I’ve been making the wrong choices ever since I was a child. I distinctly remember at the age of about six, when given the choice of dance or swimming lessons, I chose swimming . Not that I liked it more– I didn’t– but I reckoned that if I drowned, it wouldn’t matter how great a dancer I was. I would be dead.
How could I have been so wrong at such a young age? I could blame my over-anxious parents who had lived through the depression and gave me such a difficult choice in the first place. They had four children and couldn’t afford to give us all the lessons we wanted.
I thought I was very clever at the time, and for the rest of my life I have made similar choices. I chose to work at a job I didn’t necessarily like because there was steady money coming in. Writing was a much more insecure business. It might be years before I would see a return. True, but… Here I am years later, trying to catch up.
Because my passion in life, my joy, is writing, I should always have chosen it first. Now my reasoning is “What does it matter if you are alive, if you don’t have joy in your life?”
You might think it’s easier now that I am older, but the habit of a lifetime is hard to break. At this very moment I should be working on my novel instead of writing this blog, which is supposed to help market my books.
Oh, by the way, I have a book launch this Friday at 1:30 at First Metropolitan United Church in Victoria, BC, for The Serpentine Garden Path. Hope you can come.