When Howard and I were engaged we attended a devotional meeting led by one of the General Authorities of our church. I don’t remember which one he was, or the topic of the meeting, but I remember clearly that at one point he challenged the audience to look inside themselves to find what was truly most important to us. I remember searching inside myself and discovering that beyond the “givens” of living a good life as outlined by my religion, the most important thing was to be a mother, to pass on to children all the love and nurturing that I had received. After the meeting was over, Howard and I talked about it. He said that for him, the important thing was to create things and share them with other people and hopefully make a living doing so. We discussed how these two things would fit together and figured it would work very well.
That event was the beginning of our plan for our life together. Thereafter we measured all our wants and projects to see if they helped or hindered these core goals in our lives. We spent money on a house because it provided some stability for both central goals. We then began paying off the house as quickly as we could to further provide financial stability. Even when Howard’s Novell salary doubled, we did not spend much more than we already had. Instead we saved and plotted so that we could some day quit that job without jeopardizing the welfare of our growing brood of children. We made sure that we accumulated the skills we would need to succeed. The realization of the dreams has sometimes been different than expected, cartooning rather than music became the creation of choice, but the core goal was the same. Knowing what the goal was, let us steer our lives toward it.
All of this is fresh in my mind today because I read a rant by Robin Hobb in which she likens blogs to vampires that suck the creativity out of fiction writers, leaving them dry. I do not agree with all that she said, but it was an entertaining read and it made me think. Creative people are frequently filled to overflowing with ideas. They don’t just have one dream, they have a hundred. One of the hardest things for a creative person to do is to stay focused on a single shiny possibility, particularly when some of the others seem so much easier to reach. The tendency then is to chase one dream for awhile and then abandon it for the next. This frequently leaves the creative person about where they started with all the dreams still out of reach. This distraction is what Robin Hobb is lamenting. However what Ms. Hobb does not acknowledge is that for some people blogging is actually a help and inspiration for the writing rather than a hindrance. One person’s distraction can be another’s stepping stone. It all depends upon the situation and the core goals. My blog has been both depending on circumstances.
I frequently feel dazzled by all the shiny possibilities for my life, but I must reluctantly acknowledge that I can not achieve them all. I must choose. Not only must I choose, but I must make sure that the biggest, most important things get the largest slices of my attention. I’m still not finished with that motherhood project I began 13 years ago. I can’t abandon it. I must also continue to support Howard’s core goal of living creatively. In fact both of those goals long ago became “ours” rather than mine and his. That process began on the very first day we talked about it. I add and subtract other shiny possibilities from my life as time and energy allows. But even there I’m not picking possibilities at random, I have a few things I am deliberately chasing, such as writing fiction. And so I slowly, but surely, chart a course through life with which I can be pleased. Slowly, but surely, I am reaching some of those shiny possibilities and putting them into my pockets.
Is it because you put it so perfectly or because I feel so similar that this post resonates with me? Probably both. Creativity is a flighty thing. I find myself darting from one “shiny” thing to another all the time.
I read Robin’s rant and found myself nodding my head too. I do agree that blogging can sap your time (if not your creative juices). But I also think that most writers keep some kind of journal in addition to their big writing projects. (I’m in the middle of reading Joyce Carol Oats’ journal right now). I think we all need a place to put our life’s experiences into words and another place to be more daring and fantastical. I don’t think one negates the other. That said, I do think “blogging” in general is a time-sucker and I find I can easily waste away whatever precious moments I had for serious writing by surfing and commenting and posting for posting’s sake.
–Julie
It’s hard not to see that she has a point; sometimes I have felt that my writing in LJ, or my text-based RPGs, suck time away from writing fiction.
And then, y’know, I remember that I didn’t finish my first book until after I started blogging and had been running online RPGs for over a year. And finished my second one by blogging it.
So, yeah … not saying she’s completely offbase, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as she puts it. 🙂
I really like this, Sandra. Good things to think about. Timely, too. I love that the goals are a “we” thing now.
Re: blogging, I would say for me, it can be both an avenue to stay focused on my goals and a distraction from action, so I have to be careful.
Have a great week!
~Wendy
I think this:
I think that you’re doing a fantastic job of the main goals and I think it’s nice that they’ve kind of merged into one. I admire you for the way you pursue your goals and actually achieve them, and I have no doubt that you will weather the storms yet to come in the course of raising what I suspect will be 4 very fine human beings. You also have a great talent for writing and are pursuing that where others such as myself simply sit and dream.
When I was young, people asked me “what do you want to do in life?” and I used to answer, more or less honsetly, “I don’t know”. So far, I’ve worked in London repairing tills, on a farm in France, in a scrapyard, done a degree in Physics and spent about the last 10 years as a self-employed school taxi driver; this has happened as a result of doing whatever happened along. Currently, I’m happy enough with what I’m doing.
If I’m in a mood to be distracted, I can be distracted, blog or no blog. What I’m distracted with really isn’t the point. 🙂 I’ve actually found that the social support helps me get more done, not less. I expect this will become even more important as I leave school and no longer have as many regular in-person forums for discussing writing.
I like what you said here about goals. I had that conversation with Drew six months ago. He wants to paint. I want to write. We both want to have a family and be at home with that family as much as possible. We’ve set plans to those goals, and are moving forward. I expect the plans will change as new opportunities and new information come to us, but I don’t expect the goals will change. It is nice to have “our” goals rather than “my” goals and “his” goals, because we’re a lot better at all this stuff when we work as a team, and it’s not as scary, either.
*sigh* Makes me wonder where we’ll be in thirteen years. Hopefully we’ll have seen some serious progress toward the goals, if not arrivals at them. Sometimes chasing after the designated shiny goal is more important than actually having it in your pockets. The having is nice, but I really think the reaching is the point.
You’ve got it more together than I do.
Ona