“Just do it”, he said.
“Of course you can write, it’s easy. All you have to do is start”.
Where this expertise comes from, I’m not sure. But he’s very authoritative, and that must be a bit like being an author, no?
I want to argue. To ask why he has to be such a damn expert on things he manifestly knows nothing about. To ask him to explain why he will be so vocally supportive when other people are there, yet was outraged when I said I wanted to go on a writing course this year, and felt sure I would be too busy at work to find the time.
However I feel that he is accidentally, unknowingly right about this.
So I decide there is no time like the present to make a start. The office is clean, the laundry is in the machine, the dinner is simmering away on the hob, the girls are quietly upstairs watching TV and so is he.
I limber up by playing the piano for a few minutes, just to switch the neurons into action. Then I come into my quiet, empty office and open up the potential of a clean white page.
He comes downstairs. Turns the hifi on, full blast. Comes into the office. Starting moving piles of papers around. Shredding. Chatting. He never “chats”.
The number of times I’ve been sitting here by myself, working while the life of the family bubbled past outside the door. What I wouldn’t have given for a bit of company, a friendly word.
Ironic? Or deliberate? Or me being difficult, seeing the worst in every situation, attaching the most negative motivations to every behaviour?
Who knows. Irritation factor: 10/10. Writing: nul.
“Of course you can write, it’s easy. All you have to do is start”.
Where this expertise comes from, I’m not sure. But he’s very authoritative, and that must be a bit like being an author, no?
I want to argue. To ask why he has to be such a damn expert on things he manifestly knows nothing about. To ask him to explain why he will be so vocally supportive when other people are there, yet was outraged when I said I wanted to go on a writing course this year, and felt sure I would be too busy at work to find the time.
However I feel that he is accidentally, unknowingly right about this.
So I decide there is no time like the present to make a start. The office is clean, the laundry is in the machine, the dinner is simmering away on the hob, the girls are quietly upstairs watching TV and so is he.
I limber up by playing the piano for a few minutes, just to switch the neurons into action. Then I come into my quiet, empty office and open up the potential of a clean white page.
He comes downstairs. Turns the hifi on, full blast. Comes into the office. Starting moving piles of papers around. Shredding. Chatting. He never “chats”.
The number of times I’ve been sitting here by myself, working while the life of the family bubbled past outside the door. What I wouldn’t have given for a bit of company, a friendly word.
Ironic? Or deliberate? Or me being difficult, seeing the worst in every situation, attaching the most negative motivations to every behaviour?
Who knows. Irritation factor: 10/10. Writing: nul.
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