New beginnings or wanting to play out in the spring sunshine

March is a disgruntled month.  It overreaches, excitedly leaning forwards towards sunshine, warmth and long lazy days.  Mamma Winter reins it back, unmoved by tantrum clouds and dark stormy tears.

I feel much the same, disgruntled and ready to move forwards.  Moreso perhaps because the first part of this year, as I realised a few days ago, is all about endings.  Six weeks from now I will no longer have classes; ten weeks from now assignments from this term will be handed in, exams taken.  One final portfolio project to complete over the summer months and my MA will be completed.

And, with all the eagerness of a small kid just home from school, I'm heading for the door ready to go out to play without so much as a backward glance.  Tantalisingly the new writing life is breaking through the dull, damp top soil and gleefully I have been digging around in the mud to unearth it.

Last week I finished the first draft of a play I've been meaning to write for nearly two years.  I began work as a columnist on The News Minute, a new English language Indian news aggregation website, and had my first piece published.  A blog I wrote for a client has resulted in him receiving responses that could lead to new business.  The written word, in its myriad formats, is squarely front and centre in my life.

The end of the MA may be nigh but it's not actually here yet. There's plenty of daily plodding required before it is. Yet my eagerness to run forward and play out with my writing has me rushing around generating long excitable lists of things I want to do.

I want to re-edit some of the radio recordings I did last year and turn them into packages that I can publish on my *cough cough* still under development website.  (I want to develop my website). I want to grab hold of the access I currently have to filming equipment to make more short films on things that don't necessarily fit the narrow confines of my course requirements.  I want to start work redrafting my newly completed play.

Time vanishes before I properly get a chance to catch its tail and like the moody month of March I am reined back by Mama Winter.  She tells me I have to come home now, have a bath and get straight to bed. She says if I carry on like this there'll be tears before bedtime.

I can't say I'm thrilled by the prospect but I know there's sense in focusing on what is right now.  'Doing' has never really been my problem; it's the 'not doing' that I struggle with, doubtless stemming from the youngest child fear that if I don't stay up late and do everything there is to do then I'll be missing out on something Really Great.

And so I head off to pack away my lego and instead crack open McNae's Essential Law for Journalists,  pulling out my notebook ready to take notes.....

....in multi-coloured felt tip pen, of course.