Is is too late? Today's now is next year's then.

Is it too late? Am I too late? The most maddening questions of all. Since about the age of fifteen, I've felt like the White Rabbit checking my watch and muttering "f**kitty, f**kitty, fuckitty, f**k, f**k", or staring in desperation as the sand flows through the hour glass. I think often of Marguerite Duras' observation that "Very early in my life it was too late."

My over-riding feeling these days is "It wasn't too late then, but it is now". That I wasted years and years bemoaning my lost years. My real lost years numbered around seven; from the time I went in to St. Ann's to the second time I was discharged from St. Patrick's. The latter was more than ten years ago and I've spent most of those ten years recovering from treatment
Now I realise that it wasn't too late. That nineteen is a fine age for your first kiss. I turned up for the first day of the HDip thinking I'd be the granny of the class but soon found out that twenty-nine is a common time to turn to teaching as a career. And I know that thirty-eight is an okay age to have a baby and that if I get pregnant in the next two months, I will indeed a mother by thirty-nine. Which wouldn't be bad for some-one who lived at home until she was thirty-seven.

The logical turn seems to be that today's now is next year's then and, following on the pattern, I am surrounded by opportunities that in year's time, or even a month's time, I'll be kicking myself I didn't exploit. This is the logic, but the reality is subtly different. I might be the same person I was five years ago, and the world might be the same place, but my place in said world has changed. I am no longer a young woman. I woke up and smelled the pheromones only to realise they were coming from the married men who are everywhere. Men who were single when I was busy being crazy. And when it comes to writing I don't have the time now. I can make the time, I can carve it out.
So in one way, it's later. But later doesn't have to mean too late. It might be too late. It's too late now to go back to college and do journalism rather than the HDip, it's too late to go back in time and act less crazy and get back on Campus Radio and launch my broadcasting career. It's too late to go back and photocopy and keep the whole, entire novel that I wrote and can't find. It's too late now to be nicer to the gorgeous man who really liked me but who now lives half-way around the world and is seeing another woman.
But does all this mean that It's Too Late? I don't know.

I've made major changes in my life lately. Following on from joining Gateway Women, an online community for NoMo's(women who are not mothers) I found the work of Brene Brown. www.ordinarycourage.com Brown's work has transformed my way of thinking. I've thought for many years that my experiences were not down to mental illness but couldn't articulate what they were down to, until I read "The Gifts of Imperfection" and realised the role that shame has played in my life. The book recommends Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project" www.happiness-project.com  and I feel I have found a kindred spirit there. I've printed out the Resolution Sheets and feel finally, what I've always wanted, a tool to help me get a grip on my life.
So the past few days, having seen the fantastic effect my reading and changing has had on my life, I ask "Is it too late?" Will what I've learned help me reach my goals, my mountain, or merely help me come to terms with never getting there?

Today's step is to realise: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether or not it's too late because I won't know it's too late until it has already been too late. I won't know until now is then. And by then it really will be too late. Or it won't have been.

The sand  is still trickling from the bosom to the hips of the hourglass. But the White Rabbit is sitting down and having a nice rest.

Instruments of Navigation; Why Rihanna is Wrong

The theme of this blog is choices and how to make the right choices so as to reach the mountain by the least circuitous path. So I was a bit stumped today because it was, as I saw it, a day devoid of choices.
A few months ago I made the decision to once more act as an advisor for the State Exams Commission. I didn't even make the decision; the form came, I signed it and sent it back. I figured I need the money and I like having people in my regular job know that I'm an advisor. The money point is fair enough but the second point is based on my feelings of not being enough. It's still a valid point though, and should in theory do me no harm.
All things come at a price however, and last week was when I started paying. The work involves three trips up the country. The last of these was today. I set the alarm for 6 o'clock, got up and drove, knowing how I'd spend the day and knowing I'd have to drive back in the evening. No choice. No backing out at this stage beyond pulling a sickie.
I decided the only choice I could make today was to try to be happy. I would try to have a happy day. And I did, and I had a happy enough day because I remembered at the neutral bits, the standing around bits, to point towards happiness, towards the mountain. Even the existence of neutral bits was new to me.
Am I any nearer the mountain than yesterday? I don't know. I have decided though, that one of my navigational tools will be to move towards happiness. They say that that's how cats and pigeons navigate. Once they have lived in area long enough, they know the angle of the sun. Put them in a strange place and they move in one direction, find the angle worse and try another and another until the angle improves. That's how they make their way home. So in my choices I will aim to do things that make me feel happy in the short-term.
That awful song "Diamonds" has been running through my head. I find "I choose to be happy" the most irritating lyrics ever as they imply that happy people are that way because they choose to be and ergo, unhappy people are unhappy because somewhere along the line they decided to be unhappy. We had a speaker in work one day who said the same thing. A motivational speaker who told us life was all about choices and people who are depressed are that way because they're making the choice to be that way. I was outraged then, and still am. How can anyone make the choice to move towards happiness in a world so lacking in compassion? No-one chooses to be depressed, or chooses to be unhappy. I didn't choose to be a psychiatric patient. I did what I thought was best. I did what I thought would appease those who held the power and authority in my life. I didn't think I had a choice as I'd been in situation and situation where it was explained to me that I didn't have  a choice.
-You have to stay here until the doctor says you can go.
-You have to take this pill.
-You have to stay away from the person who is complaining about you.
-You have to accept that you're not wanted here/there.
And I did have to stay there until they let me go, and I did have to take the pill. I didn't realise how I could have behaved to make them let me go. I thought I did, and I tried but the more I tried the more determined they became to keep me prisoner.
Happiness was an impossibility for me. Not a theoretical impossibility, but impossible given my lack of knowledge, my situation and my lack of support. I gave up. I lost the map.
Today I had a happy day. Not a good day- I spent it a prisoner of my sense of lack- but a day in which all my choices were based on what would bring me the greater happiness. Rihanna was wrong; we can't choose to be happy. We can only choose to move towards happiness.

First, Locate Your Mountain

The title of this blog come from Neil Gaiman's commencement speech at the University of the Arts in 2012. It's at the bottom of the page and I highly recommend it. I came across the speech on www.gateway-women.com and it's been on the back of my mind for a while.

It's a simple concept and hopefully on that works. My life so far has taken me far from the mountain, or I have taken myself far from the mountain. Maybe so far I'll never reach it in this lifetime.

I have to start the journey though, as it's the only one worth taking. I'm seeing the world now like one of those maps at the start of fantasy fiction novels. There's the Mountain, and where I am now, and beyond that the Swamps of Despair and the Saline Sea of Infertility and the Forest of Confusion. Beyond them again, around the perimeter of my imaginary world, lies the Desert of Oblivion. It's a small world; life is short and I don't like travel.

Before I can take any steps I have to define my mountain. What is it like, beyond high and imposing? I came up with three things this morning to define my mountain; motherhood, publication and a full-time contract in my current job. I just threw the last one in because it feels more attainable than the others. Up to now these have been three separate locations on my cognitive map but I have put them all together because it's my map in my head and I can do that.

So my mountain is personal to me. Your mountain may be different. No, it'll definitely be different. So far today I've taken these steps towards my mountain:
-decided to taken Gaiman's advice.
-decided I want to happy along the way and that this will form part of the journey to the mountain.
-started the blog.

This is a test post. The work begins tomorrow.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikAb-NYkseI