There are more lists of shopping in my notebook than the beginning of paragraphs, or notes that may become inventions, or ideas for blog posts.

My lovely friend was 15 minutes late meeting me for lunch today, which meant that I checked Twitter several times, sent a text message, added a tweet, updated Instagram, eyeballed the door, began on this post (in my notebook) and checked Twitter again. Sitting there in the restaurant on my own made me twitchy. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

I was able to meet her at all because I took the day off today. Just because I have leave due to me and my company likes me to use it. Leaving bed after I usually arrive at work felt so decadent.

My houndling has found a ball (in that place balls disappear to, I suppose, next to socks) that makes a very satisfying thud when she drops it on the floor. I know this because she’s just dropped the ball on the floor, retrieved it, and dropped it again, three times in a row. Do you think she’s trying to tell me something?

I read most of a whole book this weekend, and I cried at the end of it. It happens seldom, a book causing tears, and leaves me feeling more raw than any emotionally-manipulative episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

(Just five things, just a little snapshot of my brain, and there is a post here. Not very difficult, right?)

I’m here.

With a new job and darker hair, in autumn instead of summer, I’m here.

Still without a bedroom cupboard, but with a new typewriter added to my collection as if that’s a consolation, I’m here.

See, much is the same.

Quiet of voice, shaky of heart, I’m here.

I’m still here.

One year ago today, I decided that my first post (published, not written) was good enough to stay here, exposed for the world to see and allowing for the expectation of more posts to come.

And they have, for the most part.

The month of February 2013 is excluded from that achievement. This little blog has been as lonely as the jersey I began knitting in January, and the new recipe books left untouched on the shelf.

I haven’t had nothing to say in that time. I just… haven’t quite gotten the words out.

This past year has made that feeling acute as it’s never been before.

Not because I have hordes of readers waiting in anticipation for more words, but because I like coming here. And I think that sitting here, stringing words together, allowing them to show up and then rearranging them, deleting some, adding others…

Sitting here, stringing words together, is good for me. Happy birthday little blog.

I was a small, shy child, with a head covered in ginger curls that later straightened. That head was filled with stories of squabbling gods on mountains, in the underworld, waiting in halls as tall as the sky for fallen kings.

Sometimes I heard them shuffling furniture from room to room just before it rained, and watched thrown lightening bolts arc across kilometres.

I don’t remember being afraid, not of the thunder.

I’m taller now, in height at least, and there is far more that scares me.

But still there is magic in a Highveld storm, when the sky around dense black clouds is shaded yellow or a murky green, and the wind raises its head to toss trees from side to side, and street lights turn on in the middle of the afternoon.

Rain drops kamikaze to the floor with tragic determination, bringing leaves and the last of Spring’s blossoms with them.

Here’s a truth: intentions are not magic. Not in that abracadabra-hooray-instant-handsome-prince way.

Intentions are just the beginning.

After intention comes a lot of hard work, some failure, some getting up and trying again, a fair measure of forgiveness, a rueful smile, perhaps some chocolate (actually, chocolate is a must) and most likely, doing it all over again.

Because here’s another truth: all the intention in the world won’t change what is being done and thought and said in the same way as before.

Intention has a best friend – commitment to constructive action that will transform, sometimes only eventually, intention into reality.

Put intention and action together in a room with tea and cake, give them work to do and BAM! That’s when magic happens.

Perhaps you knew all this already.

I needed to know it all over again after the shine from finding this year’s word wore off a little. And everything was still the same.

Hey Intention, do you fancy chocolate cake?