I’ve not been writing on here much of late because, to put it bluntly, I struggle with whether my blog (or any non-fiction I write) deserves to be shared with the world.
Continue reading “archie was here (but not necessarily writing)”
Tag: fear
wasted potential, potentially wasted…
Hi bonjour – welcome back.
Despite sporadic blogging habits, the rest of my offline writing life is progressing well.
- I continue to be reading books, including ones that have sat waiting on my reading list for many years and I am also listening to audio-books too (for when I prefer to just hide away under the covers in bed). Currently listening to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and also listening to the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.
- I continue to work away at my various stories, though to be honest, less of this is writing and more of it is cleaning and sorting my notes – the mass of jumbled ideas, germs and inklings. Currently, working at my children’s novel series on Animals.
- I continue to try at keeping myself grounded and present because I find this practice essential for a healthier state of mind necessary to keep making art. Currently, I’m realizing again how important it is to pay attention to the details of my life, to repeatedly will myself to shake off the clouds that would otherwise leave me living in a hazy fog of repetition and boredom and dissatisfaction.
we are afraid of the same thing
I am pretty confident that I can describe your greatest fear.
Not only that, but I can prescribe a formula to squash it flat.
And at no charge either!
(though I’m not responsible either if you fail to squash it right, and then it just becomes agitated and even scarier and haunts you forever, or something like that… okay?)
Okay, but seriously, I probably can describe your greatest fear.
Remember when you were a kid, and you would play games that had this big surprise?
“What Time is it Mister Wolf?”, where “the Wolf” would keep answering your questions with the time 3 o’clock or 12 o’clock or 8 o’clock, until LUNCHTIME!
Scared me every time… I knew it was coming, but still…
life legacies – what are you waiting for?
Please enjoy the irony of how long it took for me to finally just finish writing this post.
It was the past couple of weeks that helped me do it – not borne out of some desperate New Years resolution but actually, a mix of travelling that saw me at my grandmother’s funeral and flying in planes (which I’m quite dreadful with) and being stranded in Ottawa because of a blizzard that kept me from returning home for 5 extra days.
By the time I got home here in Nunavut, I was so flipping pleased just to be finally back. The return journey was awful but that was not what I was focusing on (maybe because I had gotten just really desperate?), and now I am already appreciating how much I need to transfer this perspective to my writing and my life as a whole.
Thinking about death and waiting and delays and everything, it occurred to me how we all leave a legacy behind, and that the scariest thing about that is not leaving a flawed reputation or something but instead leaving this life without ever coming close to finishing (or beginning?) something you fully wish to accomplish – like writing a book.
Like, stay with me a moment when I introduce a slightly morbid notion that you, reader, are going to die unexpectedly on the precise date of:
ONE YEAR, 3 MONTHS, 5 DAYS from TODAY.
Since I’m not a life insurance salesperson, I’m not going to talk to you about getting your affairs and stuff in order, but instead I am going to encourage you to really imagine what you wish to do, say, visit, overcome, leave behind, or accomplish before that date comes to pass and your time here is history.
Think of this not as some death sentence but instead as that big moment in every story when the character’s life-as-they-know-it changes because they cannot ever go back to the ignorance that they held at the story’s very beginning. Feels better already, right?
Okay, allow that news above to really register in your subconscious before continuing…
Continue reading “life legacies – what are you waiting for?”
archie writes 