Monday next week will be something of a landmark day. And for all sorts of reasons. Most importantly perhaps, it begins the university journey of one of my children: their first full week away from home. I am, of course, both proud and jealous!
Simultaneously, our youngest has started on their journey into adulthood via Sixth Form, beginning two years of study before hopefully they too follow a similar path. The immediate practical consequence? They will be leaving home earlier in the morning, returning later.
But there’s nothing unique about any of that really; it’s a scenario replicated hundreds of thousands of times across countries worldwide.
However, this shift – to a house strangely uninhabited by offspring during the majority of the working week – is daunting. There is some shock in the sudden recognition that all the while we were giving our children a structure to help them through their education, they were reciprocating by providing us with a framework within which to operate too. And in four days’ time that will largely have gone.
But hold on. Isn’t that liberating – and for everyone concerned? Absolutely. So what’s the issue?
In my case, Monday represents something of the fulfilment of a dream. I have longed for an existence where I have the time to focus on my writing; and now – given I am currently not ‘working’ in the conventional sense – I am on the verge of that dream becoming reality. Between 8 and 5, five days a week, I will be pretty much free to spend as much time as I chose on writing, on being creative. I can spend more time in publishing through my Coverstory books imprint. Great!
But this isn’t just ‘freedom’, it’s freedom with a twist; the price paid is the removal of the comfort blanket that I have wrapped myself in for the last sixteen years.
So there’s a fresh fear, a new kid on the block. What if I don’t take advantage of the time? What if I can’t find enough things to write about? What if I find myself frittering away the opportunity? What if having all that time becomes too daunting, impossible to handle? What if I choose to run away from the dream, throw myself back into the full-time world of ‘proper work’ – just to give myself back a comfort blanket of a different colour?
Who can say? Right now I have three or four candidate writing projects; a couple of preoccupations outside of writing that will absorb some of the time… I can paint a picture that certainly looks dream-like. But can I live it?
Watch this space!
Ian Gouge - Writer 
Ah, yes, that’s the dilemma! So much time and no excuse. And yet, if you are like me hundreds of things will rise up saying they are more important, more urgent than your writing, and days, weeks will go by with little progress. What helped me was setting weekly and daily goals, like 30 hours per week, with at least 3 hours per day. And keeping a log. If I wasn’t writing, how was I spending my time and was it really more important or urgent. The real key is having a project that you are excited about and then moving into that hot white flow. Then nothing will keep you from writing.
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You’re so right, Deborah. I do have a log of sorts to keep me honest, but the real trick is in finding that one exciting project!
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