Reflection

I didn’t get any fiction up this weekend due to being sick – but I’ll hopefully get something up during the week! In the meantime, here are a few more pictures I took by the canal last week.

Over-thinking

The last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. I don’t deal well with transitions in my life, usually – and the past couple of months have been one transition after the next. Getting back together with my boyfriend after two and a half years, getting one of my molars pulled, finishing my Masters, realising how emphatically I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being a librarian, realising how much I do want to get serious about my writing, trying to decide whether or not I want to do a PhD in the next few years… the list is practically endless.

My biggest problem is not so much to do with the turmoil and readjustment that comes with change – conversely, I do relish the freshness of a new start – but with the way I over-think things. As soon as a new world of opportunity opens up for me, I start trying to plan it.

Planning is good. Planning can help to alleviate anxiety, can lead to greater productivity, and can even provide motivation and inspiration. Planning the next few weeks, or even the next few months, seems to me to be a generally positive activity. The problems start when you realise that you are trying to plan things that are going to happen in 10 years, 20 years – when you start trying to plan out the rest of your life, and think you can act now in a way that will influence these things directly.

This is my downfall. As soon as I decided I was going to give writing a real go, that I was going to actually start writing a novel, I started to worry that I wouldn’t have enough money in 10 years’ time to settle down and have a family. Not to mention all the worries I had about the 10 years running up to that – whether I should be trying to get a part-time job, how difficult it might be for me to get a job later with a big gap on my already sparse CV, how I was going to keep paying my rent if I wasn’t making any money.

Last Friday, I got turned down for yet another library job, and I decided to partake in National Novel Writing Month this year. I got up the following Monday at 9am (early for me, shame on me, I know I know) and started planning not one, but two novels – I wanted to work on something different for NaNoWriMo in order to avoid the paralysis that might ensue if I tried to work on my “actual” novel. I was excited, enthusiastic, and felt like I had a purpose in life for the first time in a long time.

But meanwhile, every night when I went to bed I started thinking about careers and mortgages and how many words I might be able to write in a day and what I could do part-time on the side of writing and…

By Wednesday I was exhausted. I went to bed early, feeling anxious, and fell asleep almost instantly for an hour – then woke up and couldn’t sleep again until after 4.

Yesterday was not pretty.

I’ve no idea why I didn’t just stay in bed for the day. I turned into a ball of misery and ended up sitting my boyfriend’s flat crying about EVERYTHING.

I knew that my thinking pattern was highly self-destructive, but it just helped to hear him say it. He looked at me and said: “No-one can plan what they’re going to be doing for the rest of their lives. Even if there’s something you really, really want to do, all you can do is try, or just do it as long as you want to or can do it. Sure, what you do now affects what happens in the future, but decisions you make and how you spend your days right now does not have a direct bearing on what you’ll be doing when you’re 40 – not in the way you think it does.”

Wise words. I really hope I’ve learned my lesson on this one. Sometimes you just need to take each day as it comes. I do have to do some thinking about whether I need to look for a part-time job, but beyond that I really should be taking this year to just try things out and see how I enjoy it. See if I can bear sitting down every day knowing I have to write a certain amount. See if I can actually do it.

So I’m taking the rest of today off. And if I have insomnia next week I’ll sleep in as late as I want to!

Under Foot

I absolutely love this time of year. Sure, the days are quickly shortening, and we have maybe less sunshine and more rain than in the summer (though this year the summer was so awful there was no perceptible change except in the temperature). But there’s something about the clear light, the crisp mornings, the autumn colours, that set my heart pumping with joy.

I was laden down with a full backpack and my camera in my handbag when I stepped out into the street on Saturday afternoon. The sun had just come out and the street was lit up, pavements covered with fallen leaves. I just had to heave everything off my back and take some pictures.

I put my camera into a more accessible area in my bag and continued on my towards the canal – the way to my boyfriend’s flat. I took a few more photos on the way.

It’s funny, I seem to always become more active at this time of the year when everything is dying and declining. There are a lot of squirrels around my neighbourhood at the moment – one particular friend hangs around in my back garden every day, burying nuts in the flowerbeds for winter. Sometimes I feel like those squirrels – a scurry of creative activity spurred by the dropping temperatures and falling leaves.

So for the moment I am very happy – I am writing more and taking more photographs than ever before, and it feels as if the rest of my life is truly starting.

