Book(s)

I am about half way through "The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women" (Gail McMeekin) after seeing reference to it on a number of other blogs I read. It's inspiring, but I think I have to admit that I just can't do it all. So much of it rings true but, I personally can't see how single-parenting can leave me enough time for "becoming" or even "being" much of anything. There is a chapter on Committing to Self-Focus which talks about making your own needs and dreams enough of a priority. Sounds great in theory but....I want to be there these early years of my son's life, these years that he still wants to hang out with me, wants me to help him with things, explain things and answer his questions. I want to spend the time to hear what he thinks, what his day was like, who bugged him or helped him out at school. And you can't get all that in one little bundle of allotted time. It comes out little by little, prompted by other things that are going on, this is information that can't be forced or made to share simply because it's convenient for me right now to listen to it instead of when it's convenient for him to tell me. Honestly, it has left me feeling inadequate as an artist.

A quote, "The problem is the simple reality that the act of writing a poem or a novel, of painting a picture, of sculpting a form, of choreographing a dance, of composing an etude is not a simple or time-bound activity. Rather, it requires a total commitment of energies and attention, and an ability to suspend time and space - eureka, the heart of the problem for creative women, whose total attention would be shifted away from their home and children to their art!" then, "Because of our societal script to care for others, this decision to engross ourselves totally in our creative work, even in time-limited segments, generates more conflicts for most women than it does men." So true. Why is it, if while I'm doing all the other things in my life, a part of my head and heart are in my studio, working away, filing away images and experience and urges, why, when I have those small blocks of time does it take so long to get things down on paper or canvas or completed or at the very least moving along at a clip enough to satisfy?

A little while back I finished Anita Diamant's, "The Red Tent". I had it sitting in my pile for about two years and had hesitated to read it because I wasn't in the mood for something with an old fashioned style of writing. But reading it I felt grateful that as women, we've come a long way since the time of Rachel and Leah. Or have we? Do we have a raw deal now, expected to do even more than before?

Maybe I shouldn't write these kinds of posts when I'm coming down from a stressful time. But what other time is there? Or is it all perception? Rhetorical questions.