It is way too easy to get sucked in to a full-scale sulk, particularly after not feeling well. I might have been sliding in to one of them this afternoon; still feeling a bit tired after being down with a virus for the last couple of days but staring wild eyed at my to do list and everything that’s taken a slide in the last couple of weeks of madness (parents, you’re not alone in the summer-strife).
Sometimes everything conspired all at once and there are things on my to do list that I swear I only put there on Friday but have somehow been outstanding for weeks! Huh?
And then, I fell across this picture.
There are so many days when I feel like I have nothing of any import to say. When all the memories of my past mistakes come back to haunt me, when I feel like a fraud and a coward and a fool.
We all have this little inner voice; for some people I think that inner voice was born supportive and nice and encouraging. Those are the people who seem to have endless confidence and compassion, who push hard but not too hard and seem full of a warm, golden light.
For the rest of us, well that voice is a shithead of the highest order.
The plan was simple, wasn’t it?
The plan you made years ago. The one that involved studying and working, qualifying and practising. It had seemed so simple, so pure, like one of those luxury white marble top kitchens - all expansive space with perfect accent touches. Open. Clean. Relaxed. Ready.
Does your life feel like that marble topped kitchen now, all white and sparse and disinfected ready for use, that slight smell of Zoflora hanging in the air.
Or does it feel more like the cramped and filthy kitchen of a cat lady hoarder? Filled with tat and rubbish and things that are being saved for a rainy day or for best or for just in case?
In the story of Damocles, Cicero said ‘there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms’. But who among us doesn’t have some fear looming?
Tonight I did something that I had been putting off for no other reason than the fear of bad news. The irony was that I took action on the very thing that I had been avoiding, directly because of some bad news received.
For most of us, the lingering fear is something that we have become accustomed to; the dread in the pit of our stomach when the telephone rings with that particular number, the worry when we open our inboxes or our boss slams their door on the way into their office. These are fears we can cope with, we can rationalise and reason, go to battle with as any mythological hero. This is my great beast to slay.
I have had a pretty wonderful day. I planted my butt in my chair yesterday to really get this first book underway and it seems to have done the trick. Yesterday, 10 hours of work produced 7,000 words. This morning 90 minutes produced a further 2,000. I have found the flow state!
But there has been something in the back of my mind the entire time. Something that has made showing up, writing this book, sharing extracts from it with absolute glee... well it's made it a little odd.
Today would have been my father's 78th birthday. I say would have been because he died 14 years ago this December, at the age of 64.
