Playing at Being a Grown-Up

I feel conflicted, I feel torn, not knowing where my focus of energy should be. I see a pebble on the beach that’s just out of reach, it’s glinting in the sunlight as the waves lap over it. Proving too elusive to grasp, staying tantalisingly just out of reach, this pebble is symbolic of my desire to write. To write for a purpose beyond the familiarity of my comfort zone: my blogging, script writing and the odd poem when the mood takes me.

I don’t know how to answer when people ask me what I am doing. Officially I suppose the answer is taking a career break, though currently it feels that this may have no end as thoughts of returning to the rat race of a work environment trigger an inner panic, a rising unease whenever I attempt to confront the idea, so it would seem that I am not yet in the right place to move forward with this. 

I have made a decision to write, though telling anyone that I am being a writer seems wrong. What is it that prevents me from doing so? I’m certainly not in a position to be earning money from my writing and so is that the crux of it? Do I see the term writer as only appropriate for a commercially viable option? Having spent years nurturing my children into the belief that the creative process is what’s important and not the outcome - why is it that I cannot accept this for myself?

Perhaps the career path I had was so driven by targets that I feel at sea to be ungoverned by these, to be adrift in a world where I may or may not write and may or may not achieve a written product, is as unnerving as it is liberating. My husband heard me telling my son that I feel there’s an expectation that I will write something and I suppose by that, I mean I will write some sort of book. His response was that I don’t have to write anything, I don’t have to do anything, I need to focus on recovering. A statement that was simultaneously endearing and a little shocking, for it jolted a realisation of his perception of my current position. He is right though. I am recovering the segments of my self-esteem, my confidence, my belief in my own abilities and attempting to fit them back into a whole picture- it’s just that right now, I don’t know what the image will be.

These past few weeks have been a process of adjustment, not only in what I am doing and how I am organising my days, but also in what I am feeling and how I manage my expectations and those of people around me. When I am asked “So, how is it being a lady of leisure?” or “What are you doing then?” or “How is it not working then, it must be good?” - how should I respond? I am very grateful that we are able to make adjustments financially to enable me to keep on this route for now. I am grateful that I had this option when to remain in work, in my circumstances, would have led to some very dark places. I am grateful that I have options but as yet, I don’t feel I have answers.

The process of writing is in itself taking a lens to magnify the minutiae- it’s all in the description, the ability to capture a place, an object, a person, with some aptly chosen phrases. So within that, it is no doubt natural that the writer becomes the over-thinker. An observer of life in order to tell a story through the ink on the page, is by nature surely going to notice a feeling and may be more prone to catastrophising over it. I discovered that word this week, when chatting with a friend. I love it as a word, not as a quality, for it encapsulates the struggles of a mind that can leap from 0 to 60 in a blink of an eye, spiralling around all of the possible outcomes that a situation may have. It seems that she and I both share an ability of late to catastrophise.

It can be added to the long list of things that we share then. This friend and I go back to High School days and we have compared notes on life’s milestones ever since: university days, jobs, boyfriends, weddings - being bridesmaids for each other, our babies who are now either grown up or fast heading that way. Along the way though, we have also shared the small stuff, for it is those details that keep the whole thing going, this ‘adult’ thing. When chatting this week, we spoke of our lives with reference to the details and the wider lens view and both agreed that since school we have been waiting for the day when we actually feel like we’ve become adults and that we know what we’re doing, that we have some control. Having both now hit 50, we had to concede that perhaps that day never comes and all the adults that we looked up to as children were also playing the game that we now participate in. The game where you project an image of calm and knowing exactly what to do next, when actually you have no real clue.

So I should return to that pebble on the beach, the elusive one, with its glinting promise and tactile allure. It is perhaps my very adult and grown-up approach that is holding me back from reaching it? I should think of what I would have done to get to such a pebble back in my childhood days and throw caution to the wind, jump over a few waves and grab it. And once I have my pebble, examine it daily and treasure it forever.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I drove behind a hearse today, after dropping my daughter at work. Just one vehicle amongst the traffic, a simple coffin with no floral adornment - most probably empty as there was no reverential slow speed being observed by the driver as it left the roundabout by the crematorium. That’s a place I’ve been to with increasing regularity, sadly. As you get to a certain age it becomes more likely that you meet friends and extended family at funerals rather then weddings and of course, there is a certain spot in the gardens where we visit to think of my Dad. There, with a clipped lawn and often a blue sky, a small numbered plaque marks his resting place - the officialdom of a final act. I prefer to think of Dad at other times, in other places, from the corners of your mind where the sepia-coloured memories glow like discarded embers from a comforting fire. If you try really hard, you can sometimes push enough embers together to spark a brightness from the past, almost to the point that you have to catch yourself and remember that he is no longer here.

