Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Clarity

I feel like I've spent the whole year spinning around and around and now I'm standing here, dizzy and confused. Not the most poetic or articulate way of putting it - but it's been 'that' kind of year. I guess 2010 will be stored in the memory banks as the year that sanity forgot. We've had 4 months in South Africa, 3 months in Dublin and 3 months in Sydney so far and I really am just starting to focus. You know when you wake up in the morning and everything is fuzzy but you can make out a few outlines and colours? It's like that.

Sydney is starting to feel 'normal'. I am starting to want to be here. I don't want to swap with anyone, I am not wishing I was somewhere else. I am taking ownership of the decision to move here. Yes, it was me. I wanted this. I asked to move back here. Now we're here and I need to do something to make it feel anchored and permanent. I need to grasp the concept of 'forever' and also process the fact that 'forever' does not translate as 'happily ever after'. This isn't a fairytale - it's real life. No-one said it was supposed to be easy. I just had it easy for a long time and assumed that was how it would always be.

Here's the 'rub'. I need to commit to what I want to be when I grow up. It would appear I'm THERE. I am grown up. If I don't do what I want to do NOW, then when exactly? And what is it that I want to do? Well, it's this. I want to write. It is the only thing I do without hesitation, with no excuses or procrastination, I am never resentful of it, I do it with ease and certainty. Writing does not intrude on my day, it doesn't demand my time when I want to be doing something else. It doesn't chain me to some clinical desk in a depressing cubicle amongst people who don't want to be there. It makes me feel like I'm being honest. It feels like what I am supposed to be doing and it always has. I knew it at 17 and I've done it for 16 years, but now I need to do it properly. I need to be a writer.

I've postponed the inevitable I guess - always knowing this was in me, being told repeatedly and encouraged relentlessly. I've been living the subject matter for 33 years now. It's time to write it.