A Toy or Two to Tempt me to Blog.

I have been gone so long from this blog, even though I promised faithfully to get back to writing. A while ago I wrote something to explain what had happened to make me so very absent; even though my chemically enhanced brainbox makes all that feel very distant now, time has marched on so fast with children, gym coaching, courses and the infernal but finally finished blanket for Fran’s 18th, that blogging has gone by the by.

When I finished my CBT, I promised I would make a space for writing in my life, both mentally and physically. I’m a bit all or nothing though and what I want is to be writing my novel again. I miss it, much as I miss the time for writing. But make a space for physical writing I did, in our living room, my favourite spot in the house.

My little bureau feels very Bronté in its space when I get a chance to sit in it at all, with the added advantage of being tucked in a corner of a room behind a door where people sometimes forget I’m there. At least that works well enough unless the boy wants to play on the Wii, since the TV is wall mounted just behind.

Making emotional space to write is somewhat harder; I never quite know what to say these days. It can feel somewhat self-indulgent, rather young, to splurge feelings out loud like that. I’m not sure it’s what a 42 year old should do. And then, if I’m honest, I’ve never felt quite the same since the urge to blog about grief and Freddie left me. How do you top that? I can’t (I fervently hope) ever plumb the depths and write from my soul again like that. (Please don’t make anything happen so I have to). If I unleash my feelings like that again, I think it would be through fiction.

However, life does, of course continue to have the internet woven tightly through it. I love to browse as much as the next person, photos must always been stored and checked through, Ravelry perused, blog templates and websites fixed and altered. (That being, it is true, another thing that has kept me quiet; I redesigned 2 whole shops, ran them on my own for a while, employed and trained new staff). And there are always some things that can’t be done on a phone satisfactorily; I’ve never really liked blogging from it.

Enter the rather ace Venturer BravoWin, sent to me to review slightly too long ago for me not to have to blush a bit about it. (Ace Venturer, did you see what I did there?) It’s a dinky Mini windows Notebook with – *tech crush* a removable screen that becomes a Windows tablet. With a 10″ screen, it is lightweight, quick to start up and perfect for a handbag or suitcase. It has Windows 10, which I like having sworn not to buy anything with Windows 8, 32gb of memory and 8 hours of battery life.

The memory might not seem a lot, but it comes with Mobile Office which has One Drive, something I’m newly loving as a way of keeping all my desperately disparate photos, files and faffery together.I have a folder on there called “Random Weird” which is basically every back up on every computer I can find all consolidated into one place until I can find time to sort it out (Probably in 2025 at the earliest.) While I’ve used Dropbox for years, I have to admit the vast amount of storage on OneDrive does make it incredibly easy to be able to have access to absolutely everything just as soon as you want it.

The Venturer is fun to use sat at a desk or on the sofa; while a Notebook sized keyboard took a bit of getting used to for me, it is light enough to balance on a sofa arm for browsing, or a quick blog or Facebook post and at a desk, it works perfectly well for longer pieces like this. The screen detaches easily and reattaches with a magnet and the user experience is good overall; in fact really my only gripe is the shift key occasionally lets my capitalising down! With mobile Word, Excel and more to hand I can work or edit on the go, make notes for that novel or hand it as a tablet to the boy for a bit of entertainment without worrying about keyboard hinge trauma occurring.

Other notable additions are forward and backward cameras, USB port (it has a mousepad but I can’t live without a real mouse), plenty of audio options and an HDMi slot.

All of which really only leaves me with a novel to write.