I find this time of year a real struggle and to cope with it I often feel I have to turn down work and take myself off to get through. This post is in itself a shortcut - a cheat to buy myself time. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say and it struck me that I'd already said it on this platform before. The blog post is a revision of one that first appeared in another cold month in another year. It remains important and worth repeating.
Here goes... Making Time
One of the things most of us struggle with is time. On the surface the Pandemic years had an abundance of the stuff. To all intents and purposes time was sloshing around in vast unused quantities, but I've not found that I have had extra. To be honest, I've found that there has been far less time than I've needed. It's like it's been slipping away and I was constantly hunting for more. Like keys it's been something I was continuously searching for and only finding when I'd... well.. when I'd run out of time...
You can probably tell from this word soup that filling your time with endless tasks in an effort to rebuild your writing career is actually really bad for your writing career. Over the last few years I feel that I've been constantly playing catch-up with all the things that I set aside back in 2019 - in the Time Before. This fierce struggle to plaster over all of the gaps and cracks in my career has been damaging to both my health, and my creativity.
After a bit of a rocky time a while back I was talking to a very wise friend and chatting about how much I was doing and she gently stopped me and said "you've told me what you say you have to do, but what is it that you want to do?"
I sort of blustered a bit and we went our separate ways, but her words stuck with me. They sat in my head because it was a kind of revelation - I hadn't actually given any thought to what I wanted to do. Not once in all my busyness (and business) had I thought about what I wanted to do, or what might make me happy. I realised that I don't have to carry on in this set path, I can choose a different one.
I can't always afford to think about that, and for a lot of my life there was no way I could afford a choice. This is something that set a pattern in my thinking and I'm still desperately trying to hang onto absolutely every opportunity in case I can't pay the bills. I've done this for about four decades, for most of my life. I know that most of us struggle to think about not doing something because finances don't allow it, but I do think that it is important to stop now and again. To take the time to think about the happiness gaps in our lives can be an important thing for our mental and physical health. Back in July 2020 I wrote about how we should all try to stop and notice the small wins, and yet I'd forgotten to do this.
I had a few significant mental and physical health issues in 2022 and this made me admit that I couldn't continue to deliver my time the way I used to. I spent most of last year stepping back from various committees, boards, panels and national steering groups. Bit by bit I withdrew from all of them until in November last year I stood back from the last one and that was that. The only commitments that remained were ones that directly support the community in my little rural home.
I'd finally made time and now (maybe) I can think about what comes next. I have accepted that I will probably never get another contract for a children's book, or work in a library again, but some of my poetry is still being published so that's something. I finally have the headspace to finish the adult novel that has been haunting my thoughts for a few years and I might just independently publish that as I'm pretty sure it's too "quiet" for a mainstream glitzy publisher.
Who knows?
I'm training myself to stop looking at all the things everyone else is achieving, and wondering why I'm not in the same place. I'm finding that painting and poetry, and having more time to just look around me and pick a few small wins is helping me get on a more even keel. I'm pretty skint but I have some other bits of work to keep me bobbling along and I know how lucky I am in that aspect. I've worked constantly since I was 17 years old so that means I have hardly taken a breath for almost the last forty years. That said, it's never too late for a fresh start.
Right now I want to write something beautiful, but I know that to achieve that I'm going to need to take a bit of time to focus on some other things and doing everything all at once isn't good. I'm going to stop and look around at some of my small wins, and maybe rid myself of some of the things that are causing me upset and sadness. We can't always deal with everything at once, but maybe by dealing with just a couple of things at a time we cope with the rest.
Dawn McLachlan is starting a new chapter
Twitter - @dawnafinch
Instagram - @dawnamclachlan
6 comments:
Your words speak to my condition, but it's hard to make yourself listen, isn't it. Thanks for this, Dawn!
This is v wise.
Wise indeed!
Thank you for this, Dawn. Over the last few weeks I have struggled to face redundancy, but the realisation that i CAN take a break, put my wellbeing first, is slowly dawning. Maybe a few weeks after my last day I'll see my readiness for a new chapter, which is kinder to me.
Thank you everyone for reading. I try to share these things because I know I’m not alone and that helps.
You speak a great deal of sense here - one I am reflecting in a small way and actually stepping back from a lot this year. After nearly 50 years of deadlines set by others I plan to set my own - on my projects! Good luck to you.
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