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.