A day of unscheduled awesomeness

I was going to begin today with bad news. Well, not bad news as such, but a description of last night’s Outrageous Screaming Terrors. I was overcome with fear and doubt, wondering how I’ll feed myself in January, pay the rent and survive generally. This is what happens when you make big decisions about your life. Fear comes up, doubt comes up. I managed to settle my mind down after a little practice, but it can be tough. I’ve read so much lately about stretching your comfort zone rather than leaving it. Yet I seem to have left my comfort zone so far behind I’d probably need not just satnav but an Ordnance Survey, compass and a pair of sturdy boots to find it.

This morning, I woke up to find myself showered with good things. First of all, it’s beautiful outside. This does mean that my apartment will be freezing cold all day, but I’m quite happy to keep my fan heater on for the pleasure of a cloudless sky. I came downstairs feeling rather flat, thinking I would need a lot to make me feel good today. As I supped upon my detox drink, the intercom went off and I heard that wonderful gravelly voice on the other end: “Postman!”

Not just one parcel but two! Two parcels! A while ago I ordered myself the four latest Paraliminal meditations, and today they’ve arrived, along with a book by Al Siebert on resiliency. This immediately cheered me up, as these were technically Christmas presents for myself to give me a bolster through my current Life Crash. Thrilled by this development, I set off for my morning walk.

You might remember from my rather scattered entry yesterday that I mentioned I didn’t have anybody to share Christmas with. This isn’t good when you’re feeling festive and happy. Oddly, despite the Life Crash, I am feeling very upbeat most of the time. On my way out of the door for my walk, my iPhone beeped at me, telling me I had email. My mother was getting in touch to ask if I’d like to go down there for Christmas.

Now, there are issues around this. Since the last time I spent real, physical time with my parents, we had a bust-up. In fact, the bust up was this time last year, when a contract came to an end. I was desperately terrified, despite a friend offering me emergency financial help. For the first time, I talked to my mother about seriously writing. Seriously, after writing fourteen books and keeping an online diary forever. I was almost ready to acknowledge a few important things about my life. Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t happy with this at all, and things grew ugly. For a few months we didn’t speak.

The relationship between my mother and me and writing is a difficult one. She’d worked in publishing and maybe even had ambitions to be a writer. I don’t think anything could have been worse for a woman who’s had her personal dream crushed and abandoned than having a daughter who writes her first books between the age of eight and nine. Looking back, there was no way I was ever going to be intended for anything else, to be honest.

Regardless of that, the attitude has always been that I have to get a Proper Permanent Job, and do the Proper Permanent Job for all eternity, no matter how I feel about it. This is something I’ve absorbed into myself, along with the idea that I’m responsible for making my mother feel OK about what I’m doing. In a desperate bid for her approval, I did everything I could to please her. I went to university and studied geography. I thought about being an academic, but it really didn’t fit.

Leaving academia behind, degree and PhD and big brain in hand, I set out to become… a secretary. Yes! You have it right. My mother, after teaching in Africa, after doing the same things I’d done in life (constantly breaking rules, taking risks and the rest), had become a secretary. So I thought I’d be a secretary too. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out. Not only did no permanent jobs come along, but when I did contracts, I didn’t seem capable of doing them for very long. It’s taken four years of working on and off, starting my own business as an analyst, to realise I am really, really, really not cut out for office life. Or indeed any job where other people tell me what to do with myself.

Still, I tried very hard. When people told me that many people have to do things they don’t like, I felt guilty for wanting more from life. Why should I have to have a life where I spend nine hours of every day for the rest of my life in a situation I hated. Who’d choose to do that? At the same time, every time I’ve tried to run away from writing, it’s dragged me back again. When somebody asked how I’d managed to write so many books in such a short space of time, I had to reply that basically, it happened by accident. I wasn’t planning on it. All these words just come pouring out of me, this world won’t let me go.

Even as I write this I feel a little bad. My patterns are showing up (which is good), as I tell myself it’s not fair to think I have any right to be a writer, to make money from it, to have Amnar take off. In short, to let myself be me. This is one of my patterns, the major reason why I hold back. And, I think, why I wake up at 3am with the Outrageous Screaming Terrors.

Regardless, it seems like I don’t have a choice. It’s started to feel like if I don’t do this willingly, the universe will ass-whup me into it by some other means. I’m currently indebted to people like Charlie Gilkey and the Woman Known As The Girl Pie for promoting me and pushing me forward with this, while I dig in with my nails and think “No! I must plan for mediocrity! Mediocrity and boring are good!”

Despite the fact that my mother tends to put me on the defensive, I called her up and after some back and forth, I’m flying down there to see them on Friday night. It might be flinging myself into the lion’s den, but also a good opportunity to test my gradually growing confidence in myself and what I can do. Patterns and habits can be revealed and worked through!

On the plus side, I get to see my gorgeous and thoroughly wonderful niece and nephew. My niece looks so like me that people usually assume I’m her mother. I’m secretly proud of this.