Dissing Thoughts (while in the midst of hell-type)

The forme for my broadside SCUMMO (2021), which I threw onto a tray when I had to move the equipment out of the Wayzgoose Press studio…  

I know it’s a common thing these days, and too casually thrown about, but I am sincerely somewhat ADHD. Every day is a wrestle to attain hyper-focus, otherwise I flit around like one of those microbats in a shed roof, doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I don’t know whether I’ve always been like this (my teachers would no doubt say yes) or if it’s the result of looking at a screen for half of my life. I feel sorry, regularly, for all the young people who have only known screens. 

Hyperfocus is my favourite state of being. As a young girl I achieved it via books, and could be found at various hockey fields/ cricket matches/ social functions that I was dragged to by my parents, sitting under a tree or in the back of the car with the windows down, or behind a couch, reading a book for hours. 

For the past few decades, on and off, when I have access to a print studio, I find hyperfocus easily when setting type, or printing type, and (less often, because as a microbat, I flit to the next thing) dissing type. Dissing means DISTRIBUTION, or returning it to its proper place of residence (its font case), rather than letting it sit on a tray and waiting for months or usually years to see its family. 

I have a brand new studio, after years in the wilderness, and all my equipment, two separate collections that have come together (more about that later) was deposited into it late last year. But it’s all jumbled, and not really in positions that allow a Good Work Flow. So that’s been this year’s job, between bouts of bad health (now sorted, thanks to lovely lashings of B12). It’s a little overwhelming, because EVERYTHING needs something—dissing, sorting, cleaning, de-rusting—but again, yay for hyperfocus and also for living alone, so no-one demands a regular dinnertime. 

I am also a bit 'Mary Poppins', and tend to make a game out of most things. So here are my magic hands, about to separate out and go into their respective drawers:

Abracadabra!

I’ll bring them back again sometime, maybe for a greeting card, because they are just lovely. Today I’m stuck inside doing paid work (this is a short break, promise) but while I don’t HAVE to make new work (now that my M16 show is up), I’m trying to get into the studio for a couple of hours at the end of the day, and one day it will be organised enough to allow uninterrupted spontaneous creativity, and visitors.

I should say as a footnote that I’m still very much into reading real books and enjoying their doorways into hyperfocus. Out in the wilderness I used an iPad a lot of the time (which was great for huge Covid-daze tomes like the Outlander books) but now I have my bookshelves and books back in place and my bedside table has a mix of new delights and old rereads. Currently I’m juggling The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley) and Mark O’Flynn’s The Last Days of Ava Langdon.

I really just wanted to say HELLO AGAIN BLOGGING today, so that’s it for me, thanks for reading. 

[This was originally published on Substack on 16 October 2025]