Notes from the Writer's Diary: No. 3
The present is the only life you will live: writing around my mum's diagnosis
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Work Notes
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I can’t stop thinking about my mum dying. That’s the honest truth of it. Since the stage four diagnosis, the knowledge that we are now in the land of the incurable, I have felt less and less able to compartmentalise it all and go about my life. The future is something that has taken over the now. But still, the writing persists.
The present is the only life you will live
I cannot for the life of me think where I heard this quote. It’s been stuck on my desk on a post it all week. When did I write it down?
My mother is still very much alive. She is well and healthy and going about her work: seeing to chickens, digging over veg plots, cooking the apples down. To look at her you would not think anything is wrong with her. I want to ring the consultants up and say Are you sure? Are you certain?
I’ve changed my work hours to accommodate the exhaustion of it all. I now work a few hours in the early morning when my brain is infused with caffeine, and a few hours in the early evening. In between those times I let my brain do whatever it wants to. Sometimes that is bed. Sometimes that is walking. Sometimes it ends up being work. And I’ve moved back into my cluttered little writing room, having finally gotten rid of the enormous desk top computer. I work on the laptop now. The desk top computer died after ten years on the front line of writing life. I can’t believe how much more room there is on my desk without it and I can see the view from my window much better. I have missed the view, which is mostly sky and tree tops. In the day time I watch the jackdaws on the wind, the power lines waving in front of them like water reeds. I watch the tops of the trees losing their autumn leaves. I watch the sun rise over the lip of the valley, and in the evening night falls fast, dipping the office into darkness. I have yet to adjust to the suddenness of the new dark hour.
I am prioritising my work around my energy levels: my email account is monstrous and over flowing, but I let it overflow and pick it up when I can. There is something to be said for letting go of it, a terrible guilty pleasure as I watch the number of emails creep up, picking over it for anything of interest, anything that is life or death and then triaging the rest as stuff to come back to. This will bite me on the arse in a few weeks time when it becomes overwhelming, but right now I simply press the little x and watch it disappear.
This week several pieces of news returning, starting with a rejection…