The Weekly – 13th March 2017

Something big has happened. I can’t talk about it yet, but it’s something I’ve been waiting for my entire life. It arrived, as do all desires, in a form that I did not expect. And life has been so busy I haven’t even had time to appreciate its significance. I shall have to find time to do that.

Or perhaps it’s that I can’t wrap my head around it yet. Another possibility.

I wrote last week of hoping that March, April, May, and June will act as rocks in a river, altering my course, propelling me forward. I feel that is starting to happen, although I’m curious as to what unexpected forms all my desires will bloom into.

In the meantime, as with all things, it’s the day-to-day tasks that build the larger dreams. I’m not good with the mundane times. I seek rest or adrenaline. The full days of chipping away at an overly-ambitious ‘to do’ list is wearing at me.

I try to get up and go for a walk or a run in the morning. (That’s difficult in the days leading up to Daylight Savings – I need light to see the trail.) I’ve learned that if my body is tired, it helps my mind to focus.

Morning exercise is followed by breakfast and a huge vat of coffee. I sit down and read a little Milton – usually Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained. I can read only a page or two of Milton at a time, and he’s someone that I can’t skim: he also helps my mind to focus, to prepare for writing. As he’s a master of the language, reading Milton helps to inspire me.

Then it’s two hours of work on one of my book projects. Very draining stuff, that. It’s a struggle to get out of my own way and silence the voices of dissent and doubt in my head. And when I finally emerge from the world in my mind, it feels like coming up from deep underwater. It is a thrill to see a story slowly take shape, but it leaves me battle-weary.

Lunch perks me up a little, but then I have to fight the urge to nap so that I can settle into some (paid) work: deadlines, pitches, responding to emails, filing, budgeting, planning trips and assignments, and all the other requirements that fill the life of a writer.

In the evening I usually exercise again, then dinner and a movie, watched tucked up on the couch, covered up with my Mongolian blanket. Lastly, I read for a couple of hours in bed – the only thing that helps quiet my mind for sleep.

You see? Mundane. Routine. I think I’d enjoy it more if my afternoons were less filled. I believe we need space in our lives to create, time to let thoughts skip about, time to dream, and I don’t have a lot of that at the moment.

Maybe after June?

At any rate, it’s a life to be grateful for, which is something I try to do every morning between coffee and Milton.

More next week.