Recently, it’s felt like my life isn’t really my own. For various reasons, the usual things that fill up the gaps between work (and are the places where I feel my living really happens) have disappeared. Not to say that it’s all been bad. Much more time with family has made me appreciate them, and time spent looking after myself without piling on expectations can’t be a bad thing. It’s just been rather odd to face the lack of things I consider to be ‘progress.’ No drumming rehearsals have meant I haven’t got any better (and undoubtedly got worse). No French lessons, no running, all the things that I usually count up over the week and use as a measure of success. And worst of all, no writing. In times where I am struggling to hold onto my frail identity as a writer, I often open up a sticky note on my laptop that counts words completed per day. If nothing else, it means I can do a tally at the end of the week, count up the syllables of success. For a month, this has dwindled to zero.

Even these musings are being done on a train, on the way to do something else. When something has been taken away, you realise how much it meant to you. I wrote an article recently for Wander magazine (check it out if you haven’t yet, beautiful and eclectic magazine). In that, I was mostly concerned with origins, perceptions, nationality, all of the things that are commonly associated with your sense of where you fit in the world. What I’m coming to realise is that my sense of self is incredibly closely tied to my actions. Or inactions. I’ve been feeling adrift, lost in a sea of things outside my control, forced to do the bare minimum of things.

It makes me look at what writing actually gives me. Not financial gain, not fame, but perhaps something more important than I’d given it credit. I started my novel when I did a Masters. I was miserable in my job, had always wanted to write a book, and decided that now was as good a time as any. More an exercise in seeing what I could do than anything else, I wasn’t expecting to have the creation of stories become something so integral, so personal. Without losing myself in a sea of words, things feel greyer. Without imagining new people, places, their thoughts, their feelings, searching for ways to express the pictures in my head, I feel a little less. Reduced, as if the mundane acts of feeding and caring for myself are actions to keep me going, not things to keep me alive.

Writing is hard. On days when I’m tired it feels impossible to create anything. Sitting on the bus, I’d much rather read a book, the news, listen to a podcast, passively absorb something someone else created. But it’s dawning on me that the seeming sacrifice is not the hardship I’ve built it up to be. Or rather, denying myself the thing that seems like a massive effort might just be costing me more than I realise.

Sometimes you forget why you started doing something in the first place. It’s so easy for things to become routine. Even those that started out as fun can end up feeling like a chore, just another thing to do on the list, another thing to make you tired. The briefest of breaks can make large the things you found small, lend an importance and urgency to activities you moaned about doing before.

Some people lack the free time for any of the things I enjoy. Responsibilities, ill health, finances, there are innumerable conditions that keep you from your desires.

No matter how tired, I want to remember how privileged I am to have the time and space to do things. And when that time and space is taken from me, to remember to find tiny cracks within which to wedge those things that are precious when lost.

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