Cindy, on the TAW Book Club I’m registered on, put up a couple of exercises which forced my hand in thinking about these things (and working through the resistance of why I didn’t want to do so). From last week, but I’ve just done them -

 Ten imaginary lives -

(hard-pushed to find ten)

1. Writer - published and productive novelist
2. Adoptive parent (working on it)
3. Rich enough to have my dream house by the sea (see No. 1)
4. More world travel whenever I please (not at someone else’s deadlines)
5. Proper cafe owner which does proper coffee and brunches (not particularly well done in England)
6. Luxury Dog and Cat Holiday Camp owner with a big English country house (and staff to clean up the dog poo)
7. School teacher
8. Fantasy artist (pencils, not oils or watercolours)
9. Lyricist for a brilliant songwriter / musician
10. Respected politician (okay, not so sure about that one)

 Ten Tiny Changes

I can’t recall this being in Week 2 of The Artist’s Way, but it makes sense to include these to get to each of the above imaginery lives, I guess. This will truly test whether the above is actually really something I want to work towards.  

1. On Writing - I am writing, in fact I have just enrolled in a writing course which promises to make my fees back in published articles or return them if I’m unsuccessful. I am doing quite a bit over this.
2. On Adopting - Working on that as best as possible. Obviously.
   
3. On Rich Enough - I wrote about my dream house in my morning pages today. It was out of not having much else to write about. I see myself getting to that rich state personally - enough for a seaside home - via my writing. But I told myself off for not centreing on that manifestation constantly also, as a separate entity. So I’ve promised to print out a picture board I did a couple of years ago, and sticking it onto my wall today - where I can see this dream every day. I think it’s even got writing on it.
   
4. World travel - this again manifests itself with richness. I am reasonably well travelled anyway, but would like the choice to just up and go on a family holiday to an African safari or something - whenever I please. I think this one remains a subset of the rich enough dream.
   
5. Cafe Owner - There is a new town to be built in this county, with a guided bus route into Cambridge and St Ives. I have long bemoaned the fact that England doesn’t do proper brunch cafes, and have the fondest memories of some which peppered Wellington, New Zealand (and Auckland) which did a roaring trade on weekend mornings, with the best brewed coffees, cups of tea, hot chocolates with real cream, the best cakes and the best Eggs Benedict and healthy cooked breakfast options. The cafes always had an outdoor large area, where you could order your brunch, meet up with friends and read the big Sunday papers in the weekend sunshine. The new town would be the best place to set this up, but realistically - we have no money to do this. And I have no experience in catering anyway. But I can look into trying out some of those recipes here at home for some nice summertime brunches.
   
6. Pet Luxury Camp Owner - there’s a huge market in the U.K. for luxury pet hotels - there are even celebrities who hire limosenes to take their pets hundreds of miles up to the Yorkshire dales for a week at such a hotel. I have a dream of owning a large country home, with plenty of fields and lakes as surrounds, and this seems to be a nice side business, plus employing local staff to maintain, and providing locals with a discounted way to holiday their own pets with the pampered pooches being shipped in from elsewhere.  It’s not a dream I want to pursue, though - unless I happen to win the lottery to be able to buy that mansion in the first place.
   
7. School teacher - again, not a huge biggie for me. I am about to have a job interview for a position at the school’s after school kid’s club though. Wish me luck.
   
8. Fantasy artist - maybe I’ll start messing around with pencils again. I’m a good drawer, but I don’t currently want to focus on that right now - it would be to the detriment of No. 1. Until that is stable and working, I don’t want to deviate much from it. I have a habit of getting into something, and spending hours doing that instead of what I should be doing.
   
9. Lyricist / songwriter - I think this one might be lived vicariously through my daughter, lol. She seems to have inherited my musical ability, and spends most of her time entertaining us with made-up dances accompanied by songs. Before she was speaking entire sentences, she was already making up songs to well-known tunes. I need to get her piano lessons once she’s old enough, although she will never be a singer as she’s also inherited my vocal abilities.
   
10. Politician - full of opinions, that’s me. But I’m not a natural Brit, so am not entitled to run for local elections, and am unsure as to my own vocal abilities there. I’m better at writing at the speed of my thoughts, not talking. But I am making waves in my behind-the-scenes support of my husband, who is currently running for school governor. So my opinions will be somehow worked through in that respect, if he’s successful. Perhaps personally, I can combine the writing with letters to the editor to hear my voice out there more often. That would be a good combination.
    

 So, I have some homework tasks. Better get busy.

