Monday 26 March 2007

back


Back to work. Back to the city, back to noise and dirt and rush. Back to people everywhere.


Back to the bus stop, and traffic, and worring if the pigeons will one day get run over right before my eyes.


Back to not saying hello in the street.


Anyway...

I've started reading a new book. I'm only a bit of the way in but am really enjoying it, some of the language is really beautiful, and really striking. This morning, on the bus, I was reading to distract myself from the fact I was off to work once more, and this phrase struck me...

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. "Read" she'd say, "and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out,'I can do that too!'"

This just rings so true to me, not about writing but about drawing and making. I sometimes forget I like to do these things, maybe I don't quite have the time, and after a while loose confidence and I don't know where to start. I Forget. But as soon as I look at what others have done, see pictures in a magazine or book, my voice shouts out "I could do that!" "I must try to do that!" I think maybe this is what I mean when I talk about wanting to miss it. I want that creative urge to jump out at me. It's so funny that feeling, that feeling of compulsion to make, to actually get up of my bum and go and get out my stuff and make something. And it's so frustrating to feel that urge rise, then feel it slip away again as the working week goes by.

It felt so wrong today to be sat at that desk today. So against the grain, perhaps it's because it was sunny outside. I felt so trapped. When I think what I could've been doing instead, this time last week I was walking in fresh air, miles away from anyone. I know I'm being melodramatic. I know everone must feel like this when they come back from a holiday. I mean that's why it's a holiday, because its NOT real life. But I just get the feeling that my life could be a little more like that. I don't want to settle for this feeling only 25 days a year. There must be more to it.

At what point do you settle?

2 comments:

amisha said...

oh sarah... empathizing with this post so much! my schedule is defined by the tension between 'should' and 'want' and there is a real struggle to maintain creative energy during the day so that i want to create when i get home... i think it's common, honestly, unless one is so fortunate as to be in a really creative job. but once you build a routine of that time daily it becomes a need like water or air.
good luck with the readjustment this week...

Sarah said...

Thanks so much Amisha, it means a lot to know others feel the same way. I feel rubbish complaining about it because I know I'm lucky to have a job and a house and a brain that works... sometimes it's just good to let it all out isn't it... bit of a vent...

Thank you for your encouragement, I will work to build that routine...