Right now my life is full. Full of the running of a household, looking after 3 children, building up my editing and consulting business, blogging, the mundanities of domesticity. I know that I could very easily – and will very easily, if I don’t watch out – continue along this path. But at the end of it all, I think I would look back, with a wistful sense that I have failed to fulfill my potential. Is this how I see my life? Is this the life that I want to live – well no, not really.

You see, I have big dreams and big plans for myself. I haven’t achieved these dreams yet – because they are scary and, I suspect also because I am waiting for a big chunk of empty time to be able to create. Reading Julia Cameron’s book ‘The Right to Write’ has made me realize that those sabbatical months are just never going to happen in my life. If I don’t pull myself together and just get on with it I am never going to get to where I want to end up.

Which is where exactly? Well, I really do think that I want to write and be published in some shape or form.  For a while I thought that all I needed to do was simplify my life, get rid of the clutter and then the creative juices would flow and the time would be available to create. To some extent this is true, but I see now that there are always more than enough little things to fill in the time – I could clean out cupboards till the cows come home and I would still never be finished. What I need to do – again according to Julia – is snatch 15 minutes here and there and actually DO whatever it is I want to be doing. I don’t have to earn points for good behaviour, get all the work done and then maybe, if I’m very lucky, and I’m not interrupted with a phone call, there are 5 exhausted minutes left over for me. No, I have to make this a priority and actually make the life that I want to have. I will never be a writer unless I actually write – so there it is, and that is what I’m going to do!

I’m trying not to think at all about the big picture. I don’t need to work on the plot (currently non-existent) of the wonderful novel I’m going to write – I just need to write – to get into the habit, to get the creative juices flowing. The last six months of blogging have shown me that there are things in my head that I want to share and that writing daily – even if it’s only a blog post  – is eminently do-able. And I see that as I ramble on, things start to clear in my head – and I see that I really enjoy it!  The ironing (currently sitting in a mountainous pile behind me) isn’t going to get done right now, but when I do get as far as doing it, I am certainly going to do it in a very different frame of mind than I would have if I had done it before anything else.

I’ll keep you posted as to how I get on – if at all – but I have the feeling that telling you out there about my dreams may just kick-start me into action!

Helen

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.