Jan 14, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Blogs and Bloggers, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Not Writing
A Sad Confession by Vijaya Sundaram
January 13th (or the 14th), 2014
This is a confession to nobody.
So, I missed writing yesterday (the 12th), and today (the 13th of January). Actually, now it’s officially the 14th, since it’s past midnight, but since I’m not in bed yet, it’s still the 13th! So there, ye Gods of Time! Take that and that and that!
So, shall I swallow strychnine?
Rend my garments and wail aloud in despair?
Toss in my lot with the “lotos-eaters?” (Yes, yes, I know it’s lotus, but Tennyson didn’t!)
Take up good works?
Live under a bridge?
Say, “writing is an indulgence,” and work in a prison?
Stare guiltily at my Facebook page, wondering how to never, ever, ever be screen-sucked again?
Grade papers? (Naaaah!)
Go to bed?
Oh, yes, that.
Bed it shall be.
But I managed to write — sure, just this sad, lonely piece about being a bad person, who didn’t write on the 12th AND the 13th (but today’s still the13th until I actually retire to bed, remember?), but still, it’s writing (of a sort, anyway).
Besides, I’m tired.
I taught all day on my feet.
I led the Green Team in its spirited recycling efforts after school.
I read to my daughter.
Fixed dinner.
Practised (and that IS the right spelling of the verb form of the word) guitar.
Practised kathak.
Sang with husband and daughter, playing guitar again.
Surely, I can be forgiven for my lapses, ye Gods of Writing, and ye Gods Who Induce Unwanted Guilt-Feelings!
Well, that’s all for now. I shall retire and nurse my sorrows in private. Sleep will soon drown them out. Then, the new day will begin, and the clockwork of my days will keep on moving, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, until I say, along with J. Alfred Prufrock, “I can hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
Only in my dreams, tonight, I hope.
____________________________ The End ______________________________
Tags: excuses, guilt, lame excuses, not writing, the desertion of my muse for a couple of days
Dec 3, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking
So, you want to write?
What’s stopping you? The dirty dishes, the laundry, the papers you need to grade, the rooms that need to be picked up, the people you’ve to get along with or work with, the children you need to wake up and off to school with a good lunch and change of clothes, the spouse you’ve got to make feel valued, the backlog of books that wink in your direction, then whistle and look away when you turn to gaze back at them, the dust balls reproducing quietly in corners when your back is turned, the instruments you used to play, but you cannot, because you’ve got work to do, anyway, the dog or cat that clamors for your attention, that cup of cappuccino that you’ve got to have at 5:00 p.m. when the muse is knocking at your window, semaphoring madly, but you’re too tired to answer, and what good would it do, anyway, because, even if you were to let it in, you’d pass out from everything you’ve been doing, or not been doing?
Oh. Well. Surely *that’s* not what’s stopping you, is it?!
You’d better get on it, hadn’t you? Pick up your pencil, your pen, your tablet, your laptop, your languishing spirit and WRITE, dammit!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dreamer of Dreams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: being anything except a writer, being busy, being domestic, feeling guilty about not writing, making excuses for not writing, not writing, wasting time, Writing