When I become master of my own time, usually not by choice but by circumstance, the act of writing is first to fly out of the window, and I’m not referring to the rivulet of actual words because they keep on flowing no matter what, probably hammered in as an occupational hazard in the past, but to physically putting my mental notes down somewhere legitimate, whether it be personal and thus private or ultimately public. It feels like a most natural shift in a preferred balance and it used to trick me into thinking I don’t like writing all that much anyway so I treated it as another chore on the long list of things I have to do, just because.
Not to have written at least one sentence lightly covering the past few weeks, not one luminary description of life at Les Pierres and how it turns as my world does when my other half is in India doing legitimate authors research, does eat away at me however because it effaces too much time without the sense of the substantial significance of these weeks that nevertheless decidedly mattered to me.
I’m experienced in solitariness and dare say rooted enough not to mind travel too much with the one who left, a practice my sister renamed ‘armchair tourism’, and instead am usually fairly focussed on his return, anticipatory trying to come up with some sort of progress that showcases what has happened in his absence and with it make up for the time I’ve spend plunged in thought without any profound consequence to account for, as I used to be convinced that all personal freedom inevitably comes at a price, which made focussing on pleasing and surprising others turn into one of the most powerful and motivating aspects of my work ethic.
The life we are consistently trying to carve out for ourselves at Les Pierres has taught me to hand over those reins occasionally, or at least be as laid-back as possible about the potential deadlines I’m inclined to attach to them and intrinsically accept the continual shift in priorly conceived targets and expectations. None of the words so often used to delineate the lifestyle we aspire, like “a simpler life” or “a smaller life”, seems to cover its daily output all too accurate and although I sometimes employ those same expressions myself, I never do so in reference to its impact, for which “vast” and “entangled” are more appropriate terms.
The natural beauty I so often praise yet not nearly enough to proportionately outweigh the silver lining it steadily provides to any effort I put in myself, by carrying out the work I feel I’m supposed to do for it and in it, tends to remove a lot of the excess stresses in my life, and yields time to focus on my own personal needs, which remain unwavered as a source of amazement.
What’s not to like about writing anyway?
