Searching for the spark

So, I’ve been having a hard time emotionally these last few months and I’ve tried writing, a past time I have always enjoyed, but to little or no avail. I even joined a MeetUp group to try and focus myself on the task but you guessed it, no joy. I have shed-loads of thoughts and ideas swimming around in my head, all clamoring to be heard, recorded and shared with the rest of the world, only to come crashing up against the brick wall that is my befuddled, bemused and, ultimately, stuck brain.

Then, I just thought, ‘GET ON WITH IT! What in Hell’s teeth is holding me back other than me?’

Therein lies the question: what indeed? Well, I could say that the clutter that surrounds me is not conducive to clear thinking and creativity. I could say that clearing that clutter is beyond me alone and therefore moving forward is impossible. I could say that my mind is so full of clutter that even if I cleared my physical world I would still be mired in the junk of my psyche. I could say that my depression has got the better of me and I can’t think clearly enough to put down thoughts in an ordered fashion so that others could understand what I’m writing. I could say that –

STOP! STOP! STOP! Stop making excuses!

In the end I could say all manner of things are stopping me from fulfilling my lifelong ambition of being a writer. Because that’s what it is: my lifelong ambition. There it is, in black and white. It’s out there. I have spent my entire life distracting myself from my ultimate desire: to be a writer. I’ve done all manner of jobs, pursued all manner of careers, procrastinated in all manner of ways, but the eight year old girl who wanted to act and write is still in there, albeit buried under the junk and clutter of fifty years of life and living.

In October I turned fifty. Bloody hell, was that sobering! Half a century and I’m still flapping about in the wind, directionless, letting myself be pushed and pulled in whatever direction people around me want me to go. I have lost all that fire that once made me bold enough to travel all the way to the USA for a year; to head to London for three years because I could; to go back in to education and become a photographer, which I loved and still do; to go in to technical theatre because it gave me a bigger buzz than being on stage; to put an ad in the lonely hearts column and find ‘the one’; to marry ‘the one’ and have two beautiful and talented children, now almost grown and making their own futures.

Fifty, separated from ‘the one’, sick and on benefits, trying to keep my head above water and care for two teenagers, occasionally working as a chaperone, occasionally photographing people, I am madly searching for the tiniest spark, an ember, a glow, that will re-ignite the flame that will get me through the next fifty years. With my iPhone torch burning brightly, I trawl the deepest recesses of my inner being, my very core, for the last bit of light, only to find it never left, it’s just been hidden behind all the junk of my life; all the flotsam and jetsam of every day living that I never seem to deal with, that stops me from fulfilling my true potential.

So, here goes… One step in front of the other. One day at a time.

The journey starts now.