Gareth Newton-Williams

Category: Diary

General posts about my life and the things I am doing

  • Late night haiku

    As I was getting ready for bed last night I asked myself whether I had written at least five hundred words. I felt confident I had. When I sat down just now at desk E1S 059 to write these words I felt a mild disappointment when I discovered that was not the case. However, I also felt a sort of gentle thrill. A recognition that by sitting down and asking myself these questions I am making some progress towards making this something I do.

    I am a person who makes time to write a few hundred words every day. They can be in any form, about the things I am doing and feeling, or perhaps a poem, verse or ideas which have occurred to me as I go about my life.

    Writing feels like a useful skill both in what I do day to day which often involves writing things designed to be easily understood by those who read them. It is something I can do privately and publish. There is always so much to be written about as there are so many people and each has their own perspective on both themselves and the world around them.

    One of the joys of being a person is to be able to read the things written by another person. To experience the echoes and shapes which we have, apparently in common, and to wonder at the alien, the unfamiliar, whether that be places, sounds and people we have never encountered ourselves.

    This combination of the familiar and unfamiliar is critical. The former lends weight and a sense of recognisable reality to the latter. I think this is partly why Harry Potter works so well the close combination of a fantastic plot and circumstances right next to a story about going to school, making friends, and growing up in the most wonderfully normal and average way, even if the adventures those friends go on to have could not be less normal.

    I have not written a haiku, an haiku? for years. It would be nice to write a couple of them now.

    Listening

    Journey with me, and

    While we walk together, I

    Will smile and listen

    Claude

    Alone in my room

    I quietly speak my truth

    To a dead machine

    I should perhaps read some more haiku or read about them before I write any more. Or perhaps I shouldn’t. It was hard to avoid replacing the desire to express myself well with the desire to write something others would consider good or worth sharing should I choose to post them somewhere on social media.

    I took a break in writing to talk to my colleagues as they arrived at the office. I was here first, which is unusual for me as I have been more than a little casual with my start times on this contract. That said, I felt a little spark of joy to drive myself to the office this morning, with another when I found my pass had been updated and I was able to access the car park without trouble.

  • Filler posts

    It is actually the 31 May 2026 and I have today created the idea of the filler day. This is a day where when I have the thoughts and energy, time and space I will sit down and, starting with the first empty entry write at least five hundred words for each of the available spaces.

    I don’t have anything especially pressing to do this morning, aside from the usual self-care things. So I have accidentally/deliberately not checked how many gaps need filling and I am only now realising I may have just committed myself to writing a few thousand words.

    Well, I believe I can. One of the most interesting parts of this new practice has been learning that 500 is both a very small and a medium number of words to write in a single sitting. Sometimes I get through the words very quickly and easily and find I am ending before I am ready to.

    Theres a whole level of disciple to think about in that. Not just sitting down, starting and getting to the end of my five hundred, but also arriving at the end and being ready to stop and move on to the next thing which needs to be done.

    Boy are there plenty of things which need to be done!

    Right now, 7.16am it is 18.7 degrees. This is a really comfortable temperature for me. I’m sitting in a cloudy blue tshirt and pyjamas. I’ve spent some time on Hinge and some other social media this morning and so in terms of material things I have gotten up, made my bed, switched on the PC and made a coffee. Oh, and I dried the dishes I washed last night.

    So while some things have gotten done, the list isn’t extensive. Along with this writing habit I started to read some of a good book every day. Yesterday I picked up Atomic Habits again and finished the chapter I had been reading. Getting through that book has stretched much farther than it needed to. Partly because I want to slow down and set myself some tasks. I can see how there is value to be gotten from the experience of reading and thinking about that book by putting some of the concepts into action, or at least making some Emma-style notes and putting them on my wall. I should snag some A3 paper.

    Last night I moved more of my things down to the front room. One of the outcomes is that I have a blank wall behind the computer monitor. Normally I would put this by a window, as this is better for Teams call lighting and gives me something to look at when I want to look away from the screen. However, there are just no power sockets on that side of the room, so this was really the only practical option.

    That translates to this realisation – the pressure to sort out the roof is also pushing me towards processing the upstairs rooms first. Moving one or both of the paper dividing walls feels like an entry level DIY job too. Something which will help me become more familiar with the structure of the house and make serious progress to. Ok, one down.

  • How does it feel?

    What does it feel like to write five hundred words? This is the question which crossed my mind this morning as I sat, slightly lost, at the computer in Mike’s London flat. I have written plenty of things before, but there are some longer things I would like to write. Perhaps a novel or two, a book about how to do change management the way I think it ought to be done, short stories, albeit stories just under 50,000 words.

    You can’t just produce that sort of writing in a couple of minutes. It needs to be done over time, and so, what is it like? Well, I can tell you right now some of the immediate experiences are psychological. Already I feel a little more positive and upbeat because instead of thinking about doing something I am actually doing something. I should probably, yes, write that one down.

    It’s not all positive though, although I can type, mostly without looking at the keys I am now realising I make quite a few mistakes, which interrupts the flow of words onto the page. Honestly, it is a little bit frustrating as this isn’t something I have really considered as one of the challenges I will need to overcome. Then again, why should I care? There’s plenty of evidence from my life and others that as I work on writing regularly all of the associated skills will improve steadily too.

    If anything, I should make some effort to re-train my fingers and get away from what I am doing now, typing with my index and perhaps second and third fingers some of the time and move on to typing more properly. Not least as I cannot rely on the joints of my fingers to continue to operate like this without picking up some pain and damage. Which is the last thing I (anyone?) wants when you are trying to do something positive.

    I feel fortunate, whoops, I looked at the bottom of the page where Word is keeping count. 326 words at that point. How do I feel about that. Well, I can say I now realise I was hoping I could sit and confidently bash out 500 words or more before I looked, else I would have been checking the whole time.

    The other side to taking a peek is that it is similar to the experience of running or walking on a treadmill. When you look at the time there is still quite a bit left, the game isn’t up just yet, but you have made progress. I think my preferred experience there is when you are already past halfway, or at least when you have completed some recognisable proportion. A third, or some other fraction for example. That helps because it lets you more accurately think about what it is going to be like to finish. If I have written about 350 words, I can also admit to myself that writing can be done. Words can appear on the page and I can be the person who takes all of the responsibility for putting them there. Speaking of there, we are there and since I am trying to be honest with myself I will stop here for today and see whether I cannot do this again tomorrow.