Lazy Weekend

I’ve been having a wonderful, mostly lazy weekend. It started out not so great, as some of my plans on Friday fell through and I found myself finishing dinner with some friends and on a bus home at 10:30. I had just been turned down for another job and was feeling a bit miserable, so I rang my boyfriend who was at the Hard Working Class Heroes festival in town. And so my night turned around – I met him and a few of his friends in the Workman’s club for the last three bands, one of which was particularly wonderful – an electronic trio called Chips. I drank tequila with abandon and we danced up near the stage, and life felt better.

Saturday and today consistent entirely of lazing around in my flat and in my boyfriend’s, faffing around on WordPress and doing a bit of writing. My boyfriend follows football (soccer) so yesterday evening mainly consisted of watching Match of the Day, and we went to a pub for him to watch a match this afternoon while I edited some photos. For lunch we got pancakes, bacon and maple syrup in a café near my flat – an inspired combination, and something we don’t eat enough here in Ireland.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a little insular these days, and I’m not making enough effort to spend lots of time with my friends. And I wonder what my life would look like if me and my boyfriend hadn’t got back together – would I be spending more time with other people, or would I be lonely and adrift? But I’m happy, content. I reckon I’ll let myself settle into this new life and see where the chips fall.

Outside My Window: Feeding Ducks

Outside My Window is a weekly series every Saturday on Sirens & Muses where I write a short vignette based on something I see outside my window, outside my door, or on the streets around my area.

Laura crouches at the edge of the canal, crumbling pieces of bread between her tiny fingers with the kind of focus only three-year-olds can muster. She frowns at the crumbs as they escape her hands to float on the top of the scummy canal water, and is transformed with glee as the ducks dart about pecking at the pieces.

I stand behind her, a firm hold on the back of her red coat, and can’t believe how tiny she is. The smallness of my daughter is just part of life, and if anything I sometimes can’t believe how big she has grown, how the tiny creature that made its way out of my wife’s womb could have turned into this little person. We marvelled at her smallness then – it took weeks to get used to the delicate hands and feet, the paper-thin miniscule fingernails, the tiny whorl of her soft pink ears. I felt clumsy and huge at first, afraid I would hurt her with my big awkward hands.

Her hands still get lost within my palms, but now she has a soft nest of dark hair, vibrant green eyes, and an increasingly expanding mind. She is like a flower unfolding, waking up to the world. She asks questions about the world around her and I can see her soaking it all in. Every day of her life builds her personality – every sentence spoken to her, at this age, could change the rest of her life.

In five minutes’ time, her focus will have shifted – she will lose interest in the ducks, distracted maybe by a passing dog or a sudden fierce longing for ice-cream. But right now, this moment, this action of crumbling the bread between her fingers and letting it fall to the waiting ducks below is her entire world. Her sparse eyebrows knit together, the smooth baby skin rumpling slightly between them; her moist rosy top lip pouts in concentration. She achieves without thought a state that most adults can only begin to achieve in meditation and mindfulness exercises.

Laura turns her head and looks up at me, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. ‘More bread, Daddy!’ A tidal wave of love rushes over me as I smile at her imperious tone. I tug the plastic bag out of my coat pocket and hunker down beside her, tightening my grip on her coat with my other hand. We crouch together on the cold stone paving and look out on the still, murky canal water, the willow trees reflecting in its glassy surface.

Facebook & Twitter

I’ve decided to take myself more serious as a writer – this hopefully means producing more on this blog, and it also will mean a little more shameless advertising and utilisation of social media.

So I’ve created a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I’m not ready yet to start sharing with people I know in my “real” life, for various reason, so for the moment this Facebook page will be populated only by you good readers – or whoever of you actually feel like checking it out and following!

I have no idea yet how I will use the Facebook page, but I’m sure it’ll all become clear with time. I will probably update every time I post on Sirens & Muses. The Twitter account is even more of a work in progress – as I have never used it before. But if you want to follow me, I will set it up to tweet every time I post.

Without further ado, here is the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ainewarrenwriter

And here is my Twitter: @SirensAndMuses

Please feel free to like, comment, or whatever you please! 🙂

Comfort or Passion?

Left dangling as I am over the edge of the adult world of employment, I find myself thinking a lot these days about the future, and about my priorities in life.

It all comes down to the question of happiness. Having been raised in an upper-middle class home, and being someone who generally enjoys pleasing aesthetics, good food, and the arts, I find it hard to imagine being happy in life without having sufficient money to be comfortably well off – to indulge in little luxuries, to have a beautiful home. I came to a decision a few years ago that I needed stability in my life, that I couldn’t bear the thought of not having a stable income. It’s not that I have any aspirations to have a super-high-paying job – and indeed, the life choices I have made so far haven’t exactly set me up for that lifestyle. But a stable career – a career in which I would be sure to make a certain amount.