In the meantime there appears a tie-in with some thoughts from elsewhere. Susan White asks us on her blog, to consider what legacy we might want to leave behind us - what should we be remembered for. She’s even good enough to suggest that we might already be working on it.

I hummed and hahhed over this for a couple of minutes.  Logically, it should surely be from something mentioned above - afterall, those are my ultimate dreams. But in those, I had not mentioned my present life much at all - digital scrapbooking, altered arts, creating for others and for my family, even blogging here right now. They should not be denyed, even as I move onto filling my life with some other facets.

To make this easier on me, I thought about what might more simply be put on my gravestone, by my family perhaps. That thought derives something much more defined. Whereas success in writing might mean a large epitaph in the local paper (maybe even internationally) the bare bones of a person sits in a few expensive letters on a tombstone. 

My legacy then, I might like something like this -

“Author, Artist, Loving wife of ………………… and proud Mother of ……………..

“She helped people think, and was very kind” 

Perhaps I’m kidding myself with the kind part, but there’s always hope.  

I’ve had a disastrous weekend, full of tears and arguments. And interestingly, I had forgotten to do my morning pages on both days. Plain forgot, just like last weekend. My morning pages of late last week were reasonably negative anyway - brief and questioning of the need to write down all the same thoughts going through my head, and dreams - over and over again. And after such a good start on the Wednesday…

I didn’t want to dwell over the same stuff again, so used that to make me forget the pages on the weekend. Weekends are really awkward anyway. My whole morning is about sharing getting up with the family, and rushing to do something together. To confine myself away from that for half an hour or over just seemed too selfish, and hopelessly un-necessary also. What would I learn that I wasn’t already writing about anyway?

Justification aside over why I didn’t spend time on writing some morning pages, the emotions came out anyway. Resentment over my husband wanting to once again leave the house and drive away - this time to attend a football match on Saturday afternoon. Resentment in being left alone to entertain both my daughter and the dog - just like every single other afternoon in the week. Resentment that this one remaining facet of my life - motherhood - was becoming so resented as it means I never have time alone to myself to just think. Resentment which makes me realise I need to find more nature time.

I haven’t done  most of the exercises in Week 2 of The Artist’s Way. I did them in my head, and realised I didn’t want to put onto paper what I already knew. Because my life pie would be the worst one of the lot. Where you have to mark each of the following - Friends, Romance, Adventure, Work, Exercise, Spiritually, and Play - well can you do zeros on some of those, and ones on the rest? Not really a pie really, more like something that never rose in the oven.  I’m certain the exercise wasn’t intended to make us all feel a total failure in life, but to offer hope in recognising those areas we need to concentrate our attention upon.

To excuse my big fat zeros and skinny ones on that one, it seems a rating of the current state of play with my life. With leaving my full-time career last September, I also lost my friends, and still struggle to find people I fully get on with around the school playground. Other friends sit at great distances. And the financial predicament with me leaving work has also caused much suffering in many of the other pie pieces - romance is basically zero, and adventure and play are pretty much difficult to do without money. I have no excuses for exercise, as my legathy is emotional rather than physical. And spiritual - well, that’s why I joined up with TAW isn’t it - although in doing so I recall baulking against the spiritual nature of it all. Irony always impresses me, however, and it is this draw card which will keep me going.  

I therefore have only hope now that moving into Week 3, that the author will give me a get out of jail card, and something which picks up my spirit a little better, and not allow the strong skeptic centred inside of me to get away with what is currently going on internally.

TAW and this adoption thing are wringing me dry emotionally, and quite literally. It’s affecting my digital scrapbooking and crafting work at the moment, but ironically is forming an oomph behind my writing work. I picked up a couple of national writing magazines on Saturday, and have just borrowed from the mortgage money to purchase an expensive creative writing course. I’ve joined a couple of online communities on this also, although only for reading and informational purposes. And more mortgage money has just gone on an amazon order for the best writing books out there. Friday I spent tootering around learning a free relational database system which will allow me to grow my research notes for the novel. I also managed to list down some scenes for the first chapter.

And having read in some writing magazines, that writers must also read lots also, then this is exactly the excuse I might need for the claimed artists dates I’ve been taking lately - to just snuggle down and read something. In a lot of ways, I believe in actually just getting on and writing, though. I need to protect myself from the critiques offered over my creative writing attempts - just for the moment while I centre myself in this new facet of myself that I am creating.  I am making progress in this side of my creativity, and with that sits the hope that this journey of vast emotions will be worth it in the long-run. So I shall continue on with Week 3 and see where it takes me.