Tuesday 22 January 2019

Coffee Hour#1 -Cause Caffeine could create confidence.

Coffee Hour #1  
Jan 22, 2019

Well, if I am honest, for the last few months I have been struggling with writer's block.  Well, maybe that's not entirely truthful.  It's more of a confidence thing.  I have had many failures in life and quite a few things feel like they fell apart in my hands and many seemingly simple aspects of life end up becoming complex.

When working on long term projects, like novels, it's easy to get stuck in the doldrums and sit forever without a fresh breath of creativity to fill your sails and send you on or maybe it's more that life gets so busy it drains any creative drive before you sit down at the keyboard.  I think for me, it's been the latter.  The stories are screaming to get out, but I wall them up in the name of duty, responsibility.

Maybe it's more the fear that I could write for ages and not a soul would ever remotely be interested in reading my stories.  It's a silly fear because I have nothing to loose.  Write or don't write, the cost is the same.  I am not nor have I ever been the queen of popularity.

So once again, I am starting small.  Whatever I can write while drinking my morning java, I am going to post.  Time to take this blog in a different direction and maybe I'll get over my fear of getting back on the horse, forge new patterns of behaviour, open up one of my manuscripts and dream again.

I am not one for New Years Resolutions and this is not one.  I'm simply attempting believe in writing again.  I've given myself to many reasons not to.  As with sports, sometimes it is better just to do and not think in the moment.  As I tell my kids, don't attach any emotions to the action.  Don't dread it.  Don't consider things hard.  Just get moving.  Just get to it.

What do I have to loose anyways?  The drive to write stories wells up until the point of desperation, until the dam is going to burst and I am so frenzied trying to get everything else done in life that I feel  washed away before I've started, until I can't sit still.  Thoughts flow like the water in a torrential river named time.  A deluge of ideas wash through my fingers as grasp for paper cups to catch them in.

Why don't I let myself write?  Self perception, mainly.  I am my own worst enemy.  Considering my humble post in life as a stay at home mom, I battle the ideology that I should cook and clean for my family, making our home safe harbour in the stormy outside world and yet, the hurricane is blowing within me.   Growing up on an extended family farm and rising to work with the sun and playing only after it has set has left its stamp on me.  Don't be a grasshopper, be an ant!  Idleness is folly.  Reading and writing will remain leisure activities as they don't feed or house you.  I should be doing things that have a guaranteed return for my family.  Necessities of physicality are a beast of a task master.  If you're not moving forward, you're falling behind.  Are they not drivers of most actions if you really break it down?

I see what needs doing all around me.

So I hesitate.  I put off writing while I finish chores only to find that the kids are home and it's time to start supper and all the while the storm silently rages on for me.  My husband comes home and the house is alive with activity.  I batten down the hatches and keep the gale at bay.  Candle lit in the window in hopes of time for my own creative outlet returning.

I love my family.  I love my husband.  I know these moments with children in the home pass all too quickly.  Spending time with them is time well spent.  I am a cancer survivor (right smack in the middle of my university years-a key hinging point in my life.)  Life and health are treasures not to be taken advantage of.  My boy's life almost ended at 2 days old and he lives with some extra challenges.  Another twist in the road I am on.  Everything in balance and my problem is I give my time away easily.  
(And I am just not good at saying "no" when I am asked to help.  I'll admit I enjoy being able to help others.  There are have been many times I needed help.)

I am a mom.  I am, or, I was a scholar and an artist.

This battle, this duality of titles leaves me scrambling.  So I pick up a pen and save a sentence for later and maybe later happens much later than I would like.  I lived through a few things and I know control over life is an illusion, but it does help focus and make decisions.  Rage against the storm and even best laid plans come to ruin.

Perhaps it's the beauty unpredictability of life, the depth of feeling that develop character and make for better stories and deeper understanding.   What are stories but a tale of characters confronted with problems?  Ideas are birthed from problems and failures.
Shapeless and soft clay molded into a vessel that holds a wealth of water.  Standing water grows stagnant.  A vessel needs to be poured out and refilled to stay healthy.  I need to let the stories out.  For the sake of the act,  for the need to open my hand and let the torn bits of paper take flight,  grow hard like clay baked in a kiln and not fear negative responses.  

Maybe no one will ever read this, but it's been set free.  A form of communication or is it if it rests in silence?   A tree falls in a forest and no one is present to hear the sound......  Nevertheless, my coffee mug is empty and writing a blog is much cheaper than therapy sessions.   I am a survivor and the wilderness is vast so I'll keep on climbing over boulders.  Maybe my words can be a bridge for someone else.





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