New Beginnings

A snowy day and a new beginning…

When I was younger I had hopes of producing a Great American Novel, but in recent years I have realized that I’m a sprinter, not a distance runner – that and I’ve finally conceded I have no aptitude whatsoever for writing dialogue.  No amount of good resolutions – including those made when unemployed (which I am yet again), where time should not have been an issue – have produced a steady writing regimen, and I have realized lately that I do need to write, for myself if no one else.  Hence, a blog.  As belated new year’s resolutions go, it’s a lot cheaper than a home gym, especially if it winds up not being used much…

So here I sit, facing a still largely blank screen, and thinking about fear.  And I’m reminded of childhood, when timed essay questions would always produce an initial deer-in-the-headlights response from me.  I would stare in panic at the blank sheet of paper, nervously glancing sideways at fellow students scribbling away and then up at the clock, each tick of the second hand feeling almost like an accusation.  Eventually – sometimes more than halfway through the allotted time – the words would suddenly come, as if from outside me, spilling out onto the page as I struggled to keep up with them.  I might only finish just as the teacher called “Time”, but I always did finish – and usually got an “A” – or one of the prizes, if it was a contest.

Fear – or at least anxiety – is something familiar to me, and, I think, to many women.  I once signed up for a class in using yoga to manage fear and found myself in a small studio packed with women.  When the teacher arrived, she looked around the room with a bemused expression and said, “Well, this wasn’t intended as a women-only class…” 

It was with some surprise that, in my early twenties, I discovered I was not the only one who had to fight down the fear (of what, I don’t think we ever knew) in order to, for example, ask a bookstore clerk to reach a desired volume from a higher shelf – at least I did get to the point where I could comfortably ask; in my teens, it was usually beyond me.  Maturity has some benefits (though from sheer stubbornness and independence I usually still will attempt to scale a shelf to reach something before asking).

For years, I thought of fear as my personal dragon (medieval history and literature having been an area of concentration in college probably contributed to the choice of image), fighting my way to the point where I felt it was something I kept manageably caged.  I found a card with a wonderful Victorian drawing of Siegfried and a conquered dragon, which I tucked in the frame of the mirror on my bedroom vanity, where I would see it every morning.  Eventually, I realized caging the dragon was not enough; there was always the chance it might break through.  I needed to tame my dragon – befriend it, even.  It has, after all, been my companion for a very long time.

It’s an on-going quest, and writing is part of it.  Writing about it is only a very small part; it’s the writing itself that’s the important part.