But over the last year, something of the truth of life has struck me. And that truth is: life is really, really short. It is starting to seem to me that hours spent every day on something that I am less than passionate about are precious hours wasted in a short lifespan. I acknowledge that being able to turn a passion into a career is not something that is possible for everyone. But surely, at the age of 23, I should not yet be giving up on it.

I think the problem is that I have always been afraid to actually sit down and do the things I think I passionately want to do. Perhaps it is a fear of failure – a fear of not being able to achieve what I hope to achieve. When I was a child, I expected to have my first novel written before I turned 20 – but 20 came and went, and all I’d managed were some 3,000 words on a story that didn’t feel like it was going anywhere.

And following your passion is not easy. I am well aware that attempting a career as a writer or as an academic could lead to relative hardship, difficulty in acquiring a publishing contract or a position in a university, and potentially not enough money to be as comfortable in life as I might wish. But really, what should be more important to me? Should I really give up on my dreams before I even attempt to turn them into a reality, all just to avoid stress and acquire a stable income before I’m 25?

I am a qualified librarian now. I may not have as much work experience as may be needed to find a job in this environment, but I could very feasibly move into an internship and from there into a paid position in the next couple of years. And could potentially work in this company or area for the rest of my working life. It would make the other areas of my life easier – my social life, money issues, buying a house and raising a family in about 10 years’ time.

But would it make me happy?

Would I be satisfied with my life?

I’m not sure that I would be. And yet – I find it difficult to start doing those things about which I might become passionate. I have done some writing, and I have thought about my area in English literature and started playing with an idea. But it feels difficult, like wading through mud. And I think – will it get easier? Or is this really how it would be if I stuck to this path? A constant uphill struggle with my passions in life.

But the alternative looks less and less appealing to me. I’m not ready to settle for less in my life.

Skies, rooftops and street lamps

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of carrying my camera around with me – it’s a little difficult, as I often feel like it’s an extra weight and burden that I don’t want to be carting around in my bag as I walk in or out of town. But last week, it paid off. I had been for a few drinks with an old university lecturer of mine and was on my way to my boyfriend’s flat for dinner. The sun was going down, and the light on the buildings and the colour of the sky inspired me to take a few snaps. For the first one, I really wished I had a telephoto lens on me, as I really wanted to capture the statue on top of the church with the new moon beside him. But I’m happy enough with the results.

Living in the moment…

…how do we go about it?

It’s amazing how such a simple, almost clichéd idea can still manage to have a profound impact on me every time I am reminded of it in any well-thought out or well-articulated way. And it makes me wonder – am I ever going to stop “forgetting” to do this? Will there come a time when it truly becomes ingrained in my day-to-day existence?

But the problem isn’t just with forgetting to do it – the problem starts with managing to do it in the first place.

Essentially, a call to living in the moment should be a reminder of the insignificance of material things, the pettiness of small irritations with loved ones and days whiled away in boredom. We might feel moved to reach out to a loved one, or to engage more in what we’re passionate about. We might engage in such activities as meditation, and attempt to think only about what is happening to us right now without reference to the past or the future.

The problem is this: we are, as human beings, hardwired to be constantly thinking about both the past and the future.

And this tendency is present instinctually, emotionally, and intellectually.

Our ability to reason, to compare, to analyse, has led us to this evolutionary point. It is the secret to our success. And so, letting go of this tendency seems to run contrary to our very nature.

So what are we to do about it? It is often true that we would be happier if we let go of memories of incidents in the past, no matter how recent – if we allowed our consciousness to reset and focus on the now. But it is almost impossible to avoid bringing things up in your mind and assessing the probability of it happening again. And if we do consistently focus on the present and avoid this type of analysis, how are we to look at the bigger picture of our life and assess our own happiness, and the successfulness of how we are going about it?

It’s also true that we may be happier if we avoided obsessively thinking about the future – attempting to plan out the weeks, months and years ahead. This kind of thinking can be inspiring and exciting, but leads to one of our greatest barriers to happiness – waiting to be happy in the future rather than focussing on being happy right now. But again, without this future planning, we cannot build lives for ourselves.

So I suppose this goal of “living in the moment” is rather qualified. Perhaps it is something we should aim to do every day, but perhaps just for a few hours, or even for a few minutes. But is it really possible to do, when the rest of our lives revolve around the-moment-just-passed and the-moment-about-to-happen?

I feel I have been struggling to find the answer to this for many years now. At what point do I give up on this particular holy grail, and decide that the answer to happiness lies elsewhere?

Canal