Thinking Space by Savita Kalhan

In the middle of May I received a call from the local allotment secretary. A space had come up and I was next on the waiting list. Did I still want one? My first reaction was to say: No thank you. I really don’t have time for it anymore.

This past year I’ve had very little spare time because I discovered the internet, bloggers and blogging, twitter and face book, and saw with open-mouthed shock exactly what I should have been doing even before my book had come out. I had absolutely no idea. I had purposefully never worked on a computer that was hooked up to the internet, and I suddenly realised what a mistake it had been.

I immediately hooked my laptop up to the internet, discovered the SAS in January 2010 and began digging my head out of the sand.

I hurled myself into the fray and bloggers started reviewing my book, not put off by the fact that it had been out for a long while, and I was interviewed so many times I think every morsel of my life, likes and dislikes, even down to my favourite sweets when I was a kid, is on the internet, which is just a little bit scary! But I carried on at break-neck speed, giving The Long Weekend my all.

I got fed up of dragging the laptop around everywhere and got myself an iPhone – it soon became my co-conspirator, making it easy for me never to miss anything...and never to switch off. Ever. Spare time didn’t exist anymore because I had to keep abreast of everything, comment on everything, make myself known as a children’s writer. It became a habit, one that I was finding hard to wean myself off. After the two blog tours, which did require lots of publicising etc, were over, I was still on the internet, afraid that I might miss something important.

Was it worth it? Yes. Definitely. But I lost a sense of balance.

So when the allotment secretary rang me, no is not what actually came out of my mouth. I’ve been on the waiting list for a few years now and if I didn’t take up the offer now, who knew when another space might come up? This one came up because a 93 year old had decided that it was getting a bit too much for him to manage! The allotments are next to the woods behind my house, less than a minute away...

So I said yes, I’d love it, thank you!

I’ve worked my bit of land for the past few weeks, preparing it for sowing all the wonderful veg and salad we eat the most. I inherited blackcurrant, redcurrant and raspberry bushes and only needed to add some strawberries to the fruit collection. As I’ve been working down there, I’ve realised that I cannot hear my phone ringing, I’ve never once checked my emails, and the only tweeting going on is that of the birds, although I think the parakeets and woodpeckers turn their noses up at tweeting. And whether it’s for half an hour, an hour or all afternoon, I get to switch off from the whole world, allow my brain to wander aimlessly where it will, and finally it’s thinking stories again, ideas and characters are reappearing, opening paragraphs for possible future work are being written. It’s bliss.
I hope I’m on the road to achieving some equilibrium between my chosen profession and the rest of my life.

How about you?