On becoming a writer (Part 1)
...which was supposed to be a piece about habits and surviving life's wobbles.
I’ve been thinking a lot about becoming a writer. I saw this great meme on Facebook, on one of my favourite groups called Writers Write:
I’m trying. And it was going quite well with writing The Book, and then life happened. My mother-in-law got sick and she spent a lot of time in hospital, and the whole family came together. We sat with her, every day, for weeks, which I am so grateful was possible for us to do because of how our lives are structured and how we are able to support each other. The doctors tried to save her, but then we got to a point where it was just escalating…giving this medicine to counter that medicine and so forth and the sons made the very difficult decision to let her go. So we sat with her until she was gone and our hearts were broken, because she was supposed to live with us for another ten years. She had only just moved in. But the universe doesn’t always give us what we want.
For a month after her passing, when all the waiting was done and everyone had gone home, I was unable to write because of life’s existential questions and not having the will to get up at 5am, which is my best time of the day to write. I just wanted to sleep and not think too much and just brainlessly execute my other non-conscious habits, both good (exercise, studying) and bad (drinking wine and eating sweets).
And then this morning I got up at 5am and started writing again, because I want to be a writer. I am a writer. I’ve been reading Atomic Habits and it seems the best way to change your habits is to become the type of person who has the habits you want…so if I want to write I have to behave like a writer and write (see meme above). But because I am also the type of person who exercises most days, I got in the car and went to F45 at 7:15.
And while I was driving to F45 that beautiful Ben Böhmer song from the hot air balloon set over Cappadocia came on and all of a sudden there were tears, and I didn't have tissues because I thought the crying was over, and it wasn’t supposed to be my grief.
But, grief compounds…and pretty soon it wasn’t just about my mother-in-law and the grieving dog she left behind, but it was also about my parents and my friends’ parents and my best friend’s friend that passed away this past weekend and everyone else’s grief, and all the grief that is still to come.
The process of writing unleashed all the emotions and maybe I should have been writing all along, but sometimes it’s okay and you can take a rest from all the tiny habits and habit stacking and streaks and consistency and the making progress towards your goals.
Maybe Part 2 will be all about the routines and systems I’ve put in place to become the type of person I want to become (this process never ends by the way), but for now I am just happy that I put some words down today and that they truly reflect what’s going on in my mind.
Lots of love to everyone trying to keep it together out there!
