Bricks and Mortar

I've been messing about with this and that. I've started to write morning pages again, although not every day. I throw everything into the pot here- money worries, story ideas, prayers. You write three sides of whatever comes into your head. In addition, I've been mulling over various short story ideas, but none of them seem quite ready at the moment.I've begun constructing a new Squidoo lens. That's their term for it- constructing. This is going to be made up of various short-short stories which I've had kicking around for a while. I've forgotten, though, which ones are currently entered for short story competitions. Let that be a lesson to all of you- keep records.
Over the week, I've been looking at various pages on the web about how to succeed on Squidoo. I can't seem to glean anything other than to keep constructing new lenses. 200 seems a magic number. One every 2 weeks until you've published 200 lenses. But you've got to have traffic on all of them to build up traffic. Or something. And each lens has to be 2,000 words or more (I can't seem to work out how much you have to put into a lens before Squidoo consider that it's full).
I've been fiddling about with my 'marketing tool' blog, the other blog I set up on Blogger in order to itemize, and provide links to, my online stories. I tried adding a sidebar to give links to other writers' online stories. It took me ages, and left me feeling square-eyed from staring at the screen for too long.
So all in all, a bit of the doldrums. Fiddling about but not getting anything done. I've cast my eye over newspapers, in the search for story ideas, but nothing really has taken. I've printed loads of pages off at work, on subjects such as the Highgate Vampire case ( http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/the-highgate-vampire-how-it-all-began-by-david-farrant.html ).
It's the same with my personal life. We're surviving, bobbing about, which is more than some unfortunates. I'm in a job, we've got a roof over our head, but nothing seems to be improving. I feel like a row's brewing between me and my missus. I don't know what about yet. It's because we haven't had one for so long.
The news seems to be the same. Here in the UK, the government are telling us that the economy is recovering. I don't see it, and I can't think how they think they've done it...except that, in London and the south, house prices are rising. Which is what the so-called boom was based on, and what led to the credit crunch. When you have to spend practically all your money on rent or the mortgage, you've got no disposable income; and that's no way to run the economy, even I can see that.