So to return to following the hearse, on a January morning with a sky full of the blues and greys that start a wintery day. I was jolted by the image from my thoughts of my day ahead, the mundane mental list: cleaning, shopping, dog walking, trying to sort clutter to build myself a writing nest. Jolted instead into thinking about what it all means. That’s a very big question when you’ve only just surfaced from the security of your bedroom covers. Particularly today. Today had been one of those days when I had contemplated driving my daughter to work whilst still wearing my pyjamas- something I have never done and something I can assure you would not look like the glamorous yummy Mummies portrayed in a certain car advert! No, today, I had thrown on sloppy clothes, given my face a cursory look in the mirror and thought “that shit will have to do - I can fix it later.”

Looking at the hearse before me, I was struck by how small the coffin appears and how, as may well be the case for some, the stark, bare box seems such an insignificance. Dad’s funeral was so well attended that there was literally standing room only but I’ve seen others with a handful of mourners and there must be some endings where no-one sheds a tear and it’s all a matter of paperwork. Is a person’s mark upon the earth measured by the size of the final crowd that they draw?

To avoid sliding down this somewhat gloomy spiral with such thoughts, the jolt I had as I drove my usual route back home was more connected to the beginning I have made. That inner voice that we all have (I presume we all have it) began its own monologue reinforcing my decision to resign my post, to embark upon my writing, to persevere with this somewhat haphazard situation that I have created for myself. They say that you only regret the things that you didn’t do. That, and other such clichés came to mind and then, out of nowhere and with no predetermined mission to do so today, this blog piece begins to form in my head. I park on the drive, grab my laptop and head back to bed where the writing sanctuary of our newly constructed loft space allows me to think. High up, metaphorically and literally, I am away from the mundane. Looking out of the two Velux windows to one side, I see the treetops and the clouds rolling by, whilst the large window to the other side of the bed affords a vista across the rooftops to the town beyond. Though not the picturesque seascape I yearn for, as a frustrated novelist with idealistic intentions, the mere space extending on to the distant horizon and the time to sit here looking at it, is a calming opportunity and conducive to creative thoughts.

Thoughts have been my friends and my enemies lately. They are the necessary mechanism for my creativity to flourish and I have yet to allow myself to fully immerse myself in them, for to find enough distraction free time for that process still seems an elusive commodity- but it is early days. Those same early days have allowed thoughts in that start to sow the seeds of anxiety and self-doubt. When given any chance to do so they grow into emotional and sometimes irrational seedlings that need cutting down before they take root. There have been a few days when they have done their best to do so. I can picture them as I write, within a tray in a gardener’s potting shed with their labels neatly scribed upon them “this is a farce,” and “what are you actually doing” being the main plant names. So far though, I am managing them, as my cousin, who is a horticulturist, once advised - the best thing is to do a little of something in the garden every day. So I’m tending my mind garden! 

When all is said and done, we are in control of the marks we make upon a page and those which remain as a legacy for others to reference in the future. If you can no longer control part of your life, make changes to it - walk away, try again, switch it up a bit, whatever is necessary to start making things work. You can’t do it on your own, so look around for help - I have been surprised and struck by the number of people willing to offer their support and it manifests itself in so many different ways. Sometimes it needs to be actions that make a difference to your day. Sometimes words need to be said, and I don’t always want to hear them, but those that matter, know when I need to hear them.

Today is a good day, from starting as a day that felt anything but a good day. Inspiration for writing comes from the strangest places - I cannot explain it and will not begin to try. I will carry on with my mundane, my mindful moments and my inner monologue - for on days like this, I think she’s got something worth listening to!

Diva or Door Mat?

At the risk of showing my age and alienating those readers born too late to share in the cultural phenomenon of children's TV in the 70s, I'm reminded of the daily choice of which window to go through: round, arch or square? ⁽¹⁾ Choices back then were simple, like which type of penny sweet to add to your bag in the sweet shop on a Friday on the way home from school, or which outfit to put on a Sindy doll when your friend came round to play - it was always the ballerina.

