I woke up on New Year's day this year, determined to make changes. I've been hoarding beads and buttons for years, always saying that one day I'll make some things to sell online, but I never did it. A full time job as an English teacher, followed by a husband and two babies, meant that time was something I just didn't have. And yet, last year, I decided to do a course: a sewing course.
I'd always messed around on the machine, making things for friends and family. Some friends were lucky enough to be gifted the first, rudimentary projects with naff fabrics and little skill; my sister a few years later was gifted a round, Tweed handbag with an intricate Highland cow appliqued onto it. She was lucky that her Christmas gift fell at a time of greater knowledge: at least then I could put in a zip and could manage to make my own bias binding. In short there was time for things other than bathing children and marking essays.
I was restless. I started a Creative Writing course because of my interminable inability to finish anything. I have great gusto at the start of a project, dip in the middle and tail off. I just wanted to write a whole story. Eleven years of teaching children how to do it and my own advice had not rubbed off on me. Luckily adolescents never really press their teacher to find out if they follow their own rules, advice and motivational exercises. Within a few weeks, I'd written a story and it wasn't bad. I wrote a poem for my best friend's wedding. I could find it in myself to start something and finish it. I got pregnant again and had a twenty week bout of morning sickness. Oh that great misnomer.
Gaviscon became my closest friend: I could go nowhere without her nestled in my handbag, but I just couldn't continue with the class. My morning sickness occurred mostly around tea-time. I was too sick and for some reason nausea didn't inspire me... I was gutted. I really wanted to finish it-to prove to myself that I could and that I didn't have to be put off by the momentus pressure I put on myself to be 'good' at it. If I had a degree of talent, I'd compare such fear to Coleridge's stranger knocking at the door-that old metaphor for self-doubt.
On New Year's day, nine weeks into my maternity leave, I decided that the things I'd like to happen in my life, would not happen on their own. Years can go by with a strange fluidity; to-do lists are only tackled in a very day-to-day way. The most pressing obligations take presidence over long-standing ambition. 'I'll finish the novel, but only once I've painted the bathroom.' I'm sure I'm not the first, nor the last, never to paint the damned bathroom.
In short. I'm going to sell some jewllery. I'm going to finish that book about Little Pete. I'm going to damned well finish reading the pile of books beside my bed: yes the ones with curled up edges, a testament to Winter condensation. I turned 33 in January and I'll be 34 next January. Things have to change and I have to do it.
I can feel that tremendous surge of energy when both children are asleep by eight o'clock. I hope I wake up feeling it too!
