My husband, altogether too frequently, will suddenly blurt out “Why don’t you write your best selling novel and then we can realise our dreams of retiring to Spain much, much earlier?”
Oh dear, sweet, adorable, faithful husband of mine, it really is not that simple I will sigh to myself.
I’m sure that deep down he thinks I am just being lazy, a little work shy. I married an eternal optimist, who, for reasons unbeknownst to me, has an unequivocal, unshakeable faith in my abilities to actually achieve a career as a ‘best selling novelist’.
In many ways it is very flattering to know that he truly, unwaveringly believes I am sufficiently talented for this and that there is no doubt in his mind that I will succeed and on the other hand it is becoming increasingly, excruciatingly frustrating to try to explain the overwhelming difficulties I am currently faced with.
My husband is a practical, capable problem solver, he fixes things and therefore to him, there is always a logical solution to any problem.
One day he led me out of our house to stand and look at our barn that sits opposite. This huge cavernous building, with its metre thick stone walls is everything from a garage, workshop and overflow storage, to a gym and playroom and has even been used by our predecessors as a banquet room when they threw a huge party for the whole village.
“I need to re-point all the walls in this barn” he said looking thoughtfully across at the giant building “now if I look at it as a whole, it seems an impossible task, but if I do it a bit at a time, just chipping away at it, a little bit here, a little bit there each weekend, then before I know it, it will be finished” He grins at me, all positive energy and endless enthusiasm. His analogy imparted, he kisses me tenderly, gives me a squeeze, says he’ll be a couple of hours, winks at me and then saunters off towards the barn, no doubt to attempt to fix something else.
Bless him, there are a million reasons why I simply adore him, not least for his support and absolute faith in me but I can’t help feel that he genuinely doesn’t understand my predicament and somewhat misses the vital point.
To complete his current project, he can just pop along to any number of similar hardware shops, buy the materials needed from a veritable array of choice and with, not a small amount of effort on his part I grant you, he can crack on with the job a little bit at a time. When he runs out of materials he can simply return to the shop and buy some more and carry on when time and energy allows him.
He just doesn’t realise that MY small, lone, single-employee shop is currently out of stock of EVERYTHING and very much struggling.
The ‘brilliant ideas’ shelf has been bare for months, the very last drop of ‘creative juice’ was exhausted weeks ago and the meagre stock of ‘backup plan’ reached it’s expiry date and had to be thrown out along with all the ‘mediocre ideas’, the ‘crap ideas’ and the downright ‘desperate ideas’, not to mention the reams and reams of good quality paper where the odd reasonable suggestion were being held hostage amongst an army of ever encroaching doodles, they were also relegated to the bin.
With all the best will in the world, all the right tools, ample time, a quiet peaceful home in which to work with few distractions and a very, genuine desire to ‘get on with it’ in order for us both to realise our dreams ahead of time, I am still missing the key ingredient….. enlightenment.
So, as I struggle, quite possibly for the rest of eternity, to finish my book, I have in parallel to that decided to start this blog, to unburden myself of my thoughts and frustrations and avail you of all of these choice witterings, completely for free.
I hope you enjoy this journey with me. I will do my best to keep you entertained as my sanity slowly unravels.
Thank you for being here
The Virtual Recluse
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