Still, making simple choices as a child is good practice for the myriad of indecision coming your way as an adult. I often think of myself as standing in a changing room looking at a row of pristine white doors, each with its own neatly numbered shining plaque, considering my options before opening one of them to put on the outfit that hangs within it and pick up the baggage that accompanies it. Don't we all have different roles that we play each day? I have my wife role, kissing my husband 'Good morning' before I stumble around the bathroom trying to make myself presentable for the day ahead. I have my Mum role, which used to involve a lot of multi-tasking to enable my children to get through the pre-school checklist of breakfast, dressing in uniform, bag checking, picking up lunch boxes, reassuring that PE would be fine that day and they just needed to try their best in their spelling test. Lately, my Mum role is more likely to involve a checklist of whether breakfast is going to be eaten before a work shift or calling up the stairs to see how long it really takes to do eye make-up! As children become more independent, my Mum role is more that of a hotel receptionist checking everyone in and out and asking about their dinner reservations. I expect it's a common cry from parents of teenagers and beyond to bemoan the use of the house as a hotel with all services on tap: laundry, meals provided, room service when I've removed the pizza boxes casually thrown on the floor when they had a friend round and ordered out. If I moan too much about the lack of responsibility and demand that chores are completed, am I being a diva?  If I continue clearing up after them and doing those Mum things that were always part of my job description, does that make me a door mat?

Well, clearly the dressing room door to the Mum outfit contains a lot of baggage! What about the other roles that I habitually adopt? I don't know if anyone else has these scenarios going around their head, but my adulting life is managed by me adopting different characters within it. Don't get me wrong, I don't actually have names for each and physical costumes to wear - that would be entering some kind of multiple personality realm - but adult life is only really advanced role play isn't it? What started in the home corner or on board a pirate ship just becomes more refined and subtle as an adult.

I have my 9 to 5 soundtrack in my head as I fire up my computer to check on emails and start my working day. I have the socially adept, a smile for everyone persona when faced with a family / friends gathering. You know the ones where small talk is the order of the day and no-one really actually talks about anything significant and we go back to our lives having moved no further forward as a person. I have my daughter role where I balance being supportive and taking on a semi-parent role reversal scenario with moments of being back to being told what to do, as I was as a child, although this is now in the guise of friendly motherly advice. Then there’s the more recently developed writer’s role. In this I inhabit a somewhat romanticised world in my head where I am both the editor and writer with a deadline, snatching moments of time to write the latest piece or addition to a longer work in progress. Sat in a coffee shop or in a quiet space at home, writing for whichever current project, allows me that feeling of headspace which is fast becoming the goal to strive for within a busy working week.

Now, as I stand in the dressing room with all those doors lined up before me, I see a door that had been mostly left shut for a while. This is the door with outfits behind that allow me to be myself, a woman looking to have an evening out with friends being relaxed and doing silly things just because I can. A woman who likes to dress up in a newly purchased outfit and put on my bright lipstick and paint my nails and have a date night with my husband – whatever that might entail. A woman who doesn’t have to explain to anyone why she might have had a few too many drinks and is now singing rather too loudly on a night out. A self-assured and capable woman with diva aspirations.

The reasons this door has been neglected are complex and perhaps we all go through phases of being the last priority in a long list? In our busy lives with work demands and family commitments, especially when the children are younger and more dependent or there is a family member with health issues, it is so easy to get caught up with the automatic and mundane and find so many reasons not to put yourself first from time to time. I have recently found myself asking if this has meant that I have created an expectation that I will drop everything when asked and rush to help others – particularly where my children are concerned. I think the circumstances of the last year or so have had a cumulative effect where I lost self-confidence and sought solace in seeking out a calm ticking over life by having a default mechanism of agreeing to things, in that sort of ‘anything for a quiet life’ way.

When you’re feeling low and lacking confidence it is somewhat of a paradox that you take on more by not saying no to requests. So yes, there have been times when I’ve been thinking that rather than the sassy diva I would like to portray like a leading lady upon a stage in the spotlight, I’ve been more like the proverbial door mat – down trodden and gathering the dirt and dust from the stamping feet above. The way forward now is to pick myself up off the floor, fling open that last door and strut out with confidence – well, at least every once in a while.

⁽¹⁾             http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/playschool/trivia.shtml