The Banshees are all in adolescence at one stage or another. Which means that I don't have to worry about them burning the house down if I'm not in the immediate vicinity, at least most of the time, and they know to come to me if one of their siblings is contemplating something that would involve insurance companies and fire departments at some point. All well and good. Their education is a frightful mishmash and I'm going to worry about whether or not I've done enough until the cats come home, but they're also at an age where they need to take responsibility for what they have or have not done. I'm going to help but I'm done chivying, because it's time for me to get on with it. My life. My projects. All of those ethereal plans that I have had in my head for so very long. The Banshees are getting close to being grown, so it's time that I start getting my cart-and-horse problems sorted out, and all of that living in my head but not in the real world dealt with, and start doing what needs to get done so the stuff I want to get done GETS done and hopefully within my lifetime and by my hand.
Which doesn't make a lot of sense rolled out like that, but I think I'm done with making sense and now I'm moving on to making myself.
So I'm giving myself a set of challenges, and I'm giving myself permission to be messy and haphazard and wrong about a lot of them as long as I either get them done or give getting them done a bloody good go of it.
Which means I have to leave the planning stage sometime and get on with it.
The house? It's time to get on with it. Cleaning and paring and painting and whatnot, it has needed doing forever and I'm the one who needs to do it. I'm never going to be museum quality, but I do want a quiet clean space that will let me think, that will enable to get on with my other projects.
The Wilderness? It's time to get on with it. The pruning and weeding and gardening and managing and all of it.
My soaps and my knitting and my writing and reading and all of the sundry projects that I've settled on as what I want to master in the remaining decades of my life. It's just time to get on with it. Perhaps, I tell myself, my Banshees will learn my lessons better if they see me enact them. It wouldn't be the first time a parent has learned that Do What I Do has better results than Do What I Say.
So here, in this blog that I've designated as the writing blog, I plan to write perhaps just a couple of dozen words in per day. To keep up a public record (even if there's no public to note it!) of what I'm accomplishing. However, the goal is three thousand words per day. Not just any old haphazard collection of words - I've limped through a couple of NaNo events by writing just the most gawdsawful guff and fluff, and that isn't what I want anymore. Purposeful writing, with a goal in mind and a rough road map of how to get there. However, to be a writer (to crib most shamelessly from Dragonsbane) you must really just be a writer. Apply rump to seat and fingers to words and practice, practice, practice. That takes a certain amount of dedication, but also and probably more important to me currently, a certain amount of ritual and routine. I suspect I may have an undiagnosed case of ADD - no hyperactivity for me! - but whether it's that or something else, I have had a problem with concentration most of my life, and the advice I've gleaned about dealing with high-functioning ADD will apply to me very well regardless of what wiring I have going on between my ears. Ritual, routine, and subroutine - flexible enough not to strangle, established enough to get me functioning the way I want to function. Said ritual, routine, and subroutines not to be established at some far flung and unspecified future date, but to be started now, right now, even if I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
It's time, it's so very much time, to just get on with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment