. You still get fed up, but it seems much easier to accept that you can’t do a thing, and your brain doesn’t fully function or really care what is going on as long as you are as comfortable as possible.

But this is possibly the first time in my life I’ve realised how much I take everyday things for granted. My brain is still in full working order, so when my sister kindly offers to go shopping instead of a simple list, she gets instructions like “child size fromage frais, whatever is on offer, but not Nestle!” I decided that annotating it with the questions I would ask myself is perhaps going a step too far (and could result in my sister abandoning me).Going through my shopping list I realise just how many thoughts my brain goes through on the average trip to Sainsburys.  I don’t just pick stuff up, it seems everything from the sell by dates of houmous to the price vs quality of tomatoes makes my supermarket shops more complex than the average persons. Decisions take into account price, brand, quality, shelf life, ethical issues and in a different order or ranking of importance for different products. It’s probably why, despite not having a car and struggling on the bus, I have never fully embraced online supermarket shopping.

I have realised my control freakery runs deep. There are plenty of things in life I can let go of. Day to day I can seem positively normal, I don’t tend to get too precious about things at work, I don’t have any silly rules in my home and the way other people live their lives is up to them. On the surface I have relinquished the need for control of everything because trying to be in control when other people are involved is no fun. It’s much better to be relaxed there and save the control freak for things I don’t have to involve other people in like buying food, getting from A to B, and posting letters. Except suddenly I find myself trapped at home unable to control the details of my life that hold my secrets of weird, demanding and high maintenance behaviour. I love being independent, because in that independence I can be me, with all my crazy ways of doing things, without having to impact or rely on anyone else. It’s like having my secret superhero power taken away from me. And that makes me cry. And moan.

Saying that I am getting lots of writing time in. And now that life is back on track, I am working on pieces to pitch in the coming months. I am appreciating that for a brief few days if I suddenly get an idea I can just stop everything and start writing. I don’t have to scribble something on a post it and hope that evening I’ll have time to get back to it.

As as I’m getting back to thinking about getting my writing published I did think it was a good time to have a look back at my goals from January 1st 2010. The first five months of the year I’ve not really accomplished huge amounts on the list (though the dating bit seems on track!) but I have done so much more besides, that should mean I can get on with so much more in the next seven months.

Hopefully I’ll be back on my feet in no time at all so I can get on with having lots of energy, doing lots of stuff and stop having to explain the way my mind works when it comes to the weekly shop!