More dreams, not having opinions and doing it yourself

I dream a lot. I always have. Last night I dreamt loads. From about 3am when I had to go to the loo my head was full of odd dreams, right until the alarm went off at 6.15. In one we'd moved house to somewhere which was riddled with damp, in another China was about to nuke the States and a state of emergency had just been declared here :-0 . Then I seemed to spend ages drifting in and out of sleep thinking existential thoughts about the meaning of life. I came to the conclusion that Buddhism was probably nearest the mark, stripped back of all the superstitious accretions. Weird. I can do without that too often. I put this down to cheese on toast for supper and my having been watching Desperate Housewives on E4 just before bed. I do appear to be in a very odd headspace at present, prompted I think by the writing of the book which is now hurtling towards 50,000 words at present. I'm hoping to get the first draft completed by the end of the month. We're off to Cornwall for a couple of weeks at the end of February when I hope to be working on the third draft and knocking the thing into shape without other distractions. Apologies if I haven't been around much on other peoples blogs, I'm not finding the time at present to pay my usual visits to blogs I enjoy, but hopefully I should do again shortly.
I'm still completely unable to stand anything to do with current affairs at the minute. I thought I'd give the Today programme a go this morning whilst eating my porridge. I had to turn back to 6 Music after about five minutes. I just can't be doing with any of it. I've always been interested in politics and debates right from my early teens. At times I've perhaps over indulged in debate and gotten down about stuff that I'm probably completely powerless to change. Now having, at least temporarily, removed myself from thinking about much that's happening, I feel mentally much lighter and probably happier. There is an element of ego-indulgence in the idea that your opinion makes the blindest bit of difference. Having listened to countless phone-ins and radio discussions, read bloggers opinions and letters pages on loads of different subjects over the years you do eventually come to realise that most people know nothing about most things they feel compelled to share their thoughts on. Realising that I don't have to listen to them has been really liberating. The Buddhists definitely have a point I reckon.
I want to try and get my head down over the next three days, so I might not be around much. The first draft is now getting tantalisingly near completion and over the last few days I can see the quality level has risen again. What is quite interesting from a DIY artistic point of view was the entry into the music charts yesterday of a song by a band unsigned by a record label based purely on download sales. They have built their following through gigging and Myspace. This is the first time this has happened but it surely won't be the last. The way technology is empowering people to bypass the traditional media outlets is exciting. Yes, it allows lots of dross to hit the market before disappearing without trace , but within all that you can find some real gems. I'm going to put this wee story of mine out myself I reckon and try and do something with it through Myspace and a website. It'll be a good learning experience if nothing else. I've got no appetite for trying to do the rounds of agents and publishers waiting for one to bite. There may well be a time and a place for that in the future, but I don't do the lottery and I try to keep my pipe dreams in check. In the meantime I can probably sell a few copies. I'm going to fnd a clever person on Myspace to do me some cover art and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.