Before it happened, I saw the period of six months after leaving my job as make or break time. The start of the new term, also, was a big milestone for me, because it was the first time I hadn’t gone back to work after the summer holidays in, well, forever. I think my mentality (if I had one mentality – I probably had lots) was that I would have to be sorted by the end of the six months or else. Because of that I tried to count the days I spent writing and blogged about them – this was mainly a way of keeping on track. I wasn’t expecting anyone to read what I was writing. It was interesting in itself – keeping a note of the days when I wrote. It demonstrated that – actually – even when I am not working full-time, things still get in the way of writing. Distractions, like builders, for instance, like the Writing Shed not being ready, loomed large. I’ve written about them several times. I didn’t think the noise of the builders would be such a problem, for example.
Writing space and writing time really do go hand in hand. Writing space involves lots of context – the right amount of sound (try sitting in a soundproof room and you’ll see what I mean), the idea that a space is mine to do with what I want, lack of clutter. Writing time has its contexts too. The right amount of time – not too much and not too little. Planned time. Time to do other writing tasks – I mean other than the one you are best at. For me, generating words is what I like doing, so planning got sacrificed until I forced myself to do it.
The blog posts themselves were an excuse for reflection on what I’d done. I came to realise that preparing for a day, and reflecting on a day, were absolutely key to any kind of success, to the point where I think they – along with planning – may be the difference between success and failure, at whatever it is you want to achieve.
Now the six months are up, I know that they weren’t make or break time. It takes a long time to establish a business (including a writing business). It is possible to budget better when both parents aren’t working full time and commuting. It is possible to take on a flexible portfolio of teaching work, that doesn’t take over my life. None of this is straightforward. All of it has been challenging and frightening. The point I’m trying to make isn’t that it’s been easy (far from it – the opposite of easy). The point I’m trying to make is that my time isn’t up. My time is the rest of my life. Further to that, I’ve realised how much the last few months have been about learning, and how much the next year will be about learning. This has mainly been learning skills such as Photoshop or business planning so far, but it has also involved more intangible learning – learning about myself, for instance.
So, it’s not the end of days. But, although I’m still going to track how often I write, or do writing related activities, because it’s a very useful learning tool, I’m not going to try to blog every day. Christmas (see my last post) was the month-long dividing line between that approach and my new one. My new approach – now in my Shed! – involves personal planning and reflection plus a blog recording the progress of my writing. It’s the end of days in that sense. In terms of my personal process, it’s the end of days as units that I can blog about.