I’m a impulsive cleaner. When it comes to housework, I’m not one for setting aside a time to do it. Instead, it leaps out at me at an inconvenient moment. I might be in the middle of making a cup of tea when I spy a child’s fingerprints on the wall. I wipe it off and before I know it, I’ve wiped down all the walls in the house, the doors, the skirting boards. Meanwhile, my tea goes cold.

I wouldn’t mind, except this compulsion to do something spontaneously distracts me from writing sometimes. Is it because in that moment I’m stuck for words and looking an excuse. Kind of a mini writers block. While I’m dusting or polishing, will I find a respite and allow my mind to rest, or will the words spring back to life, forcing me to abandon my duster and hurry back to the keyboard.

Alternatively, I could just becoming a directionless multi-tasker, who flits between jobs, leaving them half-baked or robbed of quality. A splash and dash approach and by the time I’m old and creaky, I’ll have morphed into one of those old dears who can’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds then forget what they’d been doing.

I’m fighting a losing battle. They’re aren’t enough hours in the day to flit between tasks and focus on the words I must write. It’s frustrating. It’s real-life.