Flying Girl Jumps Into The Night, or "Oh, You Foolish Alice. How Can You Learn Lessons In Here?"

Flying Girls Jumps into the Night, or "Oh, you foolish Alice. How can you learn lessons in here?"
pencil, ink and acrylic paint on vintage book page
11/18/09

I dug out my old Alice In Wonderland book that I started altering years ago and put away as other things took over. This page fell out of it.

I thought, boy, I like that quote from Alice talking to herself.

And I thought, you can't stay safe and protected and confined and still learn the lessons you need to learn.

In order to grow, you need to take risks. You need to not always be so safe. You need to go on adventures. You need to have your equilibrium knocked around a bit.

Yes? Maybe.

All I know is that I want something out of my life, and if I were to continue with the comfort and ease of my old patterns, I won't get it.

Ease is not how we find success, I don't think. Struggle is. Because struggle makes us stronger. Struggle teaches us new skills and makes us try new things, and take chances.

I keep hoping that I can have a couple of hours kid free to do my writing. I keep wishing that I could just write for more than ten minutes without interruption.

I never can, and I get frustrated and angry every time I have to take care of a tantrum or a potty accident or yet another snack or a little girl getting into the baby shampoo and doing a little hairsalon on the bathroom bench. Yes. Every single one of those happened while I was trying to get my word count done in my novel for the day.

But here's the thing I'm learning here. There is no perfect writing day for me. Not right now. Not in this place at this time. There is no perfection at all, and yet, I am still getting my words in. Almost every day, interruptions or not, tantrums, accidents, holy messes, my own upsets and anger and depressions... none of it has stopped me.

I keep going.

10 years ago, I would have thought it would be impossible to write at all in these circumstances. 15 years ago, with my carefully cultivated uninterrupted all morning long daily writing sessions in my study with my door closed and complete focus, I managed a regular 3 pages a day and never thought that I could do anything better than that. Now I look back on that in amazement. With that much time to myself, I feel like I could write 20 pages a day!

Something about my life right now, and all its interruptions and all it's responsibilities and upheavals, and all it's focus on being a mom and a caretaker it's made me some thing much stronger.

What? I don't know.

But it happened because I dove in, despite the mess of it all. Maybe because of the mess. Because I took my mess and created the life.


Don't let the mess stop you.